The Paleo Diet According to Ice Age Meals, Part 2

Hey friends, we’re back for round two on that whole Paleo interpretation discussion and today, we’re talking ingredients. High-quality ingredients are an integral part of the Paleo diet, and the sourcing challenge can be a hurdle. Hands up if hitting up the butcher, the farmers’ market and the grocery store are all part of your weekly routine.

At Ice Age Meals, simplicity is really at the heart of all we do. From ingredient lists of the products we source to the ingredient lists of our meals, simple and pure is our goal. That’s a good description of the Paleo diet itself, as it happens.

The challenge comes in finding ingredients that are produced in a manner we deem acceptable and on a scale that matches our production.

We did a lot of touring and handshaking when we started sourcing the right ingredients, and right now:

• We buy our squash straight from the farm 167 miles from our kitchen.
• We buy our onions straight from the farm 80 miles from our kitchen.
• We buy our yams and sweet potatoes straight from the farm 215 miles from our kitchen.
• We use organic free-range turkey raised 227 miles from our kitchen.
• We use grass-fed/grass-finished beef from local Nevada ranches

We are still working on consistent, clean sources for our pork and chicken, but we’re dedicated to using a “never ever” product until we establish relationships with these farmers. That means no hormones or antibiotics at any point, ever.

The only oil we use is olive. The only salt we use is kosher. We use proprietary spice blends and marinades instead of sugar, chemicals and tenderizers. And our only preservative is cold air. We flash freeze our meals immediately after preparing and portioning them.

Why are we telling you this? Hopefully, it shows you how serious we are about our ingredients. It’s also a really good representation of our interpretation of Paleo.

We aren’t Paleo to the point that we won’t use nightshades (tomatoes and peppers). We aren’t so Paleo that we won’t use olive or canned ingredients, as long as we’re clear on what’s exactly in those cans.

And for all the food we make, our pots aren’t as big as you’d think. We cook our proteins in 40-pound batches and they’re stirred by men and women, not by machines.

Simple and pure. It’s how we do Paleo.