Figueroa Produce: Provisioner for my Inner Caveman

For several months, I have been transitioning my food intake (I dislike the word 'diet' because it is usually used to connote a short-term change of eating habits in effort to lose weight, which is neither my strategy nor my goal here) to correspond to what it generally described as 'paleo'. 

In short, the paleo diet food intake strategy is based on the idea that there were certain foods at the center of the diet of our ancient ancestors, as they emerged from the primeval jungles, millions of years ago, to become hunter-gatherers.  These are the foods that our bodies' DNA is coded to respond favorably towards, because these are the foods that our DNA itself was mutating and evolving in response to.  Foods in this category include fresh meats and veggies.

Then there are other foods that entered the diet later, which, although easy to grow, turn out to be pretty bad for you.  These include grains and legumes, which entered the human diet at the onset of the agricultural revolution, which was only about 10,000 years ago, roughly.  Apparently there is lots of anthropological evidence that human nutrition took a nose-dive when this happened.

Lately (and here I mean the past several decades), there have been even more additions to the diet that are also highly destructive to your metabolism, like all the modern oils derived from grains, sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, processed starches, trans-fats, and the like.  For more in-depth info on all things paleo, including a blog and lots of links + resources, check out the website Modern Paleo.

So I have been transitioning to this mostly-meat-plus-some-veggies diet, and haven't felt this good in a long time.  I used to have heartburn, indigestion, and all kinds of stomach discomfort.  Now these are very rare, and are pretty much confined to lapses of judgment when I eat something completely ridiculous like pizza or pasta (and which happens less and less.) My weight has stabilized around 178, which is pretty good for being 6'-1" tall, and my body fat is pretty low.  I don't know exactly how low, but you can kinda see my abs peeking through.  My energy has been great, and I feel, overall, really healthy.

One thing that has made this whole new way of eating a really fun part of my everyday routine has been the discovery of a great little market, right in my neighborhood, called Figueroa Produce.

 They sell everything a modern-stoneage caveman could want!  

The produce is gorgeous, and they have a wide selection of both organic and regular:

 
They sell raw milk, Lurpak butter, and Greek Gods yogurt, in addition to a great selection of other dairy products:

But the thing that is the most amazing of all, to me, is the meat department.

They have both regular and grass-fed beef.  The grass-fed comes from a local California family farm called Open Space Meats.  I have really enjoyed the grass-fed beef, and it doesn't seem strong or gamey at all to me, like I have heard some people describe grass-fed beef can be.

 Check out that giant grass-fed marrow bone! 

But wait - it gets even better: they make all their own ground beef right there in the store, daily.  Even their regular, non-grass-fed ground beef is better than any ground beef I have bought outside the Midwest (and I have lived in California for 19 years.)  Or, if you prefer, you can ask Rick, the friendly butcher peopleguy, and he will take any cut of meat right out of the case and grind it for you on the spot!  And their prices are far lower than a certain well-known, big organic supermarket chain (that no longer sells raw dairy products by the way.)

I realize at this point this blog post is starting to sound a bit like a commercial.  That's because it is!  Seriously, I have a selfish interest in seeing this store succeed, so I can keep shopping there.  Also, there's my natural enthusiasm for seeing an enterprise start up from scratch, and watching the owners, Anthony, Luis and Ruben, in there working hard day in and day out to make it succeed.   I really value their efforts.  If anyone deserves success, they do.

One last thing, I almost forgot.  If you give them your email address, they'll email you a coupon for 10% off your entire order.  So if you live anywhere near Highland Park, South Pasadena, Pasadena, or Eagle Rock, start getting your caveman supplies at Figueroa Produce!