Paleo Research Paper - A PDF

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Leslie Batchelder, Freshman Inquiry: Portland...

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Professor Batchelder Portland FRINQ May 1, y Cultured Caveman’s Paleo Portland: Artisanal Economies Walking around Downtown Portland, it is nearly impossible not to come across an abundance of food carts. It is almost as impossible to not come across multiple carts aimed at customers with special dietary needs. Portland has many residents who choose to eat a vegan diet, a gluten free diet, the Atkins diet, the Mediterranean diet, or paleo (the caveman diet). People quickly took advantage of this and food carts aimed towards these residents popped up everywhere. One particular food cart, Cultured Caveman, aimed towards paleo-eating folks in Portland, was opened in 2012 by Joe Ban and Heather Hunter. In a short 3 years, it has grown from a lone food cart, to three food carts and a restaurant. Each of the food carts as well as the restaurant, all have a unique look. They feature drawings of cavemen and dinosaurs and are painted bright colors (see images below). According to Joe Ban, co-founder of Cultured Caveman, the paleo diet consists of “grass-fed meats, pastured eggs, wild caught fish, lots of multicolored vegetables, a moderate amount of fruit, and a couple of nuts” and cuts out “gluten, dairy, added sugar, soy, legumes, and processed anything” (Ban). According to Dr. Loren Cordain, eating a paleo diet “enrich[es] our diets by reducing nutrient depleted foods that are ubiquitous in the typical western diet” (Dr. Cordain's Interview With SPRY Magazine). As Cordain and Ban both point out, the paleo diet is popular because it cuts out foods that are not the best for our health and replaces them with whole, nutrient-dense foods. The Paleo diet imitates the diets of cavemen (hence the nickname

“the caveman diet”) based on the idea that if they ate that way, that is the diet that humans were originally intended to eat. However, like with most diets, there are skeptics. Kris Gunnars is the founder of Authority Nutrition, a team of doctors and other medically-educated individuals who provides articles about health that are unbiased and based solely on scientific evidence. According to Gunnars, five human studies have been done surrounding the paleo diet (there have been seven total studies, however; one was done on pigs and the other had “too many confounders to conclude anything about the diet itself”). In all of these studies, weight, waist size, cholesterol levels, blood pressure, and blood sugar (two of the studies used type 2 diabetics) were decreased in the participants (Gunnars). According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, in one of the studies, done on diabetics for 12 weeks, participants lost an average of eleven pounds, their waist circumferences were reduced by 5.6 cm, and their blood glucose levels decreased by an average of 37% (Lindberg). In all five of the studies done so far, there have been no negative results. Though more studies need to be done to be positive, with the information available now, the paleo diet is completely safe. In 2014, my family and I followed a paleo diet for six months. The first month is not easy, your body is detoxing and adjusting to a new diet and you can feel it. However, during the next five months that I ate paleo, I had more energy than I had had in my whole life. I noticed myself being able to run longer and needing to take less breaks when I worked out. I was working out regularly, so not only was I losing body fat, I was gaining muscle and that helped me build my stamina and endurance even more. My family had originally hoped to not just make Paleo a “diet,” but a lifestyle change as it is intended. However, a family vacation threw us off and we were never able to get back in to it to the extent that we were before. However, we still have certain paleo recipes that we enjoy. Paleo is definitely not an easy diet to follow in the society we

live in today, with convenient fast food restaurant on every corner and processed foods costing a fraction of fresh produce, however; Cultured Caveman offered a place my family could eat when my parents did not feel like cooking. This convenience is what makes Cultured Caveman so popular. There are a few other paleo-friendly carts and restaurants around the city, but not as many as there are of other diet-specific carts. When there are only a handful of places that a family is able to dine, they will often be returning customers, especially when the food is as delicious as it is at Cultured Caveman. According to Charles Heying, artisan products are “handmade…authentic…higher quality than standard products… designed to age… locally distinct… appreciated…[and] egalitarian” (Heying 42-44). Cultured Caveman serves artisanal food aimed at locals (and tourists) who enjoy a paleo diet. Cultured Caveman’s food is all handmade. When Joe and Heather first had the idea to open Cultured Caveman, they beta tested their recipes in their own kitchen (Kickstarter). Part of the paleo diet is cutting out all processed foods, so they do not use products that are mass produced. Cultured Caveman is authentic because it uses paleo foods that are all real, whole, and nutrient-dense. The majority of their ingredients either grow in the ground or are from an animal that eats a natural diet. Since all of Cultured Caveman’s foods are handmade, they are a higher quality than the food one would find in a restaurant that is a part of a large chain. Cultured Caveman’s food does not contain any preservatives, so the food itself is not meant to age. However, when one eats the foods they were meant to eat, they help their body to age more gracefully. Portland is known for having weird people. There is a group called Portland Paleo that currently has oven four hundred members. Cultured Caveman is also a little odd, as it is not your typical restaurant, so it fits in well with Portland.

Cultured Caveman fits in with the essence of Portland for countless reasons. For example, Portlanders are very big on staying local and choosing artisan products over mass produced products. Cultured Caveman is a local company that uses local products to create artisanal foods that are paleo, healthy, and delicious. Working in a restaurant, I have gotten used to people in Portland asking for gluten free, vegetarian, and vegan options. Many people in Portland follow special diets: it’s just a Portland thing. Portland is “at or near the top of most lists of veganfriendly cities” and though vegan and paleo are almost complete opposites, this proves that many people in Portland do not follow a typical American diet (La Ganga). If you ask anyone who is not from Oregon to describe Portland in one word, you will most likely get words such as weird or hipster. Cultured Caveman could be considered hipster because it is not mainstream, one would not find paleo restaurants in just any city in America, but finding one in Portland is not unexpected. Cultured Caveman found the perfect home in Portland and fits in well with the unique culture of the city. Joe Ban and Heather Hunter opened their first food cart in May of 2012, the second one six months later, and the third six months after that. By 2014 they not only had three food carts, but they had a restaurant open as well. According to the researchers and authors of Food Cartology, “there is a considerable financial leap from a food cart operation to opening a storefront” that most food carts are not able to take (Kapell 24). Cultured Caveman was not only able to open two more food carts within the next two years, they also opened a brick and mortar restaurant. Obviously, their food cart was incredibly successful due to the number of people in Oregon needing a paleo-friendly cart. According to Kapell and the other researchers of Food Cartology, there have been few transitions from food cart to brick and mortar restaurants that are actually successful (Kapell 33). At the time that this study was done in 2008, only one food cart had suc-

cessfully made the transition and a few were on track to make the transition successfully (Kapell 35). The researchers also broke down the costs of owning a food cart versus a small business. On average, the cost of doing business in a food cart is approximately $1,100, whereas in a small business the cost is approximately $15,239 (Kapell 35). However, Heather Hunter revealed in their kickstarter video that it was going to be “well over $30,000” to open a brick and mortar, but she also added, “we are taking on most of that ourselves,” proving that they made enough money form the food carts to save up and take on a restaurant. This data outlines how big of a jump in cost business owners incur when transitioning to a restaurant from a food cart. For such a new food cart to be able to afford that massive expensive after only two years in business, they had to have been incredibly successful. Cultured Caveman has been incredibly successful because it is one of the only paleo options in Portland, a city which has more paleo-eating residents than most other cities in the country. With such a unique concept, Cultured Caveman quickly took off and became popular with locals as well as out of state paleo-followers, with some paleo families traveling to Portland just to try their food. The paleo diet, one which consists of meats, eggs, fish, vegetables, fruits, and nuts, is definitely on the rise all over the country. According to Kris Gunnars of Nutrition Authority, Paleo was the most popular diet in the world in 2013. Interestingly, that year was right when Cultured Caveman was gaining popularity and opening their second and third food carts. Though many have been unsuccessful in their transition from food cart to restaurant, Cultured Caveman is doing it, and they are doing it well.

Cultured Caveman Kenton Restaurant

Photo Source: Oregonlive.com

Cultured Caveman Alberta Food Cart Source: Meetup.com/glutenfree-PDX

Cultured Caveman Hawthorne Food Cart Source: foodcartsportland.com

Cultured Caveman Downtown Food Cart Source: foodcartsportland.com

Work’s Cited "Dr. Cordain's Interview With SPRY Magazine." The Paleo Diet. 15 Feb. 2013. Web. 01 Feb. 2016. Dr. Cordain sheds light on what the paleo diet is and how it is beneficial to the human body. Dr. Cordain also compares the Paleo diet to other popular diets. This will be helpful in my paper because I will be able to distinguish the significant differences that

the Paleo of the Paleo

diet has from other diets. Dr. Cordain also comments about the 85/15 rule diet that I can use in the section of my paper about background.

Gunnars, Kris. "5 Studies on The Paleo Diet – Does It Actually Work?" Authority Nutrition. July 2015. Web. 15 Feb. 2016. Heying, Charles H. "Brew to Bikes: Portland's artisan economy." Portland: Ooligan Press, 2010. Print. Charles Heying provides the definition of Artisan and also gives information on food carts. Heying’s definition of artisan is the basis of my whole essay, so I will use the information he provides to define how Cultured Caveman is artisanal. I will also compare the artisanal food cart qualities used in the chapter to the artisanal qualities of Cultured Caveman. Hunter, Heather. “Cultured Caveman- a Kickstarter story.” Online video clip. Youtube. Youtube, 9 April 2012. Web. 19 Jan. 2016. Kapell, Hannah, et al. "Food Cartology: Rethinking urban spaces as people places.” Urban Vitality Group. 2008. PDF. This was a very detailed research project done that gives tons of information on locations of food cart pods, struggles food cart owners face, benefits of owning a food cart over a restaurant, and information on the impacts of owning a food cart on families. In addition, the plethora of information on food carts transitioning to restaurants will help in my comparison between food carts and restaurants. La Ganga, Maria L. "The World's First Vegan Mini-mall. Yeah, You're in Portland." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 4 May 2015. Web. 09 Feb. 2016. Lindberg, S, et al. “A Palaeolithic Diet Improves Glucose Tolerance More than a Mediterraneanlike Diet in Individuals with Ischaemic Heart Disease." National Center for Biotechnology Information. U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2007. Web. 15 Feb. 2016....