Carob Powder

Carob powder is interesting stuff. My grandparents used to give me "carob milk," milk with carob powder mixed in. The carob powder would form little brown clumps, but otherwise this was a pretty good drink, kind of chocolate milk-like. On the Caveman Diet, carob is fine to eat. It sweet, but it's not quite like eating sugar. The fact that it's sweet and chocolate-like makes it a good stand-in for chocolate.

Now, the way I follow the Caveman Diet, I do eat chocolate. But only chocolate with no added sugar. What I do to get a chocolate fix is make something with cocoa powder. I've tried several frosting/pudding recipes that contained a combination of cocoa powder and carob powder. My favorite is a mixture of avocado, persimmon, cocoa powder, carob powder, a few dates, cinnamon and Stevia.

Did cavemen have all these complex ingredients? Even more importantly, did they have the food processor I constantly borrow from my roommate to mix the stuff up with? Well, no, everything they ate would have been fairly simple.

But this brings me to my philosophy on Caveman Eating. The important thing is to stick to it, even if it takes eating things that a Caveman wouldn't have had access to. Eating Paleo or Primal, or Caveman-style -- whatever you want to call it -- is really just a gimmick. It's a way to get people excited about eating healthy and help them continue doing that. You can really pursue it however you want. The key is just to find a way that works for you, which is also to say, a way that you buy into.

Case in point: A lot of people who eat this way currently include chocolate in their diet. And when I say chocolate, I don't mean the 100% cocoa that I mess around with -- I mean chocolate that contains sugar. Well, all followers of this type of eating know that sugar is not Paleo-approved. But dark chocolate fits in with how they do the diet, with the way of eating they buy into, so they eat chocolate.

 I tried eating some dark chocolate that had sugar in it and found that there's something about processed sweeteners that just doesn't work for me. Sugar is addictive in a way that something like a pureed fruit is not. An additional problem with eating dark chocolate (the kind containing sugar) for me is that you can get dark chocolate anywhere. I mean, it's at all the convenience stores. It's just too easy to get my hands on.

If I'm going to have a treat, I'd rather that it be something I have to consciously seek out. Carob seems like a good bet in that sense. Also things I have to make myself, like my Caveman chocolate frosting experiments.

Today I heated up some unsweetened almond milk and added a big spoonful of carob powder to it. Just like when my grandma gave it to me when I was a kid -- it tasted great.