Not Just Kale: Shopping for Paleo and Whole30 in Beijing

I recently embarked on a personal challenge to complete Whole30, a month-long nutritional program that aims to reset your body and your relationship with food by eliminating processed foods, including all dairy, sugar, grains, and alcohol (I won't go into the details, but you can find out more on their extremely comprehensive website). I failed miserably, mostly because I’m in a long-term relationship with cheese, but the few weeks I stuck it out taught me a lot about the importance of: a) sourcing good ingredients and b) planning and preparing healthy meals in advance. Both require a little more effort than usual when it comes to grocery shopping.

Shopping for Whole30 is actually pretty simple as the meals plans largely advocate pure meat and veg, but since that’s all you’ll be putting in your body it’s worth sourcing the best quality produce you can afford. Many paleo blogs and cookbooks on the other hand allow for, if not positively encourages, some experimentation in terms of alternative flours, wheat-free breads, and "two-ingredient banana pancakes." Arguably you could just skip that kind of nonsense and stick to the steaks and scrambled eggs, but where's the fun in that. 

A pretty good range of “healthy” ingredients can be sourced from April Gourmet/Jenny Lou’s (other supermarkets are available) but it’s worth shopping around either online or in person for the best possible prices. Below is a brief selection of some of my favorite places to stock up. 

Farm to Neighbors

You pretty much can’t go wrong with any of the stalls at Farm to Neighbors, but my personal favorite veggie supplier is Chunixiang Farm (春泥香生态农场) – they do great big bags of kale for around RMB 10 and the affable owner will even help you pick out a bag based on whether you’re using it for juicing, salads, stir fries etc. I also take advantage of Farm to Neighbors to stock up on Mantra Bars, gluten- and sugar-free energy bars made from all natural ingredients by local expat Marte Van Os. 

Taobao

As usual, Taobao is your knight in shining armor when it comes to sourcing hard-to-find health food staples. Guangzhou-based House Organic (有机e家) sells a wide selection of healthy products from respectable brands like Bob’s Red Mill, including avocado oil, coconut oil, and reasonably-priced quinoa (or as reasonable as it gets, anyway). Delivery is a little slow, so plan ahead if you need ingredients for a specific meal. 

Another one of my regular online haunts is EnjoyNature (悠享佳), stocking a good selection of Whole30 approved raw and roasted nuts, which you can use to whip up ever-so-trendy nut butters and nut milks (top tip: try making A-B-C nut butter, with equal amounts of almonds, brazil nuts, and cashews).

A couple of things to note:

1. Shopping for these kind of ingredients may initially seem expensive, but after the initial outlay you’ll find your cupboards are well stocked for several weeks. 
2. You’re going to spend a lot of money on avocados (like, A LOT). Make your peace with it and move on.

Now to put all those healthy ingredients to good use with a recipe. 

Quinoa Sorta Granola

Adapted from Good and Simple by Jasmine and Melissa Hemsley

• Half cup quinoa flakes
• 8 tbsp coconut oil (could substitute with melted butter)
• Half cup roasted almonds, finely chopped
• Quarter cup goji berries
• Quarter cup desiccated coconut
• 1 tbsp ground cinnamon
• 3 tbsp chia seeds (widely available online or from April Gourmet/Jenny Lou’s)
• 3 tbsp maple syrup 

1. Heat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit or 200 degrees Celsius and line a baking tray with baking parchment. 
2. Spread the quinoa flakes across the baking tra and toast in the oven for 10 minutes (careful, they burn super easily). 
3. Transfer the quinoa flakes to a bowl and mix in the coconut oil, followed by the rest of the ingredients.
4. Cool completely then transfer into a glass jar and store in the fridge for up to a month.

Note: you could toast the quinoa flakes in a pan if you don’t have an oven. This recipe should also work ok with quick cooking porridge oats instead of quinoa, or a mixture of the two.

The Hemsley Sisters suggest adding water to the mix to make a sort of porridge but this turned out to be frankly disgusting, so I’d just go ahead and serve this with yogurt as a pseudo-granola.

More stories by this author here.

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