I tried to convince my family to use margarine instead of butter. Got to the point where my brother started disliking butter, he would only put margarine on his veggies or he wouldn't eat them.

When I became paleo and started eating butter again and asked my mom what she thought, she said that when I was a margarine eating vegetarian she wanted to make me eat on the deck with the dog. She hated cooking separate meals for me, and she always thought margarine was bullshit. Could have used that tough love before I became vegetarian!

• Special K Berries
• The Kashi cereals, especially the one shaped like hearts
• Soy milk
• Hummus with pita chips

That was the nucleus of my diet for a long time. I remember feeling quite smug about it.

Edamame, tofu, hummus, ANY beans, beans & rice, whole wheat breads, yogurt (I bounced between low fat and whole fat), diet soda, juices/smoothies.

Whole wheat bread (and later, sprouted breads), beans, brown rice, whole-wheat pasta, tempe, and tofu.

Looking back, I believed everything the government, medical community and TV ads told me (sigh.)

I used crystallized fructose rather than white sugar in apple pies because it was "healthy." I made my own whole grain, cracked wheat bread. I went low fat for a while, until my skin started to hurt all over and I realized I had to have more fat--and then I used "healthy" vegetable oils. It's probably a good thing I decided I liked the taste of grapeseed oil because I probably could have done worse.

I ate a lot of boneless, skinless turkey breast--and to this day I refuse to eat that any more. I eat dark meat and skin, but breast meat has to be drowned in butter before I'll look at it.

Beans, quinoa, brown rice, lentils, hummus, sugary yogurts, oatmeal, lowfat milk, frozen organic meals, organic mac & cheese (what?! It's ORGANIC!), canned soup, whole grain bread, bagels, fruit juices.

I shudder to think of all the breakfast cereals. On the rare occasion I go down those aisles, I laugh at how much time I used to spend there debating which one was better. It's painfully obvious to me now that they're all made with the same dust and water as all the rest. I actually used to eat chocolate cereal for dessert, thinking it was better than a cookie since it was so low fat.

Kashi whole grain cereals.

Oat porridge! Had it every day for breakfast for ten years... Beans and lentils. Ignored the fact that I looked like I was pregnant in 5. month every time I ate it. Still thought it was healthy for some reason..

Before I switched to a "clean" diet, I ate a lot of artificial sweeteners, low-fat/sugar-free processed foods and tons of Jif crunchy peanut butter, diet soda and Quaker cinnamon roll oatmeal packets. I was really into Hungry Girl recipes at the time, because healthy to me was "fewer calories" rather than "more nutrition".
After banning processed foods, and later becoming a vegetarian and then a vegan, I ate the crap out of oatmeal (especially oat bran), homemade whole grain bread, homemade bran muffins, all-natural peanut butter, homemade hummus (in fact my first foray into a paleo-ized recipe was making cauliflower hummus, which turned out gross because I refused to use the "massive" amount of olive oil it called for), soy and wheat proteins, whole wheat pasta, tons of fruit, canola and rice bran oils for cooking, "light" bread which was really just overpriced regular bread cut smaller, all pulses, bulgur, barley, tofu smoothies, Quorn products (before I went vegan), quinoa, brown rice, agave, Earth Balance fake butter, nutritional yeast (which I still eat, but I would literally eat 1/4 - 1/2 cup of the stuff at a time to make up for my vitamin-deficient diet) and white whole wheat pastry flour.

It's kind of funny to me that I decided that it was good that I didn't fit animal products in my diet because they were too high in calories and fat, when they were the only things that ever satiated me. On my previous diet I got hunger pains every 60-90 minutes and it was a fantastic feat if I ever made it 3 hours without eating. I'm still amazed whenever I realize that I haven't eaten in 6 hours and am not even hungry.

TONS of rice. I used to put small amounts of chinese food over scads of rice, figuring that the low fat rice was way healthier than the greasy chinese food. Actually, probably both were pretty terrible :)

Fruit, exclusively:o

Whole Wheat Bread and Oatmeal.

Soymilk (/most soy products), beans, oatmeal, protein powder, whole grains, peanut butter.

Honestly, sometimes I can't even believe the old SAD me and the new Paleo me are, in fact, the same person.

Where to begin!?

I think the number one "healthy" thing that I used to eat all the time pre-Paleo was Stacy's pita chips (multi-grain of course) and Sabra hummus (can you say canola oil?)

Another vote for those loaves of crunchy, thick-crusted, chewy peasant-style whole-wheat artisan breads ... I think the only thing really healthy was the amount of extra-virgin olive oil I drizzled on top ...

Ugh, all kinds of things.

Fat-Free Milk, Canned Soup, Canned Chilli, FRIES INSTEAD OF A BURGER!!! (even home cooked), whole grain bread, sugary yogurt, low fat dressings, whole grain bagels, MARGARINE, vegetable based oils, "healthy cereal", Kashi bars, luna bars, blah blah blah health bars, "health drinks", gatorade....

When I was an over-weight kid, about 12, and trying to be thin, I would eat about 6 slices of plain bread toasted with margarine on it, and crackers with margarine, and wore plastic bags over my abdomen while I ran on the treadmill for an hour, "burning the fat away".

This is a true story.

As an evangelist vegetarian, I used to make my own soy milk and bake whole wheat bread in college --all the while dealing with really bad allergies & asthma (shudder!)

Boca Burgers!

And endless meals of pasta or egg noodles.

And endless fat-free pretzels as snacks -- not that I thought they were health food per se, but innocuous.

Peanut butter (with sugar in it), low fat foods, chicken without skin, roasted nuts. I think the rest has pretty much been said. I can bake beautiful whole wheat bread and cook nearly anything from scratch.

Cereal and pizza crust :(

As a vegan, the usual culprits: oatmeal, blueberries and flax every morning, big servings of legumes, brown rice, falafel, almond butter by the tablespoons, quinoa, lived off fruit (the gateway drug to nutella binges), soy and rice milk over dairy, tempeh, those vegan chocolates that have twice the sugar content but no dairy, wholegrain bread (family is still convinced this is the key to good health), alternative sugars and vegetable oils.

Oh, I nearly forgot my foray into textured vegetable protein- a can of gluggy tasteless paste that resembled mince. I was so excited to eat it and be so super healthy for having a suitable meat alternative. Needless to say, it didn't make me feel any better.

Why do we do this to ourselves? I'll swear here and now that I won't ever continue eating something if it makes me feel rubbish, in the name of 'health'.

Oatmeal - religiously! Also wholemeal pittas and rye bread...

epic fail when looking back

I ate a traditional bodybuilding diet including low fat, high protein and high carb spread out over 7-8 meals a day.....because of course we need to keep that metabolism going..lol. I also used to little pound the fiber. Fiber cereal, fiber supplements, extra fiber whole wheat bread, tons of pinto beans, etc. I probably ate 75-100 grams of fiber a day. No wonder I had IBS.

Hummus with pita chips, lentils, brown rice pasta, whole wheat bread, fat-free yogurt, canola oil, splenda, the usual suspects! :) I had such a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea of legumes not being the healthiest thing on the planet, but eating kidney beans after having eliminating them for a few months set me straight right quick! The day after, I felt like I'd eaten a giant donut.

I am actually pretty new to this way of eating so... I am still learning...but I use to think the below foods were so healthy

• Margarine
• Soy Milk & Tofu
• Kashi EVERYTHING
• Dates in excess (as in raw desserts, I thought raw desserts were sooo healthy for me)
• Nuts in excess (1, 2, 3 cups a day!)
• Agave Nectar (and unlimited/copious amounts of natural sweeteners like honey)
• Turkey Bacon (filled with chemicals & other crap I can’t pronounce)
• Whole Wheat Pasta
• Atkins Bars (ignoring the excessive gas)
• Low fat dairy
• Fruit juice in excess
• Canola Oil (I used this stuff like water)
• Diet Pop (and all artificial sweeteners)
• Beans & Lentil (hummus, pureed lentil soups, white bean dips, bean chili)
• Wheat thins (they taste so damn good!)
• PAM cooking spray (only little squirts to not have too much fat. I was so misinformed!)
• Pita bread
• Whole grain muffins & bagels

Oh, the wasted years!

My go-to healthy meal was sprouted toast with a Boca burger, organic Ketchup, a small amount of canola mayonnaise, with a side of edamame, an apple, and maybe some hummus and veggies.

Another favorite healthy meal I used to make was Barilla Plus pasta (pasta with extra flaxseed meal, Multi grains, and lentils) with a jar of Pasta sauce (probably with soy oil in it) mixed with a mixture of ground turkey and Veggie "meat" crumbles. With a salad with bottled dressing. Hahahahaha

Oh, and I started many a morning with a giant bowl of kashi go-lean with 2% milk or rice milk.

I also used splenda in everything and use natural Balance soy-free margarine or olivio spread.

Oh gosh, so much!

'Fat-free' yet partially-hydrogenated-soybean-oil-laden microwave popcorn; fat-free sugar-free fudge bars from dairy queen; South Beach Diet meal replacement bars; fat-free condiments of all kinds, from mayo to Italian dressing; anything suggested by Satan herself (i.e. Lillian from hungry-girl.com); fat-free sugar free Frappuccinos; Quaker flavored oatmeal; Muscle Milk; egg-white omelets.

Seriously though, if there ever were an antithesis to paleo, it'd be the hungry-girl.com way of eating.

falafels and hummus on pita. This, I actually still miss from time to time.

gigantic baked potatoes drenched in margarine and soy bacon bits.

but my worst pleasure as a vegetarian...

wheat thins and bananas. I'd seriously eat 3 bananas and a box of wheat thins for a meal and figure it was "healthy". I thought farting without pause for 16 hours a day meant I had a healthy gut.

quinoa and hummus, i'd go ape shit on that stuff