You're not a trash can an eating it won't save any starving children.

I gave away unopened things like pasta and canned food. I donated a lot of my canned foods to a food bank. (I'd gone to Costco a month before deciding I was going to jump into Paleo).

I threw out opened things like pancake mix and oatmeal.

I decided I would use up things that are considered borderline, like frozen green beans and whey protein powder.

We still have some things in our pantry that we keep on hand for non-Paleo friends when they visit. We don't want to be that couple that no one wants to visit because all we eat is "boring meats and veggies." :) We eat our meals the way we want and they have chips, crackers, etc. to add to their plates to enhance.

If they don't make you feel bad, use em up! Make the powders into shakes with healthier ingredients (berries & coconut milk, etc.); pea & rice protein are pretty benign IMO (as opposed to soy protein). You DON'T have to go cold turkey- some people do better that way, and it's not like this is a pack of Chips Ahoy or something you're going to binge and crack out on.

I brought it all in to work and made some colleagues very happy (I had a lot of "luxury" non-paleo foods to give away).

Offered it to friends and family and donated the rest.

I offered it all to my roommates - what they didn't eat eventually got thrown away. Although I do still have some non-paleo non-perishable food stashed away in a cupboard in case of an emergency or something. It doesn't hurt to have extra food around in case the shit hits the fan.

I went cold turkey - in 12 hours I had given away or thrown out 90% of what I had then went shopping bought a freezer, went food shopping and never looked back.

I fed a LOT of birds.

Pea protein and rice protein hardly sound very dire. Some of us eat rice and some have said peas aren't so bad. If those are expensive items I'd use them up, in smallish amounts. Or anything that's reasonable -- say canned or jarred this-or-that that might have some minor questionable ingredients.

Now if you're talking boxes of spaghetti and cereal and cookies or other obviously egregious items, those I'd throw out or give away.

The Paleo template is flexible IMO - one of those "not one sock fits all" kind of deals so as much advice as can come from here.. it's truly your decision. Budget, goals - so many different factors as every body is different.

In your heart - do you personally feel that the items remaining will hinder your progress or affect your goals? If you don't - keep them. If you do? I'm sure someone is more than willing to take off your hands, shoot an email out - that's how I was able to try my first Bluebonnet Whey powder - vanilla.. it was.. interesting.. like drinking cake, or even donate them to your gym. Good luck!

I went paleo gradually, and so my pantry purging was also a gradual thing. I didn't buy more stuff, but a lot of "non-paleo" goods stuck around for months.

I went paleo before my husband, so having a box of rice-a-roni on hand helped keep the marital peace. 8)

I can't be wasteful without losing sleep. Donate what you can to a food bank. Give the rest to your friends and family...or start cooking for them. If you love to cook or bake, this will be your last chance. Don't eat it and call it closure. As for rolled oats, sugar, coffee, cheap olive oil and whatnot...they make great body scrubs. I have enough cheap coffee and sugar scrub for a small paleo tribe.

Toss em', going cold turkey is the only way to make it to paleo. We did it with two kids, once they realized we weren't buying that anymore and they could eat delicious amounts of fat and meat they were happy.It was extremely cleansing and freeing.

I freecycled mine.

I tried to use up most of my non-paleo things, and give away some of them also. I'm in college so buying new Paleo-accepted items, which are very pricey, as well as wasting all the other food I had was not an option for me. My strategy was that I gave away most of the cheaper stuff, or the stuff that I didn't actually like that much anyways, and just finished off the rest, but didn't buy more. For example, for me there was no use ruining the paleo diet for a wrapped fiber-one "brownie" that tasted like cardboard!

Paleo is not something that must be started cold-turkey. Continue using them until they're consumed. Paleo benefits can be had just by increasing the amount of paleo-compliant foods in your diet. By paleo theory, pea protein (coming from a legume) would be more problematic. However, if you're not metabolically deranged or suffering from severe autoimmunity issues, you're probably just fine consuming these products.

Bin it all. Be ruthless about this. You have to be, if for no other reason than to put temptation beyond arms reach in the early days.

I would give them away, but I don't think they'd hurt you to consume them in the short term! Still, I always like to consider that my body is more important than just 'using stuff up' (I'm not a rubbish bin!). In this situation the foods seem rather benign, but if it was something that hurt me I'd just bin it or give it away.

Gave them away, threw them out. That simple, really.