How I Came to Really Love Real Food: Part Four

I "met" two very important books that summer of 2005: Jordan Rubin's Maker's Diet, and Sally Fallon's (with Dr. Mary Enig) Nourishing Traditions. These two books have completely changed the way I see food. A bit overwhelming at first, these books contain so much good information, I still refer to them heavily, especially Nourishing Traditions. Nourishing Traditions was also my introduction to the Weston A. Price Foundation, an organization that encourages people to exclude modern processed food products from their diets and rely on the "old ways".

Through the Weston A. Price Foundation (WAPF), we have found a great pulling-together of dietary guidelines, old-ways lifestyle tips, and the busting of politically-correct nutritional myths. All of this in one package. I have heard people criticize WAPF because they do not accept all "scientific" studies as valid science. For me, there is no reason to trust these studies in the first place because they are so contradictory. For example, years ago the fats of choice were lard and other animal fats, butter, and tropical oils. Then "science" says no, these are bad. Switch to Crisco and margarine. Then a few years ago, "science" tells us no Crisco and margarine, switch to liquid vegetable oils (canola, corn, soybean, etc.). This is the kind of nutritional information we receive from "science". In a word: unreliable.

Here's what seems like a more reliable method of determining good nutrition information: find healthy people groups and see what they eat. And that is precisely what Weston Price did. He traveled the world looking for people with superb health, good physical structure (bones, teeth, etc.), and long life. He found a number of these native people groups and compared their diets and lifestyles. Here are just a few of the things he found:

The diets of healthy primitive and nonindustrialized peoples contain no refined or denatured foods such as refined sugar or corn syrup; white flour; canned foods; pasteurized, homogenized, skim or low-fat milk; refined or hydrogenated vegetable oils; protein powders; artificial vitamins or toxic additives and colorings.

All traditional cultures consume some sort of animal protein and fat from fish and other seafood; water and land fowl; land animals; eggs; milk and milk products; reptiles; and insects.

Primitive diets contain at least four times the calcium and other minerals and TEN times the fat soluble vitamins from animal fats (vitamin A, vitamin D and the Price Factor--now believed to be vitamin K2) as the average American diet.

In all traditional cultures, some animal products are eaten raw.

Primitive and traditional diets have a high food-enzyme content from raw dairy products, raw meat and fish; raw honey; tropical fruits; cold-pressed oils; wine and unpasteurized beer; and naturally preserved, lacto-fermented vegetables, fruits, beverages, meats and condiments.

Seeds, grains and nuts are soaked, sprouted, fermented or naturally leavened in order to neutralize naturally occurring antinutrients in these foods, such as phytic acid, enzyme inhibitors, tannins and complex carbohydrates.

Total fat content of traditional diets varies from 30% to 80% but only about 4% of calories come from polyunsaturated oils naturally occurring in grains, pulses, nuts, fish, animal fats and vegetables. The balance of fat calories is in the form of saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids.

Traditional diets contain nearly equal amounts of omega-6 and omega-3 essential fatty acids.

All primitive diets contain some salt.

Traditional cultures consume animal bones, usually in the form of gelatin-rich bone broths.

Traditional cultures make provisions for the health of future generations by providing special nutrient-rich foods for parents-to-be, pregnant women and growing children; by proper spacing of children; and by teaching the principles of right diet to the young.

source: http://www.westonaprice.org/basicnutrition/characteristics.html

We've made lots of little changes in the last three years. Just one at a time. It didn't take long before I realized we rarely got sick anymore. When we did get sick, it was usually following a holiday or birthday party (someplace where something sugary was the treat), and the illness was relatively mild. My husband's late-summer ragweed allergies became manageable without any medication, and our doctor visits very rare. It quickly became obvious that there was value in eating the old-fashioned way, and equally obvious that the types of food we were now interested in eating were not ones found at "normal" grocery stores. This was when we began our foray into farming as a way of obtaining high-quality food.

If you are suffering from any type of health issue, I would highly recommend reading The Maker's Diet, by Jordan Rubin. This book's information is well-organized for beginning readers of topics related to good health. I also highly recommend Nourishing Traditions, but I would definitely call this a more advanced text, and maybe not so "user-friendly" as the Maker's Diet. This is a book you have to "build up to".

Next time I will talk about complications such as auto-immune problems and other issues caused primarily by antibiotic usage.