Table of Contents[Hide][Show]
- Personal Opinion Masquerading as Science
- Is Dairy Free a Health Fad?
- Question #1: Was this food consumed by Traditional Cultures?
- Question #2: How was this food prepared by Traditional Cultures?
- Question #3: How much of this food did Traditional Cultures typically consume?
- There are No Health Fads in Traditional Diets
A confused reader posted on social media recently about an article she had read by a certified nutritionist (CN) about the dangers of eating nuts and that nuts are not a healthy human food.
What? Nuts not healthy?
Her question got me thinking about what is the best approach for sorting through all the contradictory health information available today.
It’s piled high and deep out there, isn’t it?
If I had seen that article, I would have immediately rolled my eyes and clicked away no matter if the writer was a certified nutritionist, medical doctor, or a Nobel Prize winner.
Why?
Because it’s such a ridiculous claim and completely counter to historical evidence.
Personal Opinion Masquerading as Science
If someone with a PhD in Physics writes an article claiming the sun doesn’t rise in the morning, would you believe it?
Degrees are a dime a dozen these days, but common sense is very much in short supply – particularly when it comes to anything health related.
Plenty of healthy, degenerative disease free traditional cultures ate nuts. So, for someone with a nutritional degree to claim that nuts aren’t healthy is quite simply NUTS.
While I don’t mean to invalidate this individual’s personal experience with not doing well on nuts, it doesn’t change the fact that her view is a personal opinion and not worth paying any attention to on a broader scale when it comes to assessing healthy dietary choices.
If she doesn’t want to eat nuts because she doesn’t do well on them, that’s fine. But to claim that others should avoid nuts too because she can’t eat them is completely misguided.
Is Dairy Free a Health Fad?
Another example of personal belief masquerading as health truth is the myth that the milk protein casein causes cancer. Once again, here is an example of a personal belief that eating animal foods is morally wrong trying to justify itself and pass itself off as a health truth.
Dairy has been consumed by healthy, degenerative disease free cultures for millennia. In fact, it was consumed even before the advent of agriculture. Claiming that it is dangerous to health is downright ludicrous.
Now, I understand some folks are allergic to casein and need to avoid it. Sure, that’s fine. I get that. I don’t mean to be insensitive to those with dairy allergies.
But to generalize the issue by saying that casein is cancer causing and that all dairy is unhealthy to consume?
Not so my vegan friends. Time to bone up on your history. Even the Jains in India consume dairy (contrary to vegan claims that they eat no animal foods whatsoever).
So how to sort through all the conflicting information quickly and easily so you don’t get waylaid by those seeking to influence your behavior due to some personal or political agenda?
The next time a health fad or new food comes along and you are wondering whether it is healthy or not, try asking yourself these 3 questions to help sort it all out in your mind.
Question #1: Was this food consumed by Traditional Cultures?
If the answer to this question is no, then you can immediately toss it aside. As an example, what about this new “natural” sweetener like this fancy one called Swerve I’ve been hearing about that is made with the fibers of fruits and vegetables?
Don’t go near it with a ten foot pole. If it required a lab of scientists to develop, it’s nothing you want in your body. They can market it as natural all they want, but the truth is that it is a manufactured food. Let other people be the guinea pigs.
If the answer to the question is yes, as it would be for nuts or dairy, then you are in the green zone. Proceed to the next question.
Question #2: How was this food prepared by Traditional Cultures?
This question is very important because it will help you discern what preparation methods are optimal for the food in question.
In the case of dairy, healthy ancestral cultures did not heat or boil the milk before drinking it. They consumed it raw or in a fermented state, such as yogurt or 24 hour kefir.
Boiling or pasteurizing milk only became commonplace when cows were confined eating unnatural feed. These conditions resulted in milking of the cows in an unclean environment. Such is what occurred in crowded cities after the advent of the Industrial Revolution. As a result, dairy is most healthy when consumed raw as practiced historically, from cows grazing on green pasture.
Let’s look at nuts. Yes, nuts are a traditional food but preparation is again key. In the case of nuts, they were carefully soaked first which greatly improves digestibility. Healthy cultures knew this through observation and passed this wisdom along to each generation.
So eating nuts is definitely healthy as they were eaten historically, however, care must be taken to prepare them traditionally as well.
Question #3: How much of this food did Traditional Cultures typically consume?
Now that we have ascertained that nuts and dairy are healthy and how they should be prepared before consuming, the next question is how much is healthy to eat?
In the case of dairy, for many cultures, dairy was a staple and a large part of the diet. So eating a lot of dairy is fine unless there is an allergy or other health issue to consider.
Nuts are a different story. While nuts were part of some traditonal diets, they were not a primary staple. As a result, it is important to make sure not to overdo it on the nuts even if properly prepared. My personal rule of thumb is no more than a handful of nuts per day.
While I’m sure there are some exceptions to this 3 question rule, they can serve as an easy way to quickly assess whether a piece of health information should draw your attention and be investigated further or ignored as background noise.
We are all far to busy to be distracted with every health fad or opinion that comes along pretending to be a wellness silver bullet.
There are No Health Fads in Traditional Diets
Is the concept of Traditional Diets new to you? If so, I would highly recommend digging in and reading the very detailed book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. It describes the superlative health and diets of 14 isolated, nonindustrialized cultures. With this information under your belt, you will be much better armed to withstand the onslaught of health fads that come your way.
Use common sense – I love it!
Thank you Sarah!
Another great post! This is exactly what I’m trying to tell my friends and family when I explain our eating habits to them!
Sarah, Thanks for this post. My gut instinct has thought those same questions for years. The soaking of nuts, grains, beans and seeds is the only new idea I’d never thought of before, till reading blogs like yours and reading Nourishing Traditions. But just like slightly fermented veggies or cooking, rather than eating everything raw, the body definitely responds happily to these changes!
We don’t have any allergies, but been trying using almond flour in exchange for grain based baked goods. Bought almond flour is not soaked and people are using this everyday for everything. Wouldn’t that then fit in the too much nuts category?
Yes, I did that for a while and experienced symptoms of iron deficiency. Do be careful!
I’ve been wondering about the preparation of nuts in America during the last couple hundred years. I just can’t picture them soaking their nuts like healthy traditional cultures did. Is that one of the wisdoms lost when Europeans came to settle this part of the country? I am of course assuming the early settlers weren’t nearly as healthy as the healthy cultures Dr. Price studied.
True … the early settlers learned from the ancestral Indian tribes that did soak their grains and other seeds.
At the very least, the early settlers gathered nuts and seeds from where they were growing (rather than a grocery shelf after who-knows-how-long in a warehouse somewhere), where they possibly even had the chance to get rained or dewed on enough to begin the enzyme process (rather than shelled and dried ASAP at who knows what temperatures).
Sarah… Indian tribes DID soak them?? I’m fascinated to look more into that history, but the more I learn, the less it surprises me to stumble on these things.
I started to research the traditional process for corn one day. The first relevant search result directed me to the healthy home economist. 🙂
Thank you for pointing out these “three questions to ask”. I “attended” the HealThy Mouth Summit, dragging my heels for the first three days because I was familiar enough with some bold statements of yours (and Dr. Price’s, among others) that didn’t make sense to me at the time (mostly the whole phytic acid thing), and figured I would have to agree to disagree with half the summit. I do disagree with a few things, but studying natural yeast around the same time turned on a bright light for me! If whole grains were created anti-nutritious, BUT the way people nearly ALWAYS used them took care of the problem, usually without their even being aware that there WAS a problem (!)… that’s actually making a LOT of sense. In everything else, you and I have been on a similar learning curve, except where you’ve been having teeth heal, I’ve been having them pulled 🙁 …but no more, I hope.
Thank you for your time and experience which is allowing me to catch up so quickly where my knowledge was lagging.
Soaking and dehydrating nuts makes such a big difference in digestibility. We do that, then freeze and pull out whenever we want to use–which is often. Our favorite snack anymore is to gently saute them in butter and then season. We keep then in the fridge ready for snacking! So tasty!
Amen to that. My husband has no trouble with nuts that are properly soaked and then low temp dehydrated. Raw nuts — no way. They give him digestive upset.
There was a blog post going around this week about nuts and the fact that they are high in oxalates and that is why it is bad to consume them the way we do. Both in handfuls and in nut flours.
If I recall, there was a post awhile back about green smoothies and how bad they are because of the oxalates.
Are these oxalates one and the same? If so, then why would nuts be ok and green smoothies not?
BTW, love all your posts and information.
Yes, oxalates are another reason to eat nuts in moderation. Nothing wrong with eating nuts in moderation though. No need to not eat them at all because of oxalates.
I wrote the green smoothie post .. yes leafy greens like spinach are problematic in large amounts as well because of the oxalates … again, traditional cultures never consumed greens in the quantities that green smoothie afficionados do. A salad is fine though of course! It’s not just about the food …it’s about how it’s prepared and how much of it to eat as well. All 3 of these things need to be considered.
So really the ultimate rule of thumb is, ‘Everything in Moderation.’
Perhaps another thing to consider is how much of that particular food was consumed by the traditional cultures in your ancestry.
In traditional cultures, soy is fermented before consumption. There were also no GMOs. So things like organic miso and fermented soy sauce are totally acceptable.
In my traditional Chinese family, we would eat a 10-course meal in which one dish would be a stir fry with tofu and meat. Included in such a meal would be seafood, organ meats, gristly foods. Nobody I knew ever ate “tofu burgers” or a diet primarily soy. The value of tofu in small portion of the diet is probably in detoxifying the body (because of high phytic acid maybe?) – but was not viewed as something to build the body up (ie. nutrient dense).
Great post, Sarah. Good common sense rules to follow.
Thank you! In my travels through Asia in the 1980’s before the modern soy train had left the station, I did not see large amounts of soy anywhere in China or Japan. I only saw fermented soy and cubes of tofu in miso soup. Very small amounts.
When my family opened our Thai restaurant, my mom was perplexed about the constant requests for tofu. As she and the rest of the kitchen staff say (all born and raised in various Asian countries), “What’s with the tofu? We never ate that stuff growing up!” They still don’t. I chuckle when I hear people insist that’s what is eaten there. Then I get bummed when people look at me like I’m insane when I offer to have their food cooked in lard or duck fat or coconut oil, and they tell me they want canola because it’s “healthier.” 🙁
My sons eat a “grain-light” diet….they are gluten free and lactose free-ish ( we eat pastured butter and raw aged cheese) soy free GMO-corn free diet. No dyes, no weird sweeteners. It is all fine except managing nut intake. We don’t soak our nuts for nut flour…my oldest is allergic to molds so soaking things like nuts freaks me out. I make gf muffins once in a while but they are junk food…xanthan gum, super processed flours. I also make cashew muffins but one equals a handful of nuts! My five foot tall ten year old typically swipes three minimum. Balancing all of this when you can’t eat certain traditional foods gets complicated quickly.
Sarah, I am new to reading your blog, and very grateful to have discovered it. Thank you. I find myself conflicted by the post on 170 Scientific Reasons to Lose the Soy, and this post. Soy, in my mind fits all the criterial you suggest one go through to determine if a food is “good” to eat. Soy has been a staple of the Asian diet, for ages. Health benefits touted, for ages. It is plant based not manmade. No words in the ingredients that come from a science lab. It seems just as odd to me to label soy problematic as it is to label raw milk or nuts problematic. I will so appreciate your further thoughts on this.
The post you are referring to covers this perhaps you missed this paragraph:
“Please note that fermented soy in small, condimental amounts as practiced in traditional Asian cultures is fine for those who have healthy thyroid function. Only miso, tempeh, natto and soy sauce (IF traditionally brewed) fall under this category. In addition, if you want to sprinkle a few edamame on your salad or have a few small cubes of tofu in your miso soup from time to time, that is fine too. Just don’t make it a regular part of your diet!”
Thanks for the helpful response and clarification. I am new to the concept of fermented foods, and have been reading on it a bit so will continue in the vein. It is interesting to note that it once again comes down to the problem of overconsumption of what was good when it was consumed in moderation. thx!