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A frequent email request I receive from readers is to post a few days or a week of the Traditional Diet I eat or what my family eats. Seems like a simple enough request, right?
Just write down our meals for a few days and post it. No big deal.
I’ve posted my personal menu before when I was on the GAPS Diet and I’ve posted one of my children’s food logs, but I’ve never posted a food diary while eating a regular Traditional Diet.
With many people asking for this, you might wonder why I haven’t done it. Let me explain.
There are many Traditional Diets!
During Dr. Weston A. Price’s travels around the world in the early 1900’s, he studied 14 of them in detail. These cultures all ate quite differently. Some ate no plant foods, some ate a lot. Some consumed raw dairy, some did not. The variations go on and on.
The common denominator between these 14 cultures is that they all had at least one sacred food which was always from an animal, never from plants. A few of these cultures even followed a mostly carnivorous diet.
These sacred foods were discovered by lab analysis to be extraordinarily high in the fat soluble vitamins A, D, and Vitamin K2.
What’s more, these Traditional Cultures were consuming the fat soluble activators at a rate about 10x higher than Americans of the 1930’s!
These sacred foods were revered by the Traditional Cultures that consumed them for bestowing easy fertility and healthy babies. Ample quantities of these sacred foods were provided to growing children, pregnant mothers, and the elderly to maintain health including the prevention of tooth decay.
With so many different Traditional Diets, you can see why it could be misleading for me to post what I eat specifically. My Traditional Diet could easily be misconstrued by some that this is the way to eat traditionally, when it is, in fact, only the implementation of a mix of Traditional Diets that works for me given my unique genetic heritage, health history, home environment, toxin load, food budget etc.
How to Determine the Best Traditional Diet for YOU
So how did I come up with the typical way I eat?
Here’s the approach I used.
First, you need to read Dr. Price’s book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. There is absolutely no substitute for reading this amazing book. Just seeing all the pictures alone is guaranteed to rock your world! This book really should be required reading for every dietician, nutritionist, doctor, nurse or anyone else working in the healthcare field today. It really is quite laughable for anyone working in the field of nutrition to attempt to counsel people on the best way to eat without intimate knowledge of the groundbreaking work of Dr. Price.
That is a clear example of the blind leading the blind, don’t you think?
Once you’ve read Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, then you should read Nourishing Traditions Cookbook, which is the practical implementation of the Traditional Diet blueprint.
If by that point, you are still confused about how to implement a Traditional Diet for yourself, then you can do what I did.
What is YOUR Ancestral Heritage?
Take a look at your genetic heritage and focus your Traditional Diet on those foods consumed by your specific, cultural ancestors. In my case, the Northern European cultures described in Dr. Price’s book fit the bill.
The Northern European cultures did not consume rice, beans, and corn for example. These cultures also ate little if any fruit or raw vegetables. So, my Traditional Diet at home does not include these foods very frequently.
Instead, I focus on sourdough bread, raw dairy, fermented vegetables like sauerkraut, and meat, cooked stews and soups like the mountaintop Swiss culture.
I also include seafood and oats like what the isolated Gaelics consumed.
Of course, there is variation in our diet based on the other cultures studied by Dr. Price, but we focus our staple whole foods on the cultures from which we obtained our genome.
My cultural ancestors didn’t eat that many vegetables unless they were fermented or cooked in stews or butter, for example. Consequently, raw veggies are not consumed much at all in our home except for the occasional veggie juice or salad.
Watch out for Modern Fads Masquerading as Ancestral
Are you drinking regular green smoothies? You need to know that no Traditional Society ever consumed raw plant foods at that kind of rate. Given that many green vegetables contain anti-nutrients like oxalic acid or are goitrogenic (thyroid depressing), you are really rolling the dice with this modern day health fad even if you “rotate” your greens.
While this may go against conventional “wisdom” to eat raw veggies, fruits and salads with abandon, to that I say “why”?
The healthy traditional cultures that comprise my ancestry didn’t eat much in the way of vegetables and fruit unless fermented or cooked and they were perfectly healthy with straight teeth free from tooth decay, high immunity to disease, and excellent vitality into old age.
Sounds good to me. Those are the same health goals I have for myself and my family, so I’m going to stick with what works, thank you very much, not with nutritional “science” that blows with the wind and is more interested in influencing your buying habits than your health.
Figure Out Your Ancestry then Go from There …
What if you aren’t of Northern European heritage? What if your genetic heritage hails from South America, for example? In that case, I would suggest reading the chapters on the South American cultures in Nutrition and Physical Degeneration and focusing your staple foods on what those cultures emphasized, which was corn, beans, and fish – grains and legumes prepared in a traditional manner!
If you are of Asian descent, rice is likely to be a better choice for you instead of the oats and wheat in my home. We don’t eat rice much in our home. We don’t do as well on this grain as we do on wheat and oats which is what our ancestors ate. An exception to this is wild rice, which is not really even rice at all.
Are you getting the picture somewhat?
The Most Important Key to Implementation of Traditional Diet
However you choose to implement your Traditional Diet, the most important key is to focus on ample amounts of the sacred foods. These foods include raw grassfed butter, organ meats like liver, egg yolks from outdoor chickens, fish eggs (roe), and fish liver oils like cod liver oil.
Don’t skimp on these critical foods! You can round out your diet with whatever whole food staples comprised the general eating pattern of your ancestors, but the sacred foods should always remain the focal point of the diet to ensure maximum health and immunity to disease both infectious and chronic.
I hope this discussion helps you along the path to finding the best implementation of Traditional Diets for you and your family. As you can see, it’s not as simple as just posting a mealplan.
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
We use this method as well. My husband is a Russian Ashkenazi Jew and most of my heritage comes from Germany, norway, Sweden and a little from Scotland so we concentrate on slow cooked meats, sauerkrauts, sausages, lots of broth based stuff, sourdough rye breads, dairy, and stewed or cooked veggies. I make borcht with a big dollop of creme fraiche or sour cream as often as possible. Any time we vere off from this and eat too much white starch, corn, fruit or sugar we start feeling it Immediately.
And cultured, like sourdough.
Yes, sprouted.
@Howard .. oh maybe in the fermented and sprouted foods?
@Howard where are the grain based foods?
Or one could simply adopt Deep Nutrition which identifies the foods and techniques common to every culture and divides them into four categories, called the Four Pillars of World Cuisine. Meat on the bone, organ meats, fresh raw plant foods, fermented and sprouted foods. And it’s dang tasty, too!
Great post. Thanks for all the details. I am always trying to steer people in this direction. Sharing this on my Facebook.
I really liked this post. I definitely think there is no one diet for everyone, so if you’re trying to figure out what works best for you, I think this is a good starting place.
What happens when you have a mixed bag family? I come from German ancestry, while my husband is of Spanish/Italian ancestry. It gets a little too involved to make different dishes for different family members.
You will have to figure that out for yourself! 🙂 You don’t have to make dishes for different family members. We eat corn and beans in our home. They just aren’t the staple foods that we eat frequently.
Eat and observe, eat and observe. You will find the right mix if you just take cues on what your bodies respond to the best and base your choices on the wisdom of Traditional Cultures.
Eat and observe is great advice. My family is a real mixed bag, I’m African American, Scottish and Cherokee, my husband is English and my stepson is English and Filipino. I pay close attention how our meals affect us to try to figure out what to cook. My stepson reacts badly to daily and wheat. My husband is exhausted after he eats potatoes. I don’t do well with oats. I pay attention to these things to determine how we eat. It’s what’s worked best for us.
Thanks for this reply, the above comment was going to be my question too! My husband’s family is mostly from Scotland, and mine Turkey. Seems they both have meat and dairy in common, oh and butter. Yay for me! But it is definitely hard navigate though all this info. I also have to say that being Christian (not implying your not) I am so thankful for God’s grace when it comes to figuring out some of this stuff. I know His hand is on my health and that of my family. So although I don’t have it all figured out yet, my Father in heaven is there to cover my flaws and help me through this journey to better health.
A lovely and calming thing to remember indeed. Thanks for the reminder that we are not in this alone!
Dear Tina,
I was just trying to figure out how to ask Sarah if she fixes different food for her children. I have read both the books that Sarah recommends. Nourishing Traditions recommends lots of meat broths so I increased them and got much worse. But the Lord provides! I was invited three times to hear a lecture by a naturopathic doctor and decided maybe I am supposed to go to this. Yes, I was! The doctor is trained to do genetic food intolerance testing. It would have taken me years to figure out that my husband, daughter and I do not have enzymes to digest any beef, chicken or pork at all. But along with that main food intolerance comes minesalt. We do not have enzymes to digest that and if we do eat it it causes big problems for us physically and even mentally (brain fog). Also, the test will show foods that your body has difficulty digesting if eaten within a certain time frame – seven to eight hours is common. So we have potato days and grain days. If I eat potato and grain on the same day, arthritis comes out in my knees immediately. If I avoid it, I have no pain. What is important about these doctors is that they test food for you. Potato and grain will most likely not be on the label, but my body will tell me loud and clear that it is in it. However, unless your other food is clean (unadulterated with traces of your food intolerances) it is extremely difficult to pinpoint which food is causing the problem.
I have two sons also and they are dairy intolerant. My doctor told me that they must have had African ancestors. My husbands parents were both from Norway. I have English and Danish ancestors. No where in the extensive geneology my relatives have put together does it show any African descent. They have a combination of fruit and sugar. My oldest son picked up some salad dressing for me years ago and his brother got a headache which he never gets. Sure enough, my son had picked up the wrong bottle. There was sugar in the dressing. As long as they ate the food I fixed they did not have trouble with acne because I did not give them anything with fruit and sugar on the same day.
You can read and listen to information about it at Songofhealth.com. My doctor also has a website: http://www.doctorananda.com. She is the best tester! Extremely careful and diligent.
May you grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord.
Interesting. I just got Dr. Price’s book and I’ll be digging in soon.
I am of South American descent (Peruvian – though my father’s side is mostly European, so bit of a mixed bag as many Americans would be. I was born in Peru though) so I was pleasantly surprised there’s an entire chapter dedicated to native Peruvians.
My thing is though, I mostly follow a ‘primal’ diet, which some would describe as paleo + good dairy. So, with all the readily available research into the dangers of things such as most grains, legumes, etc. I’m not sure if you should include them, AT LARGE regardless of your background. Mind you, I’m not SCARED of these things, like I see many paleos be, and if properly prepared (soaked, fermented, etc) I see no issues whatsoever in people including them in their diets. I just think, we ought to combine both an ancestral approach but also look at new research.
Not that you suggested otherwise, but I don’t know if basing a diet primarily on corn and beans would be ideal for me or other South Americans. I know I didn’t feel as good as I do know focusing mostly on meats and veggies, and my mom/grandma always had good cooking methods. Even now in America we don’t eat too far removed from Peruvian cuisine, just sugars, flours, cookies, etc have made their way into that home, unfortunately.
Great post though, lots to think about.
Read Dr. Price’s Nutrition & Physical Degeneration online for free here: http://goo.gl/Jz3s6
Haha wow I am the same! Almost. Both my parents were born in Peru but my father has more European blood (Spanish/English/some Native American) than my mother does (Spanish/Native American) and I was born in Australia.
I eat a non strict traditional diet consisting of a variety of traditionally prepared foods but it would be interesting to see if what works for you works for me.