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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
I was first introduced to Weston A. Price back in November. I was given Nourishing Traditions and I gobbled up all of the information….then I just cried. I was diagnosed with breast cancer in August and decided to go with alternative therapies instead of the insane conventional therapies. Nourishing Traditions is totally opposite of all alternative cancer therapies!!! I am so torn and so confused as to what to really do. People are healing themselves with raw food diets, green smoothies and juices. (there is more to the protocal than that) Animal products are taboo. I go back and forth eating raw until I am dying to eat butter and eggs. The crazy thing was that I was a vegetarian for 18yrs (be nice, please) prior to this diagnosis, but Nourishing Traditions made so much sense to me. I immediately started my 5 year old on animal products other that eggs and dairy…I tell you, that was a challenge…clean bacon was a hit. The fermenting part is easy….Still anyone have any other ideas, information on treating cancer on traditional foods..I read Thomas Cowens paper also. If not, maybe then some positive thoughts and healing energy sent out into the universe for me.
Cadie
Hi Cadie, I’m sorry to hear about your situation. I can relate, my boyfriend developed cancerous tumors and other ailments after being a vegetarian for 20 years. He was very anemic and had fluid in his lungs as well. I am doing a medical benefit for him right now, at http://www.indiegogo.com/brianwalker?a=479713 . He went through chemo at UNC hosptial and he is doing fine now. Since he was so anemic and had nutrient imbalances, it was important for him to start eating animal foods. He also got great benefit from a cancer cure called Essiac. It is a combination of slippery elm, burdock, sorrel, and rhubarb. You can brew the tea yourself, get it in pills or tinctures online or from the health food store. He recommends it to everyone he meets who has cancer or knows someone who has it. Also, something I recently learned from the GAPS diet book– don’t know if you’ve looked into that yet. The doctor/authors outlook really changed the way I think about food. That is, thinking about animal food primarily as nourishing, feeding food, and plant food as cleansing, detoxifying food. Of course, as she says, there is some overlap. She talks about this in this interview with Dr. Mercola http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYJkS3ZBqos. I highly recommend listening to the interview, it has definitely empowered my way of thinking about nutrition after so much back and forth information on the topic was getting me frustrated. The bottom line is listen to your body and what your body is asking for, whether it needs to be nourished or cleansed at any particular time. I’m not sure exactly how that would relate to cancer treatment, I’m not an expert, but I hope I’ve helped in some way. Good luck.
Cadie I have to say that I’ve been following a guy who is totally into RAW diet (only because he has good prices on certain items I buy) and I’ve noticed from his older vids going forward to now that he’s gone from nice teeth to bad teeth to a mouth full of fake bright white huge teeth. That alone tells me all I need to know about the all-raw diet, and I was thankful that it provided a great illustration to my young son about this trend.
I don’t usually reply to post, but just thought I’d offer well wishes your way. Both my grandmothers had this disease. So sorry. I would recommend a book called Nourishing Connections by the Ceres Community Project. They provide nourishing meals for cancer patients, prepared by high school volunteers (who are taught traditional cooking practices,etc). The book has a lot of information on healing and nourishing foods, how to prepare them when you have no energy, and lots of reference information. They do recommend Nourishing Traditions, among other books, including raw foods books. It’s about balance, I think. Also I would recommend herbalist Susun Weed’s book Breast Cancer, Breast Health. She gives an awesome amount of information, balanced as well. I think some animal foods, lots of properly prepared plant foods – especially herbs, seaweed (a must!), mushrooms (Asian) – and foods fermented, cooked and raw, is the best bet. You need to find a healthy balance. Good luck to you.
Cadie, I know this response is years later than your post, but I hope you are doing well and have triumphed over cancer. I had read years ago about the success various medical researchers found and that practitioners have had with both slowing and often stopping cancer (in some cases) via 20% – 40% calorie restriction. Your post made me remember this. Since tumors are generally known to be “fed” by glucose, sugar is obviously totally eliminated (as it should be for all of us), but the other food choices emphasize good nutrition and are very similar to a high quality, higher fat, few carbs (if no glucose is available, tumors next turn to fermented carbs for “food”), reduced protein diet (sound familiar). I was trying to locate actual medical journal articles that cover this, but I’m not that great at finding applicable ones quickly. I did find many articles on this topic…most mention variable factors. There are some studies with animals mentioned that refute other studies that show that CR is helpful in either preventing or treating cancer tumors….but, if the methodologies of the “No saying” studies are looked at closely, they seem to feed the test animals with a much higher percentage of sugar/glucose. I just searched “Calorie Restriction + Cancer” and slight variations on that.
Here is an article that discusses this some:
mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/09/02/calorie-restriction-cancer-therapy.aspx
Dee
p.s. I know that Dr. Art Robinson from the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, who studies the molecular effects of aging commented on it years ago, too.
Ah! I found the article from Dr. Robinson’s website that I mentioned in my postscript. This one has the journal article at the bottom, tells a story of a successful cancer treatment by starving the cancer, but states that Calorie Restriction is known to greatly reduced cancer growth. This, in older people, can be equivalent to a cure (cancer growth slowed so much that the person died years later of other causes).
Dee
nutritionandcancer.org/view/nutritionandcancer/index.htm
What do you do with the oats besides oatmeal? I am also of northern European descent and I need more oat ideas and recipes.
Also, were there any Slavic cultures in the book? What is their traditional diet?
The more I learn about this the more convinced I am that the biggest factor in determining what to eat is looking at what grows in the climate where you presently live. Eating foods only in season where you are and spending as much time outside as possible giving your body the signals that it is indeed living in that climate (living indoors in heat or air conditioning most of the time may not be so healthy). Even so implementing this is tricky and I do think that your ancestral genes also have an impact but to a lesser degree than your current climate.
Moving in the direction of more traditional eating has been a slow process for my family, but we’re making progress. One of the things I found the most overwhelming about the recipes in Nourishing Traditions is the amount of advance planning necessary to make the meals. Transitioning from planning a meal five minutes in advance (and then nuking it) to planning a meal a couple of days in advance so it can soak and ferment is quite a challenge for me! So if you do decide to post an example of what your family eats in a particular week, it would be great if you could emphasize the preparation process more than the menu. My upbringing is so far removed from the traditional method that the idea of having two or three things soaking or simmering for hours on end and remembering when to interact with those foods over a day or two is a bit daunting.
Cy – you may want to check out “the nourishing cook” blog for detailed recipes. The blogger is cooking through 733 recipes from Nourishing Traditions.
I agree! I would be interested in the same information.
Thank you for a really informative post. I have a Northern European heritage as well and find that eating this way works best for my health. When I deviate from it occasionally, my body always lets me know.
It makes perfect sense to eat according to your heritage, blood type being a part of this I think.
What are your thoughts about Dr. Adamo’s Blood Type diet?
Thanks for your insight!
I’ve investigated the blood type diet as well as the genotype diet. I personally think there is merit to these since they have helped improve my health and stop some of my autoimmunity issues. Especially helpful is the SWAMI Genotype calculator, I believe. It even asks for ancestral information and about haplogroups if you want to narrow it down even more. However, nothing is said about traditional preparation and it doesn’t have the answers to EVERYTHING. Take what you learn from your SWAMI Xpress and use it in conjunction with the teachings of WAP and what you learn on your own for best results I would say!
Interesting post, Sarah. I will be sharing this.
Isn’t most of this stuff inconsequential to the fact that we all in one way or another hail from sub-Saharan Africa as recently as 60k years ago? Isn’t it possible that grain consumption, sprouted, fermented or otherwise, shouldn’t be considered as a part of any “traditional” diet? Did we really have time to evolve from the time grains were introduced into our diet 10k years ago to the present?
What you say “sounds” logical, but you can’t argue with the fact that plenty of Traditional Cultures like the Swiss and the Scots ate grains and were healthy.
This is the big fat elephant in the room with the Paleo argument. You CAN eat grains and be healthy .. it would be very wise for them to acknowledge this fact documented in detail in Dr. Price’s book.
If you choose not to eat grains, that is fine, but to argue that grains are unhealthy when so many Traditional Cultures ate them and were vibrantly healthy with virtually no degenerative or chronic disease or tooth decay is kind of unfathomable to me.
I don’t subscribe to a strict paleo diet. I consider myself more of an archevore in that I eat rice and potatoes in small amounts. I’ve read your arguments in the past, but I don’t think there’s any place in the human diet for wheat.
I also eat small amounts of grass-fed dairy.
I am a creationist, so I believe the world is not much older than 6,000-10,000 years. If you think of traditional diets from this standpoint rather than an evolutionary, much older one, it makes far more sense, at least to me, and would include grains. Cain (Adam and Eve’s son) raised grains.
I agree
I agree. We are a tropical species. A meat heavy diet is not ideal for our species. We only adopted such as diet because our species migrated North. In that environment the food choices are fewer so we made due with what was available. That is far from optimal. Sorry Paleophiles!
Sarah when you say your family doesn’t do so well on certain traditional foods, what exactly are you noticing? When comsuming so many differnt foods in the course of a day it can be hard for me to tell what exactly someone may be reacting to as there can be so many factors. We went to a graduation last night where my daughter ate a cupcake and it was very clear she reacted to that but with nourishing traditionally preapred foods I imagine the reactions are going to be much more subtle.
Fatigue is the #1 symptom. Sluggish, tired … if you have some health issues … there would be a flare up perhaps like bloating, reflux, headache-y. It could be a myriad of things. You know yourself best. If you just listen and observe your reactions to food, it will become second nature and you will just KNOW what is best for you after awhile!
I might add that there may be some variation based on the season of the year. Also, as your health improves, you may find that you can say .. eat properly prepared beans where perhaps you might not have been able to a few years before. Life is not static, nor is health and digestion especially in this modern age when we are so bombarded with toxins and other assaults on our system. i do TERRIBLE on most fruit in the winter, but am fine with it in the summer for example. Why? I have no idea. It is what it is.
Is is possible that you do well on fruit in summer, because they are fresh and in season?
What about central/southern Europe? I checked the link of the book online, but there only seem to be Northern Europeans. I am of Slovak origin, but live in Serbia (our ancestors moved here 250 years ago). As far as I know from my mom’s stories of when she was growing up, they ate mostly potatoes and different kinds of soups/stews, as well as various grains – always cooked. But this is only 60 years ago. I don’t know much about the time before that. How would I find out about it? Fermented they used to do Sauerkraut (German influence) and fermented sliced veggies – but today everything is done with vinegar, so I don’t think it’s really the same thing. I will be reading the book now that I have a free source, but would really like to know more about the way our ancestors ate….
There are lots of places he didn’t visit! Don’t feel bad, do the best you can and keep seaching; you’ll find the answers!
If he didn’t visit, it was because there were no nonindustrialized cultures left there!
This makes me wonder about tropical coconut oil, green tea, etc. Thoughts?
Good question – also of Northern European descent none of my ancestors ate anything tropical, like coconut oil. I’m now using it on my skin but prefer to cook with lard, as my mother did until she started on Crisco. So maybe coconut water, coconut flour, etc. are not a good choices for me.
Hi Sarah. You are right, it is hard to set a general diet for everyone because culture is a contributing factor to the kind of food that people eat. I am Filipino and our meals are never complete without rice, as it is our staple food. However, some cultures can have a complete meal even without eating rice 🙂