High five!
You’ve made some big changes in your family’s diet recently and are really focusing on eating organic. You’ve stopped buying boxed cereal and other processed snacks at the grocery store and are making homemade snacks and treats with wholesome ingredients instead. You’re even sprouting or soaking nuts and seeds and even your legumes and grains!
You’ve joined an organic fruit and veggie co-op and made the switch to grassfed locally produced meats. You’ve even taken the wise step of incorporating raw grassfed milk into your family’s diet.
While all these changes are wonderful and beneficial compared with how you’ve been eating, I’ve got some tough news for you.
These changes alone are not going to get you healthy.
Eating organic is not the way to health shocking as it may sound!
Gulp.
How can this be, you ask? Your diet is now light years ahead of where it was. How can this organic, whole foods diet not result in vibrant health?
Let me tell you a little story ….
The Telling Tale of the South Sea Islanders
The first Europeans to visit the South Sea Islands in the 1700’s were Captain Cook and his crew. Tahiti was truly a paradise with beautiful people whose frequent smiles revealed perfectly straight, pearly white teeth.
Dr. Weston A. Price found the same blissful environment nearly 200 years later when he arrived with his wife to study these happy, healthy people. Dr. Price noted that the bone structure of the South Sea Islanders was the most perfect of any of the 14 isolated traditional cultures he studied during his travels around the world in the 1920’s and 1930’s which he documented in the amazing book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration.
The traditional diet of the South Sea Islanders was high fat, consisting of seafood and pork with coconut the most important plant based staple.  Tropical fruits and other plants were also consumed as there were plenty available in such a temperate and ideal growing climate.
The environment and water were, of course, pristine and food was abundant.
Wouldn’t such an organic, whole foods diet be enough for health?
No, it was not.
The South Sea Islanders knew from observation and perhaps instinct that their clean, whole mixed diet was not enough to maintain their own health or to produce healthy babies and children.
The Sacred Food the South Sea Islanders Could Not Do Without
Despite having plenty of whole, nutrient dense foods available during all times of the year, the South Sea Islanders risked their lives over and over again to hunt sharks.
Once a shark was caught and brought to shore, the liver was removed and put inside the shark’s stomach which was then hung on a tree to ferment.
The oil that came out of the shark liver as it fermented provided a plethora of fat soluble vitamins A, D, and K2 to the South Sea Islander diet that was the critical missing link for vibrant health. This oil was given to growing children and young adults who were about to get married and also to pregnant women.  Such oil would have been critical to maintaining health into advanced age as well.
Dr. Price knew from research that the level of fat soluble activators in the South Sea Islander diet was about 10 times higher than the Americans of his day … and processed, devitalized foods had not even arrived in full force yet!
Fat Soluble Vitamins More Important Than Eating Organic
The story of the South Sea Islanders illustrates the critical nature of the fat soluble vitamins in the diet. Without them, no matter how pure, whole and organic a diet may be, health will not be maintained nor healthy children easily produced.
The fat soluble activators A, D, and K2 supercharge mineral absorption into the body tissues and enhance the health and function of every organ system.
Fortunately, fermented cod liver oil and fermented skate liver oil are available today that are very similar to the fermented shark liver oil consumed by the South Sea Islanders.
Please note that the typical brand name fish or krill oil and even cod liver oils on the market are highly processed, industrialized, rancid, deodorized oils that should be avoided. Â Only fermented cod and skate liver oil is processed with no heat as practiced by traditional cultures.
I have been taking these types of oils for many years and would never consider my whole foods diet complete without them. Why reinvent the wheel and experiment with the latest and greatest silver bullet supplements that seem to change every few months when traditional cultures such as the South Sea Islanders already knew what it took to have healthy babies and stay vibrantly healthy well into old age?
Where to Source Fermented Fish Liver Oils
Please refer to my Resources page for a list of companies that offer clean, purified fermented fish liver oils to provide your whole foods diet with the critical fat soluble activators A, D, and K2.
What to Do if You are Allergic to Fish
If fermented cod or skate liver oil aren’t possible for you due to a seafood allergy, note that you can obtain fat soluble vitamins in other foods valued by other Traditional cultures such as raw, grassfed butter (must be deep yellow to orange in color – sources), fish eggs (many can tolerate fish eggs even with a seafood allergy), emu oil from emus eating their native diet (sources), deep orange yolks from pastured hens, and liver from land based animals.
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
Source:Â Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, Dr. Weston A. Price DDS
If you want K2 eat fermented soy http://products.mercola.com/vitamin-k/
But don’t make the mistake and make soy your staple, it’s a nutrient inhibitor… Organic vs conventional ? well that’s a no brainer… lol
You guys are ridiculous. She’s a blogger, clicks are her living, a catchy title to get clicks and get you to READ her article are the point!!! All authors do it, how else would they draw people in! She’s not wrong either, deny it all you want but those of us not afraid to face our ignorance head on will benefit.
Eating a diet as much organic as you possibly can and avoiding processed is a great diet to strive for.
The title of this article is very misleading. It really has nothing to do with organic foods or eating organic. Eating organic IS important and the article suggests that people shouldn’t bother choosing organic foods. Studies have shown that foods with pesticides affect your brain. Plus, I don’t want to give my money to support Monsanto and other big industry businesses who could care less about my health or the environment. Very misleading title. Poorly done.
Where do you read that you shouldn’t bother choosing organic foods? Have you read the article? Her point is, that eating organic is not ENOUGH if you don’t get vitamins A, D and K2 (and I want to add, enough omega 3 fatty acids, which are also in cod liver oil).
Unless you get those fat soluble vitamins, the best diet won’t keep you healthy.
The title is there to get people to read the article. It got me to say, WHAT? I better read what she is saying, so I read the article. You might want to do the same thing before commenting.
Whoever thought eating organic alone would make one healthy unless the food were nutrient hi-density and covered all the nutrient requirements? Most of us know about K2, D2, alpha lipoic acid, krill oil, fat soluble vitamins like D, A, E, etc., DHA, CoQ10, probiotics in the AM, on an empty stomach, etc. Many of us know as much and some of us more than the good lady, but one does have to be careful not to ruffle feathers, the point being many people believe that eating organic will make them healthy, but of course there’s a lot more to it than that. I can eat sugar from organically grown sugar beets, I can eat lots and lots of organic fruit and watch my blood sugar level go past 200 or more, I can eat high protein and the excess will turn into sugar, and so forth. How many people are going to read Dr. (dentist) Price’s book? How many will read Grain Brain by Perlmutter, Nora Gedgaudas’s book, Primal Body, Primal Mind, and then there’s the vegan, vegetarian community with more than half of the latter being B12 deficient and vegans being wiped out by it, over 90%, and the fact is no culture on earth ever went vegetarian unless they had nothing else to eat. Our brains grew because of meat/fish, etc., not tofu, soybeans and wheat. We were once fruit eating little people and one day the fruit wasn’t available but some rotting meat was, and so it began, we gravitated toward something that was easy to digest and made the gel-like organ in our heads grow, too. It’s laughable to imagine what would have happened had we put our money or lives dependent on soy, wheat, or sugar, we wouldn’t be here. Who knows what’s really happening? Few of us. However, there is a Doctor, his name is Russell Blaylock, MD and neurological surgeon, and they are a brainy bunch, Perlmutter, Natasha Campbell McBride, and now Blaylock, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcVgm_hskfw
And though Dr. Blaylock is a Christian, which sometimes comes with biases that are a bit questionable, none of that happens in his presentation other than the saturated fat reference, but he does qualify it by saying most saturated fat picks up pesticides more than any other fat. He is speaking to many who are vegetarians and vegans, poor misguided souls, and still he is well received. When he recommended cold pressed olive oil the audience did applaud. I don’t think they would have had he recommended lard, which I choose as often as olive oil. Where did the saturated fat bad rap come from. Ancel Keys, a liar and a killer in that he’s the culprit who got the statin thing going by demonizing cholesterol and late in his life he admitted he was wrong, still vegetable oil companies thrive because of his lies and there isn’t on vegetable oil that isn’t carcinogenic, canola oil being the least, but still harmful. Having met a few people whose minds and bodies were in jeopardy using statins, one committed suicide, shot himself in the head outside of his job. He’d become impotent and suicidal on that junk. Ancel Keys and all those who influence an entire nation should have been put on trial and sent to prison all the harm he did. Actually statins were rejected by the Japanese because all the test animals were dying, along came Merck offered them some cash and life has neve been the same, but then we all know drug companies will do anything to make a profit. Statins, the thief of memory, and life.
Getting back to the article, when one eats organic and it’s balanced and includes all the stuff Dr. Blaylock features, yes, health improves, and providing we drink pure water, certified raw milk though in small amounts, get’s 40-70 grams of high quality protein per day, plenty of vegetables (organic and homegrown if possible), limited fruits and none out of season, no organic fruit juices, ever, and so forth, yes, one will be healthy or get health. I have researched hundreds of data, from the CDC, New England Journal of Medicine, San Francisco UC, and many publications, but the way I learned best was being my own guinea pig and raising four children, all strong, health and intelligent who were rarely ill. I wish I could do it over, maybe I’ll be reincarnated and have another chance. Joke.
By saying eating organic won’t make us healthy it is a bit offsetting but she does explain and that did get our attention, it certainly did me.
Thank you, Sarah, invaluable info, as usual 🙂
LOVE this! Green Pasture cinnamon tingle FCLO is a staple in our home!
Switching to speller coconut oil made a huge difference in our health. Allergies are gone
that looks like the w/f store on 41st in tulsa
A diet of organic foods plus good fats and exercise is key..
When I first read the title, I was like, “well duh!” Then I read the comments, and I was like what on earth did Sarah say? So I went and read it. Now I’m thinking, “what the hell is wrong with people?” You know, the ones that have a negative comment to say. First off, I didn’t notice any “advertising”. Sarah doesn’t manufacture the oils. And what is disappointing in the article? The fact that Sarah is telling us how to really get a high dose of very beneficial vitamins in a fish oil, based on historical data, not just cuz it’s the new SUPERFOOD that was just discovered. Thank you The Healthy Home Economist for putting out real and reliable information.