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. 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: Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, Dr. Weston A. Price DDS
So I guess its safe to assume Im wasting my money on the Carlson brand Cod liver oil huh? Nice.
Sorry, but yes this is true. Carlson’s is not a quality brand of cod liver oil. 🙁
Carlsons used to be recommended, as they used natural vitamins. However, they have switched to artificial vitamin A and D (they are listed on my bottle as added, and the previous bottle didn’t list them.). It is the high doses of the artificial vitamins that cause the problems.
Great article. I just choked down a bunch of raw chicken liver and I take fermented cod liver oil every day. I could care less about the taste, the way it makes me feel is worth it!
Thought I like the article, I am not a fan of the title. Just by first glance it seems you you think eating organically doesn’t matter, and that you can eat “healthy” conventionally raised, pesticide ridden foods is just as good.
I know you don’t think that, but why not a title that’s more fitting for the article? Like “Eating healthy is more than just organic foods” or So you’ve changed your diet, don’t forget all your vitamins!” just for example.
I hear all the time about how it just matters that you eat vegetables, not if they’re organic or not, so anything that suggests otherwise hits a nerve.
Green Pastures is not on your resources page? Do they not meet your standards?
They are running banners on my site this month … their products are sold by the other companies that are listed though at the same or even better prices 🙂
I take the Green Pastures clo and butter oil blend capsules. 2 before bed with chocolate almond milk. Even the capsules are strong lol. I’m bf’ing my 8 month old. I wonder if 2 capsules are enough???
Not enough Giselle. What you are taking is helpful but you just need more. If it were me, I would take 10 or so per day if it’s the fermented cod liver oil/butter oil blend … too many in capsule form so best to get the liquid and take off the spoon then you can get enough easily.
bahaha your sarcasm kills me! “newsflash!” haha
You are right. We used to eat organic and thought that was enough. Once switching to Weston A Price I saw real health benefits! Question- where do you purchase your grains bf you soak them. I am going to try to do it myself soon. It is just so expensive to buy and then ship.
Breadbeckers co-op is fantastic. They are all over the place if you check breadbeckers.com
I am hoping to start taking fermented liver oil–which one (cod or skate) do you suggest? Is one superior over the other? I hadn’t heard of skate until this post. I can only afford one at this time. Thanks for your advice.
In looking at the green pastures website, I see they have flavored oils, and capsules. Wouldn’t these take care of the taste issue (which I believe my 7-11 year olds will have a problem with) or are they more expensive, or inferior than the plain liquid oil? Thank you for all this help–I have a tight budget so I want to make the best decision upfront. How long does a 237 ml bottle last for 1 person? What is the dosage for capsules? Thank you Sarah!! I love your blog.
I take both Margie .. I split my daily dose between the two. The two oils have different vitamin D profiles (did you know there are hundreds of types of vitamin D???? ) and I want to be sure I get as many types as possible as science has absolutely NO IDEA what all these vitamin Ds actually do yet which is why I am sticking with the wisdom of traditional cultures on this one who knew that these fermented liver oils were critical to health.
Thank you–that would make sense and be cost effective as your bottles last twice as long as if you were taking just one.
Can you comment on the flavored oils? Are they truly tolerable with flavors? Reduced value?
We use the cinnamon fermented cod liver oil. Still very strong tasting but the best of the bunch. I do large group orders for a buying club I run and overwhelmingly, the cinnamon is the fave.
I just started taking the fermented CLO from Green Pastures and have been trying the Cinnamon and Orange flavors. I don’t like the Cinnamon, there is way too much cassia (cinnamon) oil in it and it makes my throat burn. The burn goes away after a few minutes, but it is unpleasant. The orange flavor…I can’t really taste the orange in it, I do taste the fishy taste a bit more than the cinnamon one, but it doesn’t bother me.
When I first taste the FCLO, I was surprised. Surprised that it didn’t taste as bad as I thought it would. I thought it would be gross and I would have to force it down. It certainly does have a fishy flavor, but not nearly as bad as I had anticipated.
FYI, my bottles came with a little syringe so you can extract 1/2 tsp and then squirt it down your throat. Some of it still hits my tongue, but this might be helping with the taste issue.
I am SO glad to have found this naturally processed “supplement”. Thank you WAPF and Sarah for promoting it!
Thank you SO much for the info on the flavors. I don’t like cinnamon myself so probably won’t try it, but maybe the orange? I appreciate all the practical help I’m getting here! Our budget will balance out soon (job changes) and I am hoping to be able to purchase this soon.
It’s a pity you don’t have a donate button!
I’d certainly donate to this brilliant blog! I suppose for now i’ll settle for bookmarking and adding your RSS feed to my Google account.
I look forward to new updates and will talk about this site with my
Facebook group. Talk soon!
Totally agree that eating organic is not enough. The only “supplement” I take regularly, if you want to call it that, is fermented cod liver oil.
Nevra, we are 2 souls of the same mind in that regard !!! 🙂
In case anyone is interested, the Weston a price foundation web site has a good article as to why cod liver oil is superior to krill oil, in response to dr. Mercola stating otherwise.