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
Man the skate liver oil…now that will put some hair on your chest.
Joanna, love your comment. Brings memory of my Dad, he used that term, putting hair on your chest. Hadn’t heard anyone say that in a very long time!
So taking a store bought supplement is required for my good health, seeing as how I’m landlocked and don’t fish much?
I think I hesitate to take fish oil supps as it just feels a bit unnatural to concentrate things to levels that the average human would not be able to consume. I have a hard time reconciling that our bodies are made to needs supplements, unless we have some sort of serious health problem. I once asked a very wise doctor about this and he just replied, “Eat fish.” I still take vitamin D, and that’s the only vitamin our doctors recommend, as we live in Michigan and don’t really get enough sunlight. But even with that, my first priority is to get outside in the sun when we can. I’m just wondering about your philosophy behind taking supps, as I imagine you get oily fish in your diet on a regular basis (we aim for twice a week).
While I understand and appreciate your decision and the rationale that you attach to it. I think you may be misapplying it in the case of fermented cod liver oil (or fermented skate liver oil). In the travels and research of Weston Price he found that this superfood was consumed by people in older cultures who were not yet consuming an industrial age diet. It was part of their regular diet, especially for pregnant women and children. At one point in the past a shot of fermented cod liver oil was part of the daily ration given to soldiers in one country. This is not a modern supplement but an ancient food. and while we are not used to swallowing it and are likely to find it distasteful, especially at first, it is entirely possible to do so.
Sarah, don’t antibiotics only work on bacteria rather than viruses? And wouldn’t an increased consumption of Kefir (which can eliminate pathogenic bacteria) be preferable to antibiotics? Thanks!
Just about anything is preferable to antibiotics which have been shown to leaving LASTING damage to the gut for AT LEAST 2 years. Kefir is wonderful yes and using probiotics to strengthen the immune system and fight an infection rather than meds is certainly a better option.
Sarah,
Who knew that nasty antibiotics damage gut for atleast 2 yrs!
Can you pls do a blog post on how to rebuild your gut/ things to follow immediately after antibiotic course?
I am TTC. Any info would be great 🙂
I don’t know if there is any research to answer (or prove the answer) to your first question one way or the other. But I tend to think in the terms as I explain it to my kids. Our bodies are not meant to be sterile of any bugs, germs, little creatures, etc. but there are some that are particularly good for us and some that are particularly bad for us. When we make sure we are eating the good ones they tend to fight for there living space inside of us and in the process they fight off the bad ones for us.
Now, I’m sure you already understood this, but I just brought up my overly simplistic thinking just to add to it to gone to say that it makes sense to me that probiotics probably build us up and improve our health and our ability to heal so much that they do also help with viruses in addition to helping with bad bacteria. I’ve been sick plenty in my life and the more I make these changes the healthier I get and the less I get sick. I recommend probiotics from high dose good sources and probiotics from homemade foods, to everyone no matter what issues they face.
i think this post touches on another point as well…
most of us here take much diligence in what we consume and surround ourselves with in relation to how it effects our health….
it should also be noteworthy to take as much care as we do with our physical health as with our emotional/spiritual wellbeing : )
I finally am getting the FCLO down without gagging!!! The cinnamon flavored one I’ve found to be tolerable. The butter oil though is just sitting in the frig. I’ll get there!!
Amanda, I use an oral syringe to shoot the oil in the back of my mouth, then chug a drink.
I agree, the title needs to be changed. Have you seen ‘The Vanishing of the Bees’? Much inspiration to go organic.
I agree, the title needs to be changed. Have you seen ‘The Vanishing of the Bees’? Much inspiration to go organic.
Que bueno que estoy consumiendo aceite de higado de bacalao desde hace un año y medio!!! me siento tan bien!!!