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
hi, there, sarah!!! just wanted to say thank you for all the amazing insight & info you share so freely & willingly with us all….have learned so much from you, thank you!!! also wanted to say, tho, that life is one big lesson and our journeys are a symphony of many continuous steps….and each step counts!!! we all have to start somewhere and i do believe it’s very commendable that people begin on this whole food journey, & for them to be not wholly deceived by the media/doctors/society & even QUESTIONING the ‘normal’ American diet, & here reading your blog is a blessing in and of itself!!! like emily dickinson wrote “the truth must dazzle gradually, or every man be blind.” it can feel overwhelming at times with all this new info, i remember when i first started out, but to readers, don’t be discouraged, the step you are at is right where you’re supposed to be :o) don’t add stress to the mix…..at least you know you’re on the right path to healthier living, & finally there is hope 🙂 AND sarah’s most wonderful blog!!! thank you again, sarah & God bless us all !!!! <3 !!!!
Amen, Jane. I was in their shoes 15 months ago. I read nothing but health books now when I have spare time and the journey is long and arduous but very fulfilling in the end. I am battling a serious disease and it may take me years to be where I want to be, I fully intend on being there. My advice is read, read and read. Its fascinating.
Excellent, excellent post Sarah! I’ve been taking fermented cod liver oil with high vitamin butter oil. Tastes awful, but I know it has amazing health benefits 🙂
Intersting post and thank you for sharing, but I wanted to note that at the end of the post there was an ad for ProPlan cat food. it had a lot of grains on the photo portion of the ad, and it is a food that is high in plant based ingredients. It is not an appropriate food for cats as grains are not ‘species appropriate’ (and you so know they aren’t soaked 🙂 ). As a blog that is interested in traditional foods, this is – at least to me – in stark contrast. Similar to seeing an ad for Crisco.
I hope you consider the health of the kitties when considering this type of advertising… please check out catinfo.org or feline-nutrition.org
If you can email the URL, I will block it from appearing again on this blog. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Hi Sarah!
We just started taking fermented cod/skate liver oil 4 days ago. How do I get my kids to take it? My 22 month old will not take it (even a few drops in food) and my 4 yr. old this morning told me he didn’t want it anymore. I don’t blame them. I have been burping it up all day and it makes my stomach turn. I’ve been holding my breath, but it doesn’t seem to help that much. My youngest has tooth decay (baby bottle rot-although she’s never had a bottle-and I really want to make this work. Everything I’ve tried with her, she won’t eat. My oldest has minor tooth discoloring, but I still want him to take it. Any suggestions would be helpful!! Thanks!
See my video on how to best take it .. link to the video above in answer to a similar question.
I bought the Blue Ice Emulsified FCLO in (KId Tested) Peppermint flavor. I gave it to our son, who has never taken cod liver oil, and he took it with no problems at all. I couldn’t believe it! I also gave him a little OJ to chase it down. I tasted it and it’s really not too bad. I think it also helps to take it after a meal then it is less likely to come back on you.
Thanks for the great post, Sarah. I’m expecting my first order of FCLO today. Now if I can just somehow get it into my 8 year old & my husband :/
I had another question with regards to my husbands allergies. He gets a red nose post nasal drip alot. I drink homemade beet kvass and and strawberry/apple kvass and love them. Are these good for my husband? I’ve haven’t encouraged them on him since I wasn’t sure. If he takes more than 1 Bio-Kult capsule it runs right through him where I could take 3 or more with no negative results.
Thank you!
Its pretty obvious to me that your husband needs GAPS. But so does mine and I doubt he would ever do it. You can lead a horse to water…..
Thanks for the reminder. We have to start with the CLO it’s in the cabinet! The trouble I have with my husband and others when I tout the benefits of WAPF prepared foods is:
1. Here we go again with ANOTHER change in what is supposed to be god for us.
When I explain that this is based on Weston Price’s research of traditional people and their great teeth and health….most people will then say..
2. That those people didn’t live as long as we do now.
Since there seems to be more and more folks living past 100 can you help me explain?
I just started Weston Price’s book so perhaps that will answer my questions.
thanks for all your great info – love it!
Let them eat junk if they want. Just make sure you and your children get the good stuff.
The people living long were born before WWII … people born after eating the processed diet of today are dropping like flies very young with all sorts of debilitating ailments. People who lived a short life were in the cities NOT out on farms. The life expectancy is already starting to drop.
I replied to someone elses comment but I dont know if you will see that. First, just incase you didnt already know…I just want to tell you how much knowledge and insight you give to people everyday. You are great with your words and should never stop doing what you’re doing. Second…Im trying to understand all this so sorry if this sounds simple but, how is eating BEEF liver equal to taking FISH liver oils? Same vitamins?? And why when I was pregnant both times would my doc tell me not to eat liver so much because of the high vitamin A content?? They were regular go with the grain docs just fyi.
Organic Oreos aren’t healthy? WHAT!
I think I’m going to have to disagree here. There are hundred of societies/tribes all over the world, and they all ate/eat different things. Some eat mostly indigenous fruits and vegetables, some nothing but meat, even in the Arctic they survive on not much other than blubber. And studies have shown that for the most part, they are all healthy. It’s not meat they need, it’s not fruit, it’s not even vegetables. It’s just the fact that they are eating, real whole foods, whatever that may be for them. The US, on the other hand, does not for the most part eat real, whole foods, and look at our health crisis. So while that may have worked for the South Sea Islanders, I don’t think it’s required for peoples all over the world. Even us.
Not sure about that, I’m sure some might have survived on whale blubber. But how do you explain that I have a totally whole foods diet, yet my vitamin D is dangerously low, and it doesn’t seem to be an absorbtion problem. I have started taking omegas, D3 too and feel tons better already.
It could be pollution too that depletes us, just breathing the air. Even organic food that is grown in soil that has been depleted over time might not contain enough of the nutrients it would have many years ago.
I haven’t done enough research to know how long those peoples lived.