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
Sarah,
Just a short testimonial here! My husband and I have been taking green pastures clo for about 1 year. He has not been sick even 1 time and I have had only 1 virus( Nora virus in Feb) and I am immune suppress from a kidney transplant. I usually catch everything and get extremely sick. There is definitely health building benefits to Cod Liver Oil – it is worth every bit of the cost to us.
Yes it is worth every penny!
How about just eating some cod liver in its own oil? There is canned cod liver in its own oil available on Amazon. Would eating that frequently be roughly equivalent to taking FCLO?
Would not be fermented and would not be raw.
Sarah, I was taking fermented cod liver oil for a few months. I am breast feeding and really need it. But I experienced easy bleeding and easy bruising. My legs all in blue spots and some under skin bleeding. I have no idea what is happening. I stopped taking it and they started getting lighter and some small once are almost gone in 2 weeks. I made an appointment with my doctor to see if I developed blood disorder, but was wondering if you herd about this before. I am sensitive to many foods. Can it be allergy to this oil? Thanks.
The fermented cod liver oil does thin the blood a bit which is one reason it is so good for cardiovascular health. Perhaps it’s not right for you given your blood situation … you can eat liver and do fish eggs instead.
Sarah, I thought that problem would be avoided if the fermented cod liver oil was taken along with the high-vitamin butter oil, given the vitamin K2 content in the butter oil, which helps clot the blood.
Is that not the case?
Thanks for all the informative posts, by the way!
Ana
Do you think it’s still possible to have issues with your body that block this amazing oil being absorbed to its full potential? As in, its not what you eat/take, its what you absorb.. only asking because I also take 1 tsp fermented cod liver oil off the (big) spoon, and 1/2 tsp butter oil, and I live in Australia and get plenty of sunshine (esp my belly!) but my recent Vitamin D levels were nothing to brag about, they were on the lower scale if anything. I have a great diet now but I know there is still some missing links to ultimate health for me because even with fermented food in my diet, my bowels arent as regular as most, only every second day!
Yes, I’ve seen this in Florida. Folks getting plenty of midday sun and their D levels don’t budge much on the upside. Might want to consider a sulphur deficiency as I saw a presentation at the last Wise Traditions conference that indicated that sulphated D is the type that forms from sun exposure and if one doesn’t have enough sulphur available to form it .. not gonna happen? Sulphur is best found in eggs. Soaking in epsom salts ups sulphur levels as well (epsom salts are magnesium sulphate).
Thanks Sarah, great insight! I eat pastured eggs (cooked – and raw yolks) 5 days a week, and have an epsom salt bath twice a week. It’s good to know I’m on the right track – now just to find the missing link! Appreciate your blog, learn something new every day 🙂
Your blog always inspires me to try something new, Sarah. Thank you for everything you do, and from saving us from all the “fake organics”!
@Amanda, I follow my spoonful of cinnamon tingle gel with a spoonful of peanut butter. It hides the taste pretty well. Swallowing the gel straight down without letting it get on your teeth and gums helps, too.
Sarah I was reading an article on the effects of cod liver oil and hair loss in women. Do you know if this holds any merit? Im thinking it has to do with some brands being rancid ?
Perhaps so … I would never take an industrial processed cod liver oil or fish oil! Almost all brands are industrially processed at high and very damaging temperatures unless they are fermented which is the old way of extracting the oil which does not damage it at all and preserves its rawness.
lisa has psoriasis on her knees.. anybody know anything natural for this??
-jason and lisa-
Psoriasis is auto-immune. Work on gut balance. GAPS Diet would be a great place to start researching.
Just got my Green Pastures order in the mail! $30 for a bottle of FCLO capsules is expensive, but is nothing compared to the cost of being sick/missing work/going to the doctor.
How do I go about getting that little book you showed once about all the foods that are/arent good to eat? I remember seeing a video from you and you used Ezekiel bread as an example.
Order the WAPF Shopping Guide online here:
http://www.westonaprice.org/about-the-foundation/shopping-guide