Traditional Diets
by Sally Fallon
Author of Nourishing
Traditions
Part 2 continued from last
month
Dr. Price's trip to Africa gave him the opportunity to compare
primitive groups composed largely of meat eaters, with those
of similar racial stock that were mostly vegetarian.5 The
Masai of Tanganyika, Chewya of Kenya, Muhima of Uganda, Watusi
of Ruanda and the Neurs tribes on the western side of the
Nile in the Sudan were all cattle-keeping people. Their diets
consisted largely of milk, blood and meat, supplemented in
some cases with fish and with small amounts of grains, fruits
and vegetables.
The Neurs especially valued the livers of animals, considered
so sacred
"that it may not be touched by human hands. . . It
is eaten both raw and
cooked." These tribes were noted for their fine physiques
and great
height-in some groups the women averaged over 6 feet tall,
and many men
reached almost seven feet. Until his Africa trip, Price
had not found groups
that had no cavities at all, yet Dr. Price found six cattle-herding
tribes
that were completely free of dental decay. Furthermore,
all members of these
tribes exhibited straight, uncrowded teeth.
Bantu tribes such as the Kikuyu and Wakamba were agriculturists.
Their diet consisted of sweet potatoes, corn, beans, bananas,
millet and kaffir corn or sorghum. They were less robust
than their meat-eating neighbors, and tended to be dominated
by them. Price found that largely vegetarian groups had
some tooth decay-usually around 5% or 6% of all teeth, still
small numbers compared to Whites living off store-bought
foods.
Even among largely vegetarian tribes, dental occlusions
were rare, as were degenerative diseases. It is a mistake,
however, to think that these groups consumed no animal products
at all, as is often claimed. Some Bantu tribes kept a few
cattle and goats which supplied both milk and meat; they
ate small animals such as frogs; and they put a high value
on insect food. "The natives of Africa know that certain
insects are very rich in special food values at certain
seasons, also that their eggs are valuable foods. A fly
that hatches in enormous quantities in Lake Victoria is
gathered
and used fresh and dried for storage. They also use ant
eggs and ants."
Other insects, such as bees, wasps, beetles, butterflies,
moths, grubs, cricket, dragon flies and termites are sought
out and consumed with relish by tribes throughout Africa.6
It is significant that groups who consumed mostly plant
foods practiced the feeding of special animal foods during
gestation and lactation. Apparently carnivorous groups found
no need to supplement the diet, as it was already rich in
the factors needed for reproduction and optimum growth.
Another myth about primitive diets, and one that is harder
to dispel, is that they were low in fat, particularly saturated
animal fat. Loren Cordain, PhD, probably the most well known
proponent of a return to Paleolithic food habits, recommends
a diet consisting of "lean meat, occasional organ meats
and wild fruits and vegetables." While this prescription
may be politically correct, it does not jibe with descriptions
of Paleolithic eating habits, either in cold or hot climates.
Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who spent many years living with
the Eskimos and Indians of Northern Canada, reports that
wild male ruminants like elk and caribou carry a large slab
of back fat, weighing as much as 40 to 50 pounds. The Indians
and Eskimo hunted older male animals preferentially because
they wanted this backslab fat, as well as the highly saturated
fat found around the kidneys. Other groups used blubber
from sea mammals like seal and walrus.
"The groups that depend on the blubber animals are
the most fortunate in the hunting way of life," wrote
Stefansson, "for they never suffer from fat-hunger.
This trouble is worst, so far as North America is concerned,
among those forest Indians who depend at times on rabbits,
the leanest animal in the North, and who develop the extreme
fat-hunger known as rabbit-starvation. Rabbit eaters, if
they have no fat from another source-beaver, moose, fish-will
develop diarrhoea in about a week, with headache, lassitude,
a vague discomfort.
If there are enough rabbits, the people eat till their
stomachs are distended; but no matter how much they eat
they feel unsatisfied. Some think a man will die sooner
if he eats continually of fat-free meat than if he eats
nothing, but this is a belief on which sufficient evidence
for a decision has not been gathered in the north. Deaths
from rabbit-starvation, or from the eating of other skinny
meat, are rare; for everyone understands the principle,
and any possible preventive steps are naturally taken."7
Normally, according to Stefansson, the diet consisted of
dried or cured meat "eaten with fat," namely the
highly saturated cavity and back slab fat that could be
easily separated from the animal. Another Arctic explorer,
Hugh Brody, reports that Eskimos ate raw liver mixed with
small pieces of fat and that strips of dried or smoked meat
were "spread with fat or lard."8
Pemmican, a highly concentrated travel food, was a mixture
of lean dried buffalo meat and highly saturated buffalo
fat. (Buffalo fat, by the way, is more saturated than beef
fat.) Less than two pounds of pemmican per day could sustain
a man doing hard physical labor. The ratio of fat to protein
in pemmican was 80%-20%. As lean meat from game animals
was often given to the dogs, there is no reason to suppose
that everyday fare did not have the same proportions: 80%
fat (mostly highly saturated fat) to 20% protein-in a population
in which heart disease and cancer were nonexistent.
Obtaining adequate fat in the diet was a greater challenge
for the Australian Aborigine, living in a very different
climate.9 They were close observers
of nature and knew just when certain animals were at their
fattest. For example, kangaroos were fat when the fern leaf
wattle was in flower; possums when the apple tree was in
bloom. Other signs indicated when the carpet snake, kangaroo
rat, mussels, oysters, turtles and eels were fat and at
their best.
Except in times of drought or famine, the Aborigine rejected
kangaroos that were too lean - they were not worth carrying
back to camp. During periods of abundance "animals
were slaughtered ruthlessly, and only the best and fattest
parts of the killed game were eaten." Favorite foods
were fat from the intestines of marsupials and from emus.
Highly saturated kidney fat from the possum was often eaten
raw. The dugong, a large seagoing mammal, was another source
of fat available to natives on the coasts.
Other sources of fat included eggs - from both birds and
reptiles - and a great variety of insects. Chief among them
was the witchety grub, or moth larva, found in rotting trunks
of trees. These succulent treats - often over six inches
long - were eaten both raw and cooked. Fat content of the
dried grub is as high as 67%. The green tree ant was another
source of valuable fat, with a fat-to-protein ration of
about 12 to one. Another important seasonal food in some
parts of the country was the begong moth. The moths were
knocked off rock walls on which they gathered in large numbers,
or smoked out of caves or crevices. They were roasted on
the spot or ground up for future use. Moth abdomens are
the size of a small peanut and are rich in fat.
Modern investigators find it hard to accept the fact that
groups exhibiting superb physical development and perfect
health ate liberally of the very dietary component that
modern nutritionists have demonized: Saturated animal fat.
Yet, even a cursory look at disease trends exonerates traditional
fats like butter, lard and tallow. As these fats have been
replaced by commercial vegetable oils in the western diet,
cancer and heart disease have soared.
Dietary saturated fats actually play many important roles
in the human biochemistry: Saturated fatty acids constitute
at least 50% of the cell membranes, giving them necessary
stiffness and integrity; they play a vital role in the health
of our bones;10 they lower Lp(a),
a substance in the blood that indicates proneness to heart
disease;11 they protect the liver
from alcohol ingestion;12 they enhance
the immune system;13 they are needed
for the proper utilization of essential fatty acids;14
they are the preferred food for the heart;15
and they have important antimicrobial properties, protecting
us against harmful microorganisms in the digestive tract.16
Even
more important, animal fats are carriers for vital fat-soluble
vitamins A and D, needed for a host of processes, from prevention
of birth defects to health of the immune system, to proper
development of the bones and teeth. In fact, Price was convinced
that these "fat-soluble activators" were key to
the beautiful facial development and freedom from dental
caries that characterized the people he studied.
When he analyzed their diets, he found that they contained
at least four times the minerals-calcium, phosphorus, magnesium,
iron and so forth- and TEN times the fat-soluble vitamins
as the American diet of his day.
The richest sources of vitamins A and D are the very foods
modern man eschews: animal fats, organ meats, lard, fish
eggs, shellfish, eggs and butter-but not pale, commercial
store bought-butter.
Butter rich in fat-soluble vitamins is the soft, orange-yellow
product that comes only from cows eating green grass on
fertile pastures, a commodity that is almost impossible
to find in western supermarkets. Vitamin A from animal sources
is not the same as its precursors, the carotenes found in
plant foods. The conversion of carotenes in the human body
is often compromised, and even under optimal conditions
is not efficient enough to supply the amount of true vitamin
A Price found in the diets of healthy isolated populations.17
A surprising source of nutrients in traditional diets is
shrimp, which contains ten times more vitamin D than liver.
Shrimp sauces and shrimp pastes made from dried shrimp,
and therefore a concentrated source of vitamin D, are used
throughout Africa and the Orient. This is the most likely
explanation for low rates of osteoporosis in these regions,
as well as a virtual absence of diseases linked to vitamin
D deficiency-colon cancer and multiple sclerosis.
Price accurately predicted that western man would develop
more and more diseases as he substituted vegetable oils
for animal fats, and that reproduction would become increasingly
difficult. By some estimates, 25% of American couples are
now infertile, a condition that may send the population
reductionists into paroxysms of glee but that causes untold
heartache to millions of individuals.
Infertility treatments are problematic, painful and expensive
compared to the primitive prescription: More animal fat.
"The flesh of bear hath a good relish, very savory
and inclining nearest to that of Pork," wrote American
colonist Col William Byrd in 1728. "The Fat of this
Creature is least apt to rise in the Stomach of any other.
The Men for the most part chose it rather than Venison.
. . . And now, for the good of mankind, and for the better
Peopling an Infant colony, which has no want but that of
Inhabitants, I will venture to publish a Secret of Importance,
which our Indian . . . disclosed to me. I asked him the
reason why few or none of his Country women were barren?
To which curious Question he answered with a Broad grin
upon his Face, they had an infallible SECRET for that.
Upon my being importunate to know what the secret might
be, he informed me that, if any Indian woman did not prove
with child at a decent time after Marriage, the Husband,
to save his Reputation with the women, forthwith entered
into a Bear-dyet for Six Weeks, which in that time makes
him so vigorous that he grows exceedingly impertinent to
his poor wife and 'tis great odds but he makes her a Mother
in Nine Months."
Dried
fish roe was highly valued by a number of tribes Price studied-from
the Eskimos of Alaska to Indian tribes living high in the
Andes. When Price asked these disparate groups why they
ate fish eggs, the answer was the same: "So we will
have healthy babies." Scientists have discovered numerous
factors in fish roe that contribute to fertility-vitamins
A and D, iodine and other minerals and special elongated
fatty acids-but such is the mindset of modern medicine that
this information is not passed on to parents-to-be.
Other special foods given to pregnant women and growing
children included shell fish, organ meats and deep yellow
butter, all of which Price found to be extremely rich in
minerals and "fat-soluble activators."
The response of orthodox paleo-diet researchers to overwhelming
evidence that the hunter-gatherers sought out and consumed
large quantities of animal fat and high-cholesterol foods,
rich in fat-soluble vitamins, is that while the primitive
diet allowed for optimal reproduction and development-borne
out not only by Dr. Price's photographs, but by skeletal
remains of hunter-gatherers from throughout the world-it
had the unhappy side effect of shortening his life-span.
Yet Arctic explorers reported great longevity among the
Eskimo;18 Australian Aborigine communities
were noted for containing a sizeable number of old people,
who lived together as a separate group and for whom were
reserved special foods that were easy to gather and hunt.19
The diets of traditional groups noted for longevity are
rich in animal fats: The people of Hunza consume large quantities
of fermented goat milk products, and goats milk is higher
in fat, and contains more saturated fat, than cows milk;
the inhabitants of Vilcabamba in Equator consume fatty pork
and whole milk products; and the long-lived inhabitants
of Soviet Georgia also eat liberally of pork and whole milk
yoghurt and cheeses. In fact, a Soviet study found that
longevity was greatest in rural communities where people
ate the most fatty meat, compared to town dwellers who ate
more carbohydrates.20
Yet carbohydrates, in the form of whole grains and related
seed foods, are not absent in healthy traditional diets,
even in the diets of hunter-gatherers. Price found that
millet and corn were consumed throughout Africa; quinoa
and amaranth in South America. American Indians consumed
wild rice, corn and beans; Australian Aborigines gathered
a species of wild millet and consumed a large variety of
legumes. One school of thought claims that grains and pulses
should be avoided, arguing that they were absent from the
Paleolithic diet and citing the obvious association of grains
with celiac disease and studies linking grain consumption
with heart disease.21
to be continued...