Traditional Diets
by Sally Fallon
Author of Nourishing
Traditions
Part two of a three part article
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...
