Traditional Diets
by Sally Fallon
Author of Nourishing
Traditions
http://www.ashtreepublishing.com/bookshop/proddetail.php?prod=146&cat=9
Part three of a three part article Part1 http://www.susunweed.com/herbal_ezine/June05/empower.htm
Part2
http://www.susunweed.com/herbal_ezine/July05/empower.htm
What researchers often overlook is the fact that seed foods—grains,
legumes and nuts—are prepared with great care in traditional
societies, by sprouting, roasting, soaking, fermenting and sour
leavening.22 These processes neutralize substances in whole
grains and other seed foods that block mineral absorption, inhibit
protein digestion and irritate the lining of the digestive tract.
Such processes also increase nutrient content and render seed
foods more digestible.
For example, in India, rice and lentils are fermented for at
least two days before they are prepared as idli and dosas; in
Africa the natives soak coarsely ground corn overnight before
adding it to soups and stews and they ferment corn or millet
for several days to produce a sour porridge called ogi; a similar
dish made from oats was traditional among the Welsh; in some
Oriental and Latin American countries rice receives a long fermentation
before it is prepared; Ethiopians make their distinctive injera
bread by fermenting a grain called teff for several days; Mexican
corn bread cakes, called pozol, are fermented for several days
and for as long as two weeks in banana leaves; Cherokee bread
was similar, but wrapped in corn husks; before the introduction
of commercial brewers yeast, Europeans made slow-rise breads
from fermented starters; in America the pioneers were famous
for their sourdough breads, pancakes and biscuits; and throughout
Europe grains were soaked overnight, and for as long as several
days, in water or sour milk before they were cooked and served
as porridge or gruel. Grains carefully prepared in this manner
confer far more nutritional value than modern quick rise breads,
granolas, rice bran concoctions, extruded breakfast cereals
and, of course, denuded white flour products.
Weston Price's studies convinced him that the best diet was
one that combined nutrient-dense whole grains with animal products,
particularly fish. The healthiest African tribe he studied was
the Dinkas, a Sudanese tribe on the western bank of the Nile.
They were not as tall as the cattle-herding Neurs groups but
they were physically better proportioned and had greater strength.
Their diet consisted mainly of fish and cereal grains. This
is one of the most important lessons of Price's research—that
a mixed diet of whole foods, one that avoids the extremes of
the carnivorous Masai and the largely vegetarian Bantu, ensures
optimum physical development.
Purists argue that, as with grains, man should not eat dairy
products because the keeping of herds dates back only a few
thousand years, a mere drop of time in the evolutionary bucket.
But there are many healthy milk-drinking populations including
disease-free traditional Europeans, Americans up to the first
World War, Greeks and other inhabitants of the Mediterranean,
Africans, Tibetans, the long-lived inhabitants of Soviet Georgia
and the hearty Mongols of Northern China.
Even today, the use of relatively processed milk products is
associated with longevity in countries like Austria and Switzerland.23
Modern milk is denatured through pasteurization and homogenization;
stripped of its valuable fat content; filled with antibiotics
and pesticides; laced with additives and synthetic vitamins;
and comes from cows bred to produce huge amounts of milk and
fed everything under the sun except what cows are supposed to
eat—green grass.24 There is evidence to link such milk
with the whole gamut of modern ailments including heart disease,
cancer, diabetes, breast cancer, osteoporosis, autism and allergies.
Other practices common to traditional groups throughout the
world include the use of animal bones, usually made into broth
that is added to soups, stews and sauces; the preservation of
vegetables, fruits, grains and even meats through the practice
of lacto-fermentation to make condiments, meat products and
beverages; and the use of salt. In areas where salt is not available,
sodium-rich grasses and other plants are burnt and added to
foods.
Familiar lacto-fermented foods include old-fashioned sauer
kraut and yoghurt. Almost any food can be preserved by this
method, which encourages the proliferation of beneficial bacteria.
The lactic acid they produce is an excellent, natural preservative
prevents spoilage in plant foods as pickles and chutneys, meats
as sausage and haggis, milk as a variety of soured products
and grains as chewy breads and thick sour porridges. Lacto-fermented
beverages are ubiquitous in traditional cultures—from
kaffir beer in Africa to kvass and kombucha in Slavic regions.
Lacto-fermented foods are artisinal products—instead of
mass produced items preserved with vinegar and sugar—which
taste delicious and confer many health benefits. They add valuable
enzymes to the diet, and enhance digestibility and assimilation
of everything we eat.
Gelatin-rich broth also enhances digestion and provides the
gamut of macro-minerals in easily assimilated form. Broth-based
soups are snack foods in Asian countries, usually prepared in
mom-and-pop shops; and they form the basis of both peasant and
gourmet cuisines throughout Europe. But in most western countries,
the stock pot has given way to convenience foods whose meat-like
favor derives from flavor enhancers—MSG and other neurotoxic
additives.
The first happy lesson gleaned from a study of traditional
diets is that healthy food can and should taste good; that we
can put butter on our porridge and cook in lard, that it's OK
to consume whole milk, fatty meats, liver and onions, lox and
cream cheese, shrimp and lobster, even insects, if you like
them; that heavenly sauces made from bone broth and cream confer
more benefits than pills and powders and ersatz low-fat concoctions,
the stepchildren of technology, pawned off as health foods.
Wisely used, technology can take the drudgery out of cooking,
and help us bring properly grown and prepared foods to the marketplace.
Wrongly used, technology produces breads that are soft and sweet
rather than sour and chewy; coca-cola rather than cottage-industry
lacto-fermented soft drinks; bouillon cubes rather than homemade
broth; sugar-embalmed ketchup with infinite shelf life rather
than enzyme-rich condiments and pickles preserved to last a
few months in a way that adds nutrients instead of taking them
away.
The second lesson is that healthy eating is good for the ecology.
The building blocks of a healthy diet are pesticide-free foods
raised on mineral-rich soil, and healthy animals that live free
to manure the paddocks of thousands of farms, rather than suffer
in factories, confined to misery and disease. The road to health
starts with a willingness to pay a good price for such food,
thus rewarding the farmer who preserves the land through wise
farming practices, rather than the agribusiness that mines the
soil for quick profits.
And, finally, a return to traditional foods is a way of taking
power away from the multinationals and giving it back to the
artisan. The kind of food processing that makes food more nutritious
is the same kind of food processing that the farmer or the farming
community can do in situ—sour milk and grain products,
aged cheeses, pickles, sausages, broth and beverages. All the
boxed, bottled and frozen products in modern supermarkets—the
cheerios, crackers, cookies, egg-beaters, margarines, diet sodas
and TV dinners—have made fortunes for a few and impoverished
the rest of us. The way we eat determines not only how healthy
we will be, but what kind of economy we have—the kind
where a few people make millions and millions of dollars or
the kind where millions of people make a decent living.
Technology propels us headlong into the future, but there will
be no future unless that technology is tamed to the service
of wise ancestral foodways.
Endnotes
1. Weston A Price, DDS, Price, Nutrition and
Physical Degeneration, 1945, Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation,
San Diego, CA, (619) 574-7763
2. Zac Goldsmith, "Cancer: A Disease of
Industrialization," The Ecologist, March/April 1998, 28:(2):93-99
3. Abrams, H Leon, "Vegetarianism: An Anthropological/Nutritional
Approach," Journal of Applied Nutrition, 1980, 32:2:70-71
4. Russell Smith, "Vegetarian Studies,"
Health and Healing Wisdom, Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation,
Winter 1998, 22:(4):30 (619) 574-7763
5. Sally Fallon and Mary G Enig, PhD, "Out
of Africa: What Dr. Price and Dr. Burkett Discovered in their
Studies of Sub-Saharan Tribes," PPNF Health Journal, Price-Pottenger
Nutrition Foundation, Spring 1997, 21:(1):1-5 (619) 574-7763
6. Abrams, H Leon, Jr, "The Preference
for Animal Protein and Fat: A Cross Cultural Survey," Food
and Evolution, Marvin Harris and Eric B Ross, eds. Temple University
Press, Philadelphia, 1987
7. Stefansson, Vilhjalmur, The Fat of the Land,
1956, The MacMillan Co, New York, NY, p 3
8. Hugh Brody, Living Arctic, University of
Washington Press, Seattle, WA, 1987, p 57
9. Sally Fallon and Mary G Enig, PhD, "Australian
Aborigines," Health and Healing Wisdom, Price-Pottenger
Nutrition Foundation, Summer 1998, 22:(2):8-13 (619) 574-7763
10. Watkins, B A, et al, "Importance of
Vitamin E in Bone Formation and in Chrondocyte Function"
Purdue University, Lafayette, IN, AOCS Proceedings, 1996; Watkins,
B A, and M F Seifert, "Food Lipids and Bone Health,"
Food Lipids and Health, R E McDonald and D B Min, eds, p 101,
Marcel Dekker, Inc. New York, NY
11. Khosla, P, and K C Hayes, J Am Coll Nutr,
1996, 15:325-339; Clevidence, B A, et al, Arterioscler Thromb
Vasc Biol, 1997, 17:1657-1661
12. Nanji, A A, et al, Gastroenterology, Aug
1995, 109(2):547-54; Cha, Y S, and D S Sachan, J Am Coll Nutr,
Aug 1994, 13(4):338-43
13. Kabara, J J, The Pharmacological Effects
of Lipids, J J Kabara, ed, The American Oil Chemists Society,
Champaign, IL, 1978, 1-14; Cohen, L A, et al, J Natl Cancer
Inst, 1986, 77:43
14. Garg, M L, et al, The FASEB Journal, 1988,
2:4:A852; Oliart Ros, R M, et al, Meeting Abstracts, AOCS Proceedings,
May 1998, p 7, Chicago, IL
15. L D Lawson and F Kummerow, "B-Oxidation
of the Coenzyme A Esters of Vaccenic, Elaidic and Petroselaidic
Acids by Rat Heart Mitochondria," Lipids, 1979, 14:501-503
16. Kabara, J J, The Pharmacological Effects
of Lipids, J J Kabara, ed, The American Oil Chemists Society,
Champaign, IL, 1978, 1-14; Cohen, L A, et al, J Natl Cancer
Inst ,1986, 77:43
17. Sally Fallon, "Vitamin A Vagary,"
PPNF Health Journal, Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation, Summer
1995, 19:(2):1-3 (619) 574-7763
18. Dr. Henry Greist, Seventeen Years Among
the Eskimos, date unknown, Cited by Stefansson
19. Sally Fallon and Mary G Enig, PhD, "Australian
Aborigines," Health and Healing Wisdom, Price-Pottenger
Nutrition Foundation, Summer 1998, 22:(2):8 (619) 574-7763
20. Pitskhelauri, G Z, The Long Living of Soviet
Georgia, 1982, Human Sciences Press, New York, NY
21. Lutz, W A, "The colonization of Europe
and our Western diseases," Medical Hypotheses, Aug 1995,
45(2):115-20
22. Steinkraus, Keith H, ed, Handbook of Indigenous
Fermented Foods, 1983, Marcel Dekker, Inc, New York, NY
23. Moore, Thomas J, Lifespan: What Really Affects
Human Longevity, 1990, Simon and Schuster, New York
24. For more information see
www.realmilk.com
© 1999 Sally Fallon. All Rights Reserved.
First published in The Ecologist, Vol 29, No 1, January/February
1999.
Nourishing
Traditions
http://www.ashtreepublishing.com/bookshop/proddetail.php?prod=146&cat=9
Revised Second Edition,
October 2000
by Sally Fallon with Mary G Enig, PhD
The Cookbook that Challenges Politically
Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats.
This well-researched, thought-provoking guide
to traditional foods contains a startling message: Animal
fats and cholesterol are not villains but vital factors in
the diet, necessary for normal growth, proper funciton of
the brain and nervous system, protection from disease and
optimum energy levels. Sally Fallon dispels the myths of the
current low-fat fad in this practical, entertaining guide
to a can-do diet that is both nutritious and delicious.
Order
Sally Fallon's book at our bookshop
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Or order via mail: Ash Tree Publishing PO Box 64 Woodstock,
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