Traditional Foods Are Your Best Medicine: Improving Health and Longevity With Native Nutrition 

by Ronald F. Schmid

Editorial Reviews
The Boston Herald
A provocative contribution to the debate on what constitutes a healthy diet. It deserves to be widely read.

Annemarie Colbin, author of Food and Healing
An excellent, comprehensive book. Dr. Schmid blends the wisdom of traditional eating patterns with modern scientific knowledge.

Irene Alleger in The Townsend Letter for Doctors
I've reviewed dozens of books on nutrition over the years, but Traditional Foods Are Your Best Medicine put a lot of things in perspective for me.

Listen to your elders, July 15, 1999
Reviewer: A reader from Rochester, Vermont
It's disappointing that this review is only the first to appear on this extraordinary book; after three editions in twelve years, one would think more people would know about it. Unfortunately, Truth rarely basks in the spotlight: Of the minority of Americans who actually pay attention to their health habits, most will look to mainstream sources in the news, or take the bait offered in high-powered advertisements. A few will read alternative magazines and subscribe to vegan or macrobiotic diets and think they've found the answer. And all these people will have missed the mark, in whole or in part.

We in modern society, with some exceptions, tend to look for answers, for knowledge, from modern sources--the media, "experts," establishment research. How many of us look to our ancestors? What? Who are they? Ladies and Gentlemen, our ancestors have much to teach us--and in the case of diet, I will put 100,000 years of wisdom up against a modern "expert" any day. And my conviction in making such a statement stems largely from reading this book, TRADITIONAL FOODS ARE YOUR BEST MEDICINE.

In 250 pages, Dr. Schmid lays it out: the history of human evolution and diet, and how Dr. Weston Price, who researched indigenous cultures worldwide early in this century, found them enjoying wonderful health and resistance to disease by eating their native foods; why most of today's popular diets--macrobiotics, veganism, the Pritikin diet, and others--are lacking; and how you can make the correct food choices (including organically produced animal products, which our ancestors relied upon and are FAR superior to their factory-farmed cousins). Dr. Schmid also discusses specific health problems and how to best address them. There's even a chapter on how to work with a doctor on making these changes.

The fact that I work for the publisher of this book matters little. I am also one of Dr. Schmid's patients and have a solid belief in the principles covered in his book. TRADITIONAL FOODS is one of the best-written, persuasive, and inspiring books I've been blessed to read and I am thankful for what I've learned. To you, reader: Don't swim too much in the mainstream--you won't find the answers. For all of human history prior to this century, the wisdom written about in this book WAS the "mainstream." Do yourself a great service-- buy it, read it, practice it. And enjoy not just a longer life, but a deeper one.