Traditional Diets / Nasty, Brutish & Short

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 mineralscalcium, 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 butterbut 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 deficiencycolon 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 studiedfrom 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 fertilityvitamins A and D, iodine and other minerals and special elongated fatty acidsbut 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 developmentborne out not only by Dr. Price’s photographs, but by skeletal remains of hunter-gatherers from throughout the worldit 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

What researchers often overlook is the fact that seed foodsgrains, legumes and nutsare 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 researchthat 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 eatgreen 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 culturesfrom kaffir beer in Africa to kvass and kombucha in Slavic regions. Lacto-fermented foods are artisinal productsinstead of mass produced items preserved with vinegar and sugarwhich 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 enhancersMSG 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 situsour milk and grain products, aged cheeses, pickles, sausages, broth and beverages. All the boxed, bottled and frozen products in modern supermarketsthe cheerios, crackers, cookies, egg-beaters, margarines, diet sodas and TV dinnershave 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 havethe 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.

Copyright © 1999 Sally Fallon. All Rights Reserved. Nasty, Brutish and Short? was first published in The Ecologist, Vol 29, No 1, January/February 1999.