Back To Basics: Traditional Foods

Nothing can get more basic than following the ways of our ancestors; the older generations that lived IN and WITH nature! The foods these humans ate were deeply nourishing. They enjoyed the highest quality, freshest, and purest of foods! We can learn great wisdom in creating health by studying these primitive cultures.

To illustrate this, I’d like to share with you the story of a dentist. Dr. Weston A. Price was amazed at how primitive people who followed their traditional diets had broad straight white teeth like the keys of a piano. They had no teeth deformities like crookedness or tooth decay where as in our times, almost all the kids need braces and get cavities. Dr. Price then visited some villages in Switzerland where the people still lived this way, isolated from modern society. The children there had excellent dental health, and the men in the village had very robust physical health. He found out that the #1 food in their diet was raw milk! They raised their cows and goats on open pastures where the animals grazed on green grass. Their other main food source was rye. They made it into sourdough bread which required a very long preparation but one which maximized the nutrients in it. They also had sacred foods for pregnancy and lactation as these times you need extra nourishment. The sacred food for them was a type of butter! The butter was harvested at the prime of spring when it was greener pasture than ever and the animals were better nourished.

The Eskimos, another group of people in Alaska, had never had cases of cancer or heart disease as long as they were eating their traditional foods. Their traditional diet’s main food actually was meat! They had lots of fish, and they fermented their foods a lot which again maximizes the nutrients. Their sacred nourishing food was salmon eggs. As soon as they started eating western foods, the same major diseases started emerging among them as well.

You might be thinking dairy and meat?? These foods are supposed to make you fat and sick. I’m not promoting a dairy and meat diet, I think we get enough of that already anyway. I’m only trying to bring awareness to the fact that it is the QUALITY of the food that matters most. They ate whole foods that were seasonally and locally available to them which means they were super fresh and therefore super nourishing. Another major difference: these people grew their food in mineral-rich soils. Our soils are mineral-deficient due to over-farming and mass production. They raised their animals on open fields of green grass under the sunlight enjoying fresh air. In our corporate farms, we confine our animals in feedlots where they can be grossly overcrowded living in filthy conditions. We feed them grains (along with growth hormones) to fatten them up (so that we can get bigger profits in sales), but they are not designed to eat those things! They then get sick, and so we treat them heavily with antibiotics. I mean it doesn’t take a genius to see the difference in the quality of the food here.

So, here’s the conclusion: we need to have a back to basics revolution! I’m not saying let’s become hunters and gatherers, but let’s try to eat more fresh, natural, minimally processed foods! Now a days, we see most food all wrapped up and packaged in our supermarkets with hundreds of foreign ingredients (written in a language that only a chemist would understand), and we have no idea where it came from, how it was grown or raised, and how it was processed. This “processing” is done by food manufacturers largely to either enhance the flavor or appearance of the food with chemical additives or to preserve the food, but in this process, the food’s nutritional value is significantly reduced! So, let’s just try to eat less of those denatured chemicalized and processed foods that lack any real nourishment! Let’s replace these with fresh whole foods (seasonal and local is even better), and I promise you’ll feel a dramatic shift in your energy! All nourishment is found in mother nature, not in some chemical laboratory or big factory that is most likely looking out for its own interests! When we eat nourishing foods, we can get rid of daily issues like nagging headaches, random aches and pains, weight resistance, low energy, etc. that can really negatively affect our quality of life. Food is a great blessing from God, but it can also be a curse, so please choose wisely! I invite you to explore the natural health food industry as they are trying to bring us back to the basics!