In the 1970’s, Sally Fallon picked up Dr. Weston A. Price’s Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, a book in which the dentist shared his years of research into the dietary habits of indigenous cultures. “It was one of those life changing books for me,” Sally says. “I was starting out with my family at the time and didn’t have much time for research. But, I was doing lots of food preparation and lots of cooking, and I just applied those principals to my family…And, for my family, it worked.”

At the time her children were growing up on a nutrient-dense, high-fat diet, the message to eat low-fat diets was spreading—a message counter to what she and Dr. Price believed constituted a healthy diet. So, Sally began working with nutritionist Dr. Mary Enig to write Nourishing Traditions. According to Sally, “the purpose of Nourishing Traditions was to take the work of Dr. Price, which is a little bit inaccessible and kind of hard to translate into practical terms, and provide a cookbook that was based on the principles of traditional diets.”

In the process, Sally begun her own research into the diets of traditional cultures and expounded upon Dr. Price’s recommendations for eating nutrient-dense whole foods and animal fats, including looking at traditional cultures’ careful preparation of foods by sour soaking and the importance of fermented foods like sauerkraut.

After looking at our modern day “superfoods” and vitamins and supplements, New Life Journal became curious about what we used to eat. So, we asked Sally Fallon to explore traditional food ways with us.

NLJ: If you had to briefly sum up what you believe constitutes a healthful diet, one that mimics the nutritional lifestyle of indigenous cultures, how would you describe it?

SF: Nutrient-dense, with particular emphasis on the vitamins that we get from the fats and organ meats of grass-fed animals. Everything that they did in traditional cultures, from their food choices to their agriculture techniques to their way of preparing food, maximized the nutrients and made them more available. Everything that we do in the modern diet is for convenience…and big profits, and it minimizes the nutrients.

NLJ: In your study of Dr. Price’s work and your own research into nourishing traditions, what has been most fascinating to you?

SF: What’s really fascinating is how they [native peoples] knew [to eat this way]. I’ll give you one example: in cultures all over the world, fish eggs were considered an important food for pregnant women to make healthy babies. You found that 12,000 feet in the Andes, you found that in Alaska, you found it in China. So, how did they know, and what kind of intuitive knowledge made them realize this? Now, we have the science to show that in fact fish eggs are a really good food for pregnant women.* But, we’ve lost that intuition. That’s an important part of our evolution on Earth, to loose that intuition, and we’ll regain it eventually I’m sure. But, we had to develop a different way of looking at things, a scientific way of looking at things. It’s really great when they coincide.

NLJ: In Nourishing Traditions, you mention a few connections between various cultures and societies. Is there one (or several) similarity (ies) across the board in traditional diets?

SF: Absolutely. The types of foods people ate were all very different for sure. But, number one, there were no processed or devitalized foods. Number two was that all these cultures ate animal foods of some sort; there were no vegan cultures. And, number three, they were very high in minerals and the types of vitamins we find in animal fats—vitamins A, D, and K…Those are the three basic principles that Dr. Price described. [Dr. Enig and I] added the careful preparation of grain, the use of raw animal foods, and the use of bone broth.

NLJ: In one of our feature articles this issue, nutritionists weigh in on the ever-growing list of “superfoods” currently being touted to the public for their healing properties. If you had to label three foods common to most traditional societies as “superfoods,” what would they be?

SF: I think we coined the word “superfoods” because we don’t believe in vitamins, we believe in “superfoods.” Number one would be liver. It’s the most nutrient-dense; it’s got a thousand to ten thousand times more nutrients than fruits or vegetables. The second would be cod liver oil, which is such a good source of A and D, and probably the third would be raw whole milk from pasture cows, or raw whole cheese.

NLJ: We also have an article this issue about the organic movement. I know that traditional cultures consumed what you call high quality animal products. Can we still consume these products in our culture today?

SF: Organics has a certain amount of meaning for plant foods…But, I think the word “organics” in terms of animal foods has been so watered down as to be pretty meaningless. With animal foods, you should know your farmer.

The organic model is not outdoors; it’s pretty industrial. [Traditional cultures] were farming outdoors, animals were eating green grass, the chickens were outside, the ducks were on the pond. When animals are outside, they will make vitamins A, D, and K and put them in their fat and organ meats. But today, even in the organic model, the animals are not outside, and they’re not grazing on green grass.

NLJ: It seems that an underlying aspect of traditional ways of eating had to do with bringing family and friends together, since cooking could sometimes be a time-consuming or laborious process. Can you speak to this?

SF: Cooking revolved around family or village, and there were lots of rituals and traditions associated with food. As an example, in certain South Sea Islands, it was men who did the cooking, because it was hard work; they had to cut open coconuts and cut up pigs, and so the men did the cooking in those countries. In other countries, it was usually the women who did the food preparation. So, there were lots of customs about food. When you had these nutrient-dense diets, Dr. Price noticed a very harmonious society. We might not like the structure of those societies today; some were very stratified and very ritualistic. And, I’m not advocating going back to the village, but I am advocating we learn from them their food secrets.

*Source: The Lancet, Feb 17, 2007, pp 578-85

Sally Fallon is founding president of The Weston A. Price Foundation, a non-profit nutrition education foundation helping consumers find local, grass-based animal products; she is also the founder of A Campaign for Real Milk, which advocates for universal access to raw milk from pasture-fed animals. She is the author of the best-selling cookbook Nourishing Traditions and Eat Fat Lose Fat (Penguin), both with Mary G. Enig, PhD. Fallon will be joined by Dr. Thomas Cowan and Jaimen McMillan, coauthors of The Fourfold Path to Healing, at a weekend conference in Durham, NC, February 29-March 2. For information, contact Claire Viadro at viadro@mindspring.com, or to register, call 240-379-7072 or visit www.fourfoldhealing.com/conference.htm.

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