Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon

In the many years I've been involved in natural healing, I've read many books on the subject of nutrition.  I've also tried many different types of diets, including things like juice fasting, eating vegetarian, mild food diets (eating only fruits and vegetables), blood type diet, Candida diets and more. I've always had problems recommending books on nutrition because I found most of them to be lacking in some way, either by their extremely narrow perspective, or because I simply find they don't produce the long-term results of good health to which I strive.

That's why I'm pleased to recommend Nourishing Traditions as one of the best guides to healthy eating that I've ever read. It's subtitled The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats, and that's what it does. It doesn't adhere to the politically-correct stances we hear on cholesterol and fats, nor does it advocate a narrow perspective on diet. It's not based on someone's philosophy, new "scientific" discovery or fad.  Instead, it tells you what healthy people have traditionally eaten, because it is based on the research done by Weston Price in the 1930s.

Weston Price's research was based on studying real people and the foods they ate. He compared the health and diets of "civilized" people and the traditional diets of native people. Everywhere he went native people living on traditional diets had little contagious disease, strong bones and teeth and excellent mental and physical health. People around the world ate a wide variety of foods, but the primary factor was nutritional density.  They ate foods that had 10 times more fat soluble vitamins, four times more water soluble vitamins and four times the minerals.

Food preparation was also important. The more cooked foods a culture ate, the more fermented foods and beverages they consumed. They soaked grains, nuts and seeds to prepare them for consuption. They used raw dairy products from grass-fed animals. They made bone broth and soup stocks. All of this is not only discussed in this wonderful book, it also provides you with lots of recipes to actually put it into practice. Plus, it compares natural foods to processed foods throughout the book.

I believe every home should have a copy of this book, especially families with young children. So much disease and suffering could be ended in the world if people learned to follow the wisdom of traditional diets instead of the popular fads of nutrition. If you don't own a copy, get one. If you do have a copy, use it.

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