Nourishing Traditions

I just have to mention this book I've been reading, Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. It's absolutely amazing - I haven't been able to put it down! It's a combination of a cookbook and textbook about traditional nutrition and cooking.

A lot of it is based on the research of Weston A. Price who traveled throughout the world studying native groups who had excellent health, and documenting what they ate. The idea is that before processed food and the development of processed sugar, groups who ate "traditionally" (meaning animal products, raw dairy and soaked and fermented grains) had excellent health with virtually no cancer, birth defects, or chronic illness.

At this point, Americans are eating less saturated fat, dairy, and animal products than ever before and yet our cancer and heart disease rates are growing. As recently as 50 years ago heart disease was uncommon and now it is a leading killer. Why? According to this book animal products and saturated fats are necessary for your body to function and have antioxidant and anticarcinogenic properties. The problem is in vegetable oils, especially hydrogenated oils. These are extremely toxic to the body and they believe are one of the leading causes of heart disease. The fact that American's consumption of saturated fats has gone down while the incidence of heart disease has gone up should be reason enough to consider this theory!

These are not this one woman's ideas - there are excerpts throughout the book from many, many articles and other books on the same subject. I loved the way the book was organized as well, with some major articles in the front but a lot of the content is spread through out the "cookbook" part (which is huge) in sidebars. I was absolutely fascinated by the idea of fermentation and the necessity of it in order for us to digest things properly. I was unaware of the extent to which this was (and is) used throughout the world in every culture. I've already made whey and a batch of apple butter through fermentation (which uses whey) and I'm excited to try some other things.

Stefan is totally on-board with it, which is amazing and wonderful. He is actively helping me get rid of plastic in our lives (more on that later), stop using the microwave, and start having a more traditional diet. Hooray for great husbands!