Back to BasicsWe must make changes if we want to be exceptions to the current American state of health. If you are a parent, take this opportunity to prevent your children from being part of the trend toward progressively worse health. If you currently have a health condition, possibly one that is part of a national epidemic, work on improving the outcome by changing your diet and lifestyle now. In my opinion and experience, drugs and other conventional treatments usually do not cure the problem or even significantly improve your lot. You must help yourself. Since our health started spiraling downward after 1940, we might think we should take our diets and lifestyles back to the way they were in the 1930s. However, this is not back far enough; sugar consumption was already on the rise in the 1800s. It is difficult to re-create diets and lifestyles from history books or memory, and we can't ask great-grandma about her personal health in detail. A good way to determine what an ideally healthy diet is would be to find and study ideally healthy people. This is what Dr. Weston Price did in the 1930s when he visited and studied fourteen isolated societies around the world. They were like small pockets of traveling back in time. Although the diets of these traditional groups differed in what they specifically ate, there were dietary principles they all held in common. They ate fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, fats, nuts, seeds, and meat or fish in their whole, natural state. No part of an animal was left unused. When fish were eaten, the heads and skeletons were made into soup. Their diets contained both cooked and raw foods. [1] Organ meats were prized because they seemed to enhance fertility and the health of children. [2] The groups that consumed milk drank it "as is" or ate it as yogurt or cheese. [3] Although isolated from each other, the groups had food preservation and preparation techniques in common, such as using lactofermentation to preserve vegetables, fruits and meats, allowing milk to ferment to produce yogurt and cheese and the making of bone broths. Highly nourishing broth served as an extender of the animal by providing a nutrient-dense easily digested base for meals. These isolated groups also shared the practice of soaking cereals, grains and legumes before cooking them. [4] The animal fats and tropical oils they ate had antimicrobial properties. [5] Animal fats also supplied vitamins A and D, the meat supplied protein, B vitamins, and minerals. Because people ate everything in its entirely, they undoubtedly obtained nutrients that have yet to be discovered. Rather than dissecting and analyzing foods as we do, they simply enjoyed their traditional diets. When I was a child, we were closer food-wise to the cultures that Dr. Price studied than most of us are now. Americans of some ethnic extractions still cooked almost everything "from scratch." I remember helping my mother make chicken soup from a chicken, learning to make bread and pasta with my grandmother, and lessons on crimping the edge of a pie crust from my aunt. We had dessert only on special occasions such as birthdays and holidays. Candy was strictly rationed. When we received Halloween or Easter candy, we ate a few pieces, and the rest was put in a high cupboard. Every Saturday night we could choose one piece of candy to eat, and then we brushed our teeth. When I was first married, my husband taught me some new habits, like eating sugar more freely and picking up "broasted chicken" for dinner. We ate out once a week. I did not go so far as making the open-and-pour casseroles [6] my mother-in-law told me about, hoping to make my kitchen time easier. There were, and still are, some things no self-respecting Italian will do! I taught my husband to eat many kinds of vegetables instead of just peas and corn. He quickly became accustomed to foods made from scratch and has never returned to eating meals made of highly processed foods. He even eventually gave up sugar, after a childhood of having dessert every night and a candy drawer in the kitchen that he could snack from whenever he wished. When I developed food allergies after a few years of marriage, I didn't experience the panic that many people do because my father was allergic to milk and I knew it was possible to make everything from scratch and thus eliminate problem ingredients. When you begin to take your diet and cooking back to basics, start with small changes, such as reading labels and purchasing bread, crackers, etc. that are made from whole grains and healthy fats with no high-fructose corn syrup and very little of any other sweetener. (A small amount of sweetener may be needed by the yeast in non-sourdough bread). Then prepare meals at home from whole foods. If there are nights when you need a shortcut to dinner, avoid highly processed foods and substitute pre-made foods from a health food store. Use frozen rather than fresh vegetables to save washing and chopping time. Take your diet back to basics by doing the type of cooking done by the traditional cultures Dr. Price studied which will make your food easier to digest and extremely nutritious. Taking your home environment back to healthy basics is easier than the transition to mostly home cooking. Click here for how to rid your home environment of toxic substances. A friend who had a mastectomy about three months after mine and learned about what she should do to help prevent a recurrence told me that she could not believe how good she felt after starting to eat nutritiously and walk every day. You too can make changes that will help you improve your health. When you begin to feel better, you will be glad that you did. Footnotes
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