by Lorette C. Luzajic
Sally Fallon and the Weston A. Price Foundation have been enduring the ridicule and hostility of the food and medical industries and a brainwashed public for the past decade. Cheerful quotes like “They’re happy because they eat butter” and the Foundation’s relentless campaign against soy foods have earned them snide mockeries and patronizing eye rolling from every side. I was one of the latter, sadly, when I first came upon Sally’s Nourishing Traditions: the Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats.
You all know the story by now: I was sick, tired, addicted, depressed, fat, puffy, slow, itchy, in pain, and constantly sick. I was pretty sure I’d have to become a vegetarian again because I was getting sicker by the day. Even though I was eating copious amounts of healthy whole grain foods- barley, couscous, quinoa, millet, granola, wheat germ, you name it, I felt like crap. I thought I was eating too much meat, though it barely made an appearance on my table. I picked up Sally’s book because I assumed that “challenges politically correct nutrition” meant she was going to combat the poisonous, prevailing attitude that humans are supposed to eat meat. But when I opened the book and flipped through it, I was told to eat bones, brains and raw meat. I dropped the book like a hot potato.
But as they say in Narcotics Anonymous, “insanity is doing something you’ve done a thousand times and expecting different results.” It just didn’t dawn on me that I’d been struggling to be vegetarian, vegan, or almost-vegetarian for a very long time but wasn’t getting any healthier. I thought we were brainwashed by the “beef board” to reach for animal foods and line their pockets while making ourselves sick. This cookbook is responsible for my conversion- to health, to religious adamancy about the real human diet, and to writing about meat.
It’s funny how far removed from health food “natural, health food” aficionados really are. Was I so malnourished that I wasn’t able to think for myself? Now, following the principles of Nourishing Traditions, it is obvious that real food means real food, the way our grandparents and ancient ancestors ate it. It’s insane that it is so radical to view vegetable oil as a health scourge. On the surface, what could be more wholesome than vegetable oil? But by giving it some thought, reality would show through the haze: vegetable oil is an industrial food. Aside from olive oil and some nuts here and there, we’ve never used it widely in history. It is foreign to our bodies. It goes against common sense- you have to press a lot of corn or soy to get oil. And for the most part, it’s hydrogenated. So what in the world is “healthy” oil? Using the words “butter” and “lard” still makes me cringe. Yet these are traditional, unprocessed foods. We have been taught that we’ve been taught to love these foods by the dairy board or meat industry. But the truth is, we’ve always loved them. We were taught to fear them by the monocrop industry.
It’s painfully clear now when I set food in a “health food store” how few health foods are sold there. It’s more like a candy store except that nothing tastes good. It’s so obvious that whole, traditional foods means farm-fresh eggs, beef, pork, lamb, bone broth, fresh herbs, zucchini, collard greens, fish, butter, olives, apples, peas, cabbage, berries and so on. How can bottled, isolated supplements, powdered plant proteins, canned “organic” sauces, chemicals to replace eggs, and boxes of puffed, processed grains be health food? What are we thinking?
Insanity is doing something you’ve done a thousand times and expecting different results. Though my diet had barely any meat in it, or none, for as long as I could remember, I kept blaming meat for my illness and fatigue. It was time to try something else. Sally’s book points out how pervasive these terrifying diseases are- cancer, diabetes, arthritis, mental illness, obesity, heart disease- and asks how old foods like meat and animal fat could be responsible for new diseases. Since we are eating less animal foods than ever before, wouldn’t it stand to reason that the diseases implicated by eating them should disappear? Why do we get fatter while obsessed with low-fat foods? Why do cookbooks by the heart and diabetes associations rail against saturated fat while offering recipes “loaded with sugar and white flour”?
“This is politically correct nutrition,” Sally writes. “It singles out…eggs and beef, but spares the powerful and highly profitable grain cartels, vegetable oil producers, and the food processing industry…”
“They take exercise seriously, many have stopped smoking, consumption of fresh vegetables has increased, …America has cut back on red meats and animal fats. But none of these measures has made a dent in the ever-increasing toll of degenerative disease…We buy foods labeled low fat, no cholesterol, reduced sodium, thinking they are good for us. Why, then, are we still sick?”
This is the question on which Sally’s whole book is based. Her recipes and nutritional information take fake foods off of the table- sugar, chemicals, puffs, soy, flour, processed or industrial foods. And she puts real food back on the table, including real food that we forgot existed- yes, like butter, and yes, like bones, brains, and organs. What the heck is that soy-salt-chemical lump that now passes for “vegetable stock” flavouring? Forget it- stock comes the way your grandmother made it, with real vegetables and real bones simmered for hours. This is the most nourishing multivitamin in the world. Bones are made up of dozens of vital minerals.
Furthermore, Sally teaches us to prepare grains and legumes the way we used to, soaking and fermenting. These practices are ancient and wise traditions that neutralized harmful anti-nutrients.
The best part about this cookbook is the fascinating nutritional information provided. Sally explains how carbohydrates work; what’s wrong with hydrogenation; what cholesterol really does; what fats do what and why; how sugar causes decay from the inside and not just the outside; how the vegetarian inhabitants of India have one of the shortest life spans we know; why powdered milk and eggs or puffed grains are poor choices; the role of every mineral and vitamin; what is spirulina: why all cultures have traditionally consumed fermented foods like sauerkraut; how enzymes work, and just about everything else you need to know.
But Sally doesn’t ask you just to accept her word against the word of all of your trusted medical associations. Instead, she asks for a deeper understanding of the issues at hand. We assume the “plant based” diet and food pyramid with 6 to 11 servings of grains as its mainstay came from both health and compassion motivations. But they actually come from the powerful lobby groups of monocrop manipulations, expressly to play on the consumer’s desire for health and compassion. And what is behind this science? Nothing, as she points out a thousand times. There is no such science. The “studies” we hear of and believe in don’t really exist. When said studies are studied, they say something very different than what we’ve been told.
On every page of this collection, there are excerpts from hundreds of texts and studies, showing that Sally is not alone in her recommendations of traditional food sources. These are fascinating snippets that make for lively and surprising reading. Did you know that rats fed Egg Beaters all died before reaching maturity? Or that non-egg eaters have more heart attacks and strokes than egg eaters? Or that eggs contain all known vitamins and minerals save for Vitamin C? Did you know that saturated fat protects the liver from alcohol? That candy and cake exacerbate schizophrenia and other mental disorders? That Dutch researchers found that infants breastfed by vegetarian women had delayed motor skills and abnormal red blood cells? That sugar and white grains are implicated in cancer, fatigue, allergies, gum problems, and heart attacks? That meat fat contains antimicrobial fatty acids? That sugar creates the acidic condition we are supposed to avoid by giving up meat? That tooth decay is nonexistent in cultures that eat predominantly meat, even if no one brushes their teeth? That vegetarians don’t live longer than meat eaters, despite popular “knowledge” that they do?
This was the book that helped me to change the way I was thinking. I suddenly felt the lack of a good stockpot in my kitchen- my grandmother never went three days without simmering the odds and ends of vegetables with bones. She would never even consider a cube, because the bones are not simmered for flavour alone. I started to ask myself obvious questions, like why didn’t we have cancer when we were hunters, if meat is so bad? And why are diabetics told to get rid of meat, which is the ONLY food that doesn’t affect the blood sugar and pancreas issues? Did the Eskimos REALLY live on nothing but fish and blubber- how valid are Sally’s sources? I began following her trails and finding great wisdom. For example, I wanted to know why everyone stopped eating butter, and sure enough, the trail led straight to soy’s hydrogenated nightmare, margarine. I realized that fake food manufacturers like Big Soy aren’t out to save us from disease, but to make money, and that to do so, they have to tell us we are being nice to animals and saving ourselves from disease.
Incidentally, thanks to Sally’s tireless work and endured persecution, her foundation has become the foundation of new (well, old really) thinking. Thousands of us are learning more about real food and I’ve never felt healthier. And you know what? It’s better with butter, naturally.
Lorette C. Luzajic
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