Part 27 - Sally Fallon Morell on the Wise Traditions of our Ancestors & Weston A. Price

Sally Fallon Morell is the director and co-founder of the Weston A. Price Foundation. She’s spent the last 20 years doing amazing work to promote the wise traditions of our ancestors and their farming, preparation, and consumption of foods. She’s written many amazing books such as Nourishing Traditions, Eat Fat, Lose Fat, and a new Book called Nourishing Diets. I really value all that she’s done and continues to do.

I’ve come to realize my ideal diet is the one the Weston A. Price Foundation recommends minus the grains, even though they are safe if you prepare them properly as Sally mentions. I’d prefer to run on fat and most people listening probably know the vast benefits of doing this. I want to highlight that they can be safe to eat if you soak them overnight, etc. so if you choose to eat these foods at least do it properly.

You may have noticed I’m getting all kinds of people on the show. I don’t want to be totally one sided. I’ll let people share their differing opinions and not argue with them. That doesn’t mean I support their stance. Dr. David Klurfeld, Layne Norton - let’s hear what they have to say.

I think it would be a disservice to just keep getting people on the show who 100% agree with me. You have to be open to all sides so you’re not caught being dogmatic just like vegans and only look at things from one angle or miss the truth because your head is in the sand. All I’m after is truth, and will change my views if necessary. So far, nothing has shaken my belief that we need to eat nutrient dense ancestral diets with a lot of animal fat. I believe it’s better to run on fat, and most carbs are pretty worthless because they don’t have a lot of nutrients for how much energy they have. You can get the same nutrients that properly sprouted and fermented grains have elsewhere.

People doing carnivore. Listen to the teachings of Dr. Price. Eat the whole animal. So much of the good stuff is in the bits and pieces. You can point to many populations over time eating mostly all or even 100% animal foods for long periods or life, and I agree with you, but they weren’t eating only muscle meat.

I think the best diet out there is basically what Tara Couture, my last podcast guest who’s a homestead farmer, feeds her family. The full animal plus fermented veg and other fresh grown veg thrown in. Add in some more exotic foods such as fish eggs, avocado, mushrooms, and coconut oil. You can’t get more nutrient dense and less potentially harmful than that.

This was our last film tour and we’re now actively engaged in post-production for Food Lies. All the T-shirts and rewards are being sent out shortly. You can still pre-order the film and get the other rewards at Indiegogo.com/projects/food-lies-post which is linked here in the show notes and at FoodLies.org where you can also see the film trailer. Thanks so much for the support and here’s Sally.

Show Notes

• Just got back from filming with her on her farm in southern Maryland
• They mimic nature with regenerative and holistic farming practices and produce raw milk and raw cheese, etc.
• It’s strange that we need an entire organization just help re-educate people on how we have always eaten. It’s an uphill battle with a ton of opposition
• Rotational grazing mimics the grazing and movement of ruminants throughout history
• Weston A. Price foundation validates traditional farming and eating practices with modern science
• Demonization of saturated fats
• Procter & Gamble and the cottonseed oil and Crisco story - they were experts at marketing to housewives of the time
• Vegetable oils might be worse than trans fat
• For all of history humans prized animal fat
• It’s insane to give kids skim milk
• Dr. Price found that different culture all over the world had similar practices of a nutrient dense animal food diet 6 months prior to conception
• Vegetarian diet 2014 UK study: “our results showed that a vegetarian diet is associated with poorer health (higher incidences of cancer, allergies, and mental health disorders), a higher need for health care, and poorer quality of life.” https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0088278&type=printable
• Tooth health is a great indicator of overall health
• Wide dental arches and face and not needing braces is a sign of good nutrition from pre-conception through the growth phase
• Our ancestors built up their vitamin A stores well ahead of becoming pregnant by eating organ meats, animal fat, butter, egg yolks, etc.
• The heart starts growing before the women even knows she’s pregnant
• Prenatal vitamins aren't bioavailable - you need to get the full nutrition from the food you eat
• The foundation has seen so many examples of healthy, strong, smart, attractive babies born from eating this nutrient dense diet
• Some of his other studies and observations of kids in youth detention facilities and where he gave different groups of low income kids one nutritious meal per day of beef stew and cod liver oil with really good grass fed butter
• When displacing foods of modern civilization came in (sugar, flour, canned foods, vegetable oils) the first thing that happened was rampant tooth decay. The next generation had the narrow jaws and crooked teeth
• People on the traditional diet didn’t get tuberculosis
• He studied the level in vitamins in butter compared to when the cows were on the best grass compared to heart attack rates
• He also presented data showing the level of minerals in the soil and the correlation to PhDs - the areas that people were born and raised with the most fertile soil produced far more doctors
• Her new book is called Nourishing Diets and it looks at what populations around the world really ate throughout history. Of course none of them were vegan or vegetarian - they all highly cherished and regarded animal foods https://www.amazon.com/Nourishing-Diets-Ancestral-Traditional-Peoples/dp/1538711680
• Crushes the original Blue Zones book that tried to claim many long living populations were plant based
• He actually lied - there’s studies showing all the people who got more animal foods and animal fat lived longer than people who didn’t
• She has an article about each one of the 5 blue zones refuting the original author:
• http://nourishingtraditions.com/true-blue-zones-okinawa/
• http://nourishingtraditions.com/true-blue-zones-sardinia
• http://nourishingtraditions.com/true-blue-zones-ikaria-greece/
• http://nourishingtraditions.com/true-blue-zones-loma-linda/
• http://nourishingtraditions.com/true-blue-zones-costa-rica/
• The China Study is also oft cited by vegetarian zealots. That was a very poorply done study and actually the authors said it was not to be used to draw conclusions from or show causation… although that’s exactly what vegan propagandist T. Colin Campbell did
• She says grains were actually being cultivated before we thought. BUT all the cultures knew to detoxify them by soaking and fermenting them
• Eating a bunch of whole grains caused a ton of problems in modern society like gluten intolerance, leaky but, SIBO, IBS, and much more. THere’s so many anti-nutrients in grains, humans aren't meant to digest them
• No whole foods are excluded on the Weston A. Price diet. It’s all about the context and preparation of your food
• A little know fact is that brushing your teeth isn't the biggest factor in tooth decay - it’s actually your diet. Obviously these non-westernized cultures throughout history didn't have toothpaste, toothbrushes, and flouride, yet they all had near-perfect teeth
• How the nutrient diet of our ancestors affects jaw development
• Anecdotally, her parents both had perfect teeth (raised on butter and animal fat), her and her 3 siblings all needed braces (raised on vegetable oils), and all her children and grandchildren have great teeth (went back to butter and animal fats)
• Her daughter has a gluten intolerance because she got too many whole grains too early in life. For her later children she waited and they’re all fine
• Why raw milk is considered harmful (even though it is what we should be consuming)
• It’s funny to see all this new enthusiasm for bone broth and fermented foods when Dr .Price and the foundation have known about it all along
• The future is in small artisan producers of these foods - it doesn’t take a lot of capital to start up
• The new generation is already heading this way - they don’t want to work for big corporations
• Technology got us away from our roots but it has the potential to help us get back
• They set up http://rawmilk.com
• Become a member or find out more at http://westonaprice.com

 

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