From the Weston A Price Foundation, welcome to the Wise Traditions
podcast for wise traditions in food, farming and the healing
arts. We are your source for scientific knowledge and traditional
wisdom to help you achieve optimal health.
And now, here is our host and producer, Hilda Labrada
Gore. Hey. Hilda here.
We want to choose food that nourishes us the best
for ourselves and our families. What does that look like? What
are helpful guidelines when it comes to eating an ancestral diet? And is
this even possible in today's day and age of packaged and
processed foods? What's realistic? This is episode
498, and our guest today is none other than Sally Fallon
Morel, the president and founder of the Weston a Price Foundation.
Today, Sally goes over the wise tradition's 11 dietary
principles that are a great starting place when it comes to making
healthy, nourishing food choices. She reviews the sacred
foods that were most prized by indigenous people groups.
She explains how the dietary principles are tweakable, meaning
that you can make them work for you, and why the Wise Traditions Diet
is not a diet of extremes. She goes over all of the
specifics on how to get the right balance of omega 3 fatty acids and omega
6 in the diet, which is the best fat to eat, and so
on. And she reviews why we need salt and the type of salt that's
best, and how to reduce sugar cravings.
Finally, she gives us a fresh look at the timeless principles
of healthy traditional diets. Before we get into the conversations, I wanna
let you know that we just wrapped up the annual Wise Traditions Conference.
If you missed it, don't worry. You can get access to the recordings of
many, if not all of the talks and presentations by going to
Fleetwood On-site.com. Go there for details. I'll
put a link in the show description so you can find it easily. Order just
a few of the talks or the whole conference full of presentations,
and we hope to see you in person next time. This is Hilda Librada
gore, and you're listening to Wise Traditions. Welcome to Wise Traditions,
Sally. Thank you, Hilda. It's always great to be back with you. So the
Weston a Price Foundation is celebrating 25 years soon.
Yes. I mean, you've established in 1999. That's amazing.
Well, you we just kinda stuck to it. That's so
important. Persistence. Well and I want
to have us revisit the principles Okay. Because these dietary principles are
key to what the foundation is about. Right? Yes. It's and I always like to
say, we don't do this in sound bites. It's there's more to it
than just, you know, a little saying or something. Right.
There's details that are important. And we've always
talked about our 11 principles, but now we have this
beautiful booklet, 11 dietary principles,
wise traditions diet, beautifully illustrated. So,
we'd love for people to to read this booklet. All the references
are there. And Now how many of the principles are from
doctor Weston a Price himself, and how many are some that we did research on
and realized we need to add to the list? That's a very good question,
Hilda, because number 1, 2, and 3 were doctor
Price's principles and number 11 about healthy
children. So 4 through 10 are things that we
added, and we can go through them. But, they are
also things that you find in pretty much all traditional
diets. Now what if people have sensitivities
or would prefer to avoid certain things? Can they still follow the wise
traditions diet? This diet is very tweakable. And one
of the things we don't do is say what proportions
of macronutrients your diet should be. No diet
should exceed 20% of calories as protein because
no traditional diet did. But then you have the carbs and the fats, and
that's very adjustable depending on
what works for you. I would say a lot of
us do better on a high fat diet. Mhmm. But some
people really cannot handle a lot of
fat, and so they would have more of a high carb diet. But the
key thing is to get those fat soluble vitamins, and
it's a little bit harder if you have a high carb diet.
Interesting. Now I know some people say when I tell
them, oh, the Wise Traditions diet is kind of an ancestrally based diet.
They think, oh, do I need to look at my ancestry to know what to
eat? How much does that play a part in what our diet should be,
Sally? I think there is something to that. Just
for example, if you had a lot of seafood in
your ancestral diet, it would be very good to include it. If you
had a lot of red meat in your ancestral diet, I think it's very important
to include it because probably your body needs a lot of
zinc. So, yes, I would definitely look at your ancestral
diet. But there's also, you know, some people we have a lot of
people now who can't do beef, for example, which is a shame,
but some people are just gonna have to leave things out. And
this reminds me too of, the work of doctor Jack Cruz who says
your genetic material may be predisposed
to be living in a certain part of the world. Yes. So that if, for
example, a woman from Mexico ancestry is living in Canada,
she may feel the cold more or need more sunlight actually than
she's getting in those northern latitudes. Could be. Yes. Right. So we'll have to
pay attention to that. Well, let's go through the 11 principles 1 by 1. Okay.
We'll see what we can cover. Alright. Well, the first principle is that there were
no refined or denatured foods. And I think we can all agree on
that, but we also know that this is very, very difficult in the
modern age. It means you have to really think about what
you're putting into your mouth. It doesn't mean that you have to home
cook all your meals because we can get
foods that are kind of quick foods that traditional people always
had. Cheese is one of them. I'm very partial to
cheese. Things like salami and,
cured meats, that's another one that, people had.
So, yes. You can actually can do this without
doing a lot of elaborate cooking, but it will be a lot more
interesting if you do. Yes. And so what kind of
refined or denatured foods did doctor Price come across in his
travels? Right. So number 1 was sugar and
foods containing a lot of sugar. Even back then a 100 years ago? Oh,
yes. I was well, this is 19 thirties, but sugar was was
really there. And refined flour, that's another
one that he really looked at because they knew how to make fine white
flour, and that's what was coming into all of these stores and things
in the isolated population because it it didn't decay. Mhmm.
No. You could make biscuits out of white flour and
they lasted. The other thing that he mentions that we
sometimes miss is the vegetable oils.
We call them industrial seed oils. Vegetable oils is just not the right
term because they're not made out of vegetables. Right. But the industry at the time
said, well, it just sounds so much better to say vegetables. See? Yes. But
industrial seed oils were coming into the diet. They had never
been in our diets before, and they were pushing out. They were
replacing the animal fats with a campaign to demonize
the animal fats. Mhmm. And doctor Price noted that when people started
to incorporate these displacing foods of modern commerce. Right? Yes. He saw
that their health deteriorated. Yes. And very quickly in the teeth, he
saw the, cavities and the infection and so forth in
the mouth. And then in the next generation, the teeth were
not straight. There was not enough room for the teeth. And the teeth tell the
tale. The teeth tell the tale. If you see somebody
with naturally straight teeth, it's a sign that their whole body
has been correctly nourished while they were
growing and putting everything together. And if the teeth are
crooked, then there's it's a sign that there was a lot missing
in the diet and other organs will be affected as well. But now we
can't even tell who has naturally straight teeth because a lot of people wear
braces when they're teenagers and then get them off and they have that appearance,
but maybe not really the strong body that would come with it. And
they tend to have a narrow jaw even though the teeth might be straight.
Interesting. So principle number 1 is pretty easy to understand. No
refined or denatured foods. And by the way, pasteurized milk is a refined and
denatured food. It's very important to remember that. Oh, it's
not at all how it is in its natural raw state. Right. Exactly.
And you might have a whole grain breakfast cereal, but that's
not that's not a natural food. It's denatured.
That's where that denatured. Yes. Word comes from. Interesting. Yes. When it's
overly processed, it's probably not gonna be good for us. And, honestly,
Hilda, most people, that's all they eat. The breakfast is
cereal with pasteurized skim milk and sugar, and
lunch would be a McDonald's meal. The only thing slightly natural
in that meal is the beef, and everything else is a
denatured food. It makes me so sad. I think people think,
well, organic or real food is so expensive
compared to fast food or things on sale at Costco. But
you either pay for your food or you end up paying For your medical
expenses. Absolutely. Alright. Let's go on principle number 2. Number
2, and this is a very controversial one. It was doctor Price's
greatest disappointment. There were no vegan or
even vegetarian diets that he looked at. He'd hoped to find
one. He had to admit that all the healthy people that he studied
had animal foods in their diet. And not only that,
they went to a great risk to obtain the animal foods.
So they went to a lot of trouble. It would have been much easier just
to have plant foods. But they knew they needed these foods
And all the sacred foods, the food so important for having healthy
babies, they were all animal foods. Yes. Like liver
and butter. Right? Liver, butter, fish eggs was another
one, organ meats. And doctor Price thought he would
find some peoples who were focused or whose diet was primarily
plant based and he just didn't find them. He didn't find them. Another important very
important food was shellfish. For example, in the islands
of the South Pacific, the people that lived in the interior of the
islands, they traded with the people along the coast so they could get the
shellfish. And even when they were at war with each other, they
still traded to have the foods they needed. It was that important. It was
that important. Oh, fascinating. So animal products are
important to include. Yes. Yes. And so, you know, people have
criticized us for taking such a strong stand about the need for
animal foods in the diet, but it's not just yourself you're talking about, it's
your offspring. They need those animal foods, and children need
a nutrient dense diet to as they grow. Mhmm.
And plant foods are not nutrient dense foods.
It's nice to have them in the diet, and it tastes good and so forth,
but compared to meat, what's in apples is
is a dependence of what's in meat. That's right. And you've stated
before, if we thought, well, I can get iron from spinach, for
example, so I'll eat that instead of red meat of some sort.
You'd have to eat quantities and quantities of it to even get
what you would get from an ounce of liver, for example. That's right. And when
you're eating all that spinach, you're getting a lot of oxalates, which is very hard
for the body to handle and may might cause kidney stones. So
there's a lot of toxins in plant foods. Mhmm. Good
point. So what's principle number 3? Okay. So this is the most important
principle and basically all the other principles,
can be fit into this principle. And this is the principle of
nutrient density. So the diets were very high in
minerals, at least 4 times more of all of the minerals
in the traditional diet compared to the diet of his day, the American
diet. So this is calcium, phosphorus, magnesium,
you know, iodine, all of the minerals, and very,
very high in what he called the fat soluble activators, the fat
soluble vitamins a, d, and k. And this is where we have
put most of our emphasis. How do we
get these vitamins to maximize them in the food, and
what kind of foods do we have to eat to get these three really important
vitamins? And here's the spoiler. Yeah. It's animal
fats and organ meats. Which actually
are amazing. I feel like this kind of eating is
so satisfying. And as you've pointed out before, traditional
diets maximize nutrients and modern
diets minimize them. That's exactly right. We're like, oh, we added a few vitamins and
minerals to the cereal. That's nothing compared to what real food has. Exactly. Exactly.
And also that they're absorb same amount of
calcium in raw and pasteurized milk. But when you pasteurize the
milk, you kill all the enzymes that ensure that you absorb a 100% of the
calcium. And then, for example, when you soak your
grains, you liberate all the minerals. You make sure they're easy to
absorb so that becomes a nutrient dense food. Yes.
So people say you are what you eat, but you actually are what you absorb.
Yes. What you assimilate. Uh-huh. So many of the nutrients in the plant
foods, especially grains, are blocked by
various blockers, phytic acid, this kind of thing. And
when we know understand the preparation techniques, we can turn
these foods that are problematic into foods that are nutrient dense
and easy to digest. Isn't that wonderful? Yeah.
Now what's principle number 4? Okay. So number 4 has to do with
cooking. So some animal foods were eaten raw in all
cultures, whether it's raw dairy, raw shellfish,
which people still eat, or raw meat. Now not
all the animal foods were eaten raw. They both cooked and
raw. And this almost gets this is kind of a segue into what
should we cook and what should we not cook. So we don't cook dairy
products because the proteins and the enzymes are so fragile in these
foods. We eat foods. The animal food's raw and
cooked. Vegetables should mostly be cooked because they're very hard to
digest. Grains need to be soaked and cooked.
So for each type of food, we need to
understand how to prepare it so that we get the most from it. It's
funny because I think most people would think it's the other way around. Eat your
vegetables raw and eat your meat cooked. Cooked. Yes.
And, yeah, we should eat some of our meat cooked because cooking makes the
proteins more available in meat. Mhmm. But cooking destroys the b 6.
So and that's one of the big things we get from meat.
Fascinating. So we don't need to go all raw or all
cooked. We have to have a mix. And, you know, Hilda, that's a really good
point. This is not a diet of extremes. It's not an
all raw diet. It's not an all cooked diet. It's not all meat. It's not
all plants. It's in the middle. It's in the middle, and I think that's
good news. That's the way people want to eat. It's true. To
have meat, veg, and and carb on their plate.
And what we do is show them how to prepare these foods,
to raise these foods. Of course, we're big advocates of pasture based
farming. To raise them and prepare them and put good butter
on them and so forth so that we get the most that we can get
from these foods. I love it. And that's when they taste good.
Mhmm. What's principle number 5, Sally? So principle number 5 is interesting.
This is something that's really catching on now, and this is this principle of
lactofermentation. Every traditional
culture, healthy culture, without exception, had 1 or
more fermented foods in their diet. There's no exceptions to this rule, whether
it's the Eskimos with their fermented fish or the Dauci
islanders with fermented taro. And these are raw foods. These
are foods that have been fermented and you get all the good bacteria and enzymes
and so forth. And it's really fun to see how science has caught
up with this principle because 30 years
ago, you know, the only good bacteria was a dead bacteria.
Right? And we've completely changed our view. Science
has opened up new worlds for us that the bacteria
are our friends Yes. And we need to support and replenish
those bacteria every day, and that's what the fermented foods do.
Just to give you an example, sauerkraut. You eat a
tablespoon of sauerkraut with every meal. There's more
probiotics in that tablespoon of sauerkraut than there is in a whole bottle of
probiotic pills. Wow. And if you
wild ferment, in other words, getting the bacteria from the atmosphere, there are even
more strains, I imagine. Yes. There absolutely are. And you're
right. This is catching on now, which is really gratifying. Well, somebody just sent me
an email about how some big company, I forget, might have been
Pfizer. I don't know know, how they're getting into fermented foods. And this is the
latest thing, like, they just discovered it. We know
it's a wise tradition. Yes. Right. Coming up, Sally
explains why people have so much trouble with grains and
how following the example of traditional peoples can help us benefit
from them with fewer digestive concerns.
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And this is Hilda Labradigore, and you're listening to Wise Traditions.
What's the next one, Sally? Okay. So now we get into grains and
seeds. And for so many people,
grains are a big problem, very hard to digest.
And that's because they're not following the principles that
traditional people did, and grains were always
soaked and then cooked. So it could be sourdough
bread or it could be soaked oatmeal that you cook the next morning,
soaked flour that you make into pancakes. And believe me,
these foods will taste better, and they won't be this is so hard
to digest. Didn't you say that when you were a young girl, you
had muesli or oatmeal all the time and you didn't feel well because Well, when
I was a little girl, my mother made oatmeal, and I would
get kind of a toxic shock from it. I thought, well, I must be allergic
to oatmeal. And then I learned to soak my oatmeal overnight,
and that didn't happen. So it was just the there's there's
toxins in grains and they need to be neutralized. But the other
story I have about that was I went to a party actually and it was
a friend friends of mine and they were serving granola.
And I'd never eaten granola before, and, it was just
delicious. And I went home and started making granola, and I made it with
butter and maple syrup. And I got so sick,
Hilda. Oh. I I and I didn't realize what it was
until I read a book about grains. And I, oh,
it's the granola. And I stopped eating granola, and it
took about 2 weeks to recover. I bet a lot of people
can't quite put their finger on why they don't feel well. Mhmm. And it might
have to do with this very principle that they're not properly preparing their grains,
beans, nuts, and seeds. That's right. Somebody brought to our farm, they
brought them some it was soaked, like a coffee cake kinda thing, but it was
sprinkled with oats on top. And, of course, I ate a piece,
and I ate a few of those little just a few of those little oat
flakes. And I really did not have a good day. I didn't feel
well. Wow. So but if you don't know what to look for, you can't
make those connections. Mm-mm. Absolutely. So what principle
are we on now? Okay. Now we get into the principle of
fats. What kind of fats did these people eat? Mhmm. And
there was a big range in how much fat they ate. It
varied anywhere from 30 to 80%
of the diet calories in the diet. The Eskimos had a extremely
high fat diet. And the, hunters on the
plains selected animals that were fat. They
always ate the fat. But then you had the agrarian
cultures in Africa, for example. It was fairly low fat diet.
So we don't tell you how much fat to eat, but we do tell you
what kind of fat to eat. Yes. Okay. And that's mostly saturated
fat. So that would be the fat of animals, the fat
of birds. In Africa, they had palm oil.
And in the southeast, they had coconut oil, and these are very
highly saturated. So the types of fats we need are
mostly saturated fats. And, of course, this goes completely against
what we're being told Yes. To avoid saturated fats.
And these fats actually contain important
nutrients for the body. Right? Well, they're the animal fats, not
the palm oil or the coconut oil, but the animal fats are great
sources of vitamins a, d, and k. Bird fats, duck
fat, goose fat, this was highly prized. And that's
our best source of vitamin k 2, which is doctor Price's activator
x. Right. And then you can get the proper cognitive function,
the proper digestive function. Everything works better with these
fats. Yes. Exactly. And now our latest
challenge is the EMF, the 5 g, and so forth. And
what beginning to realize is this your protection against
this is having a lot of structured water in your body. And what
structures the water is the hydrophilic surfaces
of your cell membranes. And if your cell membranes have a lot of
saturated fat in them, that's what they'll be. You'll be highly
protected against the EMF. It hasn't, escaped my
notice that a lot of these people who are extremely sensitive to
EMF are vegetarians. Interesting. They're not getting enough
saturated fat. Wow. So butter is better for everything. Yes.
Exactly. So speaking of fat Number 8 is about
balance, and it's funny. Nourishing
Traditions was the first book to introduce this concept, and now a lot of
people talk about it. Yes. Yes. So the unsaturated fats come in
2 types, omega 6 and omega 3. We don't need much of
them. We don't need to eat a lot of them. They're in our food, but
you want a balance of omega 6 and omega 3. So for
example, if you eat an egg from a pastured chicken, you'll get that
nice balance. But if you're eating a conventional chicken, you'll have
way more omega 6. And same with if you're eating a lot
of industrial seed oils, they're almost 100% omega
6. Uh-huh. But then you have people who kind of go the other
direction and and do a lot of fish oil and they're getting too much omega
3. It's funny because I used to make up a little, pneumonic
thing like omega 6 makes you sick, omega 3 sets you free. But it's
not quite that way, is it? As always, it's a
little more complicated. You don't want too much omega 3 and you don't want too
much omega 6. 6. You need the balance. And one time you told
me, if you balance your food from land animals and food from
the sea, you'll be fine. Right. That's right. You want land and
sea. In fact, doctor Price noted that the people with the best
bone structure had seafoods in their diet. I'll just think of it now
as surf and turf. Surf and turf. That's perfect. Perfect. Perfect.
What's the next principle? Is it the one on salt? This one is salt. I
love it. Yes. So all traditional cultures had salt. In fact,
one really interesting thing I just read that in the South
Seas, the people in the interior grew
the taro, and they traded with the people on the coast. And
one of the things they traded was seawater. Oh.
Just the water from the ocean. So that's how they got their salt.
Fascinating. Cooked in it. Yeah. Yeah. So all
these cultures had salt. One of the theories I have is why
the Native Americans succumb to so much disease
was that the salt trade was disrupted and they weren't getting
salt because they did have a continent wide salt
trade. But we definitely need salt. We we need a
teaspoon and a half a day of salt to satisfy the sodium
requirements. And one of the great things about
modern life is that we can get salt. Yes. It's plentiful.
It's cheap. And what's not so good
is you have these people telling you not to eat salt. I know.
It's such a recommendation. It's like a mantra from the physician. It's better lower
your salt. And then there's a new additive called Cinamix,
which people don't realize is being added to the food so they can reduce the
salt content. And we have no idea what this does to
the brain, this additive. But what I can tell you is if you're
not getting enough salt in your food, even though it tastes salty, your body
knows better and you will eat and eat and eat until you get enough
salt. Interesting. So I think it's gonna contribute to a
lot of obesity. And, of course, the other part of this is we
recommend unrefined salt that has all the minerals in
it and a lot of trace minerals in salt that we don't get anywhere
else. And these have been taken out when the salt is refined.
Some people get worried if they get sea salt that it might have, like,
microplastics from the sea in it. Is there I guess you can't recommend
a particular brand, but we need to pay attention to where we're sourcing it. Yeah.
We have a lot of brands in the shopping guide. Some of them are mined
salts, but, Celtic sea salt, which is from the sea,
they've tested their salt and they which is like a trace.
It's hardly anything. Mhmm. Plastics.
Right. Right. Which is good. We wanna make sure to get the best source
possible. Alright. So principle number 10. So number 10 has to
do with cooking bones, making gelatinous
bone broth. And I won't say it was in every culture we
looked at, but it was in most of the cultures. The basic
way people cooked is they had a big pot or a big shell
or baskets lined with pitch, and they put
water in there and either cooked with a fire or hot
rocks, and they put all the parts of the animal
in, including the bones and the gelatinous parts. If it was a
bird, it would be the head and the feet. And that way, you're not only
getting protein when you eat meat, but you're getting the collagen.
And collagen is popular right now. Yes. Collagen's a big big thing
now. So, the collagen balances the meat
proteins because your body is 50% collagen or more.
The proteins in your body are over half are collagen.
And the collagen is what holds you together, gives you strong joints and
tendons, and there's a membrane of
collagen around the muscles. So, yes, we definitely need that
collagen. So I think a broth is melted collagen.
And what Western cultures have done is make
broth into kind of the the key to
gourmet cuisine and beautiful sauces. Yeah. Gravies
and sauces and soups. Which is so delicious. Yes.
But I think it's good to note that broth isn't difficult
to make because I think I used to buy the little boxes in the grocery
store, and it's so thin and watery compared to what I can make
at home. MSG in it too. So but it's easy to make
brothy. All you need is a slow cooker. Right.
And, I kind of alternate between beef broth and chicken broth.
It's just second nature to me. It's not hard. And it's so wonderful in the
mornings on a cold winter day. Yes. Yes. And, one
thing that broth is really good for is the elderly. So my
husband's not getting any younger, and I find that the elderly have
trouble chewing meat. And when you give them
broth, it stretches the protein, goes a lot a lot
longer, and it's very satisfying for them to have the broth. Oh, it's a
good word. They make a soup with broth and then chop the meat up
really fine. That's perfect. Oh, awesome.
So we're on to the last principle. You said this is one that was also
one that doctor Price noted in his travels. You know, Hilda, this is
so amazing. These cultures were scattered all over the world. They had
no communication with each other. They had no science, but they
all knew that to have healthy babies, you
need to prepare for them and that you need certain
nutrient dense foods. And when he looked at these foods, they were foods really
high and, you guessed it, a, b, and k.
And let's just talk about vitamin a for a minute because the
science confirms this in such a wonderful way.
So when you get pregnant and the embryo starts to grow,
these are in the first few days, it's just stem
cells. Those are undifferentiated cells. And
then the stem cells start to differentiate
Right. And they become heart cells and lung cells. And so what
causes that differentiation? It is vitamin a.
Yes. Yay. Vitamin a. Vitamin a is the concert master
of fetal development. And in traditional cultures, they would have
been eating a lot of foods rich in vitamin a like liver
or fish heads or whatever, butter,
before you get pregnant. So once that
process starts, you have a lot of vitamin a available
and there won't be any birth defects. Everything will go according to plan.
If you wait until you're pregnant and then say, oh,
I'm gonna take a prenatal or something. It's too late. This that
differentiation, that building of the different organs has already
started. Mhmm. And so the first organ to start is the heart.
And if there's not enough vitamin a available, the heart will not develop
properly. That's what happened to me, as you know. I think my
mother's vitamin a stores were low and I was born with a hole in my
heart. Yeah. It's very common today. Yeah. So
not only that, not only did they prepare for pregnancy
and continue these highly nutrient dense foods throughout
pregnancy, breastfeeding, and the growth of the child. And see,
they understood that this was the time when you needed the most nutrition.
Mhmm. And you can improve your health when you're older
by changing things, but you can't change your structure. That's
already happened. So that's when these nutrient dense foods are just
vital. Mhmm. So, but the other thing was they
space their children. It was considered shameful to have a
child more than once every 3 years. And if you were in a
village in Africa or the South Seas, you couldn't go anywhere
else. You didn't wanna be shamed by your village when they're pointing their
fingers at you saying, oh, she didn't care. She didn't care about
having healthy children. Why is that important do you think, the spacing, Sally?
Well, the spacing allows the mother to recover her nutritional
stores and gives her time to build
up with a preconceptual diet and so forth. And
don't forget, she's also breastfeeding. And this is a a
big stress for the mother, nutritional stress.
So she needs to get to the point where the baby is not getting so
much of its diet from the breast milk and then do
the preconceptual diet to prepare again. Yeah. Well, I didn't
know about this principle when I was pregnant with 1 kid and I was
nursing another and I was like, oh my gosh. I'm feeding 3 people right now.
It did feel like a lot. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And you
don't need to do that to yourselves. One thing I'm concerned about is
this idea that we should be exclusively breastfeeding.
Traditional cultures did most of them, not all, most of them
breastfed for a number of years or at least until
they came pregnant with a second child. But they
didn't exclusively breastfeed. In fact, in some cultures, they
started solid food at 1 month. Oh, wow. Yeah. And certainly
by 6 months Mhmm. They were all giving solid food.
Do you think there's, resistance to giving the child food because we
think breast is best, I guess? Yes. So we've kind of gone from one extreme
to the other. We've gone from no breastfeeding to
exclusive breastfeeding. And what happens is the babies become anemic
because by 6 months, that baby needs extra iron and
breast milk is not high in iron. It's got little, but not
enough for this developing baby. And the first foods
for infants tend to be high iron foods like liver or egg
yolks or something like that. So as we start to wrap up, Sally,
what do you think is important for people to keep in mind when they consider
the wise traditions diet? What what if part of it doesn't appeal to them? If
I'm like, oh, I don't know about ferments or I don't have those in my
diet or I can't balance the omega threes and omega sixes. Yep. Well,
just do the best you can. Start somewhere. So that's why. And I think the
first thing is go from processed food to real
food. Processed food to real food. And most of these will sort of
happen by themselves. That's right. Over time. Number 1 is probably a
good one to start with. You're right. And, get off the
sugar. And it's very interesting. I wrote an article
about this recently. There was a study done where they got
these rats addicted to sugar. They had sugar water and they kept going for
the sugar water. And then they gave the rats a diet
that was 40% large, and they didn't want the sugar
water anymore. Ah. And the researchers were very upset about
this. These rats didn't they called it a chronic high fat diet. The
rats didn't want their palatable sweet foods.
Okay? But most of us are struggling with sugar addiction,
and it's really good to know that if you just increase your fat
content, these cravings will they'll eventually subside.
Very good to know. Very encouraging in this day and age where sugar is ubiquitous.
It's just ubiquitous and it's hard to resist. So
I wanna ask you the question I love to pose at the end. It might
be related to these principles or not. If the listener could do one thing to
improve their health, what would you recommend that they do? Butter. Yes.
Eat more butter. Don't be afraid of butter. It's the most
perfect fat in nature. It is the fat for the growth
and development of all mammals. There can't be anything wrong with
it for children or adults. And if it comes from grass fed animals,
so much the better. And you know what? Most supermarkets
carry grass fed butter. So this is another thing that's new and
it's really good. We should celebrate this. So I couldn't get grass fed
butter when my kids were growing up. Wow. But now there's several brands.
That's excellent. Well, thank you for your time today. It's been a pleasure. Thank you,
Hilda. Always great to be with you. Our guest today was Sally
Falamarel. Check out her blog at nourishingtraditions.com.
And I am Hilda Librada Gore, the host and producer of this podcast
on behalf of the Weston a Price Foundation. You can find me at
holistichilda.com. And for the transcript for this episode,
visit our website, westonaprice.org and click on the podcast
page. And now for a recent podcast review from Apple
Podcasts. Nurse The Littles had this to say,
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