Traditional Nutrition: maybe your great grandmother was right
Written by Tanya Carwyn Cherry Creek News, CO

Friday, 20 April 2007
Are you confused about all the different ways of eating you hear and read about? From kosher to vegan, low carb to lacto-ovo vegetarian, and the (appropriately named) SAD (Standard American Diet) diet, what do you choose?

There is a new (well, old actually) way of eating that is getting more and more press lately. It’s about going beyond organic, back to home cooking and sustainable agriculture, as well as local eating and the slow food movement. The catch-all phrase for this way of eating is “Traditional Nutrition” and it is gaining a loyal following, among many who have been eating “TF” (Traditional Food) or following “NT” (Nourishing Traditions, one of the best-known traditional foods cookbooks) for years without even knowing it.

In the 1920s and 30s, Dr. Weston Price, a retired dentist, and his wife traveled all around the world and recorded the health of many different traditional peoples. They found a startling difference between people eating their traditional diets and the health of people that were eating a more “modern” diet. The people who continued eating their traditional diets not only enjoyed excellent dental health (no cavities even though most of them never brushed their teeth), well developed bone structure (very evident in handsome, broad faces), freedom from any modern diseases ranging from cancer, heart disease and diabetes to headaches and constipation, and they also seemed full of a true joie-de-vivre. When Dr. Price compared these people to the people of the same genetic make-up (often siblings or other relatives) who ate a modern diet (refined flour, sugar, less healthy meats and fats) he found rampant tooth decay, stunted bone development (narrow faces, crowded teeth due to lack of room in the jaw) and many modern diseases, as well as a certain lackluster attitude towards life.

Dr. Price published his findings in a book called “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration” and accompanied the text with tons of photographs he and his wife took on their travels. The differences in the face of the people pictured in those photographs are truly startling.

Dr. and Mrs. Price traveled far and wide and visited many different peoples, from the Celtic fisher people of the Outer Hebrides in Scotland to the peoples of Papua New Guinea, and found that many of the diets did not resemble each other. The Massai in Africa subsist mainly on the blood and soured milk from their cows while farmers in the Swiss Alps were found to eat mostly sourdough rye bread and raw cheese. The Prices did find that there were similarities in all the diets they studied and today people following Traditional Nutrition ideals try to incorporate these into their diets.
A few basics of eating traditional food:

Eat Meat: In all their travels the Prices did not encounter any traditional peoples who were entirely vegetarian. While the amounts of animal protein and fat varied from very high, to reasonably limited, there was always some animal protein in the diet.

Eat Raw: The Prices found that every society they studied ate a portion of its food raw. In raw foods, enzymes remain intact that help digestion and improve absorption. Often it was not just vegetables and fruit that were consumed raw, but also dairy products and meats. Many foods were also fermented to increase amounts of enzymes and rates of absorption even more, as well as improve taste. Lacto-fermentation was (and still is) also used to preserve foods.
Eat Fat: Diets of traditional people were relatively high in fat. Much of the fact consumed was of the saturated kind found in dairy products, animal fat and fat from tropical plants such as coconut and palm oil.

Soak Grains: And seeds, and legumes, and nuts. It turns out that traditional people rarely ate unsoaked or unfermented grain products. Scientific research has proven the inherent wisdom of their ways by proving that unsoaked or unfermented grains contain high levels of enzyme inhibitors as well as phytic acid. The enzyme inhibitors make the grains hard to digest (they inhibit the enzymes in our digestive tract) and the phytic acid binds to minerals in the intestines and prevents their absorption. Traditionally, grains, legumes, seeds and nuts were always soaked in warm and slightly acidic water or soured dairy and/or fermented as in sourdough breads and the sour porridges found all over the world.

What To Eat and How To Eat It

If you are interested in giving Traditional Nutrition a go in your diet, below you will find some pointers to get you started.
Meat and fish: Look for grass-fed or pastured beef, chicken, pork, or eat venison. Buy wild caught fish. Cook it however you want to, or try some traditional raw meals such as steak tartare or raw sushi.
Vegetables and fruit: Eat a large variety and eat at least some of them raw each day ( that means lots of salads).
Fat: Do not shy away from healthy saturated fats. Traditional peoples ate a lot of healthy fat from animals eating the diet they evolved to eat, as well as milk fat and the saturated fat from coconut and palm oil. Also monounsaturated oils such as extra virgin olive oil is great. The human animal evolved to eat saturated fat and did so for millions of years before heart disease ever became the staple it is today. It is very likely that the problem is not saturated fat from animals, but merely fat from animals eating unnatural (for them) diets such as corn and soy beans.
Grains: Soak ‘em! With a little planning it is easy. Want to eat oatmeal for breakfast? Put them out to soak the night before in some water with yogurt or even lemon juice added. Eating rice for dinner? Put it to soak in the morning before you leave for work. Look for traditional sourdough bread or buy bread made from sprouted grains. Use brown rice pasta or sprouted grain pasta instead of regular pasta made from unsprouted flour.
Fermented Foods: Eat something that is naturally fermented every day or preferably with every meal to help digestion and absorption. For some it might take a bit of getting used to the flavor but there are many fermented foods that are already part of the mainstream diet. Eat yogurt, cheese, unpasteurized sauerkraut and kim chee (a Korean condiment), naturally fermented pickles (not brined in vinegar) and drink dairy or water kefir, kombucha or home-made lacto-fermented sodas and ginger beer (they are actually good for you and kids love them!).
Dairy: Eat raw grass-fed dairy or if you can only find pasteurized milk, ferment it yourself. Learn to make your own yogurt, which is very simple, inexpensive, and tastier then the store-bought kind and full of healthy probiotics. Eat raw cheeses, which are widely available.
This may all seem overwhelming at first, especially if you have just been nuking some frozen meals for dinner. Start doing one thing at a time, like making some home-made sauerkraut and eating it on a regular basis.
Eating a traditional diet can do wonders for your health, energy, and looks. Many people cooking and eating a traditional diet become slightly obsessed with the quality of their food. Online message boards have many a discussion on the particular smell of certain dishes, the particular color of chicken stock and the intricacies of baking sourdough bread.
For more information on Dr. Weston Price and traditional nutrition check out the website of the Weston A. Price foundation at www.westonaprice.org

Tanya Carwyn is a Certified Clinical Herbalist practicing in the greater Denver area. She lives in Littleton with her husband and their two young daughters.
Check out her new website, devoted to traditional nutrition, home cooking, slow food, local and seasonal eating and how to fit that all into a busy lifestyle. www.kitchenmuse.net


Will even one cook spoil the broth? Australia is getting a taste of the raw-food diet revival. Bisbane Times
Hollywood film stars are raving about it, a documentary heralds its benefits and restaurants dedicated to it are springing up across the United States. And the raw-food movement is gaining popularity in Australia, too.
Runi Burton, 34 from Byron Bay, has been on a raw-food diet for the past six months and says she'll never turn back. "It's been the first time in my life I'm not hungry," she says. "I'm eating about a third of the quantity of the food I've eaten before, going a longer time between meals and not having the same carbohydrate cravings I'd been having all my life."
Burton had been looking for alternative diets after battling health and diet problems throughout her life and came across the diet at Raw Power, a business run by Anand Wells in Byron Bay.
Wells started teaching people how to prepare gourmet raw foods a year and a half ago - his market stalls of organic, raw foods around the NSW North Coast became increasingly popular and people started asking for his recipes. Wells says the benefits of a raw food diet can be felt immediately.
"Most people report feeling much clearer, having heaps of energy and not getting sick any more after eating raw food," Wells says. "A relatively healthy person can have a difference in vitality, clarity and happiness after a week or two of the raw food diet."
The raw-food diet comprises uncooked fruits, vegetables, grains, sprouts, nuts and beans. The popular view among adherents is that enzymes in food are destroyed when the food is heated beyond 45 degrees.
They claim Kirilian photography, which captures electric fields around objects, shows this. Adherents say the enzymes, which carry "life force", are essential for healthy chemical processes within the body. Much of this theory was detailed 25 years ago in the bestselling book Raw Energy by British writers Leslie and Susannah Kenton.
More recent reports based on these principles stem from American nutritionists David Wolfe and Gabriel Cousens. The duo appear on a documentary film Raw for 30 Days, which claims a raw-food diet can reverse diabetes. (A trailer of the film is posted on YouTube.)
However, the enzyme theory is not accepted by the wider scientific community. Sue Radd, a nutritionist and practising dietitian at Sydney's Nutrition and Wellbeing Clinic, says there is no scientific basis for the theory that raw-food diets provide essential enzymes that might otherwise be destroyed by cooking.
"Where there are enzymes in raw foods, those enzymes are inactivated as soon as the food hits our stomach because of the strong acidic conditions," Radd says. The raw-food theory "is not scientifically proven but I still think there are other fantastic reasons to eat more raw and plant foods".
She says people on raw-food diets commonly report they have a better quality of life and health and research studies have found numerous benefits from short-term, raw-food diet trials.
"Studies have shown a significant improvement in rheumatoid arthritis symptoms, favourable changes in bacteria that live in the large bowel that would suggest lower risk of bowel cancer and also improved immune function."
She says this makes sense - raw-food diets are much lower in fat and kilojoules, with a higher intake of flavonoids and other antioxidants, all thanks to the high proportion of fruit and plant foods in the diet.
However, studies have found longer-term, raw-food adherents have deficiencies in vitamin B12 (which can only be gained from animal products), zinc and iron.
The longest study was conduct-ed in the US with 500 people on raw food diets for an average 3.7 years.
"On average, men had lost 10 kilograms, women had lost 12 kilograms, but one in five had [body mass index] less than normal and 30 per cent of women who were under the age of 45 actually stopped menstruating or had irregular periods," Radd says.
"I can't recommend an exclusive raw food diet. If you are going to be on it for a longer period of time, it puts you at risk of a number of deficiencies, so you have to know how to plan it."
Surinder Baines from the University of Newcastle's school of health sciences says many of the positive benefits found in such diets are exactly the same with vegan or vegetarian diets and may result from "the extreme limitation of foods of an animal origin".
Baines is concerned that there isn't sufficient research into the long-term impact of a raw food diet and says its restrictive nature makes it a very difficult diet to adhere to for any length of time "without having support, advice and follow up".
"It is very dramatic if you go from a usual diet. Compliance is low because it is such a rigid, strict diet."
After six months on a raw food diet, Burton says she has stuck to it about
95 per cent of the time, making occasional exceptions for cooked meat.
"I haven't found it that hard to stick to, but I've heard other people have found it really hard during winter," she says. "The longer I've gone [on the diet] the more it's about tuning into how my body feels after I eat. I'm more into that than taste sensation."
The diet is not just raw fruit, vegetables, nuts and sprouts. A variety of recipes are based on dehydrated, soaked and blended foods, including pastries made from ground almond and bound together with honey; noodles made from zucchini cut through a spiral slicer and chocolate cake made from raw cocoa butter and crushed cocoa nibs.
There are now more than 60 restaurants in the US providing strictly raw-food meals and in California, thanks to the endorsement of Hollywood actors such as Woody Harrelson, they are among the most popular restaurants. The raw food phenomenon hasn't caught on in Australia's dining scene to the same extent, although it is still possible to eat away from home on a raw-food diet.
Wells says most restaurants have salad options and he will often take a stash of dehydrated nuts with him, just in case. In any case, he says, he doesn't eat as much food anymore. "I am getting so much more nutrition I eat literally one third or one quarter the volume," he says.
A University of Sydney associate professor in human nutrition, Samir Samman, agrees raw food diets are likely to result in people eating less.
"When you eat raw vegetables there is a lot of chewing and munching - and that does help to satiate us. The mastication helps towards the �feeling of fullness - it's a lot of work to be eating raw foods," he says. "Also the water content helps to fill us up."
Samman says raw food diets are just another way to find good, healthy food and consume less sodium and fewer saturated foods. "The end benefit is that you are going to feel better."
However, Samman says the raw food diet should not be followed too strictly. "Domestic processing and cooking certain things can improve their nutritional value," he says.
"A good example is the tomato. Cooked tomato, which would normally have a bit of oil in it, actually improves the absorption of lycopenes. And small amounts of lean meat make a really important contribution to the diet.
"This raw food diet is not a new fad. It's like a lot of these popular healthy concepts -they just get recycled through history."
Revival or not, Radd says nutritionists have updated their view on the benefits of raw food in the past decade.
"What has changed is the push to eat more plant foods on a daily basis, including raw types. The appreciation of the benefits of plant-based diets [in reducing the risk of chronic disease] has increased. Diets rich in plant foods are one of the best ways to keep yourself healthy and out of hospital."
Review, Juliano's Raw
At the famed Santa Monica, California, raw-food restaurant, I am pleasantly surprised at how tasty the food is. The chefs obviously go to a lot of trouble to prepare the food, incorporating plenty of fresh herbs and spices. I try a "blood juice", a refreshing mix made from fuji apples, ginger, lime and pomegranate; and "no salmon wrap sushi" - a pumpkin pate rolled with guacamole, seaweed, pickled ginger and tomato. Pesto deep-dish pizza is a thin, flaky, buckwheat crust with walnut pesto, tomato, herbs, olives, marinated onions and mushrooms. The buckwheat base gave it lots of texture. For dessert I tried the tender, delicious apple torte - thinly sliced apples filled with cream of pecan.
Sue Radd, dietitian and nutritionist
Chocolate cookies
2 cups brazil nuts
1/2 cup pepitas
3 tbsp macca root powder
1 tbsp raw honey
1/2 cup raisins
1/4 cup raw chocolate nibs
In a food processor, whiz the brazil nuts for 5 minutes or until they become almost liquid. Add the rest of ingredients except chocolate and blend thoroughly. Mix in the chocolate by hand and form into small round cookies. Place on dehydrator mesh sheets and dehydrate for 16 hours, more or less depending on whether you like your cookies soft or crunchy.
Recipe provided by Anand Wells, Raw Power

A raw deal worth having

By Dominique Herman

"It's not about food." These are not the words one expects to hear on the first day of a cookery course.

But learning how to prepare raw foods - some so they taste as if they have been cooked - is not a conventional cookery course.

We begin with a glass of water followed by a freshly squeezed watermelon and mint juice. There's a bit of guided deep breathing and then with eyes closed we listen to a recorded narration about the quality of one's life being brought about by the quality of one's thinking. Turns out it is Sir Laurence Olivier reciting a poem from a 1960s West End play, Time.

Why are we listening to this? asks one of our instructors, Peter Daniel. "You are what you eat. The secret to the universe is Q and the intent for the four days is to bring an opportunity to begin to question. Food is a good thing to question as it will rub off on other areas of life," he says.

The bit about Q makes more sense when Peter is talking. It also makes more sense when at the end we are told our "homework" is to be more mindful of everything we eat: What is it? Where does it come from? How does it make us feel?

We are conditioned to eat in a certain way (that way being cooked for the most part), and we are going to have to "transition" to an exclusive or predominantly raw foods way of life.

The cornerstone of Mind Power, a system of conditioning the brain which relies on the concept that thoughts are real things, is the basis of Peter and Beryn Daniel's "first basic universal law". And for them it starts with what's on your plate. Every food you eat creates a different thought, they say. Every food leads to a health destination. Everything is energy and every food has a different vibration and resonance. Thoughts affect food. And, conversely, food affects thoughts. We raise our vibration by eating high energy foods and that, in turn, raises the quality and mood of our thoughts. "Quantum food!" one over excited potential raw foodist shouts out.

Beryn and Peter are married and worked as "chalet chefs" in the French Alps before moving to the UK. There they started investigating an alternative way of eating, eventually training to become raw food chefs. They then moved back to South Africa about a year ago at the same time that they went totally raw.

Apart from instructing, catering and operating a stall at the Saturday market in Woodstock, they import "super foods" such as the goji berry and hemp protein powder, as well as sell "tools to process food in a healthy way". These include a R3 500 blender that can whip any type of seed, nut or grain into a pulp, and a dehydrator, which removes the moisture from foods giving it the taste of being cooked without it having actually been cooked.

"We are not nutritionists, healers or doctors. We are raw food chefs," Peter states. But, he adds, that does not dispute the energy, the "amazing clarity", you get from eating like this.

It would take a 900g steak to provide the same amount of protein as 10g of spirulina, since steak loses much of its nutritional value when cooked. And spirulina is more bio-available than beef, Peter says.

If you cut animal fats out of your diet, you will not have a cholesterol issue ever, he adds. "Your body doesn't recognise it as food," Beryn says, referring to items such as slap chips, "and it goes into fight mode". When we get hungry, that is our body's search for minerals. Organic food, though more expensive, is higher in minerals and so we need less to be satisfied and eat less as a result, and the key to longevity is calorie restriction.

Most of us at this stage are about to slit our wrists. As one participant says, "maybe we should do that breathing thing again". Instead Peter whips up an aloe and orange smoothie for us (although oranges today are devoid of vitamin C, he adds). An aloe ferox leaf - the sort available all over the local landscape - is filleted and dropped in the blender. While that's happening, Beryn cuts off pieces of an aloe vera pot plant and we rub it onto our hands. It's very slimy but in a few seconds it has absorbed completely. Perfect for an "instant facelift", she says.

Finally we get to the food bit. There's salad sushi wraps - the organic brown and wild rice is the only cooked ingredient and meant as a transition for us newbies. Same for the mushrooms, which provide a "meaty" taste and, after being dehydrated, the look of being cooked.

Refried bean pâté, which is neither fried nor has beans in it, is a combination of blended sunflower seeds and sundried tomatoes creating a pinky paste to which Mexican spices are added.

The food is really good. And it does not require much to feel satisfied, and that satisfied feeling remains for many hours afterwards.

Cut out one unhealthy food a week. Adopt one new raw food recipe a week. "It is ordinary things consistently done that produce extraordinary results."
• The Elements of Health four-week raw-food prep classes are two-and-a-half hours once weekly, followed by a raw, organic two-course meal.

Call 021 780 9156, 072 056 9033 or 074 100 7547 for more info, or email beryn@soaring-free.com or go to Superfoods

Published on the web by Tonight on April 20, 2007.



Raw foods make a delicious meal
Lucette Moramarco
Staff Writer/ The Village News
4/19/2007 7:32:59 PM

A year and a half ago, Angelena Bosco of Rainbow went on a raw food diet to try to lose weight. Eight months and 45 pounds later, she decided she had found a better way to live. “The human body is meant to process plant foods [not meat or refined, processed foods],” she said.

Bosco now eats a partly raw diet with the goal of “feeling healthy and preventing disease, aches and pains.” “It is very calming when you eat raw, very peaceful,” she added. Her mood swings went away, as sugar is a depressant to her.

Inspired by her weight loss and newfound sense of wellbeing, Bosco took raw food classes and became a Certified Live Food Chef and Instructor so she could teach others the benefits of raw foods.

The Raw Food Diet (also called the Living Food Diet) is a step beyond a vegetarian diet. Besides excluding all animal products (meat, eggs, fish and dairy foods), the Raw Food Diet also excludes foods cooked above 112 degrees. Raw and living foods are fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and grains. Instead of being cooked, they are eaten whole or are merely chopped, diced, shredded, juiced or mixed.

“By not heating our foods we preserve the enzymes that are necessary for all body functions,” said Bosco. “The live enzymes in our food can then assist in their digestion and reserves the enzymes in our bodies to perform their necessary functions, such as distribution of nutrients and cleansing.”

In an effort to lose weight, avoid allergies and go off medications, many local residents are trying raw foods. Bosco teaches Raw Food Preparation classes at Rainbow Valley Grange twice a month. A total of 14 interested people, a few from as far away as Escondido, attended her class on March 29, the theme of which was “Comfort Foods.” As in most of her classes, Bosco demonstrated the preparation of the raw foods on the menu while she talked about the nutritional value of the methods and foods used. Once the food was prepared, everyone shared the meal.

The “comfort foods” consisted of Chili topped with onion dip, a salad with Smooth and Creamy Avocado Dressing and Chocolate Mousse dessert. All recipes were taken from “Living on Live Food” by Alissa Cohen.

The Chili, uncooked, involved soaking kamut (a grain), dates and sun-dried tomatoes; chopping and dicing a green bell pepper, red onion and several tomatoes; shaving two corn cobs; crushing garlic; and juicing two oranges. Several spices and seasonings were also added to the mixture. Topped with the onion dip (made from macadamia nuts, water, sea salt and onion), the chili tasted better than anticipated. The salad dressing (which included cucumber, olive oil, honey and apple cider vinegar) was predictably good on the salad.

The biggest and most delicious surprise of the evening was the Chocolate Mousse, which is made without chocolate but is very rich and chocolaty. The most unexpected ingredient is avocado! One avocado is blended with almond milk, dates, carob powder and almond butter to make a dessert that not only satisfies the sweet tooth but is also nutritious. And that is the point of the raw food classes: to show people how to prepare healthy food that also tastes good.

Angelena Bosco’s next Raw Food Preparation Class, “Party Foods,” will be on April 26 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. She will also offer classes on May 10 and 24 (themes to be determined). For more information including cost, or to register, call (760) 809-6668.

Blissed be, Annie
bodybybliss.com