& Why I Eat Real Food
If youâve just stumbled on this blog, you saw something about âmeal planningâ, cooking everything from scratch, and something about homemade bread. You might be thinking Iâm a crazy person. If you read the âAbout Meâ page, you may have noticed that I said I follow a loose interpretation of the Weston A Price Foundations diet…and I do mean loose. I donât agree with everything the Foundation says, but I love their premise and their founding tenants. What does that mean exactly?
WHAT KIND OF A CRAZY PERSON AM I?
Who Was Weston Price?
Weston A Price was a dentist who explored the diets and tooth decay of a bunch of indigenous populations. He found that sugar and white flour seemed to be implicated in tooth decay and chronic diseases, and that many isolated populations all over the world had avoided these diseases until the introduction of a Western diet. He interviewed lots of elderly members of these groups and what their traditional diets looked like. All the diets were unique, but they universally included non-processed foods. Some folks lived on mostly fat (Eskimos), some on almost entirely milk and blood (the Masai tribe in Africa) and others on an almost vegetarian diet (Bantu tribe in Africa). They were all chronic disease free, until Western diets (sugar, white flour, vegetable oil) put them on par with everyone else in terms of heart disease, diabetes, obesity, etc.
Of course, they probably still died a lot from childbirth, diphtheria, and injuries. Yay, modern medicine! I like modern medicine. But I donât like modern food, modern chronic disease, or modern obesity.
My takeaway from Weston Price: Processed food and lots of sugar is bad for you. Lots of foods can be good for you – meats, grains, dairy, and more. Learning about traditional foods from all over the world is really cool. Also, ethnic food is delicious. Please-give-me-more-kimchi. Continue reading “My Diet Dogma”