Traditional Foods for Mental and Physical Energy, Today and Tomorrow.
Traditional - Ancestral Foods
Did You Know?
Healthy animal fats are stable, meaning no free radicals are released when heated. Free radicals have been linked to cancer.
Unlike vegetable oils, animal fats such as lard and tallow are minimally processed.
Fats "from the earth" help the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K, to become absorbed into the body.
Fats promote brain function, particularly development, memory, mood regulation, and proper hormone production. 60% of our brain is fat.
Healthy fats cushion the organs.
Animal fats contain no artificial trans fats.
Healthy fats have been known to reduce pain and inflammation. They aid in controlling the metabolic and immune systems. They help regulate the clotting of blood, which is crucial for preventing heart attacks and strokes.
Nurturing Natural's goal is to provide women with the means, courage, and willpower, to prepare properly for their babies.
The leaders of the future.
The ones who will carry on our civilization with reverence.
Getting the deliciousness of your food from real food, herbs, spices, bone broth, butter, cream, egg yolks, and meat fats, just like our ancestors, is the key to true vitality.
There are numerous reasons to incorporate healthy animal fats in the diet, from cellular energy, protection against free radicals, and hormonal balance, to increased libido and a happy mood.
Saturated fats help the body put calcium into the bones.
Nature doesn't make mistakes by putting fat into milk.
Low-fat and skim milk is calcium going to waste or being put into the wrong place, like the arteries and the joints.
LIFE IN ALL ITS SPLENDOR IS MOTHER NATURE OBEYED. – WESTON A. PRICE
What if, individually, we each go back in time and prepare healthy food for our family?
Traditional diets.
Natural fats from healthy animal and vegetable sources provide concentrated energy. They also provide the foundation for cell membranes and multiple hormones and hormonelike substances found in the body. Fats act as carriers for vital fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K. Dietary fats are necessary for converting carotene to vitamin A, mineral absorption, and a slew of other processes.
What if every new life was given high levels of vitamins A, D, E, and K?
Organ meats like liver, heart, and kidneys.
The ripple effect would be profound.
Foods that supply these critical nutrients are the foods that the dietary gurus tell us are bad for us. The interesting thing is. Foods that are high in cholesterol, high fat, and rich in saturated fats; are the very diet that makes us healthy and helps us have healthy children. That keeps our brains active, and thinking is highly discouraged.
To think differently.
The industrialized diet, the “white man's" food. Politically correct nutrition. It does not sustain us. It does not nourish us.
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Almost every aspect of modern foods lowers nutrient availability. Confinement agriculture system, the way food is processed, made more convenient, the pollutants in the air, EVERYTHING. Everything traditional people did, from agricultural methods to food preparation, increased the nutrients. And that's why we have a health crisis today. There is no other way to solve it than to return to ancestral eating.
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Follow the money, and you'll know what the answer is.
The eggs your grandmother ate are not the same as the ones you buy in the supermarkets. Ideally, we would not just be eating the way they ate but growing the food the way they did as well.
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“Politically Correct” Nutrition revolves around the idea that we should reduce our intake of fats, saturated fats from animal sources in particular. Fats from animal sources contain cholesterol, the other "bad guy" in the civilized diet.
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So how do we achieve the optimum expression of genetic potential? I believe there is no such thing as a congenital/generational defect but rather a generation or two of poor eating that disrupts the genetic blueprint. Returning to traditional foods creates leaders of the future. Techniques straight from our ancestors.
Native Practices
Native Americans believed eating a healthy animal's liver could cure a sick human's liver.
Eating the heart of a healthy animal, could heal an unhealthy heart.
Ancestral eating consists of eating wholesome, natural, organic, Indigenous foods from the earth.
Just like our ancestors did for thousands of years.
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The basic idea of ancient practices remains with us today: building community, connecting with things outside of ourselves, and innovation as a means of survival.
For our ancestors, harvesting was an act of ceremony, through song, dance, and giving deep thanks to everything sacrificed to nurture, US.
Indigenous people relied on Mother Nature and her continual cycles. Alignment with the cycles of life is what has brought us so far as a whole.
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Colonization successfully convinced the general population that Western medicine, industrialized foods, and technological advancements would help our health. However, the opposite occurred; we've seen a drastic decline in health over the years. Euro-American culture has devalued the importance of food as a whole. Many traditional practices, including health and wellness rituals that were upheld by our ancestors, have fallen by the wayside. Most of these practices were carried on through family, community, hunting, gathering, and ancient methods that we no longer use today. Methods that spark our primal being.
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Our bodies weren't designed by Nature to eat foods made in factories. Each generation becomes more and more unhealthy as the quality of the food declines.
The diets that our ancestors followed allowed them to have a better quality of life than many of us now. Indigenous peoples' foods were some of the first and most devastating attacks committed by early western governments. The invasion came with inevitable dramatic changes to the ecosystem. Hand in hand with the decline of food integrity was the strategic introduction of alcohol which added to the disconnect from our land and its resources, inevitably leading to poor health.
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Despite the known harmful effects on the mind and body, these foods are still used and at the forefront of modern grocery stores. As a result, we have an epidemic of obesity, infertility, autism, and deadly diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, and countless forms of cancer. Euro-American culture has successfully influenced humans, as a whole, to spiritually disconnect from our food.
The Chemical Makeup of Fats!
It's evident that something is wrong with the theories we are fed about nutrition. These factory-made low-fat, experimental foods are precisely that, experimental. The idea that saturated fats cause heart disease and cancer is not only wrong but is detrimental to our actual nutritive potential. Some fats are bad for us. However, the fat's chemistry or makeup determines whether or not it is healthy.
A process called partial hydrogenation rearranges the molecule. Hydrogenation is a chemical reaction between molecular hydrogen (H2) and another compound or element, usually in the presence of a catalyst such as nickel, palladium, or platinum. The effect is a reduction or saturation of organic compounds.
It causes molecules to straighten out and creates a molecule you wouldn't find naturally in food, called trans fats and these molecules inhibit reactions in the body. They mess up enzymes, and they mess up receptors.
Fats, aka lipids, are not soluble in water. Triglycerides are naturally found in our food and bodies—three fatty-acid chains attached to a glycerol molecule. Elevated levels of triglycerides have a direct correlation to heart disease. These triglycerides do not come directly from fats you find; they are made in the liver from sugars that have not been converted into energy. Triglycerides come from carbohydrates, primarily processed sugars and refined flours.
Fatty Acids by Saturation
The three different forms of fatty acids are as follows:
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A fatty acid is saturated when a hydrogen atom occupies all available carbon bonds. All carbon-atom linkages being filled means they are highly stable due to being heavily saturated with hydrogen. As a result, they do not usually go rancid, even when heated for cooking purposes. They are straight in form and pack together quickly, forming a solid or semi-solid fat at room temperature. The body makes saturated fatty acids from carbohydrates, which are also found naturally in animal fat and tropical oil.
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Monounsaturated fatty acids have one unsaturated carbon bond in the molecule; this is also called a double bond and therefore lacks two hydrogen bonds. The human body makes monounsaturated fatty acids from saturated fatty acids and uses them in several ways. Monounsaturated fats bend at the double bond position so that they do not pack together as quickly as saturated fats and, therefore, tend to be liquid at room temperature.
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Polyunsaturated fatty acid molecules have more than one unsaturated carbon bond, also called a double bond. Our bodies cannot make these essential fatty acids. We must get EFAs from our food. The polyunsaturated fatty acids have a bend or a turn at the double bond position and do not pack together easily. They are liquid, even when refrigerated. These oils go rancid quickly, particularly omega-3 linolenic acid. Polyunsaturated fats should never be heated or used in cooking.
Any fat or oil, whether of vegetable or animal origin, is a combination of saturated fatty acids, monounsaturated fatty acids, polyunsaturated linoleic acid, and linolenic acid.
The Dangers of Polyunsaturated Fats
Fats from animal sources such as butter, lard, and tallow generally contain about 40-60% saturated fat and are solid at room temperature. Vegetable oils from northern climates contain polyunsaturated fats and are liquid at room temperature.
The masses have been misinformed. For years, government entities have told us that polyunsaturated oils are healthy and that saturated fats cause cancer and heart disease. At the turn of the century, the majority of fats in the diet came from raw butter, lard, tallow, coconut oil, and olive oil. Today, most fats in the diet are from vegetable oils, primarily soy and corn, safflower, and canola.
Evidence suggests that the amount of polyunsaturated fats we consume shouldn't exceed more than 4% of the caloric intake. In approximate proportions of 1 1/2 % omega-3 linolenic acid and 2 1/2 % omega-6 linoleic acid.1
Essential Fatty Acid consumption can be found in similar quantities in native populations whose consumption of polyunsaturated oils comes from the amounts naturally found in legumes, grains, nuts, green vegetables, fish, olive oil, and animal fats. Vegetable oils have way higher amounts of polyunsaturated fats than those found naturally in food grown under the sun.
Excess consumption of polyunsaturated oils has been shown to contribute to many disease conditions, including increased cancer and heart disease; immune system dysfunction; damage to the liver, reproductive organs, and lungs; digestive disorders; depressed learning ability; impaired growth; and weight gain.2
Polyunsaturated fats cause many health problems because they become oxidized or rancid when subjected to heat, oxygen, and moisture. Rancid oils are characterized by free radicals—single atoms or clusters with an unpaired electron. These chemical compounds are highly reactive. They have been described as "marauders" in the body because they are known to attack cell membranes and red blood cells, which cause damage to DNA/RNA strands. This reaction has been known to trigger mutations in tissue, blood vessels, and skin.
1 - Lasserre, M, et al, Lipids, 1985, 20:4:227
2 - Polyunsaturated fat complications in general: Pinckney, Edward R, MD, and Cathey Pinckney, The Cholesterol Controversy, 1973, Sherbourne Press, Los Angeles, 127-131; Polyunsaturates in correlation with learning disorders: Harmon, D, et al, J Am Geriatrics Soc, 1976, 24:1: 292-8; Meerson, Z, et al, Bull Exp Bio Med, 1983, 96:9:70-71; Polyunsaturates concerning weight gain: Valero, et al, Ann NutrMetabolism, Nov/Dec 1990, 34:6:323-327; Felton, C V, et al, Lancet, 1994, 344:1195-96
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Recent research has revealed that too much omega-6 in the diet creates an imbalance that can interfere with the production of important prostaglandins. 3
This disruption can result in an increased tendency to form blood clots, inflammation, high blood pressure, irritation of the digestive tract, depressed immune function, sterility, cell proliferation, cancer, and weight gain. 4
3 - Kinsella, John E, Food Technology, October 1988, 134; Lasserre, M, et al, Lipids, 1985, 20:4:227
4 - Horrobin, D F, Reviews in Pure and Applied Pharmacological Sciences, Vol 4, 1983, Freund Publishing House, 339-383; Devlin, T M, ed, Textbook of Biochemistry, 2nd Ed, 1982, Wiley Medical, 429-430; Fallon, Sally, and Mary G Enig, Ph.D., "Tripping Lightly Down the Prostaglandin Pathways," Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation Health Journal, 1996, 20:3:5-8
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Several researchers have argued that along with too many omega-6 fatty acids, the American diet is deficient in omega-3.
Omega-3 is crucial for cell oxidation, metabolizing necessary sulfur-containing amino acids, and maintaining proper hormone production balance.
Deficiencies have been associated with asthma, heart disease, and learning deficiencies. 5
Most commercial vegetable oils contain minimal omega-3 and large amounts of omega-6. Modern agricultural and industrialized farming practices have reduced the amount of omega-3 in commercial foods.
For example, Organic eggs from hens who are given the ability to feed on insects and green plants can have a 1-to-1 ratio of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. Commercial supermarket eggs, on the other hand, can have as much as nineteen times more omega-6 than omega-3! 6
5 - Okuyama, H, et al, Prog Lipid Res, 1997, 35:4:409-457
6 - Simopoulos, A P, and Norman Salem, Am J Clin Nutr, 1992, 55:411-4
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The vilified saturated fats that most Americans try to avoid are not the cause of our modern diseases. They actually play many essential roles in body chemistry:
Cell membranes are made up of 50% fatty acids.
Saturated fatty acids give our cells the necessary stiffness and integrity they require. The integrity of cellular membranes is crucial for cell survival.
Saturated fatty acids contribute to bone structure and allow calcium to be effectively incorporated into the skeletal system.
Saturated fatty acids contain antimicrobial properties that protect us from harmful microorganisms.
Heart Disease
Despite numerous entities telling us otherwise, the cause of heart disease is not animal fats and cholesterol but several inevitable factors in industrialized diets. Vegetable oils, hydrogenated fats; refined carbohydrates in excess; mineral deficiencies, low levels of magnesium and iodine. Deficiencies of vitamins, particularly vitamin C, needed for the integrity of the blood vessel walls, and antioxidants such as selenium and vitamin E, which protect us from free radicals; and, finally, the disappearance of antimicrobial fats from the food supply, namely, animal fats and tropical oils.8
The way to avoid and treat heart disease is not to focus on lowering cholesterol with drugs or diet. But rather consuming foods rich in B6&12, as they bolster thyroid function. Daily use of natural sea salt, a source of usable iodine, to prevent deficiencies that make arteries more prone to ruptures and plaque. Incorporating antimicrobial fats in the diet; and eliminating processed foods containing refined carbohydrates, oxidized cholesterol, and vegetable oils full of free radicals.
While serum cholesterol levels don't directly correlate to future heart disease, high levels of homocysteine in the blood have been linked to the pathological build-up of plaque in the arteries and a tendency of blood clots. Folic acid, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, and choline are nutrients that lower serum homocysteine levels.9
8 - Fallon, Sally, and Mary G Enig, Ph.D., "Diet and Heart Disease—Not What You Think," Consumers' Research, July 1996, 15-19
9 - Ubbink, J B, Nutr Rev, Nov 1994, 52:11:383-393