The Sally Fallon Conference this weekend was very good. Sally Fallon is the author of Nourishing Traditions and is promoting a diet of 'real', unprocessed, nutrient dense foods including healthy fats which are rich in fat-soluble Vitamin A and D, an essential part of a healthy diet. Her recommendations are based on the research of Dr. Weston Price. (I think Dr. Price's book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, is a must read for anyone interested in gaining and maintaining health through diet.) For more information and articles, go the Weston A. Price Foundation website,
http://www.westonaprice.org/.
For those who could not attend, I thought I'd give you a brief summary of her 11 suggestions on how to change your diet for the better. (The notes in paratheses are my input.)
1. Make you own salad dressing (very easy to do, use quality organic ingredients such as organic EV olive oil).
2. Switch to butter and avoid hydrogenated oils (butter from raw milk from pastured cows is best and is easy to make).
3. Make sure your diet contains sufficient high quality animal products, eat some raw. (A partial list Sally showed included raw diary products such as milk, butter, yogurt and cheese, pastured eggs and cod liver oil.)
4. Eliminate refined sweeteners - including not only sugar and high fructose corn syrup but also fruit juices which are high concentrations of fructose. Of course, artificial sweeteners should be eliminated too.
5. Eliminate toxic metals and additives. For further investigation of what these are doing to your body, Sally suggests reading "Excitotoxins" by Russell Blaylock, MD.
6. Be kind to your grains. Don't eat processed grains because they have minimal nutrition or have been so severely altered that they are not healthy (including whole grain breakfast cereals). Learn to soak your grains to remove 'nature's preservatives' which inhibit the release of nutrients until the seed in ready to sprout.
7. Make stock or bone broth, high in minerals and gelatin (so easy, bake a chicken for dinner and make stock from the carcass). A key to making stock is to be sure you put something acidic, such as lemon or vinegar, in the simmering stock to pull the minerals from the bones.
8. Eat a variety of fresh vegetables and fruits, preferably organic. (Homemade soups are a great, healthy way to eat lots of vegetables, and very good for you in cold weather.)
9. Reduce stresses to your physical body including things like caffeine, over-the-counter drugs such as Tylenol, stale air, synthetic fibers, strong EM fields, fluorescent lights, cell phones and high heels.
10. Get lacto-fermented foods into your diet such as raw cheese, good quality yogurt, or lacto-fermented vegetables.
11. Practice forgiveness. (I like this one. Don't blame your parents on your poor health, do fret over what you have fed your children, don't blame people who work at fast food establishments. Don't hold grudges and blame others or yourself, and most importantly don't be discouraged or think it is too late to start.)