What you eat on a daily basis can be a major determinant for your health, for better or for worse. Optimal health is something that can be achieved through eating nutrient dense foods and other lifestyle factors.
A look into history
There are several times in history we can refer to when it comes to nutrition that are all incredibly aligned. Though styles change throughout each decade and there are divergent pivotal points, history tends to repeat itself… especially when it comes to nutrition.
Only in the last century humans have developed an affinity for over-processed foods. Grocery stores were much smaller 100 years ago, farmer’s market’s were frequented, and many people grew and preserved their own food. While we now live in a different world, there is knowledge to be gleaned from this way of living.
If we go farther back into history, we can find examples of hunter-gatherers such as the Inuits, Bedouins or Indigenous Americans. For many of these ancient tribes, it is known that they had a mutual understanding of the providence of nature. Though each of these groups lived in different climates, they lacked our current culture of grocery shopping and fast food. However, they did not lack the ability to survive and thrive.
Let’s take a look at the three examples given. The Inuits are the indigenous population of Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. These are people whose lineage goes back several centuries. There is one obvious factor about the locations: they are in the Arctic. With freezing temperatures, you would think without modern grocery stores there was a lack of proper nutrition. Chilling temperatures aren’t very forgiving to plants, so there must have been a lack of variety. However, studies show that the Inuit microbiome was extremely dynamic. How can one have this without vegetables? Short answer- having an animal rich diet. As hunter-gatherers focused on survival, they ate a variety of animal foods depending on the season and prey available. Meat from fish & sea animals, land animals, eggs, birds, and when in season, local berries, roots and herbaceous plants.
Moving onto the Bedouins, roamers of the Arabian desert. Since they were always traveling, their food traveled with them. They grew & herded livestock to produce meat, dairy and wool. Traditionally they kept sheep & goats for food and trading and used camels for travel. They provided nutrition for themselves without any means of preservation in the hot and dry desert lands. Even with this obstacle, they still managed to get the nutrition they needed, almost completely derived from their livestock.
Lastly, the Indigenous American’s diet varied depending on their location, however, there are still patterns. They relied heavily on meat, whether it was bison in the Great Plains, Salmon in the Pacific, or deer in the Southwest. Alaskan Indigenous people also relied heavily on fish and sea animals such as seal or walrus. Each of these peoples ate the whole animal from nose to tail. Well, except for the Polar bear liver- it has so much vitamin A it’s toxic! They obtained the nutrition from each body part and would honor and thank the animal before they ate it. Plants were also consumed depending on the season & location, often including berries, root vegetables, herbs, some nuts and seeds, and other plant foods. They would also thank the earth for providing them.
Aside from hunter-gatherers, there are other times in history that give us plenty of data on nutrition. For example, there are several mentions of grain, olives, figs, dates honey, and milk in the Bible. Grains were a staple in the Bronze age, such as millet, spelt and barley. They used all types of herbs and spices for flavors, perfumes, and even medicine. They ate seasonal, fresh foods, fermented fruits into wines and juices, and kept nonperishable, well grown grains always on hand. Though there were religious structures around meat; goat, lamb, oxen, venison, poultry and fish were all diet staples.
Lastly, we can look to ancient cultures known for food, such as the infamous Mediterranean diet or the classic Italian cuisine. There’s no denying that these cultures all in their own unique ways value fresh, homegrown foods and prioritize nutrient density.
Though each of these ancient peoples were located in vastly dissimilar climates and have many differences, they all have similarities that we can learn from.
- Some of them were able to survive on animal foods alone.
- They ate things on a seasonal basis.
- They used the whole animal, nose to tail.
- They honored and respected the animals in their life and death.
- They used food as medicine.
- They preserved and fermented food on their own.
- They did not knowingly have the modern diseases on the rise today, such as obesity, heart disease, and cancer.
Just a century ago, food was eaten from backyards, neighbors and local markets. Food from different climates or seasons was often not readily available. Hunting and fishing for wild game was done to feed the family. Plants were used in a variety of ways for healing. Canning and preserving homegrown food was a regular occurrence in the food-abundant seasons.
Coincidentally enough, the obesity epidemic did not begin until the late 1970’s. Though it may seem like we’re too deep into modern culture, there are various opportunities to still live how we used to. There’s no reason to fight over whether plants or animals are better, give into physical focused fad diets or argue about the root of obesity. We must take a step back to see what we need.
In the pursuit of optimal health, it is imperative to chase our roots, whether from 100 or 1000 years ago. The health of our bodies and earth cannot afford to move forward in a processed, factory farmed & fast food society. We can make a difference one by one by incorporating the methods that have healed and sustained us for centuries.
A look into human biology
Aside from history, we can also look to biology to learn the necessary nutrients required for the human body. There are 6 major nutrients we as humans require: vitamins, minerals, protein, fats, water, and carbohydrates. If we look through this lens to try to support the body, we must find foods that are high in vitamin, mineral and water content, and balanced according to fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. Coincidentally enough, a diet consisting in both quality animal products and seasonal produce provides you a vast array of each category.
The nutritional density of animal foods
Beginning with ruminant meat, there is very little comparison of foods with more nutrient density. Red meat contains a sufficient amount of protein, fat (depending on the cut), b vitamins, selenium, iron, and zinc. The majority of animal organs (both ruminant meat and poultry) hold well over 100% of the RDA of vitamins A & B per serving, and also pack in protein. Beef liver is sometimes referred to as nature’s multivitamin. Bone marrow & broth are overflowing with nutrients, such as glucosamine, omega 3’s, collagen, and gelatin. These all support healthy bone structure, muscle growth, gut and even brain health.
Poultry also can provide a vast array of nutrients. Adding just a few chicken feet to a bone broth can up the gelatin and collagen content significantly. Chicken soup, often from both chicken meat & bones, is widely known in several cultures to be healing to sickness. Animal meats and organs have virtually everything you need aside from water. They can be extremely healing as a substantial part of the optimal human diet.
Eggs come next, as they are tremendous source of protein, fat, b vitamins such as choline, biotin and folate, vitamin a, selenium, and iodine. There are several varieties of eggs you can choose from, such as chicken, duck, or quail egg, all which have their own specific nutrient makeup. They also, conveniently, happen to be extremely versatile in cooking and baking. The egg yolk specifically packs in healthy cholesterol and is a superfoods for brain health & clarity. They are supportive to fetal development in pregnancy and early childhood stages. If you find you’ve been sensitive to eggs, try using just the egg yolk. Though the egg white has protein & other vitamins, it also has anti-nutrients that can cause reactions in some folks. The egg yolk is nutrient dense and easier on the body, so opt for those if you’re egg sensitive.
Dairy, when done right, is also an extremely nutrient dense. Dairy has the perfect ratio protein, carbs and fat and packs in several other vitamins and minerals such as calcium. Milk products such as raw kefir and yogurt have live cultures that support a healthy gut microbiome. Cheeses like raw parmesan or ricotta have a great ratio of fat and protein and can enhance an array of dishes. Raw milk specifically holds the enzyme needed to breakdown lactose, allowing smoother digestion. Butter and ghee and are excellent sources of vitamins and fats. They each have a high burn point so you can cook with them in several fashions.
While there are an array of different cheeses, yogurts, fats and milks that stem from dairy, the simplest and cleanest are the best. Raw, low pasteurization, A2 protein, organic, and grass-fed are all great options to look for. It will vary depending on location, laws and stores, but those are keywords to seek out in order to nourish your body with dairy. Kraft and Velveeta do not fit into this category, and many cheap and bright colored cheeses are not much of cheese at all. Over-processed dairy is the only dairy I would recommend avoiding.
Honey, provided to us by the bees, is also extremely nourishing. Not just any honey, though, and especially not the dollar store brand in a cute plastic teddy bear. Organic, raw honey is a good place to start. There are many options when it comes to the types of honey such as wildflower, Manuka, orange blossom and clover. Local honey & bee pollen have even been rumored to aid in allergy season, lightly exposing you to local allergens to build up antibodies. Raw honey has long been considered as a healing food, used in teas and medicines to heal sicknesses of the respiratory and digestive system. It’s anti-inflammatory and a major protection against oxidative stress on the body. Not only is honey sweet and delicious, but it’s healing. Honey can be a major, daily part of the optimal human diet.
The nutritional density of plant foods
Some people praise fruits & vegetables to be healers, others demonize them for having anti-nutrient contents. I, personally, think there is a healthy balance. It’s imperative to use our ancestral lens and understand that nature provides us with what we need when we need it. Plants are on this earth for a reason!
Fruit, for example, is sweet and colorful. It’s extremely pleasing to the human eye, delicious, and most types pack large amounts of vitamin C. Fruits tend to be high in sugar, but also high in fiber and water content to balance it out. Remember when I mentioned above water being a key nutrient for human thriving? Fruit holds a bunch of this. It is good to be careful with the quantity of fruit if you have blood sugar issues. However, in a balanced diet that also includes animal products, I believe you can have considerable quantities of fruit and thrive.
Believe it or not, a lot of things you may categorize as vegetables are actually fruits! You may already know that tomatoes and avocados are in the fruit family, but there are many more. All types of squashes, such as the butternut squash, acorn squash, zucchini and summer squash, and even pumpkins are classified as fruits. Peppers, olives, and cucumbers are a few others that may surprise you. Fruit is truly bountiful, and we should be prioritizing it in a healthy diet.
There are some vegetables that can also support a healthy diet. Root vegetables, such as sweet potatoes and carrots, are abundant with vitamins and starchy carbs, support digestion and simply make life better. In fact, raw carrots specifically contain significant healing properties that can actually benefit the average person of our current culture. They have the ability to bind and detox excess estrogen in the body. Coincidentally enough, the modern world’s cleaners and personal care products are loaded with xenoestrogens (chemicals that the body reads as synthetic estrogen). These can have a significant effect on your hormone balance. Being overweight or obese can also cause a surge of estrogen in the body, regardless of your gender. Raw carrots can help bring the body back into balance, being the top & only raw veggie I suggest consuming daily.
Fermented vegetables, such as kimchi, pickles, or sauerkraut are also great ways to intake vegetables with respect to history & health. The fermentation process does not only preserve foods, but breaks them down and infiltrates them with good bacteria. This method retains the nutrients already there AND adds in more key nutrients that aid in absorption and digestion. Fermented foods are also known to support a healthy gut microbiome.
I’m sure you’ve heard of someone’s grandmother cooking broccoli to mush or soaking kidney beans for days before cooking them. Though it’s not the most desirable, there is knowledge in this. Some vegetables & legumes are more foes than friends. In fact, many people are sensitive to raw vegetables, especially cruciferous ones such as broccoli, brussels or cauliflower. While they still have great vitamins and nutrients, it’s common knowledge that cruciferous veggies may cause digestive issues. They have high levels of insoluble fiber and can be hard to digest, ultimately leading to gut issues. For these foods to be a part of the optimal human diet, a degree of initial gut health is required. Remember that cooking them very well can save you the stomach drama.
While we’re on the subject, grains and legumes can be a part of a healthy diet, however it must be through an ancestral lens. Hunter-gatherers were not cracking open 3 year old canned black beans or eating 25 ingredient white breads daily. Grains and legumes were soaked in water or broth for hours if not days before cooking. Different types of grains like millet or spelt were freshly ground into flour to be mixed with water and fermented over days, months or years to make bread.
These methods are still valid and available to use even today. For example, soaking lentils, beans, or rice for a few hours to a day before cooking can allow for easier digestion and nutrient absorption. Sourdough bread is another great example of ancestral grain based food. It’s the most ancient way of fermenting dough to create yeast, rather than use fast rising yeast from a factory and adding in a bunch of preservatives. It’s a slow and rewarding process that produces a product that has less gluten, more probiotics and nutrients, and easier digestibility.
Another thing to look through the ancestral lens with is nuts and seeds. Say you’re in the wilderness, seeking a food source. If you find nuts, they do not come in a massive 5 pound bag covered in sugar and salt. Most of them have a hard shell that would take a lot of time to crack into to get the fruit out. It’s very unlikely that nuts were eaten in large amounts. In fact, some nuts such as the Brazil nut, should not be eaten in large quantities because it is so dense in Selenium it can cause toxicity. So, does this mean you can’t have nuts if you absolutely love them? Of course not! However, being modest with your consumption is probably a good thing.
It is also significant that while nuts contain healthy fats and protein, the majority of them are very high in lectins. Lectins are a protein that sticks to the intestinal lining associated with inflammation, leaky gut, metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance. Similar to legumes, you can soak nuts for better digestibility. There are also some nuts and seeds that are better than others (read more here), but either way, it is a good thing to keep your intake no bigger than a handful, or to soak them if you are using them in dishes.
The optimal human diet
Lets break down the 4 main pillars of the optimal human diet: eating nose to tail, honoring the animal & earth, eating seasonally, and using food as medicine.
Eating nose to tail.
There is no denying that animal foods are extremely nutrient dense. Prioritizing well-sourced muscle meat and organs as a main staple in your diet can support your healing. To honor the animal is not throwing away the bulk of what made it live, but using it to our best ability to support our nutrition.
You can use bones for broths and flavoring soups or stews. You can use bone marrow by roasting and salting it, providing yourself with a delicious source of healthy fats and vitamins. Animal fats are easily broken down into oils with heat and can be used for cooking or making homemade moisturizing products. You can find ancient and delicious recipes on how to include organs like liver, kidney or heart. You can ground any of those organs into a ground meat mix to up the nutrition in your meatballs or bolognese dishes. Eating nose to tail also encourages less waste and is a way to honor the animal fully.
Honoring the animal and honoring the earth.
Factory farms are far from glamorous and are a huge issue today, especially in America. Tribes across the world hunted wild game for survival, but they did not abuse their animals, force them into small and dirty places, or pump them full of hormones. While most of us are not hunting for our own food, we can still do our best to buy from ethical businesses. We do not need to support big food’s accepted animal abuse. It’s okay if not everyone who reads this will pray over their food or be grateful for the animal that provides it. However, it’s important that everyone looks to where their money goes and where their food comes from.
Just because meat is cheap does not mean it’s good. In fact, it’s probably not. The size of a chicken breast shouldn’t be as big as the grocery mart’s value pack, red meat shouldn’t be a light pink or tan color, and eggs shouldn’t be all the same bright white color with a pale yellow yolk. It is simply how nature truly is, and is only after one thing: money.
While it may be an investment to buy higher quality animal products, it’s worth the investment. It’s an investment not only for your health, but for the health of the planet and the honor of animals. We have dominion over the animals, but that does not mean we should be abusing and using them. Giving your money to companies that do this is allowing it to continue quietly. And if we’re honest, buying less from these companies (often being packaged and processed goods) is a way to save in this area as well. If you stick to buying high quality REAL food, you aren’t spending any extra money on boxed snacks and ready made dinners.
There are several ways to shop for ethically produced meat. In fact, simply avoiding the cheap meat section in the grocery store can be your first step. There are many ethical businesses online that send frozen meat right to your doorstep. Local farms are often willing to sell in bulk amounts with price cuts. You can find small shops that produce at their own speed and cost. Even simply talking to people at farmer’s markets to learn more about their farms can make you lasting connections that may provide you with food. America was built on the local farm, and we are now forgetting them due to convenience.
Aside from animals, honoring the earth is another thing that our society has lost focus of. Mass amounts of mono-crop corn, soy and wheat flood the country to produce cheap, pesticide laden products. This deteriorates our soil, air pollution and food quality. Inflammatory seed oils made from soybean, rapeseed or canola are pumped into almost every name-brand food in a box to make it cheaper. Unfortunately, these oils have a similar affect on our soil, air and bodies. Honoring the earth is not the average family’s cupboard full of boxed cereals, sticky granola bars and plastic bottle salad dressings.
There are also many ways to honor the earth in our daily life, even in this day and age. While things such as glass food storage or reusable water bottles can make a lasting impact, we’ll stay on the subject of nutrition. Eating fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds, and oils can indeed be a part of a healthy diet. However, they can also be detrimental to your health if they are laden with pesticides and mass produced. Supporting your local farmer, growing your own food, buying organic, buying from small shops rather than large grocery, making things from scratch, reading ingredient labels and finding smaller businesses to support can all be ways to honor the earth.
Eating seasonally.
Eating seasonal provides your body with what it needs in that specific climate. Food is a signal to the body that communicates many things, not just hunger and fullness. Creation is intricate in every aspect, including the times that certain plants are in season. Tomatoes, watermelon and peaches are juicy and sweet fruits that are extremely hydrating, and they happen reach their peak season mid summer. Citrus fruits, pomegranates, pears and apples reach their peak in the cooler weather, when many of us happen to need more vitamin C support. Pumpkins and potatoes come out in the fall weather when it begins to cool down, many of their dishes being warm and satiating. This is no mistake, this is how nature intends.
And no, this doesn’t mean you have to ONLY eat seasonally. We are in a modern society that functions differently, so you will not die eating a food that isn’t grown locally or in season. However, this is a good motivation to shop locally, learn about when foods are in season, and incorporate them as often as possible. It’s a beautiful thing that we are provided with the things we need, when we need them. It helps us appreciate the earth more and support our many bodily systems. Fruits & vegetables that are out of season can still be nourishing, of course. However, it is an easy way to optimal health when you make a habit to regularly eat with the seasons.
Using food as a means to heal and nourish.
When you look at America, it’s easy to see sickness, obesity, and disease on the rise. Many times, we resort to discussing how food is killing people. While over-processed, under-nourishing foods are absolutely dangerous to health, and it is obviously possible to be under-nourished & over fed, we can find power in this. Not because people are sick, but because the opposite is true too: while food has the power to destroy, it also has the power to heal.
If you want to reach optimal health, your focus needs to shift to healing. Your mind sends signals all over the body and can affect just about every part of your health. It’s imperative to see and use foods as a means to heal and nourish. Constant worry about health issues, identifying with diseases and diagnoses, or losing hope for humanity are all things that will not help your health, regardless of your diet. Reverse your psychology to be thankful that the earth and animals have the capacity to provide you with everything you need.
When you see food as a means to nourish, you don’t have to worry about restricting or missing out. You focus on giving your body what it requires in each moment. You’re in tune with the signals your body gives you after eating foods. There may be times you need to nourish with plants, or animals, or even sweet pleasure foods. You don’t have to be neurotic and stressed about your diet when you know you’re adding nourishing and delicious foods that you love. It is possible to have an array of options in the diet, thrive and enjoy your life without living off of empty foods. Your mindset shouldn’t be one of missing out, but one of abundance.
When you learn of the many foods that have healing properties & look back to see all of the beautiful patterns in history, you have a new appreciation for it. When you see that Creation provides you everything you need, you can have a mind of abundance and gratitude. REAL food allows you to live rather than to deteriorate. It is all a gift that you should steward well with acknowledgement and appreciation of it’s strength.
While I could go one forever about the many foods and I enjoy and thrive on, I’ve made it much easier for you. Head over to my nutrition resources tab to learn how to shop ethically for quality animal & plant foods, find great brands with the above values, learn tips on how to prepare nourishing meals, and more. If you’ve recently added any foods to your diet that make you feel fantastic, please share in the comments!
Much love, see ya next blog.
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