Many traditional diets are healthy, if you follow the entire diet! So if you want to eat like the Maasai, their diet is raw beef, blood, and fermented cow milk. That’s it. No fruits, no vegetables, no grains. Siberians don’t eat vegetables or fruits. The Inuit traditional diet is primarily seal meat and lots of seal fat. Are they actually healthy? Yes. Are you willing to eat like that? Probably not!
On the other end, we have the traditional Guatemalan diet which is very high in corn, low in protein and low in vegetables. Or the typical Filipino diet that is high in refined carbohydrates. The Guatemalan peasants were stunted due to lack of proteins, being oppressed in a colonial situation. They are still dealing with a lack of enough nutritious food. When the Filipinos got enough money to spend on more food after WWII, they immediately started eating larger amounts of fatty meats and white rice. At this point they have a pandemic of diabetes. These “traditional” diets are actually not healthy.
Just because something is “traditional” does not mean it is healthy. And sometimes, a healthy very traditional diet like the Maasai or Inuit is not something that we can deal with. However, there are general principles that the traditional diets offer us that are quite helpful. I encourage people to think back to what their grandparents or great-grandparents ate, if they were not enmeshed in poverty. The grandmothers cooked with mostly local, seasonal foods, mostly not processed. They used very small amounts of sugar, and sweets were for very special occasions, not every day. Bread was hearty, spread with real butter. Meat was from local farmers. Or there were other sources of protein such as soy or peanuts, and good, hulled but otherwise unprocessed, rice and other grains. There was generally some kind of fermented food.
I don’t know about you, I am not particularly interested in returning to the labor-intensive times that my great-grandmother dealt with in the Texas outback. Yes, buying food at the farmer’s markets is a great thing. But what about the rest of what we need? I find Jo Robinson’s approach very helpful. (Eating On the Wild Side) She says if we pay attention, much of what we want by way of healthy food can be found in a regular supermarket. She explains how to know which apples are better for you, along with onions, and a host of other foods we can find in a good sized supermarket.
Clearly we need way less sugar than we think we need, and less of the other white stuff that also causes diabetes: white flour, bread, and pasta. We’re going to be buying less processed food. You want to find “clean” meat, if you’re going to eat meat. If you can’t get grass-fed meat at your supermarket, it is going to take some searching, and perhaps coordinating, but you can find it, everything is online! Unless you are vegan or vegetarian, you need to find a good source of meat.
It can be quite instructive to look at your ancestor’s foods, look at what appeals and does not, check out whether they are a healthy alternative for you or not, and perhaps try some or all of those foods.
Of particular interest in this discussion are the Pima Indians on the border of US/Mexico. An important study detailed what happened with their dietary changes. Before 1539, when the Spanish first made contact, the Pimas lived on an agricultural diet of beans, corn and squash, with wild fish, game meat and plants. As with most native people, they were lean and healthy while on their traditional diet. After 40 years of famine because the white settlers diverted the water source, Uncle Sam stepped in and gave them food: white flour, sugar, partially hydrogenated lard, and canned goods. They promptly became diabetic and overweight, and have remained that way ever since. Their cousins further down in Mexico are still healthy.
When I went on a tour to Tanzania, I did research on what foods were eaten there, both traditionally and now, especially “hotel” foods. What I found was that “hotel breakfast” was the worst offender, with American-style pancakes, white breads, muffins and tropical fruits, and eggs. The same was true when I was in Thailand. However, I asked the guide in Thailand if the traditional Thai breakfast of jook (rice porridge with chicken and/or fish) would also be available. After he finished being astonished that I knew what jook was, he assured me that yes, it would always be available, and it was. In Tanzania, the cook in the outback made me the traditional GF breadstuff that reminded me of authentic Southern corn pone, and I was very happy. Neither of these foods come from my own ancestry, but they are basic, very unprocessed foods, and quite tasty!
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