Guts and Grease: The Diet of Native
Americans
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Written
by Sally Fallon Morell and Mary Enig
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The
hunter-gatherer's dinner is front page news these days. Drawing from the
writings of Dr. Boyd Eaton and Professor Loren Cordain, experts in the
so-called Paleolithic diet, columnists and reporters are spreading the word
about the health benefits of a diet rich in protein and high in fiber from a
variety of plant foods 1,2. It's actually amusing to see what the
modern food pundits come up with as examples of the "Paleolithic
Prescription." Jean Carper offers a Stone Age Salad of mixed greens,
garbanzo beans, skinless chicken breast, walnuts and fresh herbs, mixed with
a dressing made of orange juice, balsamic vinegar and canola oil.3
Elizabeth Somer suggests wholewheat waffles with fat-free cream cheese,
coleslaw with nonfat dressing, grilled halibut with spinach, grilled tofu and
vegetables over rice, nonfat milk, canned apricots and mineral water, along
with prawns and clams. Her Stone Age food pyramid includes plenty of plant
foods, extra lean meat and fish, nonfat milk products, and honey and eggs in
small amounts.4
Above
all, the food writers tell us, avoid fats, especially saturated fats. The
hunter-gatherer's diet was highly politically correct, they say, rich in
polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fatty acids but relatively low in overall
fat and very low in that dietary villain-saturated fat. This is the one
dietary factor that health officials tell us is responsible for all the
health problems that plague us-everything from cancer and heart disease to
obesity and MS.
Remarkable Health
That
the hunter-gatherer was healthy there is no doubt. Weston Price noted an
almost complete absence of tooth decay and dental deformities among native
Americans who lived as their ancestors did.5 They had broad faces, straight
teeth and fine physiques. This was true of the nomadic tribes living in the
far northern territories of British Columbia and the Yukon, as well as the
wary inhabitants of the Florida Everglades, who were finally coaxed into
allowing him to take photographs. Skeletal remains of the Indians of
Vancouver that Price studied were similar, showing a virtual absence of tooth
decay, arthritis and any other kind of bone deformity. TB was nonexistent
among Indians who ate as their ancestors had done, and the women gave birth
with ease.
Price
interviewed the beloved Dr. Romig in Alaska who stated "that in his
thirty-six years of contact with these people he had never seen a case of malignant
disease among the truly primitive Eskimos and Indians, although it frequently
occurs when they become modernized. He found, similarly, that the acute
surgical problems requiring operation on internal organs, such as the gall
bladder, kidney, stomach and appendix, do not tend to occur among the
primitives but are very common problems among the modernized Eskimos and
Indians. Growing out of his experience in which he had seen large numbers of
the modernized Eskimos and Indians attacked with tuberculosis, which tended
to be progressive and ultimately fatal as long as the patients stayed under
modernized living conditions, he now sends them back when possible to
primitive conditions and to a primitive diet, under which the death rate is
very much lower than under modernized conditions. Indeed, he reported that a
great majority of the afflicted recover under the primitive type of living
and nutrition."6
The
early explorers consistently described the native Americans as tall and well
formed. Of the Indians of Texas, the explorer Cabeza de Vaca wrote, "The
men could run after a deer for an entire day without resting and without
apparent fatigue. . . one man near seven feet in stature. . . runs down a
buffalo on foot and slays it with his knife or lance, as he runs by its
side."7 The Indians were difficult to kill. De Vaca reports
on an Indian "traversed by an arrow. . . he does not die but recovers
from his wound." The Karakawas, a tribe that lived near the Gulf Coast,
were tall, well-built and muscular. "The men went stark naked, the lower
lip and nipple pierced, covered in alligator grease [to ward off mosquitoes],
happy and generous, with amazing physical prowess. . . they go naked in the
most burning sun, in winter they go out in early dawn to take a bath, breaking
the ice with their body."
Greasy and Good
What
kind of foods produced such fine physical specimens? The diets of the
American Indians varied with the locality and climate but all were based on
animal foods of every type and description, not only large game like deer,
buffalo, wild sheep and goat, antelope, moose, elk, caribou, bear and
peccary, but also small animals such as beaver, rabbit, squirrel, skunk,
muskrat and raccoon; reptiles including snakes, lizards, turtles, and
alligators; fish and shellfish; wild birds including ducks and geese; sea
mammals (for Indians living in coastal areas); insects including locust,
spiders and lice; and dogs. (Wolves and coyotes were avoided because of
religious taboos)8.
According
to Dr. Eaton, these foods supplied plenty of protein but only small amounts
of total fat; and this fat was high in polyunsaturated fatty acids and low in
saturated fats. The fat of wild game, according to Eaton, is about 38 percent
saturated, 32 percent monounsaturated and 30 percent polyunsaturated.9
This prescription may be just fine for those who want to promote vegetable
oils, but it does not jibe with fat content of wild animals in the real
world. The table below lists fat content in various tissues of a number of
wild animals found in the diets of American Indians. Note that only squirrel
fat contains levels of polyunsaturated fatty acids that Eaton claims are
typical for wild game. In a continent noted for the richness and variety of
its animal life, it is unlikely that squirrels would have supplied more than
a tiny fraction of total calories. Seal fat, consumed by coastal Indians,
ranges from 14 to 24 percent polyunsaturated. The fat of all the other
animals that the Indians hunted and ate contained less than 10 percent polyunsaturated
fatty acids, some less than 2 percent. Most prized was the internal kidney
fat of ruminant animals, which can be as high as 65 percent saturated.
Sources
of Fat for the American Indian10
Politically
correct paleodieters also ignore the fact that the Indians hunted animals
selectively. The explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who spend many years with
the Indians, noted that they preferred "the flesh of older animals to
that of calves, yearlings and two-year olds. . . It is approximately so with
those northern forest Indians with whom I have hunted, and probably with all
caribou-eaters." The Indians preferred the older animals because they
had built up a thick slab of fat along the back. In an animal of 1000 pounds,
this slab could weigh 40 to 50 pounds. Another 20-30 pounds of highly
saturated fat could be removed from the cavity. This fat was saved, sometimes
by rendering, stored in the bladder or large intestine, and consumed with
dried or smoked lean meat. Used in this way, fat contributed almost 80
percent of total calories in the diets of the northern Indians.11
Beaver
was highly prized, especially the tail because it was rich in fat. But small
animals like rabbit and squirrel were eaten only when nothing else was
available because, according to Stefansson, they were so low in fat. In fact,
small animals called for special preparation. The meat was removed from the
bones, roasted and pounded. The bones were dried and ground into a powder.
Then the bones were mixed with the meat and any available grease, a procedure
that would greatly lower the percentage of polyunsaturated fatty acids, while
raising the total content of saturated fat.12 When a scarcity of
game forced the Indians to consume only small animals like rabbits, they
suffered from "rabbit starvation."
"The
groups that depend on the blubber animals are the most fortunate, in the
hunting way of life, for they never suffer from fat-hunger. This trouble is
worst, so far as North America is concerned, among those forest Indians who
depend at times on rabbits, the leanest animal in the North, and who develop the
extreme fat-hunger known as rabbit-starvation. Rabbit eaters, if they have no
fat from another source-beaver, moose, fish-will develop diarrhoea in about a
week, with headache, lassitude and vague discomfort. If there are enough
rabbits, the people eat till their stomachs are distended; but no matter how
much they eat they feel unsatisfied. Some think a man will die sooner if he
eats continually of fat-free meat than if he eats nothing, but this is a
belief on which sufficient evidence for a decision has not been gathered in
the North. Deaths from rabbit-starvation, or from the eating of other skinny
meat, are rare; for everyone understands the principle, and any possible
preventive steps are naturally taken."13
The Whole Animal
Ruminant
animals, such as moose, elk, caribou, deer, antelope and, of course, buffalo
were the mainstay of the Amerindian diet, just as beef is the mainstay of the
modern American diet. The difference is that the whole animal was eaten, not
just the muscle meats.
Beverly
Hungry Wolf describes the preparation and consumption of a cow in The Ways
of My Grandmothers, noting that her grandmother prepared the cow "as
she had learned to prepare buffalo when she was young." The large pieces
of fat from the back and cavity were removed and rendered. The lean meat was
cut into strips and dried or roasted, pounded up with berries and mixed with
fat to make pemmican. Most of the ribs were smoked and stored for later use14.
All
the excess fat inside the body was hung up so the moisture would dry out of
it, recalls Beverly Hungry Wolf. It was later served with dried meat. Some
fats in the animal were rendered into "lard" instead of dried.
All
the insides, such as heart, kidneys and liver, were prepared and eaten,
roasted or baked or laid out in the sun to dry. The lungs were not cooked,
just sliced and hung up to dry. Intestines were also dried. Sapotsis
or Crow gut is a Blackfoot delicacy made from the main intestine which is
stuffed with meat and roasted over coals. Tripe was prepared and eaten raw or
boiled or roasted. The brains were eaten raw. If the animal was a female,
they would prepare the teats or udders by boiling or barbecuing-these were
never eaten raw. If the animal carried an unborn young, this was fed to the
older people because it was so tender. The guts of the unborn would be taken
out and braided, then boiled too. The tongue was always boiled if it wasn't
dried. "Even old animals have tender tongues," she recalls.
The
hooves were boiled down until all the gristle in them was soft. The blood was
also saved, often mixed with flour or used to make sausages in the guts.
The
second stomach was washed well and eaten raw, but certain parts were usually
boiled or roasted and the rest dried. "Another delicacy is at the very
end of the intestines—the last part of the colon. You wash this real good and
tie one end shut. Then you stuff the piece with dried berries and a little
water and you tie the other end shut. You boil this all day, until it is
really tender and you have a Blackfoot Pudding."
According
to John (Fire) Lame Deer, the eating of guts had evolved into a contest.
"In the old days we used to eat the guts of the buffalo, making a
contest of it, two fellows getting hold of a long piece of intestines from opposite
ends, starting chewing toward the middle, seeing who can get there first;
that’s eating. Those buffalo guts, full of half-fermented, half-digested
grass and herbs, you didn’t need any pills and vitamins when you swallowed
those."15
The
marrow was full of fat and was usually eaten raw. The Indians knew how to
strike the femur bone so that it would split open and reveal the delicate
interior flesh. Eaton and others report that the marrow is rich in
polyunsaturated fatty acids but Stefansson describes two types of marrow, one
type from the lower leg which is soft "more like a particularly
delicious cream in flavor" and another from the humerus and femur that
is "hard and tallowy at room temperatures."16 According
to Beverly Hungry Wolf, the grease inside the bones "was scooped out and
saved or the bones boiled and the fat skimmed off and saved. It turned into
something like hard lard." More saturated fat the professors have
overlooked!
Samuel
Hearne, an explorer writing in 1768, describes the preparation of caribou:
"Of all the dishes cooked by the Indians, a beeatee, as it is
called in their language, is certainly the most delicious that can be
prepared from caribou only, without any other ingredient. It is a kind of
haggis, made with the blood, a good quantity of fat shred small, some of the
tenderest of the flesh, together with the heart and lungs cut, or more
commonly torn into small shivers; all of which is put into the stomach and
toasted by being suspended before the fire on a string. . . . it is certainly
a most delicious morsel, even without pepper, salt or any other
seasoning."17
Sometimes
the Indians selected only the fatty parts of the animal, throwing the rest
away. "On the twenty-second of July," writes Samuel Hearne,
"we met several strangers, whom we joined in pursuit of the caribou,
which were at this time so plentiful that we got everyday a sufficient number
for our support, and indeed too frequently killed several merely for the
tongues, marrow and fat."
Certain
parts of the animal were considered appropriate for men or women. The male
organs were for the men, as well as the ribs towards the front, which were
called "the shoulder ribs, or the boss ribs. They are considered a man’s
special meal." For women, a part of the "intestine that is quite
large and full of manure
. . . the thicker part has a kind of hard lining on the inside. My grandmother said that this part is good for a pregnant mother to eat; she said it will make the baby have a nice round head. Pregnant mothers were not allowed to eat any other parts of the intestine because their faces would become discolored."18
Sacred Foods
All
of the foods considered important for reproduction and all of the foods
considered sacred were animal foods, rich in fat. According to Beverly Hungry
Wolf, pemmican made with berries "was used by the Horns Society for
their sacred meal of communion." Boiled tongue was an ancient delicacy,
served as the food of communion at the Sun Dance. A blood soup, made from a
mixture of blood and corn flour cooked in broth, was used as a sacred meal
during the nighttime Holy Smoke ceremonies.19
Bear
was another sacred food-altars of bear bones have been found at many
Paleolithic sites. Cabeza de Vaca reports that the Indians of Texas kept the
skin of the bear and ate the fat, but threw the rest away. Other groups ate
the entire animal, including the head, but recognized the fat as the most
valuable part. According to colonist William Byrd II, writing in 1728,
"The flesh of bear hath a good relish, very savory and inclining nearest
to that of Pork. The Fat of this Creature is least apt to rise in the Stomach
of any other. The Men for the most part chose it rather than Venison."
Bear grease was thought to give them resistance by making them physically
strong. "We eat it sometimes now and everybody feels better."20
Bear
was also considered an important food for reproduction. When Byrd asked an
Indian why their squaws were always able to bare children, the Indian replied
that "if any Indian woman did not prove with child at a decent time
after Marriage, the Husband, to save his Reputation with the women, forthwith
entered into a Bear-dyet for Six Weeks, which in that time makes him so
vigorous that he grows exceedingly impertinent to his poor wife and 'tis
great odds but he makes her a Mother in Nine Months."
Fat-Soluble Nutrients
Indians
living in coastal areas consumed large amounts of fish, including the heads
and roe. Price reported that in the area of Vancouver, the candle fish was
collected in large quantities, the oil removed and used as a dressing for
many seafoods. Shell fish were eaten in large amounts when available.
Animal
fats, organ meats and fatty fish all supply fat-soluble vitamins A and D,
which Weston Price recognized as the basis of healthy primitive diets. These
nutrients are catalysts to the assimilation of protein and minerals. Without
them minerals go to waste and the body cannot be built tall and strong. When
tribes have access to an abundance of fat soluble vitamins, the offspring
will grow up with "nice round heads," broad faces and straight
teeth.
Certain
fatty glands of game animals also provided vitamin C during the long winter
season in the North. The Indians of Canada revealed to Dr. Price that the
adrenal glands in the moose prevented scurvy. When an animal was killed, the
adrenal gland and its fat were cut up and shared with all members of the
tribe. The walls of the second stomach were also eaten to prevent "the
white man's disease."
Plant Foods
A
variety of plant foods were used throughout the North American continents,
notably corn (in the temperate regions) and wild rice (in the Great Lakes
region). Dry corn was first soaked in lime water (water in which calcium
carbonate or calcium oxide is dissolved), a process called nixtamalizacion
that softens the corn for use and releases vitamin B3, which otherwise
remains bound in the grain. The resulting dough, called nixtamal or masa, can
be prepared in a variety of ways to make porridges and breads. Often these
preparations were then fried in bear grease or other fat. Many groups grew
beans and enjoyed them as "succotash," a dish comprised of beans,
corn, dog meat and bear fat. As an adjunct to the diet, corn provided variety
and important calories. But when the proportion of corn in the diet became too
high, as happened in the American Southwest, the health of the people
suffered. Skeletal remains of groups subsisting largely on corn reveal
widespread tooth decay and bone problems.21
Tubers
like the Jerusalem artichoke (the root of a type of sunflower) were cooked
slowly for a long time in underground pits until the hard indigestible root
was transformed into a highly digestible gelatinous mass. Wild onions were
used to flavor meat dishes and, in fact, were an important item of commerce.
Nuts like acorns were made into gruel or little cakes after careful
preparation to remove tannins. In the Southeast, pecans contributed important
fat calories. In the southern areas, cactus was consumed; in northern areas
wild potatoes.
Staples
like corn and beans were stored in underground pits, ingeniously covered with
logs and leaves to prevent wild animals from finding or looting the stores.
Birch bark was used to make trays, buckets and containers, including kettles.
Water was boiled by putting hot rocks into the containers. Southern Indians
used clay pots for the same purpose.
In
general, fruits were dried and used to season fat, fish and meat-dried
blueberries were used to flavor moose fat, for example. Beverly Hungry Wolf
recalls that her grandmother mixed wild mint with fat and dried meat, which
was then stored in rawhide containers. The mint would keep the bugs out and
also prevent the fat from spoiling.
The
Indians enjoyed sweet-tasting foods. Maple sugar or pine sugar was used to
sweeten meats and fats. In the Southwest, the Indians chewed the sweet heart
of the agave plant. In fact, the Spanish noted that where agave grew, the
Indians had bad teeth.22
Fermented Foods
Use
of sour-tasting fermented foods was widespread. The Cherokee
"bread" consisted of nixtamal wrapped in corn leaves and
allowed to ferment for two weeks.23 Manzanita berries and other
plant foods were also fermented.
The
Indians also enjoyed fermented, gamey animal foods. The Coahuiltecans, living
in the inland brush country of south Texas set fish aside for eight days
"until larvae and other insects had developed in the rotting flesh.24
They were then consumed as an epicure's delight, along with the rotten
fish." Samuel Hearne describes a fermented dish consumed by the
Chippewaya and Cree: "The most remarkable dish among them. . . is blood
mixed with the half-digested food which is found in the caribou's stomach,
and boiled up with a sufficient quantity of water to make it of the
consistence of pease-pottage. Some fat and scraps of tender flesh are also
shred small and boiled with it. To render this dish more palatable, they have
a method of mixing the blood with the contents of the stomach in the paunch
itself, and hanging it up in the heat and smoke of the fire for several days;
which puts the whole mass into a state of fermentation, which gives it such
an agreeable acid taste, that were it not for prejudice, it might be eaten by
those who have the nicest palates."25
A
number of reports indicate that broth and herbed beverages were preferred to
water. The Chippewa boiled water and added leaves or twigs before drinking
it.26 Sassafras was a favorite ingredient in teas and medicinal
drinks.27 Broth was flavored and thickened with corn silk and
dried pumpkin blossom. California Indians added lemonade berries to water to
make a pleasantly sour drink.28 Another sour drink was produced
from fermented corn porridge.29 In the Southwest, a drink called
chichi is made with little balls of corn dough which the women impregnate
with saliva by chewing. They are added to water to produce a delicious, sour,
fizzy fermented drink.30
Guts and Grease in a Glass
Modern
food writers who assure us we can enjoy the superb health of the American
Indian by eating low fat foods and canned fruits have done the public a great
disservice. The basis of the Indian diet was guts and grease, not waffles and
skimmed milk. When the Indians abandoned these traditional foods and began
consuming processed store-bought foods, their health deteriorated rapidly.
Weston Price vividly described the suffering from tooth decay, tuberculosis,
arthritis and other problems that plagued the modernized Indian groups he
visited throughout America and Canada.
Modern
man has lost his taste for the kinds of foods the Indians ate—how many
American children will eat raw liver, dried lung or sour porridge? How then
can we return to the kind of good health the Indians enjoyed?
Price
found only one group of modernized Indians that did not suffer from caries.
These were students at the Mohawk Institute near the city of Brantford.
"The Institute maintained a fine dairy herd and provided fresh
vegetables, whole wheat bread and limited the sugar and white flour."31
So the formula for good health in the modern age begins with the products of
"a fine dairy herd"—whole, raw, unprocessed milk from cows that eat
green grass, a highly nutritious substitute for guts and grease and one that
every child can enjoy, even native American children who are supposedly
lactose intolerant. Add some good fats (butter, tallow and lard), aim for
liver or other organ meats once a week (but don’t fret if you can’t achieve
this with your own children), make cod liver oil part of the daily routine,
eat plenty of meat and seafood, and augment the diet with a variety of plant
foods properly prepared, including a few that are fermented. Keep sugar and
white flour to a minimum. It's a simple formula that can turn a nation of
hungry little wolves into happy campers.
Meanwhile,
be skeptical of government guidelines. The Indians learned not to trust our
government and neither should you.
The
authors are grateful to Don Coté for his help with this article.
Sidebar
Native Americans and Diabetes
American
Indians know all too well the havoc that Type II Diabetes can wreak on the
human body. What they may not know is that Uncle Sam is to blame.
Thousands
of American Indians depend on the Food Distribution Program on Indian
Reservations (FDPIR). What do participants receive? It should come as no
surprise that the commodities are loaded with carbohydrates with very little
protein on the menu and even less fat. And the fats Indians do receive are
loaded with trans fats. These foods are cheap and the multinational giants
that produce them are equipped with lawyers and lobbyists to ensure that
their products are the ones our government buys. The federal government feeds
53 million people per day. Is it any wonder they're out to cut costs,
whatever the consequences to our health?
Even
in light of the latest research on the ill effect of excess carbohydrates on the
human body, federal agencies have no choice. The National Nutrition
Monitoring and Related Research Act of 1990, also known as Public Law
101-445, states that all federal agencies shall promote the current US
Dietary Recommendations in carrying out any federal food, nutrition or health
program. The USDA Food Pyramid is more than a recommendation; it's a federal
prescription written in stone. And it's speeding the death of most if not all
Americans.
The
Indians are hit harder and faster than the rest of us because they are only
two generations away from the "old way" of life, based on game
animals and fish. Uncle Sam will never admit that the Indians were tall, lean
and healthy just two generations ago. If ever someone wanted proof that
humans weren't designed to eat a grain-based diet, look at the American
Indian population-almost all of them are battling overweight, diabetes, and
heart disease. Addictions are common. Yet many Indians have vivid memories of
life before federal handouts, a time when diabetes and other diseases of
civilization were unheard of among the Indians.
The
US government has failed miserably when it comes to treating its native
peoples. But without a change in US law, Indians will continue to receive a
recipe for death. One possible remedy is the Tribal Self-Governance Project,
created by Congress in 1988, which allows tribal governments more flexibility
in the decision-making and administration of their contracted programs.
Indians must take a stand and demand that government subsidies reflect their
native diet. Better yet, Indians who can should refuse their "gift"
from the government and return to hunting and fishing-the only way to reclaim
their health.
Michael
Eades, MD
Drs. Michael and Mary Dan Eades are the authors of Protein Power Lifeplan (Warner, 2000)
References
This
article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts,
the quarterly magazine of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Spring 2001.
Comments
(15)
"Debates about the
genetic origins of health disparities raise one last question. Empowered by
the Human Genome Project, researchers hope to find genes for every disease
and disparity. However, as more and more genetic links are proposed for
American Indian ill health, the overall argument becomes harder to sustain.
Disparities among American Indians have existed whether the prevailing
diseases were acute infections (e.g., smallpox and measles), chronic
infections (e.g., tuberculosis), or the endemic ailments of modern society
(e.g., heart disease, diabetes, alcoholism, and depression). Recent trends
suggest that disparities in cancer might also emerge. Is it conceivable that
American Indians have genetic vulnerabilities to every class of human
disease?
The Persistence of American Indian Health Disparities David S. Jones, MD, PhD" -If the Native American diet was so healthy why did they die off? New epigenetic research now places less determinism on genetics (maybe 10%, certainly not the 90-95% die off of Native Americans.) The whites came from a history where the plow was abused to such an extent that whole civilizations collapsed. I believe the Native Americans in a similar manner abused the use of fire. Their food system was predicated on it: multiple burnings a growing season. The soil ecology after fire supports a pioneer ecology. Nutritionally speaking, the Native Americans were existing off the vapors of the land. Mineral and microbiological accumulation was limited to the few months between burning. I would agree their diet had great potential but not under Native American agricultural / fire practices. Luke Pryjma
"Debates about the
genetic origins of health disparities raise one last question. Empowered by
the Human Genome Project, researchers hope to find genes for every disease
and disparity. However, as more and more genetic links are proposed for
American Indian ill health, the overall argument becomes harder to sustain.
Disparities among American Indians have existed whether the prevailing
diseases were acute infections (e.g., smallpox and measles), chronic
infections (e.g., tuberculosis), or the endemic ailments of modern society
(e.g., heart disease, diabetes, alcoholism, and depression). Recent trends
suggest that disparities in cancer might also emerge. Is it conceivable that
American Indians have genetic vulnerabilities to every class of human
disease?
The Persistence of American Indian Health Disparities David S. Jones, MD, PhD" -If the Native American diet was so healthy why did they die off? New epigenetic research now places less determinism on genetics (maybe 10%, certainly not the 90-95% die off of Native Americans.) The whites came from a history where the plow was abused to such an extent that whole civilizations collapsed. I believe the Native Americans in a similar manner abused the use of fire. Their food system was predicated on it: multiple burnings a growing season. The soil ecology after fire supports a pioneer ecology. Nutritionally speaking, the Native Americans were existing off the vapors of the land. Mineral and microbiological accumulation was limited to the few months between burning. I would agree their diet had great potential but not under Native American agricultural / fire practices. Luke Pryjma
HI, I am half native from
my material side. I grew up in western NY around the Seneca Nation. I grew up
a lot with my grandparents and ate a diet high in wild game and my gram grew
all her veggies. We ate pretty traditionally when it came to wild game. I suffer
now from Fibromyalgia and a host of other joint related disease. I was a very
healthy child living with my grandparents as we ate venison, wild turkeys,
rabbit, elk, wild birds, a lot of fresh caught trout and bass etc. If it was
wild game we hunted and ate it. Then all our veggies came from my grams
garden which contained a lot of corn, green veggies, tomatoes, some potatoes
etc. I am finding at almost 43 that I do not eat very much anymore. All I
crave wild game, anything I can get my hands on. I am planning on hunting
next year. I feel I am literally starving. I get extremely sick eating meat
from the grocery stores, I can't drink milk anymore as I grew up on farm
fresh milk that was straight from the cow, not processed in any way. Oh how I
miss the taste of the green grass in my milk and scooping the cream off the
top for my oatmeal in the morning. We did not have processed foods as we put
up veggies from the garden for winter and we always hunted and fished year
round. I live in British Columbia now and am around a lot of Natives who come
from eating Salmon and other ocean type foods with the occasional bear meat,
caribo, elk and moose mixed in the diet. Unless I hunt it's hard to get a
hold of the game meats. If anyone has any Ideas or lives in the Vancouver
area and has meat for sale or to give away please let me know. I seriously
eat like a mouse and have lost 8 pant sizes due to not being able to have a
diet I can actually eat without feeling sick. It would be amazing if people
would get together and maybe make a recipe book from how we used to eat in
the past it would be fantastic, if anyone knows where I can get game meats in
this area you would be my hero. I don't know what to do anymore and I
basically eat to survive, take a lot of vitamins due to the lack of my diet
being of what my body can stomach. I am tired of getting sick all the time
with flu's and colds as well and I would give anything to sit down and eat a
real meal more often than when I am invited to a Native gathering in the lower
mainland. I am culturally starved... literally. (No I have no eating disorder
and my Doctor agrees with me on having grown up on a diet consisting of game
meats and a lot of fresh veggies and fruits off the tree that many studies
such as this one has been published stating that people like us do get sick
from not having our ancestrial diet. We have racking our heads on what to do
to for me to find some where to get a hold of more of the foods my body
needs. So again even my Doctor agrees with the diets from just a few
generations ago and that some people cannot function or be healthy on a diet
from food from a store)
At mel id love to get
some basic food info from you . Im blackfeet with half Aztec children i grew
up with Italia adopted family i want to help fix the damage of white man on
my children and my health . My kids cant sromach the dairy and farmed animal
meat . My daughter has a bone infection and tissue damage in her hands and
shes only 7 been living with it for years . I'm so blessed to have seen your
post and found this forum .my email is cglidden82@aol.com any
guidence would be a blessing . I'm just trying to find my place among my ppl
and guide my children .
Is the boiled caribou
stomach a "cooked" food or fermented?
How was wild rice prepared and cooked?
I find all this information really interesting and useful. But I
do wonder what effects things like blood types have. I am AB and supposedly
do better on veggie diets.
If you look at diets followed by say the Chinese - they are cooked vegetables, rice, fermented foods, fruits, and meat occasionally - it seems that different diets can achieve similar results in different body types. I've tried raw milk and meats - no carbs or low carbs - and I definitely felt some interesting sensations in my body: warmth in my gut, more balanced energy... but I have a hard time digesting raw milk, raw eggs, and even some meats - I find an easier time digestion wise on cooked vegetables and grains. There too my energy level seems a bit more balanced, but I can't say that I am able to generate the internal warmth that a meal of raw meat induced in me. I support all diets that pull from traditional foods, raw foods, unprocessed and unadulterated foods - I know that healing exists in them. I think it's just tweaking until you find the right balance for you. Thank you Sally Fallon for your courage.
In my opinion this is a
dangerous message to put out there, with the western worlds sedentary
lifestyle, saturated fat is a bad fat. Wild game is made up of lean protein
vs. the fat grain fed domesticated animals of today. The saturated fat
consumed by the Indians would have been burned off rather quickly due to
their active lifestyles.
Running Bull
who is still eating like
this, preparing food like this??? where can we learn it? whatever it takes! i
am starved for real food, man!
Dear Sally and Mary;
Thank you for your wonderful work. Every Native American should be reminded over and over again how great they once were and encourage them to look to their history to regain the health that once was as natural as the air. We could all benefit greatly from the Native American diet of our ancestors. I know I have since I made a decision to eliminate everything that was processed, genetically modified and chimically ladened. It has been a difficult journey at times but I posesses great health compared to my siblings who have shunned the idea that processed food is killing us. Thanks once again for a great article. Olivia Beauford
I'm a full WestonApricer,
one of my biggest problems is to get rid of the frige, vermenting I beleve
was dune at the rite time to extend the food but finding info on prosesing
animals and fermenting them the traditional way is very hard, they always
want to add sodium and salt. How to hang the fats and meat not to get flie
strike? this stuff is hard to find.
Is there a book on this?
Dear friends,
I have no words to thank you enough for the wonderful job you are doing. I am a 34 years old male from Madrid, Spain, who has been following this type of low (sometimes zero) carbs diet for a couple of years. My weight is rougly 150 pounds while my height is 6'2", and I can assure you that I do not deprive myself of food and eat more than 2,500-3,000 cal per day. Also, I´d like to bring to your attention the impact that this style has had on my mood and brain. I suffered in the past from a mild OCD and now, with the avoidance of carbs coupled with a regular supply of aminoacids AND saturated fats (find in eggs, meat, butter and cheese), my symptons have gone. Finally, I fully agree with your critics against Cordain (whose book I´ve read) and the myth of mediterranean diets (having lived in Spain and Greece I can attest the fallcy of that), who emphasize the comsuption of mono/polisaturated fats / oils and recommend the complete avoidance of sat fats (big error). Again, many thanks for your excellent contributions and best regards from Madrid.
·
My mother was pregnant
with me and followed a traditional Native American diet while my father chose
not to. I was born with more than enough room for all of my teeth, and with
them very straight. I did have to get some dental work done when I was 14 and
strayed from our traditional diet while in school. My brother also had more
than enough room for all of his teeth, yet he constantly snuck out of the
house to a lot of sweets and processed foods. He has had 10 fillings so far
and after his last dental visit they said that he has some more starting to
form! Meanwhile, I had a LOT of plaque and grime, but my teeth where in
perfect health (even with the extream enamel damage for falling on my jaw 5
years ago)!
While we where growing up being fed traditional foods, my father lived on a low-fat, high-fiber diet. He has had almost all his teeth replaced by porcelain ones, and has many joint problems. He has already had one lower lumbar fusion and next summer they are going to fuse two vertebra in his neck. He has horrible arthritis, plaque forming on all of his arteries (including in his brain), extremely high blood pressure, and rosacea. The sad part is that my father, who is an orthopedic surgeon by the way, says that he is in decent health! He constantly says that my mother and I have too much body fat and need to lose some of it, while my brother and him have the "perfect" amount of body fat. They are in horrible health! My mother in I, who are both technically over-fat at 22% & 35%, have a perfect blood cholesterol ratio even if the amount of total cholesterol is off the charts and we do not have the insulin problems and joint problems of others who are over-fat. Understandably, my father is also urging us to go low-fat to bring it down. Both my brother and father take so many pills that I want to cry. I'll try and show this to my brother and hopefully convince him to go back to our ancestor's roots.
It seems that those
peoples who had evolved with their diet "in place" to take
advantage of local foods, suffered the most in degenerative disease from
adopting the "white man's" diet as evidenced by the extremely poor
health of many members of American Indian tribes.
I began Atkins over 7
years ago. It impressed me immediately just from the weight loss alone. But
one by one many ailments unexpectedly vanished such as migrains, itchy skin
and achy joints.
Before I go on I must point out that my achy joints healed due to low carb not weight loss. I know this because I regained the weight plus a few extra pounds. Joint pain never did return, regardless of the return of the weight. This is why I was determined to stick with the diet and find various tweaks. The longer I am a low carber the more I realize the importance of keeping my LC diet as ketogenic as possible. Following a recent diagnosis of pre-diabetes I have been monitoring my blood glucose and I am able to keep it stable by sticking to a strict diet of guts and grease. Well, should I say occasional guts.I am sure that native americans did not eat 3 times a day with in-between-snacks. Unless they owned refrigerators and had Mcdonalds and shopping centers near by. This is another reason I became interested in intermittent fasting. Sooo, keeping my diet as ketogenic as possible with the help of intermittent fasting has helped my to stabilize my blood glucose leveld and are equpping me with the armor to slow the onset of T2 diabetes that has ravaged my family. My food pyramid looks nothing like the goverments. |
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