Authors: Mary Enig
Our approach, based on the way healthy people eat in countless traditional societies, is above all balanced. However, your ability to eat in a natural, wholesome, balanced way has been undermined by decades of constantly changing advice from so-called experts. Nor can you regain a sense of balanced eating from following carefully calibrated numerical prescriptions, like those of the Zone Diet, or the larger quantities of protein in the newer version of the Atkins diet. But you can regain it by eating moderate amounts of traditional food combinations, many of which you already know and love (and some of which will be new), since they all inherently have this balance.
So accustomed are we Americans to the convenience of fast-food restaurants and manufactured foods that many of us have forgotten how real food tastes. Is it any surprise that meals made of lab ingredients (like the trans fats in nearly all packaged and baked goods) fail to nourish or satisfy you, leading to overeating, bingeing, and splurging, and ultimately to disease?
In Part 2 of
Eat Fat, Lose Fat,
we’ll reintroduce you to creative yet simple steps to restore some of the traditional foods your body longs for (specific menu plans and recipes are in Part 3). In the next chapter you’ll learn about the wholesome, traditional foods, including healthy fats, that you can begin adding to your diet right now. Be prepared for a nutritional plan you’ll love!
Getting Used to Coconut Oil and a Traditional Diet
If you have been on a low-fat diet for many years, you may need to transition slowly into a higher-fat traditional diet. Occasionally, someone reports a feeling of nausea, especially after taking the one to two tablespoons of coconut oil that we recommend before meals. This is probably due to the body’s inability to produce enough fat-digesting bile after so many years of not needing it. (The short-and medium-chain fatty acids in coconut oil don’t require bile for breakdown; but coconut oil contains smaller amounts of longer-chain fatty acids that do require bile for digestion, and butter and other animal fats require even larger amounts.)
If this is the case, simply cut back on the amount of coconut oil you are taking. Start with one teaspoon and build slowly from there to the suggested one to two tablespoons. You can also take the coconut oil with your meal instead of twenty minutes before. And, be sure to eat three meals a day at regular intervals so that the body learns to produce bile on a predictable schedule. Some dieters have actually reported that they want a very slight feeling of nausea because it suppresses their appetite.
In a similar vein, several individuals have reported that they gained weight at first when they started taking coconut oil. They persevered because they liked the increased sense of energy they experienced. Then after a few weeks, they found that they had started losing weight. Of course, moderate restriction of calories and carbohydrates is also important for successful weight loss.
While coconut oil and other healthy fats are significant additions to your diet, you’ll gain the most benefit from this program if you also incorporate traditional foods and methods of food preparation, which you’ll learn more about in this chapter. While some of these foods may be new to you, many will already be familiar and will remind you of foods your grandmother might have made. Although modern dietary myths may have scared you away from eating them, this chapter will explain the scientific evidence that supports the consumption of nutrient-dense traditional foods, and encourage you to enjoy them. Consumption of traditional foods, prepared according to traditional methods and including plenty of healthy fats, has been the basis of our nutritional philosophy in all our writings, as well as of Dr. Enig’s nutritional practice.
We owe tremendous gratitude to Dr. Weston A. Price, the dentist who studied the diets of healthy nonindustrialized peoples and reported his findings in his classic work,
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration
. He was ahead of his time in identifying health problems—including tooth decay, crowded and crooked teeth, tuberculosis, arthritis, growth problems, and fatigue—arising from the modern diet based on sugar, white flour, and vegetable oils, and for discovering and articulating basic dietary principles for building strong, healthy bodies. At the Weston A. Price Foundation, which we founded in 1999, we use Dr. Price’s guidelines to sort through the many conflicting nutritional claims to foundational foods that build health. The Foundation is dedicated to publicizing the scientific validation for the health benefits of traditional diets, which Price was the first to describe.
Dr. Price explained that vitamins A and D are catalysts to mineral absorption and protein utilization. Without them, you cannot absorb minerals, no matter how abundant they may be in your food. In addition, Price discovered another fat-soluble nutrient, a potent catalyst for mineral absorption that he labeled Activator X. It was present in all the diets he studied. Dr. Price identified Activator X in fish liver oils, fish eggs, organ meats, blubber of sea animals, and butterfat from cows eating rapidly growing green grass in the spring and fall. Unfortunately, there has been no research on this nutrient since his death in 1948.
Weston Price’s Nutritional Discoveries
In analyzing the key factors in the foods traditional, nonindustrialized peoples ate, Dr. Price was surprised to learn that, in comparison to the American diet of the 1940s, these traditional diets provided at least
four times
the water-soluble vitamins, calcium, and other minerals, and at least
ten times
the fat-soluble vitamins. The fat-soluble vitamins Price found to be so important—A and D—are uniquely provided by certain animal foods: shellfish, fish eggs, oily fish, fish liver oils; butter, egg yolks, and organ meats of ruminant animals raised outdoors and on pasture; and the fat of birds and pigs raised outside and on pasture. Yes, the very cholesterol-rich foods now shunned by the American public as unhealthful were a critical source of health for diverse populations around the world.
In describing the essential factors of nutrition, Dr. Price provided an over-arching nutritional perspective that is proving timeless and far more universal than passing food theories and fads.
As we saw in Chapter 2, the USRDAs for important nutrients are lower than the amounts of these nutrients your body actually needs. What’s more, modern food fads and theories (along with modern agricultural practices) have substantially reduced the nutrient value of most foods. While traditional diets in his time provided about ten times more fat-soluble vitamins than the American diet of the 1940s, today this ratio is probably higher (we don’t know for certain, since this research is not being done), since Americans have deliberately reduced animal-fat consumption. What’s more, fats from animals raised in confinement (as they are nowadays) are not as nutritious. The average American child eats vitamin-rich foods like shellfish and organ meats rarely, if at all, while sources prized by other societies, like blubber and insects, are obviously not part of our Western diet. Unfortunately, we have also demonized butter, eggs, and cream, which
are
traditional Western sources of these healthy nutrients. When we do eat these foods, they usually come from animals raised in confinement, so their nutritional value is compromised.
Comparison of Traditional and Modern Diets | |
Traditional diets | |
TRADITIONAL DIETS | MODERN DIETS |
Foods grown on fertile soil | Foods grown on depleted soil |
Organ meats (liver, marrow, heart, tongue, brain) preferred to muscle meats | Muscle meats (steaks, chops, roasts), few organ meats |
Animal fats | Vegetable oils |
Animals on pasture | Animals in confinement |
Dairy products, raw and/or fermented | Dairy products, pasteurized |
Grains and legumes, soaked/fermented | Grains, refined and/or extruded |
Bone broths | MSG, artificial flavorings |
Unrefined sweeteners (honey, maple syrup) | Refined sweeteners |
Lacto-fermented vegetables | Canned vegetables |
Lacto-fermented beverages | Modern soft drinks |
Unrefined salt | Refined salt |
Natural vitamins in foods | Synthetic vitamins added to foods |
Traditional cooking methods | Microwave, irradiation |
Traditional seeds/open pollination | Hybrid seeds, GMO seeds |
If any two words can sum up the characteristics of healthy traditional diets, they are
nutrient dense
. In this chapter, we’ll survey some of the common nutrient-dense foods that Dr. Price discovered formed the basis of the health and well-being of people in traditional cultures.
Rediscovering Nutrient-Dense Foods
Below you will find descriptions of the traditional foods that, together with coconut, make up the basis of our diet plans. Some, such as butter, eggs, and milk, will already be familiar to you, although you may never have tasted them in the traditional, far healthier—and tastier—forms we recommend. These foods will provide the vitamins, beneficial fatty acids, and other nutrients in the right combinations for both weight loss and enhanced health.
Principles of Healthy Traditional Diets
Eggs
Eggs contain every nutrient the body needs except vitamin C. Egg whites provide the highest-quality protein of any food, and the yolks provide special fatty acids necessary for nerve function. If the chickens are raised on pasture, their yolks will provide generous amounts of vitamin D and also vitamin A (although not as much as liver or cod-liver oil).
In a study carried out in 1929—almost 70 years ago yet extremely relevant to the modern era of confinement agriculture—researchers in Kansas found that the second most potent source of vitamin D was egg yolk (number one was cod-liver oil) and that the amount of the vitamin varied depending on how the chickens were raised. Only those exposed to bright sunlight (containing UV-B light) or to a UV-B lamp produced eggs with sufficient levels of vitamin D. Egg yolks from chickens kept under glass or in cages were so low in vitamin D that rats fed on them developed rickets.
Egg yolks also supply choline and the long-chain fatty acid DHA, both important for nerve function. Perhaps that’s why eggs are considered a brain food in China, where a pregnant or nursing woman will eat up to ten eggs per day if she can afford them, to ensure that her child is intelligent.
Organic Versus Pasture-Fed
Many people have heard about the horrors of confinement egg production and are buying organic eggs instead. However, you may not be aware that chickens producing organic eggs are also raised in confinement. It‘s true that conditions are vastly better for organic chickens than those producing regular commercial eggs; the chickens are not confined to cages, which is why their product can be labeled “free-range.” However, organic chickens rarely have access to bright sunlight, and their diet is highly artificial, lacking the green plants and insects that chickens are designed to eat. In fact, the USDA organic standards
forbid
feeding animal foods to chickens—yet the chicken is an omnivore, not a vegetarian!
Many far-thinking farmers are now raising chickens on pasture by using moveable hen houses. The chickens get fresh green pasture and plenty of bugs every day. This is the only method that ensures that the egg yolks will contain vitamins A and D as well as DHA. That’s why we encourage you to find pasture-raised (as opposed to free-range) eggs. Many health-conscious consumers make a big effort to purchase eggs directly from farmers, or at stores that obtain their eggs directly from farmers. (See Resources for sources.)
In our recipes and menu plans, you will find many ways to consume eggs. Raw egg yolks from pastured hens are mixed into smoothies, mayonnaise, and other foods. (There is no danger of salmonella from the egg yolks of hens raised out of doors, without antibiotics. Egg yolks from organic eggs are also safe to eat raw. However, we do not recommend eating the yolks of supermarket eggs raw.) The whites should mostly be eaten cooked, as they contain enzyme inhibitors that can interfere with protein digestion. Although many diet books advise you to eat “egg white omelets,” we don’t recommend this, because you need the vitamin A in the yolks to assimilate the protein in the whites. In fact, it’s better to eat the yolks without the whites than vice versa.
The Anti-Egg Scare
Once called nature’s most perfect food by nutritionists, eggs fell into disfavor and their consumption began to plummet after 1950. The average number of eggs consumed in the United States per person per year has dropped from a high of 389 in 1950 to only about 185 today. Tragically, many people, including many children, never eat eggs.
Why this turnaround? Since eggs contain high levels of cholesterol, various authorities promulgated the hypothesis that eating eggs raises cholesterol levels and thus contributes to heart disease.
Surprisingly, there are very few published papers on the relationship between egg consumption and heart disease, but the little research that has been done indicates that egg consumption creates no risk. One study, published in the
Journal of the American Medical Association,
1999, found that consumption of one egg per day carried no risk of increased heart disease or stroke among healthy men and women.
During the period when egg consumption in the United States went into decline, rates of heart disease and other chronic diseases soared. Yet negative publicity creating fears of egg consumption has drowned out all the evidence that eggs are good for you. In fact, the food industry has created imitation egg products like Egg Beaters, promoted as a healthy alternative. But a University of Illinois study published in the journal
Pediatrics,
1974, refutes this claim. One group of lactating rats was fed exclusively on fresh eggs, while another group ate Egg Beaters. The rats who ate eggs thrived, grew normally, and enjoyed perfect health, while those on Egg Beaters were stunted, had a variety of physical abnormalities, and all died long before reaching maturity. In this case, as in countless others, efforts to improve on Mother Nature are not real improvements.
Proving the folk wisdom of the Orient, unpublished research carried out during the 1990s at the University of California at Berkeley divided 80-year-old men into two groups: those who were senile and required constant care, and those with their faculties intact who were able to care for themselves. All filled out dietary surveys. Researchers found only one difference between the dietary habits of the two groups: the group that was mentally alert ate at least one egg per day.