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Summary: Nourishing Traditions
Review: This is a must have for everyone. Besides being a great cookbook it offers sound advice on nutrition that everyone needs to know about.
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Summary: The single most valuable guide to cooking and nutrition.
Review: It is clear that something has gone badly wrong with out diet. What is not so clear is what we should do about it - the blizzard of contradictory theories and advice is profoundly perplexing. Yet the more one learns about the unhealthy influence of the food processing industry on both the researchers and the regulators, the more sceptical one becomes of nutritional guidelines from the food establishment.Sadly, food has become a source of doubt and stress rather than nourishment and satisfaction. What are we doing to our bodies, and the bodies of our children? Common sense suggests two ways out of this confusion. The first is to eat as our pre-agricultural ancestors ate - the paleo diet - on the assumption that these are the foods we are genetically adapted to consume. But for most, this is impractical and over restrictive. The second approach, and the one adopted here, is to review the modern research in the light of what we know of the wholesome traditional diets that sustained many cultures for millennia - cultures that were free of the diet-related degenerative diseases of today. It is an exciting and fruitful line of enquiry, and this book is much the best source. It is clear that our ancestors were intuitively aware of the nutritional challenges presented by agricultural foods - dairy, grains and pulses. This book gives us access to the wide range of almost forgotten techniques - such as soaking, fermenting, culturing, sprouting and slow cooking - which render these foods safe and digestible. And they also know how to make the most of pre-agricultural foods such as meats and fruits. The authors chart how these techniques have been replaced by newfangled foods and preparation methods that were entirely absent from traditional diets, but which are more amenable to mass industrial processing. To be re-introduced to these traditional foods is a liberating experience. Not only are they proven to be safe and nutritious - they are also exceptionally tasty and satisfying. The first 65 pages of this book give the best guide I have found to sensible food selection. Many Enig is a leading lipid biochemist, and the advice on dietary fats is particularly timely and helpful - it is worth the price of the book for this alone. As an alternative to the USDA Food Pyramid, the authors divide our choices into three distinct categories: - Nourishing traditional foods, properly prepared, which can be eaten freely
- Compromise foods, which can be eaten in moderation by the healthy
- Newfangled foods, which should be avoided by everybody. Within this framework, the authors suggest that you experiment to find the proportions of animal foods, grains, fruits etc that are suited to your own heritage, constitution, preferences and sensitivities. They then give 600 pages of practical advice, recipes and lore on the preparation of traditional foods. It is a priceless and unique mine of information. Please don't be put off by the featured review suggesting that this book is "reactionary and poorly researched". The accusation that it is poorly researched is simply risible. The reviewer entirely misrepresents the views of the authors, and as others have pointed out, is factually incorrect on every point. This is the single most valuable book on diet and nutrition I know. It holds the key to worry-free, safe and nutritious eating. And given the accelerating pandemic of diet-related diseases such as diabetes, this is a book that can justifiable claim to be, as one reviewer suggests, "one of the most important books ever written, period".
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Summary: This is a great book......
Review: The title of Sally Fallon's book, NOURISHING TRADITIONS, is a bit of a pun because her book nourishes both the body and the soul. Fallon has assembled a huge amount of material about food and life as lived in traditional societies in the past and all over the globe. The result is a wonderful compendium on "outlaw" food preparation. Fallon suggests many "diet doctors" have made big mistakes regarding food-especially food from traditional sources. Their first mistake is that they rely on the USDA and FDA guidelines which are woefully inadequate since they are subject to corporate interests and they ignore information from non-U.S. sources. The second big mistake the diet gurus (some of them medical doctors) make is that they fail to inform about how you can determine the REAL nutritional value of foods. Counting carbohydrate and fat calories is not enough. You need to understand how the food was grown and processed, i.e. bad things happen on some farms (especially those run by large agribusinesses). Many of Fallon's suggestions are accepted across the nutritional spectrum (banish refined sugar, flour, etc.), and some of her ideas have been accepted into the main stream in the past few years (value of Omega-3 fats), but most of her ideas are ignored although they are very sound. Fallon supports the notion that food growing and preparation in the old days was pretty good, i.e. traditional food preparation using organic foods is a healthy way to live. Many of the ailments modern folks suffer are brought about because of BAD food. Folks who practice traditional diets using organic foods are generally healthier. Organic yogurt, ghee, free range chicken, miso, cod liver oil, honey, etc. are all associated with good health and long life. Unfortunately, simply buying "good" food in a supermarket is not enough. For example, you can buy honey, but unless you eat raw honey without pesticide and herbicide ingredients, you are wasting your time and money. Non-organic yogurt filled with sugar and other material has little or no nutrient value. Milk collected from abnormal cows and homogenized and ultra pasturized contains no healthful organisms, including the bacteria in the pus "modern" cows secret. Perhaps the worst thing those on a weight-loss diet can hear is that many of the so-called "low-fat" and other lo-cal foods may actually cause you to gain weight. Some of the chemicals in convenience foods actually inhibit the thyroid. I received this book as a Christmas gift, but if I didn't already own it, I'd buy it.
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Summary: My answer after 31 years of personal research
Review: I have been reading intently about health and nutrition for the past 31 years. I have read everything in the popular press and many many things that I found in medical journals about nutrition. And my body has been my own laboratory, trying out many of the nutritional ideas that I have read about. Prior to learning about Weston A. Price and Sally Fallon, no system of health that I have studied seemed to have the answers for me; none seemed even to make logical sense; none made my body feel good. This system of eating is the only one that really works, and that makes sense and is a cohesive way of thinking about nutrition. After 31 years of intense reading and experimenting, I have found my answer for health. And this book helps me figure out how to incorporate these health ideas into my diet. PS. My third baby is my "cod liver oil baby" and is the most radiantly healthy of my three. Everyone comments on her skin. People see her from a distance, a great distance, and say that they just had to come closer to get a close-up look at her radiant skin. I want to give this book a thousand stars.
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Summary: You say you want a revolution?
Review: If my grandmother had written a cookbook (or even passed one down -- she cooked and baked without recipes), I like to think it would have looked something like this. After all, Grandma was born in 1893 and worked as a cook in the early part of this century -- before the food processing boom. At first blush, this is an intimidating work. Not only is it weighty and dense (like the food it champions), it runs counter to every new-fangled approach to nutrition and food preparation. It is vehemently "anti-pyramid" and anti-food fad (the sections on soy alone will curl your hair), and all about unleashing the hidden power of natural foods. Small wonder it provokes outrage. Who wants to be told they've been poisoning themselves (and their children) for decades? Or that Ronald McDonald should sport horns and a tail? But when you really start to think about it (and I've done nothing but since opening the book), there's nothing so revolutionary about it. After all, this is the way people ate for thousands of years (and the way a few primitive cultures still eat). People didn't used to get food poisoning the way they do now. They could put in a hard day's labor (physical labor, not pounding a keyboard). In many ways, we've sanitized ourselves into illness, more's the pity. I look forward to "mining" this wonderful book. I've already scouted out a source of raw dairy and can't wait to get cooking!
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Summary: A new way of life
Review: None of the ideas in this book are new. In fact, that's the point of the book: there are a lot of old ideas that we have forgotten! Since reading this book our lives are completely different, and our attitudes toward food are completely different, and in fact, I've seen the same changes in the lives of other people I've recommended the book to. In our family, it is no longer strange to see jars of milk on the counter turning into kefir, or small-beer bubbling away. Our food rarely comes out of cans or packages, and there is a supply of jerky and dried fruit and roasted nuts for snacks and travelling. People who visit think we are really into "gourmet" foods, and indeed, it's gotten so I like our food better than most of the restaurant food. But our health is much better, and our life calmer, somehow. I'd totally recommend this book for anyone who wants to understand "food" in a more global, historical context. There are some ideas that you will probably want to research further -- the recipes here are "easy and basic" but for things like making sauerkraut and fermented vegies there are all kinds of extras you can learn (and hundreds of recipes floating around). There are also ideas that will seem shocking at first -- well, lots of the ideas will seem shocking at first -- and you don't need to try all of them unless you want to. The idea of leaving cabbage out at room temperature in a sealed jar seemed like a recipe for botulism to me! But what was amazing to me was that as I researched, I found that the most "shocking" concepts were actually just "normal life" 100 years ago or so. Which goes to show how far we have come from our roots!
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Summary: At last! The truth about the food we eat.
Review: This book is FANTASTIC! Full of eye opening revelations about the food we THINK is good for us. I can't believe I was so unaware of what I was eating.
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Summary: Refreshing!
Review: I really like this book. First off, it doesn't follow "the herd" as far as diet goes. My husband and I had been long term followers of Dr Weil's 8 Weeks to Optimum Health program and we just felt deprived and unhappy with our food. A friend of mine(in the nutritional counseling field) recommended this book. She follows most of the guidelines and she and her family are in prime condition. Anyway, I was really worried about using so much fat, but voila! We are thinner than ever and our kids are happy with the food. My favorites in the book are the pancakes, the sauerkraut, gingered carrots, cordito, the sourdough bread, the cream cheese, and the buffalo sesame wings. It felt so good to toss the soy milk out along with the white sugar! This is REAL food, prepared in the right way. The only downfall is the amount of prep time some of the recipes require. However, there is a section in the book on how to eat properly with a restricted schedule and tight budget...Well DONE!!
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Summary: The answers are waiting in the pages of this book
Review: It can be VERY challenging to be a good consumer of today's widely-varied "expert" nutrition advice. The government says "this"; the latest health guru tells you "that"....after a while, it all gets so tiresome. Yet, I kept on looking for what felt right - That's what Sally & Mary's book was, when I first picked it up. There was so much that just seemed so right!!!!
What really proved at least one concept in this book true was the information about fat being **GOOD** for weight-loss and maintenance (should I repeat that?) and my personal experience of this LONG BEFORE I'd ever heard the term "Atkins", or found Sally Fallon and Mary Enig. For over 1 year I had a diet highly restrictive of sugar, and vinegar-containing foods (ie; ketchup, mayo, pre-made salad dressings), and yeasted foods. To be successful on this diet which I perceived to be very restrictive, I increased my fat intake by AT LEAST 40% (in order to make otherwise "boring" food enjoyable). I put butter or extra-virgin olive oil on everything I could. Lo-and-behold, I lost 40 pounds. I kept telling everyone around me, "I'm eating so much fat! How is this possible?". Everyone thought I was just mis-judging my intake. Sally and Mary explain how this unexpected weight loss occurred.
That is just one very small example of why this book should be on every health-concious person's reading list. Okay, so it's not supportive of vegetarianism - believe it or not, there could be good reason for that. It also goes into what kind of dairy can be healthy; The immunity-supporting benefits of homemade soups; Why traditional food-preservation methods are worth re-awakening ourselves to; The health-sustaining properties of traditionally fermented foods (meaning no tofu made with short-cut methods!), and OH-so-much more! You'll be amazed at their "take" on canola oil, and soy "fake foods".
I give this book 5 stars because it absolutely deserves it. You could spend the rest of your life deciphering thousands of resources before finding the remarkably well-researched information in this volume. $$$ is pittance when you think about what you probably spend on health insurance in a month!
Good luck and good health!!
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Summary: Also an Invaluable Text !
Review: This is not just a cookbook!
Equally or even more important is the first section of the book which contains invaluable chapters on fats (importance of butter and coconut oil as well as polyunsaturates), grains (their proper preparation!!!), proteins (raw meats and fish as well), vitamins, minerals (excellent documentation on how we absorb minerals and explains mineral salts, chelates, colloids etc.), special diets, etc. This is well researched and quotes and explains the faults in studies used by the "establishment" and diet dictocrats to "justify" their positions.
Throughout the cookbook section the margins are filled with invaluable quotes from varying sources.
Just excellent!
After 20 years of researching and reading on nutrition, I finally found a book that puts it all in perspective. You need this book!
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