Customer Reviews

Traditional Foods Are Your Best Medicine: Improving Health and Longevity with Native Nutrition

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I first read this book in 1987, when it was initially published. I'd picked it up in a bookstore on Fifth Avenue (that's how well I remember the occasion, 16 years later), started to read, and couldn't put it down. So I bought what for me then was an expensive book and finished it that night.

It was difficult to know who to admire more after after I'd completed it, Ron Schmid, who so lucidly and modestly outlined the accomplishments of Weston Price (really, the centerpiece of the book), or Price himself, an extraordinary man whose self-supported, worldwide investigations of the food traditions of native cultures were nothing less than revolutionary in what they implied for how most of us eat--and live--today. In any case, I felt oddly moved by this book--a strange thing to say considering its subject--as if some real portion of an invaluable truth had been exposed to me.

Three years later, I used this book to develop an eating plan for my pregnant wife, including cod liver oil every day and a lot of fish and raw milk cheeses (the closest we could come, even in Manhattan, to any raw milk products). With all of that, our son decided to wait two weeks beyond his due date to make his appearance--21 1/2'' long and weighing over nine pounds--with the obstetrician remarking that my wife's placenta was twice the normal weight, in fact was the largest she'd seen in all her years of delivering children. I don't know whether either fact can be attributed to the diet my wife had followed, but the important thing is that our son turned out to be very bright, healthy, and the owner of a sweet temperament (our first clue of that being that he was effectively sleeping through the night when he was two weeks old)--qualities that this book suggest are not at all unusual when pregnant women follow traditional diets.

So, for me this book has some sort of talismanic power, the kind I associate with other profound life-transforming (or -generating) reading experiences. In that sense, I'm not particularly interested in challenging ANY part of it, as some others here have done, because I feel its general, encompassing theme is so strong and effectively expressed by the writer, and because, as far as I know, Schmid was a trailblazer in introducing (and explicating so clearly) Weston Price's work to the general reading public. I will add, though, that anyone interested in this book, should and even must buy a copy of Sally Fallon and Mary Enig's Nourishing Traditions, which extends Schmid's (and Price's) generalities into the American kitchen. It's as much a treasure as Schmid's book, as the two together, like Jack Sprat and his wife, cover everything (including how to think about fat), from principles to practicalities, that you might need to build new lives out of ancient practices.

Schmid's book was the first one I read on the work of Weston A. Price and Francis Pottenger. It is a very good overview of the subject of Tradtional diets. If you are wondering what "Traditional diets" are, they are simply the way people ate before big business took over food production, and made shelf life and profit margin more important than the nutritional quality of food.

Price was a dentist who embarked on a decade long research project in the late 1930s to find the healthiest people on Earth and study what they ate and how they ate it. His studies ranged all over the world, covering all different races. Schmid has done a good job of giving an overview of Price's findings.

The only issues I have with this book are that Schmid falls for the cholesterol scam in discussing heart disease, and that he also falls for the idea that the term "life expectancy" as used in statistics means the average age of death. (page 66) It doesn't. Life Expectancy as an arithmetic average would be reasonably close to the median age of death in a perfect Bell curve population sample, but such perfect samples only exist on paper, not in reality. The median age of death, that is the age by which half of the population died, was 57 in 1900. This means that half the population lived to be 57 or older. Kind of different than saying the average age of death was 45-50. In 2000, the median age of death was only 78, so there hasn't been as much gain as we are led to believe. Neither figure addresses the health or quality of life of people at those ages, either. A minor point in the grand scheme of this book. His discussion of life expectancy differences for those 40 and over on the rest of the page is still very much true and sets the record straight on the PR hype we are given about our current state of health.

For more in-depth information on fats and cholesterol, I recommend Mary Enig's book, Know Your Fats.

This is a great book, and will open your eyes to a better way to eat and improve your health. I heartily recommend it.

This book is well-written and provides an excellent synopsis of Dr. Weston Price's research into traditional diets from many peoples around the world. Dr. Schmid writes lucidly and shows the benefits and limitations of traditional diets in treating various diseases.

The book goes wrong, like so many others, in its demonization of saturated fat. Schmid is simply wrong about saturated fats causing heart disease, cancer, and ill health in general. He is also wrong in asserting that our ancestors did not eat a lot of saturated fat. This is strange coming from someone who is so obviously familiar with Price's research which showed every population group to be eating diets rich in saturated fats and these people, as Schmid knows, were supremely healthy.

I think a better book to get would be Lutz and Allan's LIFE WITHOUT BREAD or Fallon and Enig's NOURISHING TRADITIONS.

This book can be a companion book to other books recommended by the Weston Price Organization. It is more or less an "encyclopaedic" type style to traditonal foods information using the Weston Price book as a guideline, but going into a more of an updated, and practical style.

There is a lot information that I found useful, such as the grading of salmon (which I never knew about), or getting calcium from eggshells to name just a few. However, he does not tell you how much calcium you are getting by eating eggshells. Also, I could never grind it to a powder in a blender as he said. I had better results with just a mortar and pestle.

On saturated fats, try as I might, I cannot find anything he has to say against the use of saturated fats as criticized by Fallon or Brynes. (Perhaps they have become somewhat fanatical about Price's diet). He is, however, against the modern way of raising animals which he believes is not the same as our ancestors. He points out that a lot of animal's mouths are being used as convenient garbage dumps, and proceeds to name all the types of garbage being eaten, that's right, garbage! This may alter the fat content, metabolism, ratios, etc., to a state that may not be healthy for you or the animals fed on such a diet. I agree on this point wholeheartedly! But, in no way do I see him telling us in the meantime to eat vegetables only and avoid all animal products! Properly raised animals that is.

There is also an explanation of the death rate of earliers years of how long Americans live are skewed. I never quite understood this, as I read about it in other books but there is no explanation how they concluded this, but he gives it here and it's so simple to understand! This should tip you off that this book is fairly lucid and logically written and I highly recommend it for a better overall view and guide to the Weston Price diet.

It's disappointing that this review is only the first to appear on this extraordinary book; after three editions in twelve years, one would think more people would know about it. Unfortunately, Truth rarely basks in the spotlight: Of the minority of Americans who actually pay attention to their health habits, most will look to mainstream sources in the news, or take the bait offered in high-powered advertisements. A few will read alternative magazines and subscribe to vegan or macrobiotic diets and think they've found the answer. And all these people will have missed the mark, in whole or in part.

We in modern society, with some exceptions, tend to look for answers, for knowledge, from modern sources--the media, "experts," establishment research. How many of us look to our ancestors? What? Who are they? Ladies and Gentlemen, our ancestors have much to teach us--and in the case of diet, I will put 100,000 years of wisdom up against a modern "expert" any day. And my conviction in making such a statement stems largely from reading this book, TRADITIONAL FOODS ARE YOUR BEST MEDICINE.

In 250 pages, Dr. Schmid lays it out: the history of human evolution and diet, and how Dr. Weston Price, who researched indigenous cultures worldwide early in this century, found them enjoying wonderful health and resistance to disease by eating their native foods; why most of today's popular diets--macrobiotics, veganism, the Pritikin diet, and others--are lacking; and how you can make the correct food choices (including organically produced animal products, which our ancestors relied upon and are FAR superior to their factory-farmed cousins). Dr. Schmid also discusses specific health problems and how to best address them. There's even a chapter on how to work with a doctor on making these changes.

The fact that I work for the publisher of this book matters little. I am also one of Dr. Schmid's patients and have a solid belief in the principles covered in his book. TRADITIONAL FOODS is one of the best-written, persuasive, and inspiring books I've been blessed to read and I am thankful for what I've learned. To you, reader: Don't swim too much in the mainstream--you won't find the answers. For all of human history prior to this century, the wisdom written about in this book WAS the "mainstream." Do yourself a great service-- buy it, read it, practice it. And enjoy not just a longer life, but a deeper one.

Awesome book on the principles of traditional healing foods. This is a great addition for anyone who wants to learn true nutrition and about the great discoveries by Weston. A Price. I highly recommend it!

Dr. Schmid's book on healing, nurturing traditional foods is an excellent resource for anyone wanting to understand what *real* nutrition is all about. It shows the problems with our US Government-approved dietary recommendations and why following such dogma is making us all sick (while profiting pharmaceutical companies and the whole medical system)! Get past all the vegetarina/low fat/vegan/cholesterol-is-bad doctrine and learn how to *really* be healthy, just as countless people through the millennia have done!

Excellent reading with all the modern science information to support the whys and hows of traditonal eating. I especially like the chapter on creating a native diet that assists the reader to develop a balance in diet according to personal needs as those needs fluctuate. While this book has no recipes and no diets...if you're looking for a complete, sound nutritional guide to healing and health - buy this book.

I am a Registered Dietitian that uses a holistic approach to nutrition and I feel this book is a valuable addition to any nutritionists library. Lacks a bit of detail in research areas, but is a good branch of the Weston Price tree.

Greetings! If you are interested in this subject, I propose that you also read a book that is complementary to this one: Eat Right for Your Type, by Dr. Peter J. D'Adamo, who also has a web site.