498: The “Tweakable” Wise Traditions Diet: Making an Ancestral Diet Work for You with Sally Fallon Morell

From the Weston A Price Foundation, welcome to the Wise Traditions podcast for wise traditions in food, farming and the healing arts. We are your source for scientific knowledge and traditional wisdom to help you achieve optimal health. And now, here is our host and producer, Hilda Labrada Gore. Hey. Hilda here. We want to choose food that nourishes us the best for ourselves and our families. What does that look like? What

are helpful guidelines when it comes to eating an ancestral diet? And is this even possible in today's day and age of packaged and processed foods? What's realistic? This is episode 498, and our guest today is none other than Sally Fallon Morel, the president and founder of the Weston a Price Foundation. Today, Sally goes over the wise tradition's 11 dietary principles that are a great starting place when it comes to making

healthy, nourishing food choices. She reviews the sacred foods that were most prized by indigenous people groups. She explains how the dietary principles are tweakable, meaning that you can make them work for you, and why the Wise Traditions Diet is not a diet of extremes. She goes over all of the specifics on how to get the right balance of omega 3 fatty acids and omega 6 in the diet, which is the best fat to eat, and so

on. And she reviews why we need salt and the type of salt that's best, and how to reduce sugar cravings. Finally, she gives us a fresh look at the timeless principles of healthy traditional diets. Before we get into the conversations, I wanna let you know that we just wrapped up the annual Wise Traditions Conference. If you missed it, don't worry. You can get access to the recordings of many, if not all of the talks and presentations by going to Fleetwood On-site.com. Go there for details. I'll

put a link in the show description so you can find it easily. Order just a few of the talks or the whole conference full of presentations, and we hope to see you in person next time. This is Hilda Librada gore, and you're listening to Wise Traditions. Welcome to Wise Traditions, Sally. Thank you, Hilda. It's always great to be back with you. So the Weston a Price Foundation is celebrating 25 years soon. Yes. I mean, you've established in 1999. That's amazing.

Well, you we just kinda stuck to it. That's so important. Persistence. Well and I want to have us revisit the principles Okay. Because these dietary principles are key to what the foundation is about. Right? Yes. It's and I always like to say, we don't do this in sound bites. It's there's more to it than just, you know, a little saying or something. Right.

There's details that are important. And we've always talked about our 11 principles, but now we have this beautiful booklet, 11 dietary principles, wise traditions diet, beautifully illustrated. So, we'd love for people to to read this booklet. All the references are there. And Now how many of the principles are from doctor Weston a Price himself, and how many are some that we did research on

and realized we need to add to the list? That's a very good question, Hilda, because number 1, 2, and 3 were doctor Price's principles and number 11 about healthy children. So 4 through 10 are things that we added, and we can go through them. But, they are also things that you find in pretty much all traditional diets. Now what if people have sensitivities or would prefer to avoid certain things? Can they still follow the wise

traditions diet? This diet is very tweakable. And one of the things we don't do is say what proportions of macronutrients your diet should be. No diet should exceed 20% of calories as protein because no traditional diet did. But then you have the carbs and the fats, and that's very adjustable depending on what works for you. I would say a lot of us do better on a high fat diet. Mhmm. But some people really cannot handle a lot of

fat, and so they would have more of a high carb diet. But the key thing is to get those fat soluble vitamins, and it's a little bit harder if you have a high carb diet. Interesting. Now I know some people say when I tell them, oh, the Wise Traditions diet is kind of an ancestrally based diet. They think, oh, do I need to look at my ancestry to know what to eat? How much does that play a part in what our diet should be, Sally? I think there is something to that. Just

for example, if you had a lot of seafood in your ancestral diet, it would be very good to include it. If you had a lot of red meat in your ancestral diet, I think it's very important to include it because probably your body needs a lot of zinc. So, yes, I would definitely look at your ancestral diet. But there's also, you know, some people we have a lot of people now who can't do beef, for example, which is a shame,

but some people are just gonna have to leave things out. And this reminds me too of, the work of doctor Jack Cruz who says your genetic material may be predisposed to be living in a certain part of the world. Yes. So that if, for example, a woman from Mexico ancestry is living in Canada, she may feel the cold more or need more sunlight actually than she's getting in those northern latitudes. Could be. Yes. Right. So we'll have to

pay attention to that. Well, let's go through the 11 principles 1 by 1. Okay. We'll see what we can cover. Alright. Well, the first principle is that there were no refined or denatured foods. And I think we can all agree on that, but we also know that this is very, very difficult in the modern age. It means you have to really think about what

you're putting into your mouth. It doesn't mean that you have to home cook all your meals because we can get foods that are kind of quick foods that traditional people always had. Cheese is one of them. I'm very partial to cheese. Things like salami and, cured meats, that's another one that, people had. So, yes. You can actually can do this without doing a lot of elaborate cooking, but it will be a lot more

interesting if you do. Yes. And so what kind of refined or denatured foods did doctor Price come across in his travels? Right. So number 1 was sugar and foods containing a lot of sugar. Even back then a 100 years ago? Oh, yes. I was well, this is 19 thirties, but sugar was was really there. And refined flour, that's another one that he really looked at because they knew how to make fine white flour, and that's what was coming into all of these stores and things

in the isolated population because it it didn't decay. Mhmm. No. You could make biscuits out of white flour and they lasted. The other thing that he mentions that we sometimes miss is the vegetable oils. We call them industrial seed oils. Vegetable oils is just not the right term because they're not made out of vegetables. Right. But the industry at the time said, well, it just sounds so much better to say vegetables. See? Yes. But industrial seed oils were coming into the diet. They had never

been in our diets before, and they were pushing out. They were replacing the animal fats with a campaign to demonize the animal fats. Mhmm. And doctor Price noted that when people started to incorporate these displacing foods of modern commerce. Right? Yes. He saw that their health deteriorated. Yes. And very quickly in the teeth, he saw the, cavities and the infection and so forth in the mouth. And then in the next generation, the teeth were

not straight. There was not enough room for the teeth. And the teeth tell the

tale. The teeth tell the tale. If you see somebody with naturally straight teeth, it's a sign that their whole body has been correctly nourished while they were growing and putting everything together. And if the teeth are crooked, then there's it's a sign that there was a lot missing

in the diet and other organs will be affected as well. But now we can't even tell who has naturally straight teeth because a lot of people wear braces when they're teenagers and then get them off and they have that appearance, but maybe not really the strong body that would come with it. And they tend to have a narrow jaw even though the teeth might be straight. Interesting. So principle number 1 is pretty easy to understand. No

refined or denatured foods. And by the way, pasteurized milk is a refined and denatured food. It's very important to remember that. Oh, it's not at all how it is in its natural raw state. Right. Exactly. And you might have a whole grain breakfast cereal, but that's not that's not a natural food. It's denatured. That's where that denatured. Yes. Word comes from. Interesting. Yes. When it's overly processed, it's probably not gonna be good for us. And, honestly,

Hilda, most people, that's all they eat. The breakfast is cereal with pasteurized skim milk and sugar, and lunch would be a McDonald's meal. The only thing slightly natural in that meal is the beef, and everything else is a denatured food. It makes me so sad. I think people think, well, organic or real food is so expensive compared to fast food or things on sale at Costco. But you either pay for your food or you end up paying For your medical

expenses. Absolutely. Alright. Let's go on principle number 2. Number 2, and this is a very controversial one. It was doctor Price's greatest disappointment. There were no vegan or even vegetarian diets that he looked at. He'd hoped to find one. He had to admit that all the healthy people that he studied had animal foods in their diet. And not only that, they went to a great risk to obtain the animal foods. So they went to a lot of trouble. It would have been much easier just

to have plant foods. But they knew they needed these foods And all the sacred foods, the food so important for having healthy babies, they were all animal foods. Yes. Like liver and butter. Right? Liver, butter, fish eggs was another one, organ meats. And doctor Price thought he would find some peoples who were focused or whose diet was primarily plant based and he just didn't find them. He didn't find them. Another important very

important food was shellfish. For example, in the islands of the South Pacific, the people that lived in the interior of the islands, they traded with the people along the coast so they could get the shellfish. And even when they were at war with each other, they still traded to have the foods they needed. It was that important. It was that important. Oh, fascinating. So animal products are

important to include. Yes. Yes. And so, you know, people have criticized us for taking such a strong stand about the need for animal foods in the diet, but it's not just yourself you're talking about, it's your offspring. They need those animal foods, and children need a nutrient dense diet to as they grow. Mhmm. And plant foods are not nutrient dense foods. It's nice to have them in the diet, and it tastes good and so forth, but compared to meat, what's in apples is

is a dependence of what's in meat. That's right. And you've stated before, if we thought, well, I can get iron from spinach, for example, so I'll eat that instead of red meat of some sort. You'd have to eat quantities and quantities of it to even get what you would get from an ounce of liver, for example. That's right. And when you're eating all that spinach, you're getting a lot of oxalates, which is very hard for the body to handle and may might cause kidney stones. So

there's a lot of toxins in plant foods. Mhmm. Good point. So what's principle number 3? Okay. So this is the most important

principle and basically all the other principles, can be fit into this principle. And this is the principle of nutrient density. So the diets were very high in minerals, at least 4 times more of all of the minerals in the traditional diet compared to the diet of his day, the American

diet. So this is calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, you know, iodine, all of the minerals, and very, very high in what he called the fat soluble activators, the fat soluble vitamins a, d, and k. And this is where we have put most of our emphasis. How do we get these vitamins to maximize them in the food, and what kind of foods do we have to eat to get these three really important vitamins? And here's the spoiler. Yeah. It's animal fats and organ meats. Which actually

are amazing. I feel like this kind of eating is so satisfying. And as you've pointed out before, traditional diets maximize nutrients and modern diets minimize them. That's exactly right. We're like, oh, we added a few vitamins and minerals to the cereal. That's nothing compared to what real food has. Exactly. Exactly. And also that they're absorb same amount of

calcium in raw and pasteurized milk. But when you pasteurize the milk, you kill all the enzymes that ensure that you absorb a 100% of the calcium. And then, for example, when you soak your grains, you liberate all the minerals. You make sure they're easy to absorb so that becomes a nutrient dense food. Yes. So people say you are what you eat, but you actually are what you absorb. Yes. What you assimilate. Uh-huh. So many of the nutrients in the plant foods, especially grains, are blocked by

various blockers, phytic acid, this kind of thing. And when we know understand the preparation techniques, we can turn these foods that are problematic into foods that are nutrient dense and easy to digest. Isn't that wonderful? Yeah. Now what's principle number 4? Okay. So number 4 has to do with cooking. So some animal foods were eaten raw in all cultures, whether it's raw dairy, raw shellfish, which people still eat, or raw meat. Now not

all the animal foods were eaten raw. They both cooked and raw. And this almost gets this is kind of a segue into what should we cook and what should we not cook. So we don't cook dairy products because the proteins and the enzymes are so fragile in these foods. We eat foods. The animal food's raw and cooked. Vegetables should mostly be cooked because they're very hard to digest. Grains need to be soaked and cooked. So for each type of food, we need to

understand how to prepare it so that we get the most from it. It's funny because I think most people would think it's the other way around. Eat your vegetables raw and eat your meat cooked. Cooked. Yes. And, yeah, we should eat some of our meat cooked because cooking makes the proteins more available in meat. Mhmm. But cooking destroys the b 6. So and that's one of the big things we get from meat. Fascinating. So we don't need to go all raw or all

cooked. We have to have a mix. And, you know, Hilda, that's a really good point. This is not a diet of extremes. It's not an all raw diet. It's not an all cooked diet. It's not all meat. It's not all plants. It's in the middle. It's in the middle, and I think that's good news. That's the way people want to eat. It's true. To have meat, veg, and and carb on their plate. And what we do is show them how to prepare these foods, to raise these foods. Of course, we're big advocates of pasture based

farming. To raise them and prepare them and put good butter on them and so forth so that we get the most that we can get from these foods. I love it. And that's when they taste good. Mhmm. What's principle number 5, Sally? So principle number 5 is interesting.

This is something that's really catching on now, and this is this principle of lactofermentation. Every traditional culture, healthy culture, without exception, had 1 or more fermented foods in their diet. There's no exceptions to this rule, whether it's the Eskimos with their fermented fish or the Dauci islanders with fermented taro. And these are raw foods. These are foods that have been fermented and you get all the good bacteria and enzymes

and so forth. And it's really fun to see how science has caught up with this principle because 30 years ago, you know, the only good bacteria was a dead bacteria. Right? And we've completely changed our view. Science has opened up new worlds for us that the bacteria are our friends Yes. And we need to support and replenish those bacteria every day, and that's what the fermented foods do. Just to give you an example, sauerkraut. You eat a

tablespoon of sauerkraut with every meal. There's more probiotics in that tablespoon of sauerkraut than there is in a whole bottle of probiotic pills. Wow. And if you wild ferment, in other words, getting the bacteria from the atmosphere, there are even more strains, I imagine. Yes. There absolutely are. And you're right. This is catching on now, which is really gratifying. Well, somebody just sent me an email about how some big company, I forget, might have been

Pfizer. I don't know know, how they're getting into fermented foods. And this is the latest thing, like, they just discovered it. We know it's a wise tradition. Yes. Right. Coming up, Sally explains why people have so much trouble with grains and how following the example of traditional peoples can help us benefit from them with fewer digestive concerns. One Earth Health. Explore the amazing benefits of organ meats with

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off your next order. Exclusions may apply. The offer ends on July 1, 2025. That's green pasture.org. And this is Hilda Labradigore, and you're listening to Wise Traditions. What's the next one, Sally? Okay. So now we get into grains and seeds. And for so many people, grains are a big problem, very hard to digest. And that's because they're not following the principles that traditional people did, and grains were always

soaked and then cooked. So it could be sourdough bread or it could be soaked oatmeal that you cook the next morning, soaked flour that you make into pancakes. And believe me, these foods will taste better, and they won't be this is so hard to digest. Didn't you say that when you were a young girl, you had muesli or oatmeal all the time and you didn't feel well because Well, when

I was a little girl, my mother made oatmeal, and I would get kind of a toxic shock from it. I thought, well, I must be allergic to oatmeal. And then I learned to soak my oatmeal overnight, and that didn't happen. So it was just the there's there's toxins in grains and they need to be neutralized. But the other story I have about that was I went to a party actually and it was a friend friends of mine and they were serving granola. And I'd never eaten granola before, and, it was just

delicious. And I went home and started making granola, and I made it with butter and maple syrup. And I got so sick, Hilda. Oh. I I and I didn't realize what it was until I read a book about grains. And I, oh, it's the granola. And I stopped eating granola, and it took about 2 weeks to recover. I bet a lot of people can't quite put their finger on why they don't feel well. Mhmm. And it might have to do with this very principle that they're not properly preparing their grains,

beans, nuts, and seeds. That's right. Somebody brought to our farm, they brought them some it was soaked, like a coffee cake kinda thing, but it was sprinkled with oats on top. And, of course, I ate a piece, and I ate a few of those little just a few of those little oat flakes. And I really did not have a good day. I didn't feel well. Wow. So but if you don't know what to look for, you can't make those connections. Mm-mm. Absolutely. So what principle

are we on now? Okay. Now we get into the principle of fats. What kind of fats did these people eat? Mhmm. And there was a big range in how much fat they ate. It varied anywhere from 30 to 80% of the diet calories in the diet. The Eskimos had a extremely high fat diet. And the, hunters on the plains selected animals that were fat. They always ate the fat. But then you had the agrarian cultures in Africa, for example. It was fairly low fat diet.

So we don't tell you how much fat to eat, but we do tell you what kind of fat to eat. Yes. Okay. And that's mostly saturated fat. So that would be the fat of animals, the fat of birds. In Africa, they had palm oil. And in the southeast, they had coconut oil, and these are very highly saturated. So the types of fats we need are mostly saturated fats. And, of course, this goes completely against what we're being told Yes. To avoid saturated fats. And these fats actually contain important

nutrients for the body. Right? Well, they're the animal fats, not the palm oil or the coconut oil, but the animal fats are great sources of vitamins a, d, and k. Bird fats, duck fat, goose fat, this was highly prized. And that's our best source of vitamin k 2, which is doctor Price's activator x. Right. And then you can get the proper cognitive function, the proper digestive function. Everything works better with these

fats. Yes. Exactly. And now our latest challenge is the EMF, the 5 g, and so forth. And what beginning to realize is this your protection against this is having a lot of structured water in your body. And what structures the water is the hydrophilic surfaces of your cell membranes. And if your cell membranes have a lot of saturated fat in them, that's what they'll be. You'll be highly

protected against the EMF. It hasn't, escaped my notice that a lot of these people who are extremely sensitive to EMF are vegetarians. Interesting. They're not getting enough saturated fat. Wow. So butter is better for everything. Yes. Exactly. So speaking of fat Number 8 is about balance, and it's funny. Nourishing Traditions was the first book to introduce this concept, and now a lot of people talk about it. Yes. Yes. So the unsaturated fats come in

2 types, omega 6 and omega 3. We don't need much of them. We don't need to eat a lot of them. They're in our food, but you want a balance of omega 6 and omega 3. So for example, if you eat an egg from a pastured chicken, you'll get that nice balance. But if you're eating a conventional chicken, you'll have way more omega 6. And same with if you're eating a lot of industrial seed oils, they're almost 100% omega

6. Uh-huh. But then you have people who kind of go the other direction and and do a lot of fish oil and they're getting too much omega 3. It's funny because I used to make up a little, pneumonic thing like omega 6 makes you sick, omega 3 sets you free. But it's not quite that way, is it? As always, it's a little more complicated. You don't want too much omega 3 and you don't want too

much omega 6. 6. You need the balance. And one time you told me, if you balance your food from land animals and food from the sea, you'll be fine. Right. That's right. You want land and sea. In fact, doctor Price noted that the people with the best bone structure had seafoods in their diet. I'll just think of it now as surf and turf. Surf and turf. That's perfect. Perfect. Perfect. What's the next principle? Is it the one on salt? This one is salt. I

love it. Yes. So all traditional cultures had salt. In fact, one really interesting thing I just read that in the South Seas, the people in the interior grew the taro, and they traded with the people on the coast. And one of the things they traded was seawater. Oh. Just the water from the ocean. So that's how they got their salt. Fascinating. Cooked in it. Yeah. Yeah. So all

these cultures had salt. One of the theories I have is why the Native Americans succumb to so much disease was that the salt trade was disrupted and they weren't getting salt because they did have a continent wide salt trade. But we definitely need salt. We we need a teaspoon and a half a day of salt to satisfy the sodium requirements. And one of the great things about modern life is that we can get salt. Yes. It's plentiful. It's cheap. And what's not so good

is you have these people telling you not to eat salt. I know. It's such a recommendation. It's like a mantra from the physician. It's better lower

your salt. And then there's a new additive called Cinamix, which people don't realize is being added to the food so they can reduce the salt content. And we have no idea what this does to the brain, this additive. But what I can tell you is if you're not getting enough salt in your food, even though it tastes salty, your body knows better and you will eat and eat and eat until you get enough salt. Interesting. So I think it's gonna contribute to a

lot of obesity. And, of course, the other part of this is we recommend unrefined salt that has all the minerals in it and a lot of trace minerals in salt that we don't get anywhere else. And these have been taken out when the salt is refined. Some people get worried if they get sea salt that it might have, like, microplastics from the sea in it. Is there I guess you can't recommend a particular brand, but we need to pay attention to where we're sourcing it. Yeah.

We have a lot of brands in the shopping guide. Some of them are mined salts, but, Celtic sea salt, which is from the sea, they've tested their salt and they which is like a trace. It's hardly anything. Mhmm. Plastics. Right. Right. Which is good. We wanna make sure to get the best source possible. Alright. So principle number 10. So number 10 has to do with cooking bones, making gelatinous bone broth. And I won't say it was in every culture we

looked at, but it was in most of the cultures. The basic way people cooked is they had a big pot or a big shell or baskets lined with pitch, and they put water in there and either cooked with a fire or hot rocks, and they put all the parts of the animal in, including the bones and the gelatinous parts. If it was a bird, it would be the head and the feet. And that way, you're not only getting protein when you eat meat, but you're getting the collagen.

And collagen is popular right now. Yes. Collagen's a big big thing now. So, the collagen balances the meat proteins because your body is 50% collagen or more. The proteins in your body are over half are collagen. And the collagen is what holds you together, gives you strong joints and tendons, and there's a membrane of collagen around the muscles. So, yes, we definitely need that collagen. So I think a broth is melted collagen.

And what Western cultures have done is make broth into kind of the the key to gourmet cuisine and beautiful sauces. Yeah. Gravies and sauces and soups. Which is so delicious. Yes. But I think it's good to note that broth isn't difficult to make because I think I used to buy the little boxes in the grocery store, and it's so thin and watery compared to what I can make at home. MSG in it too. So but it's easy to make brothy. All you need is a slow cooker. Right.

And, I kind of alternate between beef broth and chicken broth. It's just second nature to me. It's not hard. And it's so wonderful in the mornings on a cold winter day. Yes. Yes. And, one thing that broth is really good for is the elderly. So my husband's not getting any younger, and I find that the elderly have trouble chewing meat. And when you give them broth, it stretches the protein, goes a lot a lot longer, and it's very satisfying for them to have the broth. Oh, it's a

good word. They make a soup with broth and then chop the meat up really fine. That's perfect. Oh, awesome. So we're on to the last principle. You said this is one that was also one that doctor Price noted in his travels. You know, Hilda, this is

so amazing. These cultures were scattered all over the world. They had no communication with each other. They had no science, but they all knew that to have healthy babies, you need to prepare for them and that you need certain nutrient dense foods. And when he looked at these foods, they were foods really high and, you guessed it, a, b, and k. And let's just talk about vitamin a for a minute because the science confirms this in such a wonderful way.

So when you get pregnant and the embryo starts to grow, these are in the first few days, it's just stem cells. Those are undifferentiated cells. And then the stem cells start to differentiate Right. And they become heart cells and lung cells. And so what causes that differentiation? It is vitamin a. Yes. Yay. Vitamin a. Vitamin a is the concert master

of fetal development. And in traditional cultures, they would have been eating a lot of foods rich in vitamin a like liver or fish heads or whatever, butter, before you get pregnant. So once that process starts, you have a lot of vitamin a available and there won't be any birth defects. Everything will go according to plan. If you wait until you're pregnant and then say, oh,

I'm gonna take a prenatal or something. It's too late. This that differentiation, that building of the different organs has already started. Mhmm. And so the first organ to start is the heart. And if there's not enough vitamin a available, the heart will not develop properly. That's what happened to me, as you know. I think my mother's vitamin a stores were low and I was born with a hole in my

heart. Yeah. It's very common today. Yeah. So not only that, not only did they prepare for pregnancy and continue these highly nutrient dense foods throughout pregnancy, breastfeeding, and the growth of the child. And see, they understood that this was the time when you needed the most nutrition. Mhmm. And you can improve your health when you're older by changing things, but you can't change your structure. That's already happened. So that's when these nutrient dense foods are just

vital. Mhmm. So, but the other thing was they space their children. It was considered shameful to have a child more than once every 3 years. And if you were in a village in Africa or the South Seas, you couldn't go anywhere else. You didn't wanna be shamed by your village when they're pointing their fingers at you saying, oh, she didn't care. She didn't care about having healthy children. Why is that important do you think, the spacing, Sally?

Well, the spacing allows the mother to recover her nutritional stores and gives her time to build up with a preconceptual diet and so forth. And don't forget, she's also breastfeeding. And this is a a big stress for the mother, nutritional stress. So she needs to get to the point where the baby is not getting so much of its diet from the breast milk and then do the preconceptual diet to prepare again. Yeah. Well, I didn't know about this principle when I was pregnant with 1 kid and I was

nursing another and I was like, oh my gosh. I'm feeding 3 people right now. It did feel like a lot. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And you don't need to do that to yourselves. One thing I'm concerned about is this idea that we should be exclusively breastfeeding. Traditional cultures did most of them, not all, most of them breastfed for a number of years or at least until they came pregnant with a second child. But they didn't exclusively breastfeed. In fact, in some cultures, they

started solid food at 1 month. Oh, wow. Yeah. And certainly by 6 months Mhmm. They were all giving solid food. Do you think there's, resistance to giving the child food because we think breast is best, I guess? Yes. So we've kind of gone from one extreme

to the other. We've gone from no breastfeeding to exclusive breastfeeding. And what happens is the babies become anemic because by 6 months, that baby needs extra iron and breast milk is not high in iron. It's got little, but not enough for this developing baby. And the first foods for infants tend to be high iron foods like liver or egg yolks or something like that. So as we start to wrap up, Sally, what do you think is important for people to keep in mind when they consider

the wise traditions diet? What what if part of it doesn't appeal to them? If I'm like, oh, I don't know about ferments or I don't have those in my diet or I can't balance the omega threes and omega sixes. Yep. Well, just do the best you can. Start somewhere. So that's why. And I think the first thing is go from processed food to real food. Processed food to real food. And most of these will sort of happen by themselves. That's right. Over time. Number 1 is probably a

good one to start with. You're right. And, get off the sugar. And it's very interesting. I wrote an article about this recently. There was a study done where they got these rats addicted to sugar. They had sugar water and they kept going for the sugar water. And then they gave the rats a diet that was 40% large, and they didn't want the sugar water anymore. Ah. And the researchers were very upset about

this. These rats didn't they called it a chronic high fat diet. The rats didn't want their palatable sweet foods. Okay? But most of us are struggling with sugar addiction, and it's really good to know that if you just increase your fat content, these cravings will they'll eventually subside. Very good to know. Very encouraging in this day and age where sugar is ubiquitous. It's just ubiquitous and it's hard to resist. So I wanna ask you the question I love to pose at the end. It might

be related to these principles or not. If the listener could do one thing to improve their health, what would you recommend that they do? Butter. Yes. Eat more butter. Don't be afraid of butter. It's the most perfect fat in nature. It is the fat for the growth and development of all mammals. There can't be anything wrong with it for children or adults. And if it comes from grass fed animals, so much the better. And you know what? Most supermarkets

carry grass fed butter. So this is another thing that's new and it's really good. We should celebrate this. So I couldn't get grass fed butter when my kids were growing up. Wow. But now there's several brands. That's excellent. Well, thank you for your time today. It's been a pleasure. Thank you, Hilda. Always great to be with you. Our guest today was Sally Falamarel. Check out her blog at nourishingtraditions.com. And I am Hilda Librada Gore, the host and producer of this podcast

on behalf of the Weston a Price Foundation. You can find me at holistichilda.com. And for the transcript for this episode, visit our website, westonaprice.org and click on the podcast page. And now for a recent podcast review from Apple Podcasts. Nurse The Littles had this to say, this podcast is a gem and so needed in a world overloaded with misinformation about health and wellness. Everybody needs

to listen to it and share with your friends. Thank you for producing fabulous episodes week after week and bringing the message of the foundation to a wider audience. Nourish the Littles. It is our pleasure. Thanks for taking the time of writing this review. I would love it if you too could leave us a review. I'm telling you these make a difference for potential listeners. And thank you so much for listening, my friend. Stay well, and remember to keep your feet on the ground and

your face to the sun. On behalf of the Weston a Price Foundation, thanks for listening. We have many free resources to support you on your health journey. Visit westonaprice.org to find podcasts, articles, videos and more. You can also find a local chapter near you for help in finding sources of great food. We invite you to support the foundation's mission of education, research and activism by becoming a member. Thanks again and take

care. Wise Traditions is a project of the Weston a Price Foundation for wise traditions in food, farming, and the healing arts. The content on this podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended to substitute for the advice provided by your doctor or other healthcare professional. It is not intended to be nor does it constitute

healthcare or medical advice.