My guest today, Sally Fallon Morell is author of the bestselling cookbook Nourishing Traditions and The Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby and Child Care. She is the founding president of the Weston A. Price Foundation. We’ll be talking about how Dr. Weston Price researched traditional cultures to learn about nutrition and what we really should be eating for good health. Sally is a journalist, chef, nutrition researcher, homemaker, and community activist. Her lifelong interest in the subject of nutrition began in the early 1970s when she read Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price. Called the “Isaac Newton of Nutrition,” Price traveled the world over studying healthy primitive populations and their diets. The unforgettable photographs contained in his book document the beautiful facial structure and superb physiques of isolated groups consuming only whole, natural foods. Price noted that all of these diets contained a source of good quality animal fat, which provided numerous factors necessary for the full expression of our genetic potential and optimum health. Ms. Morell applied the principles of the Price research to the feeding of her own children, and proved for herself that a diet rich in animal fats, and containing the protective factors in old fashioned foodstuffs like cod liver oil, liver and eggs, make for sturdy cheerful children with a high immunity to illness. And since she has been educating the world on how to enjoy this diet deliciously. www.westonaprice.org
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Nourishing Traditions: Bringing Traditional Foods to Modern Life
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Sally Fallon Morell
Date of Broadcast: April 09, 2014
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and to live toxic-free.
Today, we’re going to talk about food. We’re going to talk about food that is truly, deeply healthy, and comes from our traditions, our human traditions in food.
Today is—what is the date today? Wednesday, April 9, 2014. I’m here in Clearwater, Florida. The sun is shining. And my guest today is Sally Fallon Morell.
She’s the founder of the Weston Price Foundation, and the author of a wonderful, wonderful book called “Nourishing Traditions,” which I’ve been studying and eating from since it first came out, I think, 15 years ago or something like that.
Sally is on the line, but I want to tell you about my experience with her work before we talk to her because it’s changed a lot for me about how I think about food and my health, and I want to really emphasize the importance of what she’s done.
First of all, I want to say, Sally is going to tell us her story from her viewpoint, but I’m going to tell it to you from my viewpoint.
Sally is one of these people who figured out that something was right in a world where a lot is wrong. And she figured out a right way to eat. She fed her family, and she saw the results, and she said, “I need to do something to bring this to the world.”
I’m assuming she said that because her actions followed from that kind of thought. And so she wrote a book. She started an organization, The Western Price Foundation (and there’s much, much accumulated information on that site. When you become a member, you can have access to all of it).
She does scientific research. Everything that she says is based in science and research. It’s not her opinion. It’s based in something. She has other equally high integrity researchers around her who are also researching with the same kind of intelligence and thoughtfulness.
The organization puts on incredible conferences. I had the honor of being invited to speak about five years ago (I went to San Francisco and spoke at their conference).
And let me tell you. I’ve been to a lot of conferences on subjects that are health-related. And what you do is that you go to a hotel, and you’re expected to eat the regular hotel conference food, which is usually not very delicious, it’s not organic, and it’s not healthy for you.
Well, when you go to the Weston Price Foundation Conference—and I would recommend that you go to the Weston Price Foundation Conference—just eat the food because when I went, it was a revelation as to what food is supposed to taste like, and also, how it feels in your body. All of the things that Sally writes about, all of the things that she speaks about, about food, were right there being demonstrated.
They had Weston Price Foundation members preparing the food at the conference. And they brought in the food. They didn’t use the hotel food, they brought it in. And we all ate the best food that we’ve ever eaten. It was really incredible.
When I went to the conference, I tasted the food, I saw the members. I saw how happy and healthy everybody was. It was like being in another world. And it’s the world that we all could have if we just ate the way we should be eating.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Wow, thank you.
DEBRA: Hi, Sally.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Hi.
DEBRA: That’s what I wanted to say. So I am very pleased that you are here today with us. I just have to thank you for the excellent work that you’ve done and continue to do.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Well, I appreciate that. And I’m so glad that you started off talking about children because your narrative is accurate. I raised my children according to this diet. I had read the words of Weston Price and applied his principles to raising my children.
DEBRA: Tell us about Weston Price’s work. I want to allow you to explain it. That’s why I didn’t go into it.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Weston Price was a dentist who traveled throughout the world, studying isolated, primitive people to, first of all, ascertain were they healthy. And he found 14 groups that were superbly healthy as manifested first and foremost by their teeth. They had beautiful, broad faces, all of them had straight teeth, and hardly any cavities at all. Some groups had no cavities.
And then he looked at their diets. Now, these diets, of course, were different everywhere he went. The Eskimo diet was different from the Southeast diet, and the Alpine Swiss diet was different from the Gaelic diet.
But there were certain underlying characteristics: and 1) was, of course, there were no processed foods in these diets, 2) is that all of the diets had animal foods in them (there were no vegan diets), and 3) and this is the really critical one, was the very high levels of vitamins and minerals, especially what we call the fat-soluble vitamins. These are vitamins A, D and K, which we can only get from few foods.
We get them from organ meats, egg yolks, butter, cream, the fats of animals, certain types of shellfish and oily fish, fish eggs. And they need to be from animals who are outside in the sunlight, eating green pasture. And then you get a maximizing of these fat-soluble vitamins.
And our mission is a real uphill battle because these are the foods that people are being told not to eat, people have been avoiding now for over a generation. And they are the very foods that traditional cultures valued most of all for having healthy babies, having a healthy pregnancy, healthy babies, healthy reproduction.
So, we really stress these foods. We have created a network of chapters, local chapters, that help you find these foods, and help you buy direct from farmers because it’s very hard to find these healthy foods.
DEBRA: They are! I’ve known about this diet since Nourishing Traditions first came out. But it’s been a very long route for me to apply these things in my life. It’s not because I’m not interested, or that I don’t think that they’re a good idea, but I live in Florida. I live in an area of Florida that is not like living in San Francisco or New York or some place where you can get a lot of food. I had a very hard time.
I joined my local chapter, and I found out where I could get these things. But they were so few and far between. They were expensive. To get to the farmer was maybe an hour and a half drive. And finally, finally, right in the last few months, I can actually buy pastured eggs off my natural food store.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Good! These things are coming. It’s getting easier. Raw milk is one of our big themes. We really promote the consumption of raw milk. And that’s becoming more available.
We have Dr. Price, of course, who suggested cod liver oil. And we now have a really wonderful cod liver oil that’s manufactured in the United States. It’s the only cod liver oil that has all the natural vitamins and it’s not heated during processing.
So yes, it’s becoming easier. Raw milk, for example, is becoming much more available.
Well, these are the foods that create healthy children. And I saw it happen in my own children. Just to give you an example. I needed braces. All of my brothers and sisters needed braces. None of my children needed braces. So, you can reverse that narrowing of the palate in a generation or two with the right food.
So, you’re right. I just thought, “Well, the world needs to know about this. There are so many dietary schemes out there and theories about how we should eat. But none of them is based on how real people eat.”
And so we like to say that we show the scientific validation of traditional food wisdom. And if you can find a food with food tradition, and then show that the science validates that, then I’d be pretty sure that you’re on the right track.
DEBRA: I totally agree with you. I totally agree with you. And I understand how you felt that the world needed to know that.
That’s because when I found out that toxic chemicals were making me sick, and that I could get well by not being around them, I said, “Oh, my god.” It just became something I had to do for the rest of my life until the whole world gets it.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: When you raise children on the side, they might have a much greater tolerance for toxins.
We’ve always had toxins in our environment. Smoke is loaded with toxins. And of course, there was much more exposure to smoke amongst traditional culture.
DEBRA: Well, I think we have a combination. We need to go to break, but I want to say this one thing.
It’s clear to me that what’s going on in the world today is we have a combination of inadequate nutrition, which makes our bodies not function as well as they could, and then we have too many toxic chemicals which are also destroying the function. But also, our lack of nutrition makes it, as you said, more difficult to tolerate the toxic things within the environment.
So, it really goes hand in hand. We need to reduce toxics and increase nutrition.
And we’re going to go to break. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Sally Fallon Morell from the Weston Price Foundation. She’s actually the founder of the Weston Price Foundation.
We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Sally Fallon Morell. She’s the founder of the Weston Price Foundation and author of Nourishing Tradition and other books.
Sally, tell us what’s going on in the world today with how people eat and why that’s a problem for health. What are the problems that you’re solving with the Weston Price diet?
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Well, let’s just talk about the toxins for a moment. One of the key things that we need in our bodies to eliminate toxins is saturated fat. Saturated fats support the enzymes that your body uses to get rid of toxins. And our bodies have a very wonderful system for getting rid of toxins because we’ve always been exposed to toxins.
And without plenty of saturated fats in the diet, and the cell membrane, and also if you’re eating the industrial fats and oils, the liquid oils, and the partially hydrogenated oils, they replace saturated fats in your cell membranes, and these enzymes can’t work anymore.
And this is one of the reasons we’re seeing so many people so sensitive to toxins, especially these children who started off their lives on low fat diet, not getting these good animal foods and so forth.
Now, another thing that’s critical for getting rid of toxins is vitamin A. And most doctors today will tell you that vitamin A is toxic. And we’re extremely deficient as a population in vitamin A. And this is why we recommend cod liver oil to make sure that we’re getting adequate vitamin A every day. And vitamin A is our number one vitamin to defend us against toxins.
DEBRA: I have a question. Let me ask you this.
So one of the things that I’ve run into in eating all the things that you recommend is that my body is actually pretty sensitive to different foods and has been since I was born, so I don’t eat any seafood, for example, because it actually makes me sick to eat it. And I can’t event put it in my mouth without gagging. And so to take cod liver oil is like an impossible thing.
So, for those of us who can’t take cod liver oil, what do you suggest is the next best thing?
SALLY FALLON MORELL: So then you need to eat liver. Every day, you need to eat liver just for vitamin A. Now, probably the easiest type of liver to eat is chicken liver or duck liver. It’s much milder than beef liver, and you can make a delicious pate with it.
DEBRA: I love chicken liver pate.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Yes, and chicken liver pate will have vitamin D and vitamin K as well. But you really need that vitamin A, and it’s hard to get it if you’re not taking some kind of liver product—either cod liver oil or liver.
DEBRA: Okay, I’m going to go get some organic chicken livers and make pate. I have a great recipe.
Okay, what’s next?
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Well, the saturated fats and the vitamin A, and then just a good wholesome diet. I think it’s really critical not to let your blood sugar get too low. When that happens, you become more sensitive to toxin. And that means eating three good meals a day with plenty of fat and protein in every meal.
So, you don’t want a real high carb diet….
DEBRA: …which is what most people eat.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: And by the way, I want to say though, we’re not against carbs. A lot of traditional cultures had lots of carbs in their diet. But the key thing is to get those vitamins and minerals in your food.
DEBRA: And the vitamins and minerals are in the animal proteins and fats.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Well, the key ones. But they’re also in good plant foods as well.
DEBRA: So, tell us then what are the basics of the Weston Price diet?
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Well, it’s good whole foods, especially good animal foods—so meats and organ meats from pastured animals. And you always eat your meat with the fats. Traditional cultures never ate lean meat. They knew that it would make them sick. And it makes you sick by depleting vitamin A.
You need vitamin A to digest protein. And if you just eat a lot of protein, you’ll deplete yourself of vitamin A, if you eat the protein with the fat.
Lots of butter, cream, eggs, egg yolks—we do recommend plenty of seafood if you can tolerate it.
DEBRA: I know! That’s the one part I can’t eat. I just can’t eat it. But I know it’s very highly recommended.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: And then we recommend proper preparation of grain because grains can be quite toxic if they’re not properly prepared via fermentation process. So, in practice, that means you want a genuine sourdough bread, or you soak your oatmeal overnight to pre-digest it. And you eat your bread with plenty of butter, and you put butter and cream on your oatmeal, butter or cream.
And then we recommend fermented foods, lacto-fermented foods like sauerkraut, and lacto-fermented beverages like natural sodas like Kombucha.
And then the last thing is bone broth, good old-fashion chicken broth, beef broth. And that, by the way, is extremely detoxifying. The types of amino acids in the body help the liver detoxify.
DEBRA: Excellent! And you have a new book coming out in the fall called Nourishing Broths. I got an advanced copy, and it’s fantastic.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Good. I’m glad you did.
DEBRA: I want to say it’s as good as your other books, but I think it’s even better. Listeners, I want you to know that Sally just has this way of doing excellent, meticulous research. And then she tells you everything about the subject—the history, the science. And then she turns it into delicious food, so we can just apply all of that knowledge in the food that we eat.
And Nourishing Broth is no different than her other books in that regard.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Thank you. We’re very excited about the book, very excited.
DEBRA: Yes, I can hardly wait for it.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: I have another new book also—The Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby and Child Care.
DEBRA: I saw that, and I didn’t know if it was a new book.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Well, it came out last year.
DEBRA: Okay, that’s probably why I didn’t know about it before. But I saw it. If people go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, in the description of today’s show, there is both Nourishing Traditions and the new baby book, and links to them, where you can buy them on Amazon.com.
We’ve got 20 seconds until we go to the break. So I didn’t want to ask you a new question. But we need to go in, let’s see, 15 seconds.
So WestonPrice.org is Sally’s—
SALLY FALLON MORELL: It’s WestonAPrice.org, W-E-S-T-O-N-A-P-R-I-C-E dot org, WestonAPrice.org.
DEBRA: WestonAPrice.org, that’s right.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: And we have a website called RealMilk.com
DEBRA: And we’ll talk about that after the break. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. And my guest today is Sally Fallon Morell. She’s the founder of the Weston Price Foundation, and author of Nourishing Traditions. And we’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Sally Fallon Morell. She is the founder of the Weston Price Foundation and author of Nourishing Traditions and other books.
And just before the break, we were just mentioning raw milk. I know you have a campaign about this, Sally. Tell us what you’re doing, and the problems with milk, and why we should be drinking raw milk.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Well, one of the projects of the Weston A. Price Foundation is called “A Campaign for Real Milk.” It has a separate website—RealMilk.com. And our goal is to have raw milk—well, let’s say, “real milk.” And by “real milk,” we mean raw, whole milk from pastured cows, available in all 50 states where it’s legal to either sell or provide with cow shares some way. That’s available in all 50 states.
And we’ve actually gotten close to our goal. We’re 40 out of 50 now.
DEBRA: That’s wonderful!
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Yes, and we have a lot of legislation coming up in the states that don’t have it. In another 10 years, I think we will have met our goal.
My strategy in the teeth of a very hostile government—hostile agencies, hostile medical establishments, hostile public health establishments—is just to create implacable demand for this wonderful food. And we’ve done that by educating people on the health benefits of raw milk, the safety of raw milk.
And what’s also working in our favor is that industrial pasteurized milk is just very hard to tolerate. It’s got a lot of toxins in it.
And we have more and more people who simply cannot drink ultra-pasteurized or pasteurized milk.
The market for pasteurized milk is declining at 3% per year whereas the market for raw milk is growing in about 25% per year.
DEBRA: So, let me ask you this. So when people say they’re allergic to dairy, or when people are told to eliminate dairy, there’s a difference between industrial dairy and raw dairy.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: There absolutely is. We actually did a survey, and we found that 82% of people who were diagnosed as lactose intolerant could drink raw milk without any problem. And it is really hard to have a good healthy diet in the west if you’re not consuming dairy foods because they are our best source of calcium, they’re our best source of good fat, and lots and lots of other wonderful nutrients.
And they’re in a particularly appealing package. Most people really like milk and cream and butter and cheese.
DEBRA: I do. I love butter so much.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Yes, butter is our signature food.
DEBRA: I love butter so much that I eat bread only to hold the butter.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Exactly! You need to see teeth marks in the butter, or you don’t have enough butter on your bread.
DEBRA: I have been known—this is one of those things that people don’t like to admit, but I have been known to just eat butter with nothing else—a spoonful of butter.
And now, I’ve been making ghee. And I love ghee too. In fact, I think I like ghee even better than butter. And it’s wonderful to cook with.
I think that the key thing here is that we really need to be eating raw. But wait, I want to just amend what I just said.
It’s not just about milk. Raw milk versus industrial milk, I think is a really good example of the difference between how prevalent we’re all eating industrial food instead of what one might call a real food.
And so, a raw milk from a pastured cow would be a real food. But look, it’s illegal to even sell it in 10 states. And when you started, it was probably illegal to sell it in—
SALLY FALLON MORELL: By half the states, yes.
DEBRA: Yes, in Florida here, sometimes we get raw milk at my local natural food store, independently-owned. But it says on there, it’s for pet food. It’s only for pets.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: But that’s okay. There’s no law against eating pet foods.
DEBRA: Right. But that’s the way they have to sell it, which I think is—
SALLY FALLON MORELL: But they can sell it, and that’s the main thing.
DEBRA: It’s horrible!
SALLY FALLON MORELL: It’s just booming in Florida. Several dairies, and yeah, it’s just booming in Florida. And the health department just stepped back, and there hasn’t been any problems with it either.
DEBRA: No, there are no problems with it. I love raw milk. I think it tastes so much better. It’s actually easier for me to get raw goat milk here. And it’s just delicious. I can get cheeses made out of raw milk. So all the nutrition of raw milk is, I think, it can be available if you know how to get it.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: And that’s what we’ve done at the Weston A. Price Foundation. We’ve helped people find it.
We’ve created customers for raw milk farmers. It’s just booming. At least 10 million people in the United States drink raw milk.
DEBRA: That’s wonderful because I think that the way the world should be is that the norm is that we should just be able to go into any store and buy real foods and […]
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Yes, it’s very hard today. And I think we should be, but in actual fact, we aren’t. For example, it’s almost impossible to get pastured eggs in a store. And that’s why we recommend that everybody have a relationship with a farmer.
And a lot of our chapter leaders have created food clubs where they order online, and they get a big delivery of food once every two weeks from somebody’s garage. And that’s worked very well.
DEBRA: Well, another thing that I did—for a while, I had chickens in my backyard until the police came and took them. But they were the best eggs I had ever eaten. And it was such a wonderful experience to be able to feed them, and know what they were eating. And even to feed them grass and greens—
SALLY FALLON MORELL: In the old days, people fed chicken their scrap.
DEBRA: Right! And that’s what I did too. And so to be able to experience this whole life cycle of feeding my chickens what I wanted them to eat, and then an egg would appear—
The first time that happened, and I actually saw the egg in the nest, it was such a great day for me. It’s like you had such a separation of food if you think of eggs as being something in a carton at the store, then you see a chicken actually produce an egg, and then you take it inside, and you make an omelet, and then you eat it, it’s such an experience.
I just think that it should be legal to have chickens everywhere. People have backyards. You shouldn’t have the government come and take your chickens.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Yes, that’s our next fight. Our first fight is get raw milk legal everywhere.
DEBRA: Well, you’re doing a fabulous job. And I know that we’re all happy that you’re doing it, so that we can have our milk, so that we can have our eggs. It’s just you’re really taking us out of the industrial world and saying, “Here are the real things that people should be eating.”
SALLY FALLON MORELL: I’m not against industry. We need industry for cars and airplanes and all sorts of things—computers. But it’s just inappropriate to apply this industrial model to our food. It just doesn’t work.
DEBRA: I agree, I totally agree.
And we’re going to take another break. We’ll be right back with my guest, Sally Fallon Morell, Founder of the Weston Price Foundation and author of Nourishing Traditions. And that’s WestonAPrice.org, W-E-S-T-O-N-A “Price” dot-org.
I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and you’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. We’ll be back.
I’m looking at the Weston Price—I should say it right—Weston A. Price Foundation website. That’s Weston, W-E-S-T-O-N-A “Price.org.” And the kinds of thing that you’re going to find on here, if you just look over in the right-hand column, you’ll see that you can find the “Help me find nutrient-dense foods.” You can find a local chapter. They have a free brochure that you can read.
And one of the things that is right there on the homepage, about three-quarters of the way down, is a link that says “Differences between the Weston A. Price Foundation diet and the Paleo diet.”
I was very interested in that because, recently, I went on a month of a very strict Paleo diet. And I did it because I was having some problems.
I’ve not been eating the American diet for 30 years. And when I found Nourishing Traditions, it changed a lot for me. But as I’ve said, I couldn’t actually eat everything because I can’t eat cod liver oil and things like that.
And so I’m not as healthy—I’m so much more healthy than I was 30 years ago or even 10 years ago or even 5 years ago.
But there are still things going on with my body. And I went on this Paleo diet which helped me a lot because I was eliminating some things that I hadn’t eliminated before. I know that you have grains on the Weston Price Foundation diet, but I have been eliminating grains. And I see that there are a lot of things that I haven’t been fully applying like preparing the grains properly and things like that.
So, I know a lot of people know about the Paleo diet. What I’ve learned about the Paleo diet is I went on a very particular type of Paleo diet which helped my body a lot for that month. And I still continue to be on it. But I can see the importance of adding these things back in, that you’re talking about, and doing them in the proper way, not just saying, “I’m going to go out and eat white bread,” but preparing the grains the way you do properly and things like that.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: The grains, our diet that allow for you to leave things out. Some people leave out grains, some people have to leave out dairy, some people have to leave out seafood.
DEBRA: Seafood, me.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Just because you’re not going to eat a certain food doesn’t mean it should apply to everyone.
But my real concern about the Paleo diet is way too high in protein, too low in fat, and that will deplete you of vitamin A faster than anything. And people can really get in trouble on this diet.
DEBRA: I did really well on this particular version that I have on my food blog, ToxicFreeKitchen.com. But I’ve been reading a lot of—I thought, “Well, let me look around on the internet and see what people are saying about the Paleo diet.” And there are so many versions.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Well, that’s the other thing. It’s very confusing. Some allow fats. But the main speakers for the Paleo diet, their books are extremely low fat. And you just actually can’t stay on a diet like that. You start getting cravings.
DEBRA: Well, the one that I went on, actually, I think they probably—the doctor that put it together, I think that she probably is applying Weston Price principles as well because she encourages fat on her Paleo diet. And so, I’ve been eating a lot of coconut oil and butter and things. And I’ve been doing really well.
And I’m not hungry. And that’s the thing. Every once in a while, I’ll go on some extreme lose seven pounds in seven days kind of diet or something. I did the HTC diet. Did I say that right? HTC, I think that’s right. I did that, and I took the injections, and all these things. I lost weight, and I gained it all back and more.
I started taking the injections, and then it turns out—
SALLY FALLON MORELL: The fat goes away and they come back with their friends.
DEBRA: Yeah, yeah! And I was hungry. I was hungry all the time. So when I went on this Paleo diet for 30 days, and have been continuing it, I ate a lot of fat. And I lost—I think it was 11 pounds in a month. But I was eating a lot of fat.
And I went to my doctor, and I said, “I’m not hungry on this diet.”
And he said, “Because you’re getting nourished.”
And so, I know that I’m not eating excess protein. I’m eating about three ounces of protein per meal. I’m eating my fat, I’m eating my vegetables, and I’m eating nuts and flaxseeds and things like that. And I’m doing really well on it. But it is a more adequate protein, the high fat. Real food as much as I can get.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Well, you really do need the fat, yes.
DEBRA: Yes. So I think that I put it together in a way that it considers the things that I need to do, but it is also following the principles as best as I can that you’re talking about.
I can’t say this enough about how much I admire this particular diet, and what it’s based on, and how well you’ve brought it into practical application in modern life because your recipes are delicious, your instructions are very, very clear, and it’s easy to do if you can actually get the food.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: And that was the big challenge. That was the big challenge. And that’s why we set up the chapter system. And I could tell you, these foods are so much more available now than when we started. The sourdough bread, lacto-fermented foods, homemade broths—you can buy all these things now. You don’t even have to make them.
And the number of farmers doing pasture-raised animal products has just increased exponentially. It’s really exciting to me to see this new kind of farming come in and just be prosperous.
DEBRA: So here’s another big question I want to ask you. I think that one of the obstacles that a lot of people have—and I know this has been a challenge for me too—is how do you actually get into the groove of preparing all this food? Especially,
I don’t have a lot of pre-prepared foods here, and so I find that I have to prepare everything. I have to just go get the best ingredients I can, and then do all the preparation. How do you work that into your life?
SALLY FALLON MORELL: I’ve been cooking since I’ve been five years old. And to me, I escape to the kitchen. In other words, there comes certain times during the day when I get tired of what I’m doing, and my relaxation is going to the kitchen and cooking.
A lot of people are afraid to cook and so forth. But I think if you start with simple things, just eggs and bacon for breakfast, and cheese and sourdough bread for lunch, there’s no preparation there at all. You buy the sourdough bread, you buy the cheese, you buy the butter.
One of the things that we tell people, the first thing they should learn to make is their own salad dressing. It’s very easy to make, and it replaces—I mean, the absolute worst garbage in the supermarket are those salad dressings.
So, start there. Learn to make your own salad dressing. And then you can be an artist making your salad.
It really isn’t hard to cook simple meals. Bacon and baked potato with butter, or steamed vegetables with butter, and roast chicken or something like that. Get a slow cooker. It’s very easy to cook in a slow cooker.
DEBRA: I agree. I think also for me, it’s helped to make a big pot of super stew over the weekend that I can then just portion out in a refrigerator. And then when it comes the time to eat it, it’s just a matter of warming it up.
I’ve discovered that my favorite breakfast is scrambled eggs with sweet potatoes in them. I just bake enough sweet potatoes for the week, and then I cool them off and peel them and chop them up, and I have a container of sweet potatoes ready to go into the ghee, in the pan, and I brown them up and put in green onions, and a couple of beaten eggs, and my breakfast is done in three minutes.
It’s just a matter, I think, of working out what it is that you like to eat, and see how you can prepare it, in the most efficient, quickest way.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Exactly!
DEBRA: But it is a transition for people who are accustomed to buying everything packaged.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Well, I have to say, there’s really no other way. If you’re not willing to prepare your own food, it can be done, but it will be a lot more expensive.
DEBRA: I totally agree with you. When I first moved here—I’ve been cooking since I was six. My father taught me how to cook. But when I moved here to Florida, I was astonished at the number of women who did not know how to cook. They were just incredulous that I knew how to cook, and that I would go to a potluck, and that I would bring something that I had made with my own two hands.
People started asking me for cooking lessons just because they taught my food tasted so good, and they didn’t know how to cook. And they really were opening cans, and taking frozen food out of the freezer, and warming them up. And that’s what they were feeding their families.
I think it’s a pleasure to cook, and I think everybody needs to learn.
Anyway, we’re getting very close to the end, about 30 seconds. The music is going to come on, and we’re going to be done.
So I just want to thank you so much for joining me today and all the work that you’ve been doing.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: You’re welcome. It was a pleasure to be here. And I should say the website is WestonAPrice.org. We really encourage your listeners to be members of the WestonAPrice.org.
DEBRA: I encourage that as well because it’s worthwhile for them to do. It really is going to improve our health more than anything else that I can imagine. And thank you, thank you, thank you.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Alright! Well, thank you for having me.
DEBRA: You’re welcome.
