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The Natural Dietician
Three hundred years ago, those living on the very land you now sit on lived a very different lifestyle. They had to work for their food, and the options were sometimes limited. Whatever they ate was seasonal; relatively fresh; free from anything artificial or chemical; and not from a box, package, or bag. If we think about the thousands of years of human evolution and the foods our bodies adapted to, we see that in the last hundred years there has been a quick shift in the types of foods we eat, without the time for us to adapt.
The genome (genetic blueprint) of a person from the arctic has existed in a similar environment for thousands of years with relatively similar types of food being available (e.g., the historical Inuit diet was high in fat and protein and relatively low in carbohydrates), and any sudden change in their eating patterns went against the adaptation that this person had evolved with. “Not only did [the Inuit] have bigger livers to handle the additional work [of protein digestion] but their urine volumes were also typically larger to get rid of the extra urea,”[1]which is the by-product of protein metabolism. The Inuit diet had the right balance of all of the nutrients they needed, despite its not looking anything like the modern “food guide,” which underscores the words of Inuit researcher Harold Draper, “there are no essential foods – only essential nutrients.”[2]
Turn the clock forward to the present day, and we see a very different eating pattern in many places in the arctic due to the infiltration of Western foods. Not only is there a growing predominance of packaged and processed foods, but also less healthful fats and fewer organ meats and specialty foods (such as bone marrow) are consumed compared to one hundred years ago – foods that traditionally provided all the necessary nutrients. This problem is multifactorial, and due to strong historical colonization policies, plus climate change, many Northerners have lost their connection with the land, have difficulty affording materials for hunting, and are therefore ever more dependent on other less nutritious food sources.
Since the two world wars, marketing companies have, in essence, informed our dietary habits. Consequently, many people believe that to eat healthfully means having a “restricted” diet; that is, they avoid all the “goodies’’ that are now available to them. When Anishnawbe Elders woke up in the morning three hundred years ago, they didn’t turn on the TV to see the multitude of food options thrown across the screen at them, nor did they have aisles of brightly colored boxes of cereals to choose from. Food was food; it was eaten with respect and for nourishment, for ceremony, or for medicine – that’s it.
I therefore put forward the concept of the “grandmother diet,” which essentially means utilizing the historical eating patterns of our grandmothers when they were young (and not in residential schools for the Indigenous kokums [grandmothers]). Our grandmothers are often people of inspiration and respect. They are women who didn’t have everything handed to them when they started their lives; they had to work hard for their families, with their families. If we have a hard time separating good food from bad, we can look to our grandmother spirits, who just had food, and the food they had was what they and their families worked to attain from the land.
Grandmother eating obviously doesn’t apply only to Indigenous eating patterns, but also to eating patterns everywhere on the globe. Many people’s grandmothers (when they were young girls and women) the world over often ate more home-cooked meals and prepared them from scratch with fresh food that was available locally. Our grandmothers were also usually born in places where their ancestors had lived for decades, if not centuries or more, before immigrating later in life to other areas. This means that the grandmother diet often fits well with the genome (genetic makeup) of the family line, and therefore outlines a template for eating that is likely to work well for a granddaughter or grandson today. For example, if a grandmother emigrated from Vietnam to Canada with her family, there is a good chance that the children and grandchildren would do better healthwise eating a traditional Vietnamese diet rather than adopting a Western diet.
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How often do you go to the grocery store and visit the same sections, grabbing the same basic foods over and over again? What is the ratio of packaged items of unknown origin to fresh foods spanning the colors of the rainbow and grown “in season” that you put in your grocery cart?
The concept of seasonality is one of those pop phrases that has become popular with chefs around the world. “Cooking with seasonal locally grown produce was voted the top food trend of 2010 by nearly 2,000 chefs.”[3]It has long been known that each and every plant and animal has its season. Each plant has its peak season, when it is ripe, and each animal has its peak season, when it is fed the most nutritious foods based on availability and the nutrient density of the land on which it grazes. There are many cultures in the world that have retained the knowledge of the seasonality of their foods (even Western countries, such as France, whose open local markets are a testament to eating seasonally); however, there are other places where this knowledge is almost completely lost due to the year-round availability in grocery stores of a wide variety of foods from all over the world.
For example, “a BBC poll has revealed that fewer than one in 10 Brits know when some of the UK’s most well-known fruit and vegetables are in season…. Of the 2,000 people polled, only 5% could say when blackberries were plump and juicy. And 4% guessed accurately at when plums were at their best. One in 10 could pinpoint the season for gooseberries. All of this is despite 86% professing to believe in the importance of seasonality, and 78% claiming to shop seasonally.”[4] So does the season really matter when it comes to eating?
Let us for a moment remember those radial (wrist) pulse assessments whereby many Traditional Medicine practitioners assess a patient through signs coming from their body. With each of the four seasonal changes in weather, the pulse also changes slightly.[5] This means our bodies are physiologically in tune with weather changes (ask any migraine sufferer who knows exactly when a thunderstorm is coming because barometric changes are one of their triggers). In Chinese medicine (in addition to most other Traditional Medicine systems around the world), people are understood to be indirectly and directly influenced by changes in the weather. Because of this, they need to make lifestyle changes corresponding to nature, in part because of the view that the earth and its forces are a holistic entity.[6] This is not merely a concept from Chinese medicine, as mentioned, but of most Indigenous cultures that believe and know that the environment is one with the human body and spirit. When the earth bleeds, the Indigenous soul bleeds (which is one of the reasons Indigenous Peoples are known keepers of the earth and support environmental protection), and changes are made to heal the wounds of both.
Because human and animal bodies change with the seasons (e.g., bears going into hibernation), it was and is still known that the timing for eating certain foods is essential to good health and emotional balance. What is brilliant about the concept of seasonality, aside from its rationality and practicality, is that eating with the seasons brings variety to the diet. This variety helps ensure that we get the “full complement of vitamins, minerals and other nutrients that nature offers,”[7] and therefore prevents deficiencies and ill health. “One study found that women who ate a diet rich in fruits and vegetables from 18 different plant families … had significantly less damage to their genetic material than women who limited themselves to five plant families.”[8]
Practically, this means that instead of starting the morning with the same fruit at breakfast each and every day, one might have half a grapefruit in the winter, switch to pomegranates in late fall, and blueberries in the summer.[9] Researchers have found evidence that the nutrient content for many foods varies by season; for example, vitamin C was found to be highest in spinach when it was in season (they found “threefold differences in the vitamin C content of spinach harvested in summer versus winter”[10]). Research has also found that even the nutrient content of cow’s milk was different, depending on the time of year and the diets of the cows.[11]
Because human and animal bodies change with the seasons (e.g., bears going into hibernation), it was and is still known that the timing for eating certain foods is essential to good health and emotional balance.
It has been demonstrated that there is a right time to pick plants for eating, but it is key to the preparation of traditional medicines. It is well known in herbal medicine that plants need to be picked only at certain times of the year. In fact, some plants are so sensitive that if they are not picked at the correct time they can actually be so toxic as to make someone sick.
In traditional nutrition recommendations, root vegetables are fall and winter foods. They can remain in the ground until the first frost and can be stored for the winter. These vegetables are considered to be grounding foods that help to prepare us for the coming cold season. In the spring, the first shoots of above ground plant foods make their appearance. These plants, which are part and parcel of the warmer weather, are lighter and cooler and nutritionally invigorate the system.
Meats are no different; just as we are what we eat, so too are animals. If an animal is stressed on slaughter, for example, it is a well-known fact that the quality of the meat changes. The slaughter industry knows this well and has attempted to instigate measures to reduce stress in animals before slaughter for the main purpose of preserving the meat quality. If a cow experiences distress, a hormonal cascade is activated, which triggers the “release of various stress hormones such as catecholamines and cortisol, thus glycogen depletion prior [to] slaughter [using up carbohydrate stores], elevated ultimate pH and poor muscle-meat conversion,”[12] occur that affect the taste and tenderness of the meat (essentially, the cow goes into lactic acidosis or hits “runner’s wall”).
Whether we consume plants or animals, their nutrient makeup – determined by the organism’s time of life, its physical location or habitat, and its stressors – determines how that very plant or animal helps to build our houses [our bodies]. All of those ingested meat or plant fibers become who we are each and every day as our systems incorporate the nutrients, in addition to the literal state of being of the organism (i.e., stressed meat). Therefore, the responsibility to ourselves begins with the responsibility of taking care of those very plants and animals, ensuring that they share with us the best possible nutrient status – in balance and free of inflammatory mediators. This allows our systems to be vibrant and healthy, and ultimately the best-built house on the block (in addition to allowing the plants and animals themselves to be vibrantly healthy, of course).
Historically, Indigenous cultures have had a clear understanding of the need to respect plants and animals. When most Indigenous Peoples take the life of an animal or a plant for their own survival, they use every part of that animal or plant that they need, and they return the parts they do not use to the earth in a ceremony of thanks and gratitude. Those buried bones and other remains then provide nourishment to the surrounding plants, and the cycle of life continues.
Given our absolute reliance on these food sources and our direct connection to them, we need to clearly recognize and boldly state that we are intimately connected to them because they do enter our bodies, and when they do, they can either help us or harm us, depending on the choices we make each and every day.
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Indigenous Peoples the world over often discuss the need for self-determined revitalization of lost culture and practices. In some cases, there is even a rejection of modern practices that are believed to go against the cultural and natural laws of the land that have been in place for thousands of years before settler institutions arrived and often set very different laws. One of the most powerful things that Indigenous Peoples can do is push aside the settler dietary habits that have been imposed on them through cultural devolution or by moving to a new location. (In this latter case, it is important to acknowledge the term Indigenous as being any person having historical ties to their homeland. An Italian person is indigenous to their country, and a Chinese person is indigenous to their country; however, if a Chinese person moves to Italy, they will still fare better on a traditional Chinese diet than an Italian one.)
Dietary guidelines that have been put in place in many Western countries where Indigenous Peoples live, such as Canada, the United States, and Australia, often do not reflect their unique genetic makeup, dietary adaptations, or nutrient needs. There has been an attempt to model traditional foods by maintaining the key structures of standard dietary pyramids and just replacing the protein foods with traditional meats, or replacing the fruits with berries. This appeal to Indigenous heritage was warranted; however, it is not backed by sound data since standard dietary pyramids (biased toward dairy and grain products) have not been studied or researched sufficiently in Indigenous populations. However, given thousands of years of sound survival data, Indigenous Peoples do not have to wait for any supportive data on how to eat properly to arrive from an institution per se; the knowledge is inherent. Just as a Chinese person fares better with a traditional Chinese diet, so too does a Mohawk person fare better with their traditional foods.
Indigenous dietary patterns differ significantly around the world, depending on the geography, and this provides a clear example of how nutrient-dense diets can be achieved in different ways (the “grandmother diet’’ of the region). For example, the Inuit obtained over 90% of their food calories from meat and fish (<10% from plants), the Hadza obtained closer to 50% of their food calories from meat and fish (with close to 25% being from roots), and the Hiwi obtained around 80% of their calories from meat and fish (with 10% from roots).[13]
Indigenous dietary patterns differ significantly around the world, depending on the geography, and this provides a clear example of how nutrient-dense diets can be achieved in different ways (the “grandmother diet’’ of the region).
It must be clearly noted that none of the diets mentioned above contain any milk products. It is therefore not a surprise that the estimated rate of lactose intolerance in Indigenous groups such as Australian Aboriginals is 70%, compared with control rates of 9%.[14] Yet for posted recommended intakes of calcium across the North American population, milk products are listed and often insisted upon for the health of bones and to prevent osteoporosis. To not recommend milk products for calcium causes anxiety among many professionals as it is considered a necessary staple, especially for children, based on institutional teaching and curricula. Yet, for the high number of Indigenous patients (as well as many non-Indigenous patients) who have gastric distress – often suffering in silence not knowing what ails them, or repeatedly visiting the doctor’s office where general screens are run that come back as “normal” with the patients being told that nothing is wrong – this is not optimal. This is the scenario despite clear evidence of the high rate of milk intolerance causing distress, in this patient population as well as many others (70% of African Americans, 90% of Asian Americans, 53% of Mexican Americans, and 25% of the US population in general are lactose intolerant).[15] The simple removal of lactose from the diet of these patients results in relief from this daily struggle. Empowering Indigenous patients and others to understand their bodies, informing them about why, genetically, they may not tolerate certain foods by giving them the example of the grandmother diet makes a world of difference in their confidence, understanding, and ability to take a direct role in their health and wellness.
It must also be clearly noted that the grain intake of the Inuit, Hadza, and Hiwi is almost nil. Yet our current food guidelines don’t discriminate, casting grain intake from six up to eleven servings per day, depending on the country – which for many Indigenous and non-Indigenous people is a quick slide to diabetes (especially since people are generally less active and grain and flour intake is higher today compared with historical times). ‘‘[D]iabetes was rare among the Aboriginal population in North America prior to 1940, the rates increased rapidly after 1950 and have now reached epidemic levels in some communities.”[16] Indigenous and non-Indigenous people around the globe must understand that hundreds to even thousands of years of grandmother diets means that they are genetically adapted to eating the foods that their ancestors ate. For Western Indigenous populations specifically, eating what we could now term the dominant “settler foods”- based diet (i.e., foods brought by settlers that were not natural to, or consumed in, the area in which they had settled), ensures a continual battle inside of their bodies to be and feel well. It is imperative for the nutrition and medical professions to acknowledge the unique genetic makeup of Indigenous patients when they form their treatment plans. Diabetes is rampant in the Indigenous communities, yet the advice for diabetic management still strongly recommends dairy and grain products, “whole” grains, that is. This does not accurately address the underlying individuality of not only the Inuit, Hadza, and Hiwi patients, but Indigenous patients from various ethnic backgrounds around the world.
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The food that various Indigenous communities ate differed depending on where they lived and what the land provided for them. Just because many Indigenous diets are low in grains and dairy products doesn’t automatically mean that a referral to an Atkins-style diet is necessary or warranted. There are many variables to consider when formulating a healthful food plan for any person that ensures a balance of nutrients, regardless of the types of foods that are eaten. As many Indigenous Peoples do not have access to traditional meats, which are leaner than their conventionally farmed counterparts, there needs to be some give in how this new traditional diet will be formulated. This also applies to non-Indigenous people, as many of the sources for balanced nutrition used in traditional cultures can provide guidance and insight into healthful eating patterns for all.
The grandmother diet may include hardy ancient grains or wild rice, lean meats and fish with healthy fats, and plenty of berries and vegetables. Everyone should consider the rainbow each time they go to the grocery store to ensure that they have at least one of each color of the rainbow in their carts. “The most commonly cited and remembered sequence [of the rainbow] is Newton’s sevenfold red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, remembered by the mnemonic, Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain (ROYGBIV).”[17] From a food standpoint, we can usually divide foods into red (such as apples, beets, cranberries, raspberries, and rhubarb), orange (such as pumpkins, squashes, carrots, and apricots), yellow (such as millet, ginger, lemons, and potatoes), green (such as artichokes, avocados, celery, and broccoli), blue/purple/black (such as wild black rice, purple cabbage, blueberries, and plums), and then white/tan/brown (such as cauliflower, onions, garlic, and mushrooms). If you have one food of each color each week, if not every day, you are already on the right track. It can be that simple!
Many of the sources for balanced nutrition used in traditional cultures can provide guidance and insight into healthful eating patterns for all.
It is not necessary at first to focus on removing things from your life; the grandmother diet is not a diet per se, it is a healthy-living plan based on your genetic heritage and, therefore, digestive capabilities. Including colorful foods as per above first is the best way to get started on the right path. Eat throughout the day; many people make the mistake of having their largest meal for supper, when all they do afterward is sleep. Often when people don’t eat much throughout the day because they are busy, by the time evening comes they want to eat everything in the cupboard. When your body craves nourishment, it can gravitate toward foods you find are most comforting, but these foods don’t necessarily satisfy your body’s needs. Trust that your craving indicates that your body needs something. This something can be a nutrient that is deficient, a thirst that needs quenching, or even a need for love or fulfillment in one’s life that needs filling. All of these can be confused, resulting in an attempt to fill the soul with various foods that not only don’t satisfy the craving but often increase it.
Most people (including non-Indigenous people) do not eat enough healthful fats, which were a large part of the Indigenous diet, because we have all been taught to fear fats for an assumed association with heart disease. This notion has only recently been debunked with more and more research demonstrating that there is a clear distinction between the types of fats and their effects on the body. In 2015, the American Heart Association (AHA) published a report that stated, “The association’s current recommendations support moderate-fat diets low in saturated and trans fats, with an emphasis on incorporating unsaturated fats.”[18] However, this has led to much confusion among Indigenous groups in particular when dieticians and institutions on one hand state that they need to reduce or remove saturated fats and red meats as much as possible from their diet, and on the other hand promote and support a traditional diet, which can be high in saturated fat and red meat. The most important statement from the American Heart Association seems to be in their most recent comprehensive dietary guide, which was issued in “November 2013 and recognizes that the overall dietary pattern is more important than individual foods.”[19] It is one thing to eat a diet high in deer meat, wild rice, and berries and other plant foods, and another thing to eat a diet high in Spam or bologna with white macaroni and cheese.
When you sit down to eat, a good way to ensure you have a good balance is to divide your plate so that colorful plant foods (i.e., vegetables) take up half the plate, an ancient whole grain (not a refined white grain, unless specified by your healthcare practitioner) takes up one-quarter of your plate, and a protein food takes up the last quarter of your plate. Don’t be afraid to drench your food (after cooking, as heat destroys the oil) in good fats such as olive oil, as this will help you feel full faster and also benefit your heart. Some of these foods and oils are not traditional foods in all areas; however, they provide the balance we need when some traditional food sources are no longer available in any given region.
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Indigenous and non-Indigenous people have historically suffered through eras of starvation (due to a lack of available foods or nutrients in certain periods of history); however, the empowerment through eating grandmother foods does not have to be diminished by a repeat of our not-forgotten past of seeming restrictions. Eating healthy does not mean eating a restricted diet. Our grandmothers didn’t have the option of the processed and packaged food we have now, so their diets were not restricted, they just ate what was naturally available. As Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, collectively we need to clearly differentiate the food that is our own, and the food that has settled around us, and then make the important choice in how best to nourish ourselves. Indigenous and non-Indigenous people will need to adapt, and the new eating habits will be best if based on the diets of other Indigenous Peoples around the world, whose fruit, vegetables, and grains might have different names from ours, but share similar nutrient profiles as the foods of our ancestors. We can together lift ourselves from the poor health that plagues us, by nothing more than listening to our grandmothers.
Governments and institutions need to clearly understand the role they have played in the changes to the diets of Indigenous Peoples over a relatively short period of time in our collective history. With the often high cost of healthful foods versus processed foods, and the reduced availability of land-based programs to grow fresh foods or animals, it is becoming clearly evident that the way we feed our nations right now is not working, and we need the cooperation of individuals, the private sector, and government to put it right. We all need to rise up and be a testament to the collective power of Old World and New World knowledge to lead our future generations on the right path for our health and the health of Mother Earth. Let us become what we eat with awareness and power from the energies of our grandmothers, whether we are Indigenous or not.
From Science of the Sacred: Bridging Global Indigenous Medicine Systems and Modern Scientific Principles by Nicole Redvers, ND, published by North Atlantic Books, copyright © 2019 by Nicole Redvers. Reprinted by permission of North Atlantic Books.
About the Author
Nicole Redvers, ND, is the first licensed practicing naturopathic doctor in North America who is Dene (a member of the Deninu K’ue First Nation Band). She has traveled the globe, studying Traditional Medicine systems in various countries and working with Indigenous patients, helping to bridge the gap between traditional and modern medical systems. In addition, Redvers developed Northern Canada’s only integrative medicine clinic from the ground up. She also cofounded and chairs a nonprofit group, the Arctic Indigenous Wellness Foundation (AIWF), whose purpose is to revitalize traditional wellness services in the Canadian north and to focus on the preservation of Traditional Medicines. She is currently expanding her education as a Dartmouth Merit Scholar through the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice, with the goal of enacting greater system change for Indigenous Peoples.
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- Gadsby and Steel, “The Inuit Paradox.”
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- Yonela Zifikile Njisane and Voster Muchenje, “Farm to Abattoir Conditions, Animal Factors and Their Subsequent Effects on Cattle Behavioural Responses and Beef Quality: A Review,” Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Science 30, no. 6 (2016):755-764, accessed September 6, 2018, https://doi.org/10.5713/ajas16.0037.
- Ferris Jabr, “How to Really Eat Like a Hunter-Gatherer: Why the Paleo Diet ls Half-Baked,” Scientific American, June 3, 2013, accessed January 10, 2013, www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-paleo-diet-half-baked-how-hunter-gatherer-really-eat.
- Janette C. Brand et al., “Lactose Malabsorption in Australian Aboriginal Children,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 41, no. 3 (1985):620-622, accessed September 6, 2018, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3976561.
- Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, “What Is Lactose Intolerance?” n.d., Accessed February 9, 2018, www.pcrm.org/health/diets/vegdiets/what-is-lactose-intolerance.
- Public Health Agency of Canada, “Diabetes in Canada: Facts and Figures from a Public Health Perspective. Chapter 6: Diabetes among First Nations, Inuit, and Metis Populations” (2011), accessed January 10, 2017, www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/cd-mc/publications/diabetes-diabete/facts-figures-faits-chiffres-2011/chap6-eng.php.
- Wikipedia, “Rainbow,” n.d., accessed January 10, 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow.
- American Heart Association, “The Facts on Fats: 50 Years of American Heart Association Dietary Fats Recommendations” (2015), accessed January 10, 2017, www.heart.org/idc/groups/heart-public/@wcm/@fc/documents/downloadable/ucm_475005.pdf.
- American Heart Association, “Facts on Fats.”
Published in the Price-Pottenger Journal of Health & Healing
Spring 2020 | Volume 44, Number 1
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