Baby Bear, a shepherd mix dog, was acquired by the
Misha May
Foundation last spring. The Misha May Foundation specializes in training and
rehabilitation for mixed-breed shelter dogs. Unfortunately, Baby Bear was
discovered to have a mast cell tumor on his paw, which could not be totally
removed without amputating the foot. The executive director, Lorraine May, a
holistic dog trainer and Reiki practitioner, decided to remove as much of the
tumor as possible surgically while preserving the foot and then pursue holistic
treatment.
Baby Bear began taking BioPreparationTM
last May and the remains of the tumor on his paw quickly started
healing. BioPreparationTM is
a holistic supplement offered by Optimum Choices. We took regular
pictures of his paw which you can see on our
Cancer Results page.
We are happy to report that Baby Bear was adopted on September 23. He
had a vet check on September 23 and was proclaimed very healthy with no
sign of any recurrence of his tumor. Lorraine reports that he looks and
feels marvelous.
BioPreparationTM was developed
by Russian scientists through
years of animal research to promote optimal health and reduce cancer. For more
information, click here.
When it comes to choosing the optimal diet for our health, there is a lot of
conflicting information out there, ranging from vegetarianism to macrobiotics
(grains and vegetables) to
the Paleolithic diet (meat, vegetables and no grains). We like to take the same
approach with humans that we take to our pet's diets. With dogs and cats, it
makes sense to look at what their wild ancestors ate, since that is what their
bodies are designed for (raw meat, bones and organs).
With people, it makes sense to look at what traditional cultures, untouched by
Western civilization, have eaten for thousands of years. Today there are few
cultures that have not had contact with civilization. Fortunately, there was a
researcher who investigated the diets of many traditional cultures in the 1920's
to 1930's, when travel to them became easier but before these cultures started
eating Western foods. This researcher was Dr. Weston A. Price, a dentist from
Cleveland. Being a dentist, he studied the teeth of these people and discovered
that people on traditional diets had healthy, almost cavity-free, beautiful,
straight teeth in uncrowded, broad jaws. When the children of these people
changed to a Western diet, they had crowded, crooked teeth in narrow jaws with
lots of cavities. The cause was clearly not genetic (unlike what we have been
told), as children in the same family would either have beautiful, well-spaced
teeth or crooked, unhealthy teeth depending on what their diet was.
Dr. Price studied the diets of traditional cultures all over the world, from
remote villages in Switzerland to Eskimos to the South Pacific. His work is now
being carried on by
Weston A. Price
Foundation, founded in 1999 by Sally Fallon and Mary Enig, PhD. Sally Fallon
summarizes Dr. Price's research by identifying the 11 underlying characteristics
of healthy traditional diets.
The first characteristic is that they contained no refined or denatured foods.
Just refined sugar, white flour, vegetable oils, canned foods and condensed milk
were enough to cause havoc to traditional people's health. Today we have many
more refined foods including high fructose corn syrup, pasteurized, skim and low
fat milk, hydrogenated fats, isolated protein powders and many food additives
and preservatives.
The second characteristic is that they all contained animal foods, which was
actually a big disappointment to Dr. Price. He had hoped to find a healthy
traditional culture that was vegetarian but he did not. Today, we have a myth
that a vegetarian diet is the healthiest diet. Many people assume I must be
vegetarian because I don't eat the standard American diet, I avoid junk food and
eat healthy food. Actually, my diet is high in organic animal foods. While a
vegetarian diet can be useful short-term for cleansing, it does not promote
optimal health long-term and can be especially damaging for children. For more
information on the drawbacks of a vegetarian diet, see:
http://beyondveg.com/.
What Dr. Price found was that at a minimum, the
traditional cultures ate dairy products and insects. As an example, east Indians
eat dairy products and their grains are typically infested with insects, which
provide essential nutrients. When they move to England, their health sometimes
declines since their grains are now free of insects. The people Dr. Price found with the broadest
faces and thickest skulls (indicating the best diet) ate fish and shellfish. Also, he found that traditional
cultures went to great trouble, energy and risk to obtain animal foods. For
instance, people living in the Andes at 12,000 feet would hike down to the sea
to get fish roe (eggs). The
reason for this is there are critical nutrients that only occur in animal foods,
such as the fat soluble vitamins A and D, as well as cholesterol. Cholesterol
has been demonized by the media but it is an essential nutrient for optimal
development of the nervous system, brain and digestive tract. So it is
especially critical for children. B12
is another nutrient found only in animal foods.
The animal foods most concentrated in nutrients, particularly these fat soluble
vitamins, such as butter, liver, fish eggs, cream and animal fats, which we are
told today not to eat, were the sacred foods of traditional cultures. These
foods were eaten by children, pregnant women and parents-to-be because the
cultures intuitively understood the importance of the nutrients in them,
particularly for the developing nervous system. For instance, in China, pregnant
or nursing women ate up to 10 eggs per day. In the Native American cultures,
infertile couples would go on a "bear fat" diet and that usually cured the
problem. While beta carotene in plants can be converted to Vitamin A, children
don't have all the enzymes yet to make this conversion so they have a higher
need for foods rich in Vitamin A, not beta carotene. Maybe the high levels today
in children of learning disabilities, ADHD and autism have something to do with
our modern diet. Even adults can have problems making the conversion from beta
carotene, particularly diabetics.
Vitamin D is also essential in the diet, since we would have to spend about half
an hour in the sun at noon every day, with no clothes on, to get enough from the
sun. Even cultures living in the tropics have a lot of Vitamin D in their diets.
So these animal foods rich in Vitamins A and D are very important for health.
The third characteristic of traditional diets is that they were extremely
nutrient dense. The diets of traditional cultures had much higher levels of
vitamins and minerals than we get in our diets today. Everything they did
maximized nutrients, such as their choice of food, how they raised their foods
and how they prepared them. They grew food on fertile soil, ate organ meats
preferentially to muscle meats, ate animal fats rather than vegetable oils,
raised animals on pasture rather than in factories, ate dairy products raw or
fermented and would travel far to get foods that were super nutritious, such as
fish eggs. With our faith in modern medicine, we have forgotten the importance
of nutrition. For instance, we used to feed cod liver oil to our children but
now we vaccinate them instead. This started with the publication of Baby and Child Care by Dr. Spock, who advocated
vaccinations instead of cod liver oil.
The fourth characteristic of traditional diets is that although they cooked some
or even most of their food, they always ate some animal foods raw. The plant
foods were usually cooked, as there are a lot of toxins in plants. But they
always had some raw animal foods such as raw milk, butter, cream or cheese, raw
marinated fish or raw meat. One important nutrient destroyed by heat is vitamin
B6, which is found in raw dairy and meat.
Next month, we will describe characteristics five through eleven of healthy
traditional diets.
Now that we know some of the characteristics of healthy traditional diets, how can we
incorporate this into our own diet to improve or maintain our health? One step
is to start incorporating some of the "sacred foods" into your diet, such as cod
liver oil, butter, organ meats and algae. Optimum Choices offers a superfood
algae supplement that provides extremely concentrated nutrition such as Omega
fatty acids and over 4,000 natural occurring enzymes:
BioSuperfood for people and
BioPreparation for pets. For more details on improving your diet, we
recommend the cookbook Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon, featured
below as our Book of the Month.
The information in this article is from a seminar on "Healthy Traditional
Diets" by Sally Fallon in Denver on September 20, 2003. Sally Fallon is
co-founder of the Weston A. Price Foundation. For more information on the
Foundation and a wealth of articles on nutrition, go to:
http://www.westonaprice.org.
The Foundation also publishes a quarterly journal for members that contains
excellent articles on nutrition.
Nourishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon, ISBN 0967089735
This book will tell you how to create a healthy diet for yourself based on
the principles of healthy traditional diets, as described in the article above.
The book is not only a cookbook but contains a wealth of information, including
references to scientific studies and sections explaining the principles of
preparing different types of foods, such as grains, to enhance digestibility.
Nothing on this website has been evaluated by the FDA. This information
is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Please
see a qualified healthcare practitioner for any disease or illness.
When it comes to choosing the optimal diet for our health, there is a lot of
conflicting information out there, ranging from vegetarianism to macrobiotics
(grains and vegetables) to
the Paleolithic diet (meat, vegetables and no grains). We like to take the same
approach with humans that we take to our pet's diets. With dogs and cats, it
makes sense to look at what their wild ancestors ate, since that is what their
bodies are designed for (raw meat, bones and organs). 
The second characteristic is that they all contained animal foods, which was
actually a big disappointment to Dr. Price. He had hoped to find a healthy
traditional culture that was vegetarian but he did not. Today, we have a myth
that a vegetarian diet is the healthiest diet. Many people assume I must be
vegetarian because I don't eat the standard American diet, I avoid junk food and
eat healthy food. Actually, my diet is high in organic animal foods. While a
vegetarian diet can be useful short-term for cleansing, it does not promote
optimal health long-term and can be especially damaging for children. For more
information on the drawbacks of a vegetarian diet, see:
What Dr. Price found was that at a minimum, the
traditional cultures ate dairy products and insects. As an example, east Indians
eat dairy products and their grains are typically infested with insects, which
provide essential nutrients. When they move to England, their health sometimes
declines since their grains are now free of insects. The people Dr. Price found with the broadest
faces and thickest skulls (indicating the best diet) ate fish and shellfish. Also, he found that traditional
cultures went to great trouble, energy and risk to obtain animal foods. For
instance, people living in the Andes at 12,000 feet would hike down to the sea
to get fish roe (eggs). The
reason for this is there are critical nutrients that only occur in animal foods,
such as the fat soluble vitamins A and D, as well as cholesterol. Cholesterol
has been demonized by the media but it is an essential nutrient for optimal
development of the nervous system, brain and digestive tract. So it is
especially critical for children. B12
is another nutrient found only in animal foods. 
The animal foods most concentrated in nutrients, particularly these fat soluble
vitamins, such as butter, liver, fish eggs, cream and animal fats, which we are
told today not to eat, were the sacred foods of traditional cultures. These
foods were eaten by children, pregnant women and parents-to-be because the
cultures intuitively understood the importance of the nutrients in them,
particularly for the developing nervous system. For instance, in China, pregnant
or nursing women ate up to 10 eggs per day. In the Native American cultures,
infertile couples would go on a "bear fat" diet and that usually cured the
problem. While beta carotene in plants can be converted to Vitamin A, children
don't have all the enzymes yet to make this conversion so they have a higher
need for foods rich in Vitamin A, not beta carotene. Maybe the high levels today
in children of learning disabilities, ADHD and autism have something to do with
our modern diet. Even adults can have problems making the conversion from beta
carotene, particularly diabetics. 
The fourth characteristic of traditional diets is that although they cooked some
or even most of their food, they always ate some animal foods raw. The plant
foods were usually cooked, as there are a lot of toxins in plants. But they
always had some raw animal foods such as raw milk, butter, cream or cheese, raw
marinated fish or raw meat. One important nutrient destroyed by heat is vitamin
B6, which is found in raw dairy and meat.