Photos of recipes from the new book Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Photos of recipes from the cookbook Tender Grassfed Meat
Live Food, Dead Food
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat
Traditional homemade sauerkraut is full of life.
Human beings need live food to support their life and health. Food that is full of vitamins, enzymes, co-factors, and many other substances that exist naturally in the food of our ancestors. Our bodies know how to use these substances to support life and health.
Modern processed foods are full of chemicals and preservatives that have killed almost all the life in the food. Many so called “fresh†foods are irradiated, which kills the life in the food. Many of these foods will not spoil, because there is no life in them to spoil. These dead foods do not give us the nutrients needed to support the natural functions of our bodies, which require nutrients that can only be found in live food.
Traditional Foods Are Live Foods
Our ancestors ate live food. It was either fresh and unmodified, or it was preserved by traditional methods such as fermentation, drying, and smoking. These traditional food preservation methods actually used beneficial bacteria to increase the life in the food, often increasing the amount and quality of the nutrients.
Dr. Weston A. Price spent ten years travelling around the world, studying the diets of healthy traditional peoples. He found that traditional peoples eating the diets of their ancestors were free of the chronic diseases that plague modern humanity.
- They did not have tooth decay, though they had no dentists.
- They did not have cancer, or heart disease, or arthritis, or asthma, or allergies, or birth defects, though they had no doctors.
- They did not have any form of mental illness, though they had no psychiatrists.
- They did not have crime, though they had no police.
- They kept their sight, hearing, balance, mental acuity, and mobility well into extreme old age, though they had no glasses, no hearing aids, no hip or knee replacements, and no prescription drugs.
What they did have was plenty of good live food in its natural state, free of added chemicals, brimming with enzymes, vitamins, beneficial bacteria, and other co-factors that were alive, not dead. While the diets of these people were diverse, all of them ate raw or very rare meat and/or seafood, though they also cooked much of their food. All of them ate the organs of animals and fish raw, or lightly cooked. All of them ate some form of fermented live foods. All of them ate some form of raw, live animal fat, whether in the form of pastured butter, raw milk, raw cheese, raw fish fat, or raw animal fat. All of them ate raw fruit and berries. All of them ate some vegetables raw. All of them preserved food by fermentation, or drying, or smoking. These traditional methods preserved or actually increased the life in the food.
Dr. Price also found that traditional peoples eating modern processed foods suffered greatly from every modern disease; had terrible teeth that they often lost; and often suffered from epidemics such as tuberculosis. The modern processed foods eaten by these sick people were dead foods from cans and jars, often filled with sugar, processed in such a way that they did not spoil.
Modern Foods Are Dead Foods
The food industry loves dead food. Why? Dead food lasts longer. Dead food will not spoil. As an example, some cupcakes have lasted 15 years without spoiling. See this fine article about 15 year old cupcakes. Dead food has a very long “shelf life,†which means it can be transported for weeks, and sit on shelves for months or years, and still be the same. Dead food increases profits.
Live foods spoil, which really hurts profits. The fact that live foods will spoil makes it much harder to transport them, requiring intensive refrigeration, or freezing.
The food industry developed chemical preservatives, substances that prevent food from spoiling by killing the life in the food. These preservatives change the food they touch, changing it into something that we were not evolved to eat, something that our bodies do not recognize or know what to do with.
Dead food is not limited to packaged foods. Pesticides are poisons, whose purpose is to kill. Some pesticides are designed to kill plants, and others are designed to kill insects. When they are in the food, they change the food, almost certainly killing some or all of its live qualities.
Genetically modified plants have been changed so they can survive huge amounts of pesticides without dying. This means that genetically modified plants have been sprayed with even more pesticides than ordinary factory crops. Other forms of genetically modified plants actually have internal pesticides that will kill insects.
Many fruits, vegetables, spices, meats, and other foods are irradiated. The purpose is to kill bacteria, but the radiation changes the food itself, into something different, something new and foreign to our bodies. The purpose of radiation is to kill, and radiation kills life, including much of the life in the food.
The food industry has now introduced nanites, tiny particles much smaller than a single cell, as a new way to preserve food. These nanites are designed to kill bacteria, and they will kill all bacteria, including the beneficial bacteria our bodies need to function properly. These nanites are often used in food packaging, and no labeling is required. It is not known what happens when these tiny particles penetrate our cells, especially the cells of our organs.
How to Eat Live Food
The basic rule is, if it does not spoil, don’t eat it. This applies to meat, fish, vegetables, fruits, milk, cheese, butter—just about every food.
- Eat only real, basic food that humanity has eaten for many centuries.
- It is also best to find foods that are raised and processed without the use of added chemicals, such as foods that are organic or the equivalent. Processed foods should be avoided. If you buy processed foods, try to buy foods packed in glass, to avoid chemicals and nanites in the packaging. Even organic foods can have chemicals in the packaging, as organic tomato cans are lined with BPA.
- Avoid all foods that have been irradiated.
- Avoid all foods that have chemical preservatives.
- Avoid all foods that have been genetically modified.
- Eat traditionally fermented condiments, such as old fashioned sauerkraut. Traditional fermentation actually increases the life in food.
- Eat a large portion of your food raw. This can include high-quality dairy, fruits, and vegetables (though some vegetables, especially cruciferous vegetables, should not be eaten raw).
- Eat only grassfed, grass finished meats and wild seafood. These foods are especially full of life when cooked rare, or eaten raw. As Sally Fallon Morell has pointed out in her great cookbook, Nourishing Traditions, the US Department of Agriculture has stated that parasites are killed if food is frozen for at least 14 days.
- Learn about traditional foods, and how to prepare and eat them. I recommend Nourishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon Morell. For grassfed meats, I recommend my own book, Tender Grassfed Meat.
Live foods give life, by supporting the natural functions of our bodies.
This post is part of Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday and Monday Mania blog carnivals.