The Nourisher - Editor’s Blog

This email crossed my in box yesterday and I wanted to share it with you along with my answers:

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My name is Brittany W and I am currently studying year 12 at Loreto college in Marryatville, South Australia. For Nutrition Studies, I am required to research a current issue in the field of nutrition and this particular assignment is worth 30% of my overall grade. I have chosen to research the recipes in magazines, such as yours, and the ingredients used - whether they
are a healthy option or substitutions can be made etc. Your time in answering the following questions would be greatly appreciated, I not, please direct me to someone who is able to assist me. Many thanks.

So here are her questions…

Q: Where do you source your recipes from?

A: Many are from Contributors to the magazine, authors who have written articles and books we review. Some are our own concoction but all follow our Principles of Nourishment.

Q: Do you have your own nutritionalist employed for your company?

A: Yes, Susanne Skates, a qualified nutritionist works with our company. Joanne Hay, our editor is an independent nutrition and natural health researcher.

Q: Do you make a conscious effort to follow the Australian Dietary Guidelines or

A: We certainly do not. We do not agree with the USDA guided food pyramid as an appropriate guideline for human health. We believe it a guideline for successful large scale industrial agriculture and corporate ‘food’ production only. Our research leads us to the conclusion that when traditional food ways were abandoned last century, the overall health of the entire western population of the world began to decline. We seek the return of nutrient dense foods and traditional food preparation as well as the study of nutrition to be truly independent. Our research has shown that government guidelines for correct nutrition are neither based on science nor empirical evidence. They are not independent and in fact are provided by the agricorporate multinationals who profit from such recommendations.

(We agree with the Weston A Price Foundation’s issues with the food pyramid. - Ed)

Instead we make an effort to follow the guidelines of truly independent traditional nutrition researchers such as the non-profit, Weston A Price and Price Pottenger Foundations.

Q: Dietary models when including recipes in your issues?

A: Our recipes are based on the research and recommendations made by independent researchers such as Weston A Price, Vilhjalmur Stephansson, Royal Lee and Francis Pottenger. These men studied ancient societies who had survived, no thrived, for thousands of years with out need for modern ‘medicine’ or assistance in birthing, and found a very different picture to what modern nutritionist paint.

The basic recommendations of the Weston A Price Foundation are those we follow.

Q: Have readers ever questioned the ingredients used in your recipes, such as the type or quantity?

A: Yes, they would like to know where to get some of the ingredients such as raw milk, raw cream. It is part of our mission to make nutrient dense foods such as these available to all Australians.

Q: Do CSIRO diets influence how you structure the recipes and ingredients in relation to methods of cookery and the type of fats used?

A: No, the CSIRO are also labouring under the same junk science that only truly independent researchers are willing to oppose.

(CSIRO stands for Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation - when ever food is related to industrial research, I’m suspicious, what about you - Ed)

Q: Does culture play a part in ingredient selection in recipes despite the nutritional impacts on health? E.g. ghee used in Indian cooking?

A: We find that recipes that truly reflect traditional food ways (more than 400 years old) are much more aligned with our dietary recommendations.

Ghee has always been used in Indian culture for cooking. When the cows the ghee come from are raised appropriately (grass fed, not factory farmed) the ghee is high in Vitamin A, D and K2 which are vital to human health and which Weston A Price’s research revealed to be 4 times higher in non-industrial diets compared to western diets at the time of his research (1930s).

The same can be found in traditional fats such as lard, butter and tallow as well as eggs, insects and shellfish. All these foods which are demonised in modern nutritional hegemony are part of ancient food ways the world over. Saturated fat has never been conclusively proven to be implicated in heart disease and is in fact recently lauded as being beneficial for fertility, immunity and lung function. It is only when animals are kept confined, and fed inappropriate feed (soy meal, other animals’ excrement, out of date confectionery, corn and other grains, antibiotics and hormones) that their fat becomes dangerous for health. Grass fed animal fats are health giving and an ideal energy and nutrient source.

So, yes culture does play an important role in recipe selection because of the beneficial nutritional impact of traditional foods on health. We find modern nutritional dogma to be concocted to serve the pockets of the few and we need not look any further than the sky rocketing chronic disease statistics for proof of its inadequacy.

Thank you very much for your time.

You’re welcome Brittany. I hope the links come through on your email. If not let me know and I’ll send you them separately. There is a lot of research to do if you really want to find out about human nutrition. I hope this is enough to spark your interest.

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How sweet it is to be approached by a youngling like this. How do you guys think I went? I hope I wasn’t too full on with her. It can be a shock to hear this stuff and by the sound of her questions, she and her teacher are fully entrenched in the current politically correct nutritional dogma. I wonder if she’ll take this ball and run with it? I wonder how her teacher will take it if she does present him/her with a project citing non politically correct research? I feel a little excited about the idea of being able to influence a young curious person whose interest in nutrition could bring her… well more than perhaps she bargained for.

She has given me permission to share this conversation with you and will continue to converse with us. So if you have any comments or more information for Brittany, comment below.

About the Author...

Joanne Hay, Editor of Nourished Magazine, Chief Nourisher and Mother of three is very grateful to live in Byron Bay and be able to share all she has learned about Nourishment. She has trained as an Acupuncturist (unfinished), Kinesiologist (finished) and parent (never finished). She serves the Weston A Price Foundation as a chapter leader. She loves sauerkraut, kangaroo tail stew, home made ice cream, her husband Wes and her kids Isaiah, Brynn and Ronin (in no particular order…well maybe ice cream first).