Wise Ways Cooking School

Traditional foods are real foods that are whole, unprocessed, and unrefined.  As Michael Pollan would say, it’s food that “your great-great-grandmother would recognize as food.” Traditional foods are old; they are foods that have nourished humans for thousands of years before the invention of industrial and processed foods. Traditional foods are nutrient-dense and are grown or raised without pesticides, herbicides, petro-chemical fertilizers, growth hormones, antibiotics, or genetic modification. Traditional foods are made from scratch using time-honored preparations that maximize nutrition, digestibility, and flavor.  

Specifically, traditional foods are:

• Beef, pork, lamb, goat, game, organ meats, poultry, and eggs from grass-fed and pasture-raised animals
• Wild fish and seafood from unpolluted waters
• Full-fat dairy products from grass-fed cows, preferably raw and/or fermented, such as raw milk, whole yogurt, kefir, cultured butter, whole raw cheeses, and fresh and cultured cream
• Animal fats from grass-fed and pasture-raised animals such as butter/ghee, tallow, suet, lard, and chicken, duck, and goose fat - these fats remain stable even at high temperatures
• Traditional plant oils: cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil, expeller-pressed sesame oil, expeller-pressed flax oil, virgin coconut oil, palm oil, and palm kernel oil - coconut and palm oils remain stable at high temperatures due to their high saturated fat content; the other plant oils should not be heated (with the exception of an occasional saute in sesame or olive oil)
• Marine oils such as cod liver and skate liver oil, ideally fermented - the best daily supplement there is! (see GreenPasture.org to order)
  
• Whole fresh fruits and vegetables, preferably locally-sourced and grown using organic or biodynamic methods (visit our Resources page for sourcing recommendations)
  
• Whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds that have been properly prepared by soaking, sprouting, or fermenting to neutralize phytic acid, enzyme inhibitors, and other anti-nutrients found naturally in these foods
  
• Lacto-fermented vegetables, fruits, beverages, and condiments - a potent natural source of probiotics, enzymes, and enhanced vitamin content
• Bone broths from the bones of fish, chicken, beef, and other animals/poultry - an excellent source of easily-assimilated minerals, a must in the diet of every person who does not consume raw dairy products
• Unrefined salt such as Celtic sea salt or Himalayan salt
• Natural sweeteners such as raw honey, Grade B maple syrup, maple sugar, date sugar, and dehydrated cane sugar juice (sold as Rapadura and Succanat) - consumed in very small amounts