Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats

Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats
by Mary Enig, Sally Fallon

List Price: ~~$27.00~~
Our Price: $16.09
You Save: $10.91 (40%)
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Buy Used: from $11.94 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions

Book Summary Information

Author: Mary Enig, Sally Fallon
Brand: Spring Arbor/Ingram
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1999-10-01
ISBN: 0967089735
Number of pages: 688
Publisher: Newtrends Publishing, Inc.
Product features:

ISBN13: 9780967089737
Condition: New
Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

Accessories:

Book Reviews of Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats

Book Review: This book is a treasure
Summary: 5 Stars

As of my writing this, 391 people have written reviews of this book, and of them 304 have given it five stars and another 35 have given it four. What can I possibly add to the chorus? A few personal remarks, and a few responses to critics.

Those of us who love food and want to enjoy it, who believe in nature and tradition and want to honor both, who want to be healthy in an unhealthy world, may sometimes feel that we are beset by two enemy armies at the same time, one on either side. On one hand there is the world of junk food and McDonald's. There has to be something better than that. But on the other hand, the "health-food" establishment is grim, warning against fat, against eggs, against milk, against butter, against all the things that make eating joyous. The egg-white omelette ("that monstrosity"), skim milk, raw broccoli--this can't be right either. Some of us gravitated to macrobiotics or raw-foodism as an escape. But no. The voice of reason suggests that whole, real foods, prepared traditionally, can and should enhance, not damage, our health. This book is the anthem, the manifesto, the clarion call of that voice.

To begin with, this book is very, very well-written: every page is filled with passion, imagination, and humanity. I have come to believe a lot of what this book says because the voice which speaks from these pages is so authentic, so human, and so intelligent. More important yet, it is an absolutely fantastic cookbook. I have cooked at least half of the recipes in it, perhaps more, and the vast majority of them are incredible. Where do I start? A spicy dish of kidney beans, brown rice, and scallions cooked in coconut milk. A casserole of quinoa, potatoes, and leeks simmered in beef broth, flavored with cilantro and cream cheese. A papaya chutney. A steak tartare. A meatloaf. A curried apple soup. A soup of butternut squash and sundried tomatoes. A taramosalata made from fresh fish roe. Those are a few things off the top of my head. The amazing thing is that so many of these dishes are unique; even after ten years of cooking I've never seen recipes like this.

Now, to reply to some other reviewers. Firstly, I am amused by reviews that amount to little more than vegans or vegetarians expressing outrage at a book which encourages the eating of meat. None of these reviews responds to the specific arguments against veganism presented in Nourishing Traditions. Have they even read the book? Very lamentable is the tendency of a few simply to say "check out The China Study". It can hardly be a secret that the authors of this book are involved in an association, and that that association has a pretty big website filled with articles. One of those articles is a highly detailed and thoughtful critique of The China Study. If you have read that article and find its arguments flawed, by all means come here and point out the flaws. But simply to say "read the China Study", as if we had never heard of it, is an insult to people who have already taken the time to look at and respond to that book.

In dealing with the many other complaints it would be helpful to think of this book as composed of three concentric circles. In the core are the main ideas and most strongly held convictions of the women who wrote the book; in the center are a half-dozen or so stands which they take pretty seriously but which are not exactly central; and around the periphery are many 'odds and ends' which the writers added because this is a book in which they decided to collect all of the opinions that they had come to after years of study and because it was their right to do so.

An example of the last, outermost circle would be the praise of Noni Juice which someone finds fault with. Those things are hardly going to influence anyone's opinion of the book: if you think Fallon and Enig are dangerously wrong on the vital subjects of fat, cholesterol, and whole grains, you're hardly going to look on their work with any more kindness if it should turn out that Noni juicewas, after all, a good thing, and if you love and agree with their central premises, you're hardly going to reject their book with disgust if spirulina should happen to turn out not to be all it was cracked up to be.

The core of this book consists of these arguments: we are supposed to eat the way our ancestors ate, and the way traditional people ate, all over the world, before the modern period. We have wantonly abandoned the foodways of traditional people and the proliferation of allergies, diabetes, cancer, etc. etc. is the result. What can we learn from traditional people? Saturated fat and cholesterol in our diet, in the forms of such things as butter, coconut oil, lard and beef fat and eggs are good things, not bad things. The idea that eating these things gives us heart attacks was a cruel and dishonest trick played on us partly by naive and partly by scheming people who had a vested interest in steering us towards other products.

But meat, milk, and eggs should be from animals which lived natural lives, eating the green grass and insects nature designed them to eat and getting exercise and sunlight. Meat from a cow given grains is an unnatural product. Milk which has been pasteurized is a denatured product. Whole, unrefined grains are indeed better--far better--than refined white flours, but it was irresponsible to recommend them without first teaching us how all traditional people prepared these foods: with prolonged soaking and/or sprouting to make them digestible. Finally, white sugar is a really bad thing. Natural sweeteners like maple syrup, honey, and unrefined sugar cane (rapadura) are far preferable, but they too should not be overdone.

I believe these arguments. This book makes a very powerful case for them. Fallon and Enig devote page after careful, painstaking page to their arguments, citing study after study. And in response, we hear only the vaguest and most general language from their would-be detractors. It is ridiculous to say that the authors' assertion that B12 is not found in vegetables is false because "spirulina and Klamath algae are loaded with the stuff" and because deer meat doesn't have any. So, the only people for whom Fallon's assertion is untrue are who? Vegetarians who eat copious amounts of klamath algae and carnivores who eat nothing but deer?

And then, after a preposterous review filled with such argments, we end with the solemn assertion that "Reading this book was the first time I've ever wondered whether free speech is such a good idea". We get ample amounts of reviewing by folks who do little more than criticise Fallon's tone. Listen: if you're going to claim that the argments in this book are false, your responsibility is to quote the book, line by line, and demonstrate how each item in the argment is false. In fact, if you are really sincere you owe it to us to disabuse us of our errors in a logical, coherent way--not a way which just makes you seem silly. Statements like "I live close to deer and I've watched several mothers now raise their babies. I cannot imagine killing such an incredible creation." Let's get something straight: if you are a vegetarian, we already know how you feel about meat-eating. Repeating this sort of thing is not exactly a cogent response to the scientific arguments assembled in this book and it's certainly not going to change anyone's mind.

Where I have a problem with this book, to be honest, is in what I have called the second or middle tier: the opinions or assertions which are not exactly central but which seem to come up again and again. Caffeine is really bad. Nuts need to be soaked and dehydrated in order to get rid of enzyme inhibitors. Even granting that things of this sort are true--a big if, since here the arguments are far less fully detailed--how important are these warnings? Is it "you really have to do this or you'll problems down the road", or is it more like "if you have time you should do this, but at the end of the day drinking tea or eating raw nuts will not exactly kill you"? Because quite frankly, the problem I have with Nourishing Traditions is that every single area of our eating and drinking lives becomes an area of concern. Not a single thing can be gotten from an ordinary source and simply eaten. Milk should be raw, beef grass fed, nuts need to be soaked, grains should be ground fresh before using and then soaked, etc. What about busy single people who cannot devote so much of their time to these pursuits?

And tea and chocolate bring a lot of joy to a lot of people. Are they really so very bad? To have cast a shadow over them without really devoting much time to the argument seems a little mean to me. (In a side-note, the website of the association connected to this book includes some "what we eat" articles, one of which mentions coffee--so apparently there is some room for dissent on some of these points within the ranks. I personally find that encouraging; it makes the whole affair seem a lot less cult-like.)

In a nut-shell, if I let everything in this book get to me I would be spending all my time in the kitchen shelling my own nuts and then soaking them, grinding my own grains every time I baked, and planning all my meals a week in advance because if you can never use beans without soaking for hours and if you can never use nuts which have not been soaked and dehydrated, that pretty much kills any spontaneity in the kitchen. If Fallon and Enig are planning a third edition, I would really recommend a kind of real-life approach, one that says "look, we recommend soaking the nuts, but if you can't, an occasional batch of raw walnuts won't kill you. We don't love caffeine, but if you love your tea, a bit of organic oolong probably isn't the end of the world." And, if they would not agree with this point of view, if they feel that these things are vital, then explain more specifically why.

Having said that, I'd like to reply to a few specific criticisms made by other reviewers.

1. "There is no emphasis on exercise for weight maintenance and mineral absorption. No concession that her idol Price was visiting societies which performed large amounts of manual labor just to exist and could easily burn off the high amounts of calories they consumed."

This is true. It also is probably true that there was a "feast or famine" dynamic in traditional societies, and that even where things like Lent (forty days of veganism in old Europe!) did not impose it, recurring dearth surely meant that people were not eating multiple egg-yolk omelettes with sour cream every day of the year. Further, sheer seasonality imposes limitations which would not be apparent from this book. But the criticism goes too far. The point of this book is that we have been lied to for many years about things of vital importance. The anti-fat, anti-cholesterol polemic have been drilled so deeply into most of us (and are still the unrivalled orthodoxy of the media--when was the last time you saw a food praised as "low-fat"? For me it was an hour ago, in the New York Times) that Nourishing Traditions has to be understood as a corrective measure. To criticise it for not taking into consideration every detail of life is to hold up unrealistic and unfair expectations of a book.

2. From the same source: "As for the recipes, Fallon's "Asian" recipes are about as far away from traditional Asian cooking/processing techniques as you can get."

This is also true. A recipe for "Japanese fish soup" calls for white wine and olive oil. The miso soup recipe is, to anyone familiar with the real thing, bizarre. The "kimchi" recipe calls for a comical half-teaspoon of red pepper, where a real Korean recipe would call for at least a cup. But again, what is the point here? For anyone who wants to find out about real traditional Japanese or Korean cooking, there is surely no shortage of authentic cookbooks out there. I strongly recommend Gaku Homma's Folk Art of Japanese Country Cooking as a companion and, in some sense, a corrective to Nourishing Traditions: it's a real-world account of what poor peasants were actually able to eat. Armed with the basic principles of Nourishing Traditions, we can now appreciate what we find in those books and, perhaps, modify them according to those principles and to our tastes. What good would Fallon have done by reproducing them? This is, let us admit, a very American and very inventive book. The curry apple soup which I mentioned above, which is fantastic, could only have been created by a creative American cook living in our international age. The "kimchi" is what one might expect an average American to find palatable; it is a reasonable exercise in adaptation.

3. The credibility of the reviewer whom I have been quoting is pretty thoroughly demolished by the statement about Orangina, which recieved an adequate reply in one of the comments to that review.

4. One of the most bizarre reviews is entitled "Baking Recipes Are a Disaster". People, the baked goods recipes alone are worth the price of the book. I have made the pumkin pie, the pear-cranberry tart, the carrot cake, the orange cake, the banana bread, the apricot spice bread, the blueberry muffins, and the coconut bars. In every single case, I myself found them heavenly and everyone else who ate them raved about them. One woman mentioned the pumpkin pie a year after she had it. The apricot bread was "ridiculously good" according to one person. A woman who was on a diet had two pieces of the carrot cake and said she had to restrain herself from taking a third. Except for very minor alterations to suit my own taste I followed the recipes exactly: the same proportions of major ingredients, same cooking temperature, same soaking time, same cooking time, baking dishes of the same dimensions. These things are important. I suspect someone just didn't follow all the instructions.

5. Someone said something along the lines of "Mrs. Fallon may enjoy spending all day in the kitchen. I don't." Actually, there's an important point to be made here. This is, obviously, a slow-food cookbook. But once you do the basic prep, you can relax. Put the vegetables in a glass jar with the seasonings, cover tightly, and you're done; you relax while the vegetables ferment slowly. Put the bones and meat and vegetables in a large stock pot, bring barely to a simmer, skim the top. Now you relax while the aroma of broth fills your home for the next day. Put (whatever) into the oven at a low temp. Now relax until it's ready, two hours later. Plan ahead a bit, and do your prep, and soon you'll be surprised by how little there is to do on many occasions. You'll have your fermented vegetables ready in jars, your broth in the fridge or freezer on on the oven, your grains and beans soaked and ready to cook. And this is not "stress" cooking. Nothing like making puff pastry and being terrified that it won't come out well.

6. "However I am not a big fan of her nontraditional methods, which she applies to all non-European recipes. If you can't be be bothered in presenting authentic recipes representing ancient traditions easily found in immigrant homes across America, then don't attempt it or it damages credibility of the traditional food cause."

This reviewer goes on to praise Sally Fallon for her great European recipes, and then calls for a "companion volume" on non-Western cuisines that presents those traditions. Again, there is a lot of truth here. I would find such a companion volume immensely fascinating. But two points. First, there is nothing wrong with the kind of Westernized take on world cuisine which Fallon presents. After all, many Americans either would not or cannot make fully authentic non-Western dishes. Where, outside of major cities, would you even find the ingredients? So Fallon has written something useful to most of her readers. Secondly, I disagree that really traditional dishes are "easily" found in immigrant homes. My own family were Sicilian immigrants, and it is frightening how quickly they lost their traditions. And the first generation--the only ones that probably remembered the traditions--where illiterate, and poor, and could not have contributed to a cookbook if their lives had depended on it. In most immigrant homes tradition and modernity are hopelessly intertwined and most people don't have a clue which is which. So yes, I agree. Let's have a book all about what different groups of Native Americans ate and how (don't you think the original cooking of North America deserves a shot?) Let's get really traditional books about cooking from around the world. When I looked for an Indian cookbook they all said things like "Traditionally this would be made with coconut oil or ghee, but with what we "know" now about saturated fat, we substitute canola oil"--yuck. But with NT, we know what to do with those recipes! Just modify them according to basic NT principles. Again, Gaku Homma's Folk Art of Traditional Japanese Country Cooking would be a splendid companion volume to Nourishing Traditions.

So much for responding to criticism. My main idea is, don't miss the forest for the trees. In a book crammed with facts and opinions, just about anyone is going to find a few things to argue against. For me, this book changed my life, my eating, my ideas about food, all for the better. Even if you reject the main ideas, the FACTS in it are a treasure. And the format: hundreds of recipes, hundreds of sidebars, means that it gives up its gems very slowly. Four years after first finding and reading it, I'm still discovering things I'd never noticed before. Just yesterday, buried in the chapter on sauces, I came upon the "pineapple vinegar" for the first time. Never noticed it before. And this was synergistic, since I'd just bought a pineapple for the pineapple chutney in another part of the book and assumed that I would throw out the skin; now I have a good use for it. That's the kind of thing that happens when you read this book. It's a joy, a pleasure, a stimulus, and a way to eat. Don't deprive yourself of it!

Write your own review

More Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats reviews:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Summary of Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats

This well-researched, thought-provoking guide to traditional foods contains a startling message: Animal fats and cholesterol are not villains but vital factors in the diet, necessary for normal growth, proper function of the brain and nervous system, protection from disease and optimum energy levels. Sally Fallon dispels the myths of the current low-fat fad in this practical, entertaining guide to a can-do diet that is both nutritious and delicious.

Nourishing Traditions will tell you:

Why your body needs old fashioned animal fats

Why butter is a health food

How high-cholesterol diets promote good health

How saturated fats protect the heart

How rich sauces help you digest and assimilate your food

Why grains and legumes need special preparation to provide optimum benefits

About enzyme-enhanced food and beverages that can provide increased energy and vitality

Why high-fiber, lowfat diets can cause vitamin and mineral deficiencies

Topics include the health benefits of traditional fats and oils (including butter and coconut oil); dangers of vegetarianism; problems with modern soy foods; health benefits of sauces and gravies; proper preparation of whole grain products; pros and cons of milk consumption; easy-to-prepare enzyme enriched condiments and beverages; and appropriate diets for babies and children.

Healthy Books

Book Subjects

Most talked about in Healthy Books

Recipes for Life: From the Fitonics Kitchen
by Marilyn Diamond, Lisa Neuwirth
Avon Books (T); Published: 1998-05; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $24.80
Price in other shops: ~~$25.00~~

More Chicken Soup & Other Folk Remedies
by Lydia Wilen
Ballantine Books; Published: 2000-09-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.85
Price in other shops: ~~$14.00~~

Farm Journal's Country Cookbook
by Farm Journal
Ballantine Books; Published: 1981-07-12; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Price in other shops: ~~$6.99~~

Gluten-Free Cookery: The Complete Guide for Gluten-Free or Wheat-Free Diets (Beginner's Guides)
by Peter Thomson
Hodder Headline; Published: 2001-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $15.36
Price in other shops: ~~$22.95~~

The Green Gardening and Cooking Guide Image

The Green Gardening and Cooking Guide
by Bob Sherman, Carol Bowen
Pan Macmillan; Published: 1990-02-09; Paperback; Book

Magic Foods for Better Blood Sugar (Readers Digest)
by Reader's Digest
Readers Digest; Published: 2008-09-26; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $23.00

The Italian Gourmet Diet: A Seven Week Menu Plan for Wine and Pasta Lovers Image

The Italian Gourmet Diet: A Seven Week Menu Plan for Wine and Pasta Lovers
by Vincenzo Buonassisi, Guido Razzoli
Macmillan Pub Co; Published: 1983-03; Hardcover; Book
Price in other shops: ~~$14.95~~

The Gl Diet Cookbook
by Nigel Denby
Harpercollins MD; Published: 2009-08-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $37.77

Healthy Gut Cookbook
by Marguerite Patten
Harpercollins MD; Published: 2009-08-01; Print on Demand (Paperback); Book

The River Cottage Cookbook: As Seen on Channel Four
by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
HarperCollins UK; Published: 2003-10-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $39.85

Similar Books and other products

Know Your Fats : The Complete Primer for Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils and Cholesterol
by Mary G. Enig
Bethesda Pr; Published: 2000-05-14; Paperback; Book
Best price: $28.10
Price in other shops: ~~$29.95~~

Real Food for Mother and Baby: The Fertility Diet, Eating for Two, and Baby's First Foods
by Nina Planck
Bloomsbury USA; Published: 2009-03-31; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.97
Price in other shops: ~~$17.00~~

Making Sauerkraut and Pickled Vegetables at Home: Creative Recipes for Lactic Fermented Food to Improve Your Health (Natural Health Guide)
by Klaus Kaufmann, Annelies Schoneck
Alive Books; Published: 2002-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.92
Price in other shops: ~~$11.95~~

Real Food: What to Eat and Why
by Nina Planck
Bloomsbury USA; Published: 2007-06-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.49
Price in other shops: ~~$15.99~~

Eat Fat, Lose Fat: The Healthy Alternative to Trans Fats
by Mary Enig, Sally Fallon
Plume; Published: 2006-03-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.87
Price in other shops: ~~$16.00~~

Nutrition and Physical Degeneration
by Weston A. Price
Price Pottenger Nutrition; Published: 2008-01-31; Paperback; Book
Best price: $23.26
Price in other shops: ~~$27.95~~

The Fourfold Path to Healing: Working with the Laws of Nutrition, Therapeutics, Movement and Meditation in the Art of Medicine
by Thomas S. Cowan, Sally Fallon, Jaimen McMillan
Newtrends Publishing, Inc.; Published: 2004-08-31; Paperback; Book
Best price: $15.63
Price in other shops: ~~$25.00~~

The Body Ecology Diet: Recovering Your Health and Rebuilding Your Immunity
by Donna Gates, Linda Schatz
Hay House; Published: 2011-06-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.53
Price in other shops: ~~$15.95~~

Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food
by Catherine Shanahan, Luke Shanahan
Big Box Books; Published: 2008-11-14; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.95
Price in other shops: ~~$14.95~~

Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods
by Sandor Ellix Katz
Chelsea Green Publishing; Published: 2003-09-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $14.12
Price in other shops: ~~$25.00~~