When it comes to nutrition, we like to frame it this way: besides the well-being of our loved ones, and perhaps our relationship with the man in the sky, our personal health is probably the most important aspect of our life! Since what we eat is by far the greatest contributing factor to our health, we find food pretty damn important! Of course, we believe in living a little and not letting a strict diet control our lives! Therefore, if we can eat well for at least 80% of our caloric intake, indulge sensibly, do a little intermittent fasting as damage control, then we can have healthy bodies and minds!
We find the two best guides for healthy and balanced nutrition to be Mark Sisson’s Primal Blueprint and the Weston A Price Foundation (WAPF). Both diets recommend eating whole, natural foods from reliable sources with the bulk of our calories coming from fat.
The Primal Blueprint was created based on the idea that humans have been around for thousands of years and although the conditions in which we live have changed, our bodies really haven’t. So in order to thrive physically, it’s best to emulate our ancestors in how they ate (and moved). In the Primal Blueprint’s guidelines dairy is considered OK in moderation but not preferred. Grains and legumes are not recommended.
The Weston A Price Foundation aims to restore nutrient-dense foods to the human diet through education, research and activism. The work of Price is detailed in Nutrition and Physical Degeneration where he studied the habits of several modern and isolated tribes around the world in the 1930’s and 40’s. The common denominators shared by the isolated tribes with impressive and superior physiques were used to create the WAPF’s dietary guidelines: essentially the same as the Primal Blueprint except for the use of dairy “from pasture-fed cows, preferably raw and/or fermented.” Grains and legumes must be “prepared by soaking, sprouting or sour leavening to neutralize phytic acid and other anti-nutrients.”
Check out our archive of healthy LbF-approved recipes!
