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May 15, 2008

Rebecca rated it:

My stepmother gave me this book for my birthday. Looking it over at first I thought-- "Wow, she thinks I'm a spelt-eating, raw-milk drinking, conspiracy theorist lunatic." This book begins with 80 pages of single space size 10 font INFORMATION-- about how the USDA, the American Cancer Association, and your pediatritian are all part of a sinister alliance to give you cancer, heart disease, cavities, and arthritis, and about the vast conspiracy of misinformation in the health and food wo More...

1 comment like (21 people liked it)

Jun 06, 2008

melissa rated it:

I am a reformed vegan. I will say this again and again with no shame. I was a longtime vegetarian who went vegan after being diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia. I thought I was eating "cleaner" and "healthier". I guess I did feel morally superior but physically I felt like crap and I never felt any relief from autimmune disease flare-ups. Then I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism. I felt like my body was turning against me even though I thought I was healthy. More...

0 comments like (30 people liked it)

May 26, 2011

Lucinda rated it:

As a child I lived in the city, playing outside, watching a lot of tv and chasing down the ice cream truck until my dad remarried when I was 8 and we moved to a small farm. On that farm, our family ate EXACTLY how she teaches in this book. We milked our cow and goats and drank raw milk. We raised and butchered our own cow, pigs and chickens. My step-mom made us eat liver (organs) and lacto-fermented foods like sauerkraut and pickled veggies. She was German but now I am wondering if she live More...

1 comment like (11 people liked it)

Mar 14, 2008

Krista rated it:

Following Fallon's guidelines for NT made me very sick and I am doing much better now that I've found my own, individual, pathway for nutrition and health. Don't get me wrong-I keep NT as a resource because Fallon has invaluable info (and preparations that I continue to use) concerning bone broths, soaking, sprouting, and lactic fermentation. But the emphasis on fatty red and organ meats, dairy, and huge amounts of saturated fats (healthy though they can be when not eaten in excess)were making m More...

1 comment like (9 people liked it)

Jul 27, 2008

Maren rated it:

I came upon this book three years ago at Barnes and Noble. I read it, sitting in the bookstore, leaning against the bookshelves over the course of a few weeks, while my kids were at preschool for an hour. Fallon puts together a very interesting book though she isn't an anthropologist, a researcher, or a very good chef (though some of her salads are delicious).

She denounces modern food preparation methods, including the pressure cooker and the microwave in favor of old-fashioned met More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Oct 15, 2007

Dean rated it:

i love this book. it's based on some weird fucked up research some dentist did in the '30's that you have to ignore and read past. i warned you. but it totally changed the way i cook. soaking grains, fermenting dairy products and vegetables, sprouting, slow roasting nuts, slow cooking beans. i find all of this totally relaxing and delicious and i think she is right about the nutritional value in it. i can't really get behind eating a lot of organ meat, or meat generally, but there are some re More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jun 23, 2007

Astrid rated it:

This book inspired me to become a nutrition consultant. It's a must-read. The first part of the book discusses nutrition concepts, and the second part presents a plethora of recipes. Don't worry if you are vegetarian; while Fallon focuses much of her time on meats, there is plenty of other information to be gleaned from this volume.

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Apr 28, 2009

Jill rated it:

Wow! This book is seriously challenging my notion of good food and a healthy diet. Just getting into it, but I think many of her ideas are right on: lacto-fermentaion, sprouted grains, cultured dairy products, meat - especially organs, and real butter! I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when, over a bowl of my homemade granola, I read the intro to the chapter on whole grains: "Nor do we recommend granola, a popular "health" food made from grains subjected only to dry heat and t More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 24, 2008

Beth rated it:

This is another good foundation book if you're looking at eating traditional foods. She talks a lot about culturing foods to encourage enzyme growth which promotes good digestion and gut flora.

There are a few bizarre things...I think she promotes eating meat raw, though specially prepared and of course from clean sources. I'm not willing to go that far. Heh.

Some of her recipes are not the greatest...I would suggest finding some one who has tried them before making. I ha More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 14, 2008

michael rated it:

As a cookbook, its ok. It has a few odd and interesting recipes, but nothing really that jumps out as memorable.

As for the rest. Its starts out by trashing fad diets while trying strongly to encourage you to believe it isn't a fad diet itself. Then rumbles on into telling you that packaged, prepared food is bad for you, you're gonna die of malnutrition. Packaged, prepared ingredients are bad for you, you're gonna die from malnutrition. Your only chance is to get hard to find and e More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Dec 24, 2007

tessa maria lalonde rated it:

The joy in this tome is the encouragment I received to go beyond my notions about diet and preparation and to consider, then put into practice, pretty logical and sound health concepts. Basically, this book argues that we should incorporate a variety of quality fats, fermented foods, raw dairy, and organ meats to our diets for optimal mental and physical health, for us and the generations proceding. Party! As a warning, though, Nourishing Traditions is really bound up in a kind of disturbing More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jun 23, 2011

Connie added it

BIG book with lots of information and I have not even gotten close to the recipes yet! This book was recommended by Dr. Terry Wahls who has overcome her MS (wheelchair bound, now biking and horseback riding) through diet and electrical stimulation used to retrain and rebuild nerves and muscles.

I expect this book is going to be a prominent fixture in my kitchen as I work through the post-CCSVI procedure period.

Wow! Great recipes, great information. I am done reading and thus More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 08, 2012

medis rated it:

I really love the ground she's covered in terms of food preparation and reviewing the history of the arterycloggingsaturatedfat myth and others. The debunking of how healthful seed oils are over tropical plant and animal oils was awesome, and real depressing too. The frustration one encounters when shopping for salmon or sardines, seeking them out in the first place for their omega 3 content and affordability relative to their fresh counterparts, only to find that many brands have added sunflowe More...

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Feb 21, 2011

Sara rated it:

I was first given this book by an herbalist friend of mine who endorsed its content and position ondiet, but warned me about Sally Fallon's "spit-and-vinegar" approach to food choices and social change. No doubt--Nourishing Traditions absolutely lives up to its subtitle in Sally Fallon's direct, no-nonsense critique of prevailing nutritional values and investigation of the vagaries of processed foods. This book is both a bible of useful recipes and an argument for a considered, holis More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jan 10, 2011

Audrey rated it:

I love reading cookbooks. This one came to me when I needed to change the way I was eating. I was motivated because I felt sick. A naturopathic physician recommended giving up grains and sugar and starches. Now that is NOT something that Nourishing traditions requires that you do. It makes use of high quality ingredients and certain preparation practices, along with judicious quantities and frequency of use of these things. But I had to go a step further because I was sick. I was actually More...

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Aug 12, 2010

Laura rated it:

Any book that contains the word "dictocrats" in the title should probably be read with a wary eye. This is a rant in the form of a cookbook, based on the work of the Weston Price Foundation. I'm sympathetic to many of the ideas here (especially the idea of eating natural, organic, unprocessed foods) but I think the authors use questionable science to back up many of the more out-there ideas. There's some serious cherry picking of references here. If it convinces people to eat healt More...

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May 18, 2010

Karen rated it:

I have always been conscious of nutrition and health, but this book was a real eye-opener! While I'll admit that Fallon is a bit of a fanatic and that some of her "research" may be questionable, my gut tells me that, overall, she is correct. Certainly, she gives us all something to think about.

The basic premise of the book is that people (and Americans in particular) need to get back to our ancestral methods of growing, preparing, and eating food. She blames a myriad of he More...

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Sep 19, 2009

Elizabeth marked it as to-read

from the library

Table of Contents

Preface xv
Introduction
Politically Correct Nutrition
Fats
Carbohydrates
Proteins
Milk & Milk Products
Vitamins
Minerals
Enzymes
Salt, Spices & Additives
Beverages
51 (5)
About Food Allergies and Special Diets
56 (7)
Parting Words
63 (1)
Guide to Food Selection
64 (2)
A Word on Equipment
66 (3 More...

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Oct 07, 2011

Elaine added it

I haven't read this cover-to-cover (it's a cookbook!) but I did finish the intro chapters on nutrition and skimmed most of the recipes. It's a good overview of a lot of the same information you see in books like Good Calories Bad Calories, albeit from a different perspective, and it's not so rigorously scientific. A lot of the info can also be read online at the Weston A. Price Foundation website.

The thing that sticks with me the most is the miracle Fallon paints of butter from spring More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 26, 2011

Samantha rated it:

Some of the information on nutrients and oils is interesting and informative. However, Fallon does use outdated and poorly constructed studies to try to convince her readers that you will be healthier if you eat more meat and lard. I agree that fats are fine and that reducing fat is not healthy, BUT I think fats like avocado, coconut, and olive-based fats/oils (for example) are much healthier than fats like pig and cow fat. I think there are more than enough studies that are far more convincing More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 31, 2009

Lanie rated it:

I love this book. I'm so bummed I took it to a friends' house to cook with and left it in my paper grocery bag and it got mistaken for recycling....*pout*. It was my most referenced reference book, probably (so much so that I might splurge for another), with loads of info on every vegetable and what vitamins and minerals it is rich in and what each of those vitamins and minerals does for you, and loads of info on diseases and ailments and what you should eat to get rid of them and oodles of y More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jan 15, 2009

Amy added it

It seems strange to review a cookbook, or add it to my list of literature for that matter, but I will count this among my books because there is more context than recipes: On every single page in the margin is a passage about food, some of it coming from current health magazines, some of it from fiction, some of it from health guides from the mid-19th century, some that came from who-knows-where. I don’t know exactly what Fallon is up to here, but the concept interests me of having so much inf More...

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Sep 27, 2011

Principle Based Learning added it

This is a book I first read about in another book (The Maker’s Diet by Jordan Rubin). It gives the “how to” of Rubin’s dietary suggestions. I checked Nourishing Traditions out of the library again and again and realized that I could not live without it so bought full price via special order at the bookstore. That is the only time I have done that for a book. Now I can see it is almost half the price on Amazon, but I do not regret the money because it is such an incredible reference book. It More...

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Jan 31, 2011

Vanessa rated it:

This book forever changed how I think about food. I was already interested in Traditional Foods by the time I bought it, having recently left lifelong vegetarianism. This is way more than a cookbook - it's at least an equal part a nutrition encyclopedia. That said, every recipe in here is from scratch - and scratch doesn't just mean from whole ingredients, it means that there are a whole bunch of recipes that take overnight if not weeks. Make your mayonnaise. Make your own sourdough culture, kef More...

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Feb 17, 2009

Meg rated it:

Absolutely one of the most inspiring books I've read in QUITE some time - especially considering that it's basically a cookbook. And the subtitle is correct - it is a challenge to everything you "think" you know about nutrition. I'm a self-professed (other people think so too ;)) health nut, but this book really caused me to stop and THINK about the differences in what we might consider healthy, and what your body actually needs to function.

As a "recovering vegan" More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Mel rated it:

My main reason for reading this book was to find more ways of fermenting food, since that is something I'm very interested in. I only had a chance to try a few of the recipes before it had to be returned to the library, but they were mostly pretty good. The constant quoting from Weston Price got old really fast, but if you ignore the sidebars the book is fine. I did enjoy the "guess the processed food from its ingredient list" puzzles.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 11, 2011

Holli rated it:

I love this book. A friend of mine, a chiropractor, recommended it to me about 10 years ago. Part textbook, part cookbook, when I first got it I spent days perusing it. "Listen to this," I kept shouting to my husband. It just made so much sense. This book has taken me on a wonderful journey and taught me so much. I love spending time in the kitchen where I can make things brew and bubble and ferment and rise. It brings out my "inner Ma" (as in Little House in the Big W More...

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Aug 03, 2011

Jenny rated it:

This book is coming up due soon, so I have to read it before Real Food. So many "currently reading" books, so little time...

Oh man, at times it was a struggle to read this book, probably mostly due to the fact I was reading it at night...and it was putting me to sleep! To be honest I did not read the whole things cover to cover, as much of it is a cookbook. I did read the first 80 or so pages, as that is where most of the information is, and then the beginnings of chapters, s More...

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Jul 01, 2009

Alan rated it:

I've read some pretty dogmatic,self-righteous--"I'm right and everyone else is so stupid" books on nutrition, but this one really takes the cake (I eat puns too). How many times am I going to read about the Pottenger cat study that was done 60 years ago? The author cites the most outdated and poor quality research to argue against vegetarianism, flours, breads, pasta, etc. The author also does us the favor of debunking the myth that an animal based diet requires more resources than a More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jan 07, 2011

Emily rated it:

girl, when i read this book, i feel mixed: ok, i hear you, very interesting, subversive, and... like, "sets the bar really high" as a friend said. yeah, like, too high and for the wrong hurdle. like i am one of those people who really wants to be told what to eat and to eat that. i often opened this cook book when it was in my house, wanting to make say, pancakes, and then realize there's no way in hell i can feasibly realize the recipe ever, especially not w/in the next 40 minutes or More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

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