Page 46 - Summer 2019 Journal

milk that a cow (or human or other mammal) produces, and it is extra high in nutrients. However, Ukrainians cook it with sugar.
My favorite dairy product in Ukraine is “kefir made with roasted milk.” (I know, this sounds like “pasteurized milk,” a no-no!) However, the Ukrainians take milk and slow-roast it at low heat in a clay vessel for hours until the milk turns brownish and almost tastes chocolate-y; then they ferment it, and it is soooo good.
VEGETABLES AND FRUITS
Fermented vegetables are everywhere, and houses typically come
equipped with underground food storage cellars. My girlfriend’s mother uses over thirty one-gallon jars each year to pickle and preserve her garden harvest. Primarily, this consists of cucumbers and tomatoes combined with herbs from the garden. These pickled vegetables will last through the winter. This is just an ordinary thing that Ukrainian mothers do—and in the fall “pickling season,” everyone is talking about pickling their garden.
Ukrainians eat “salads,” but they are very different from American salads. A typical salad will mix boiled vegetables with mayonnaise and eggs. Also sometimes called a “salad” is sauerkraut with other things added to it.
Borscht is probably one of the Slavic people’s most popular dishes. It can be either a soup or a stew; in addition to bone broth, meat and lots of sour cream, the inclusion of beetroot gives borscht its telltale purple hue.
Ukraine does not offer anything terribly exciting on the fruit front, but pickled apples and homemade probiotic wines are common offer- ings. There are also lots of dried fruits. Stewed fruit is popular, and after stewing and straining the fruit, Ukrainians also create a very tasty drink.
GRAINS
Bread is a huge part of Ukrainian culture, but you will not find any
whole-grain breads. There are breads that look whole-grain, but they are actually just grains with a darker tint.
It is also very hard to find sourdough bread in Ukraine. In fact, I was shocked at the absence of sourdough bread, considering the prominence of wheat and Ukrainians’ heavy use of fermented foods. Baker’s yeast did not become popular until the 1950s, so my girlfriend’s father tells stories of his mother using wild yeasts to get the dough to rise. She made a sourdough starter from scratch, which is really easy to do. Even during her time, however, they were also buying white refined flour from the store.
I suspect that Ukrainians used to grind their grains, sifting out a good portion of the bran and then using sourdough to ferment the endosperm and germ flour. The bran may have been fermented and given to farm animals or put back into bread but fermented for additional days.
The Weston A. Price community consumes a lot of beet kvass, but in Ukraine and other Slavic countries, kvass beverages made from bread are very popular with everyone. Kvass is comparable in taste to a traditional ale from western Europe. It is a fermented beverage that uses bread as its sugar source, along with various spices and herbs. Essentially, you take bread and dissolve it in water and add a starter. The starter grows
44 Wise Traditions
off the starch dissolved in the water from the bread. Add some spices and, boom, you have some sort of kvass.
BRINGING UKRAINE’S LESSONS HOME Weston A. Price witnessed healthy primi- tive peoples eating the most nutrient- and ener- gy-dense foods available in an easy-to-digest, toxin-free format. This usually consisted of organ meats, fatty meats, raw dairy, properly prepared starches and plant foods. The people who Dr. Price studied understood that for all life on Earth, health is governed by the laws of Mother Nature. As Dr. Price said, “Life in its
fullest is Mother Nature obeyed.”
If you ever find yourself confused about
how you should eat, just ask yourself the fol- lowing questions: How do I give my body as many nutrients as possible? How do I make these nutrient-dense foods as easy to digest as possible? How do I deactivate the antinutrients found in the skins and seeds of plants? Which wild animals consume this food? What does their gut look like, and how does it compare to the human gut? (For example, cows can use their built-in “fermentation tanks,” while humans must ferment foods externally.) If you are react- ing poorly to nourishing foods, ask yourself: Do I have bad bacteria and fungi in my gut that are stealing my nutrients and eating me alive? What fermented foods do I need to eat to get my gut microbiome back in order?
In any event, all of us can draw inspira- tion from Ukraine’s nourishing traditions and use some of their time-tested ideas to get more nutrients into our own diet.
Michael Merrill runs the YouTube channel “Heal Your Gut Guy” where he shows people how to recover from gut disease with ancestral dietary principles and natural remedies. He used to suffer from digestive issues, even while following a nutrient-dense ancestral diet. The channel’s content dives deep into the digest- ibility challenges of each food group and how to overcome them.
SUMMER 2019