traditional Guatemalan worry dolls

Does making a change or just anticipate making a change make you nervous? I feel that way on occasion. Usually before I read a book to tell me ever more about how to eat better and everything that is wrong with the current food system. Because there is so, so much that is broken, and so many people that don’t know how to eat to sustain their bodies because they have never been taught how.  I sometimes worry that the more I read and learn the more I might doubt what I am doing or feel guilt for not doing more.

Well, I’ve been meaning to read Nourishing Traditions for quite a while now; but I had that apprehension about it. But when I saw it waiting for me on the library endcap, I knew it was time. I took the book that had been waiting for me and dove in. Nourishing Traditions is all about eating in the way people used to, not fearful of bones in meat and other signs of food with a life: sprouted, lacto-fermented and thoroughly unprocessed. I liked that idea: food that wasn’t totally dead. Live cultures from home cultured dairy products, fruits and vegetables. Not wasting innards and bones; parts of the animal that nutrient rich, have delicious potential, and often thrown out. My liver and onion loving grandfather would approve. 

The book focuses in on the research by Weston Price (a dentist, who studied diets of native peoples to link the correspondence to dental health and structure to nutrition). While the book is homey and hardly a glossy, shiny thing; it is chock full of some valuable information and ideas. I kept renewing the book until someone else at the library requested it. I was fascinated by it.

And while I didn’t feel the kind of guilt I anticipated from it, instead I felt okay. I feel like I am on a good dietary path. I’m not going to say I am doing everything perfect according to Weston Price’s ideas- because I don’t. And I won’t say that I am living the word of wisdom perfectly either, I don’t know how to. But I go back to a quote I love from John and Leah Widsoe’s book  The Word of Wisdom,

This does not mean that one should be always fussing about one’s food or be conscieous of every mouthful eaten. That would be a bore as well as an unhealthy attitude. . . Moderation is the essence or spirit of the Word of Wisdom.

I just have to focus on doing well as much as I can, and then not stress about what I haven’t yet achieved, what I am not doing. Since there will always be something more that I could be doing and someone else who is doing more than I am doing. I learn and read more, I just have to remember to be a peace with myself and make the changes that I feel good about.

So, yes. I do recommend reading the book. I’m planning on picking up a copy of my own, since it didn’t scare me too much to have around, and I’ve kind of missed it since it has been gone.

How about you, have you worried over change or dove right in? Have you read the book? What do you think about it?