WHAT DID YOUR GRANDPARENTS EAT?
I recently saw my grandma (age 82) and we talked about the kinds of food she ate growing up. Given all the research I’ve done in my own practice I was surprised to see how many dietary choices she made growing up that were considered normal, but extraordinary by today’s standards.
Some background; my grandma grew up in a small village in Mexico called Santa Catarina, which is in the center of Mexico. She lived there for 16 years before taken as a wife by my grandfather, moved north, had 6 children (including my mom), and the rest is history.
I was really curious about her eating habits because of her strong bloodline. To start, her mother, my great grandmother, is still alive and well at the age of 100! Not only is she 100, but she is healthy. As you can imagine, she gets around quite slowly, but cognitively she is there.
My grandmother has a bit of a different story. She was diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer in 2014. If you’re not familiar, pancreatic cancer is arguably the worst type of cancer out there. It often goes undetected until the later stages where it can metastasize quickly once found. Only 5-10% of people survive any kind of treatment, and of those that do survive the treatment only 1% will live 5 years past the original diagnosis.
I am happy to write that she not only beat it once, but twice. A little while after she first went into remission, her oncologist discovered more tumor growth, but she made short work of it all. She has been alive and well ever since.
Now, since then, she also experienced a nasty fall where she hit her head and developed a subdural hematoma, aka brain bleed. At her age, only about 1/3rd of people survive a subdural hematoma. Thankfully, she pulled through and is now almost completely back to normal. She experiences slight memory issues, but that can be expected after having both brain damage and surgery.
Needless to say, she is a survivor, and probably then some. No doubt she will continue to live a long and wonderful life, just like her mom. Clearly longevity is in her genes.
I have my theories of course as to why she developed cancer, while her mother did not, and most of them come down to food.
In rural Mexico, there are no gmo crops or hormone fed animals. But there’s also not any supermarkets or warehouse style stores where you can buy convenience in bulk. What there is instead is homegrown fruits and vegetables, wilderness fed livestock, wild mushrooms and herbs, and plenty of sunshine.
So naturally, I had to ask, what did you eat growing up? And here’s what she said.
Soups
A lot of soups (called caldo in Spanish). This is how she got most of her vegetables in. Usually these would have some sort of meat, but not always, and the meat would have the bone in. Bones provide tons of collagen in soups, which helps you rebuild your bones, skin, fascial structures, you name it.
Beans and rice
This is pretty typical, not only in Mexico but throughout the world. And not only beans, but lentils and chickpeas too. Combined with rice, these legume meals offer a complete protein that is not only filling but packed with micronutrients. Plus the fiber helps to build a resilient microbiome.
Organ meats
In some parts of the world, children would fight over these parts of the animal; liver, heart, kidney, intestine. People in the US used to eat more of these but not so much anymore. It’s disappointing too, because organ meats can offer you more nutrients than even healthy plant sources. They are unbelievablygood for you, especially during pregnancy when you are developing a new body.
Root vegetables
Did you know there are more root vegetables than just russet potatoes? There are areas in the world known as Blue Zones where people not only live longer, but they live healthy disease-free lives, and all of them sustain themselves by tubers and legumes mostly. Not only are we talking about yams here, but also turnips, cassava, ginger, bulb roots (onions), taro, the list goes on.
Corn
I mean real corn here. Before the 50’s, corn was in its natural state, nothing like what Monstanto has created today. If you compared the two side by side you would almost think they are a different plant all together. But all natural organic non-gmo corn is not only sweet but packed with flavor (and nutrients!)
Cactus
You may not have known that you can eat cactus, but you can. It’s actually quite good (once you removed the thorns). Cactus is a lot like aloe, it produces this slime-like texture that can soothe and heal the gut lining. Just don’t be surprised if the fiber cleans you out your first time trying it.
Raw milk and bread
She didn’t eat these often, but maybe once or twice a week. Much like corn, wheat that is harvested today is a patented product, hardly a food. And worse it absorbs the Round Up constituent glyphosate like mad, which makes you wonder why wheat intolerance is so rapidly on the rise. Also raw milk is phenomenal for you. It’s when it gets pasteurized that all the good microbes get killed off and your left with something fractionally beneficial. Contrary to government regulation, raw milk is both safe and wonderfully good for you.
It was at this point that my dad came into the room and chimed in on the conversation. When I repeated all that my grandma had said, he agreed and told me that’s pretty much what he ate too. My dad also grew up in Mexico, in a city called Cuernavaca, until his teens when he migrated to the States.
My dad was apparently more of a wild child than I was, because he said he and his friends would raise hell all over the place. But food was always available, whether it be a neighbors fruit tree, or wild mushrooms in the jungle. He also mentioned eating chapulines (spiced grasshopper) every so often too, but I’ll leave insects for another post.
So I look at this type of diet and I ask myself, how many people in the US eat even somewhat close to this? Probably very few. And it can’t be because of the expense, because compared to the modern diet these food sell for cents on the dollar. It must be because of convenience and influence.
LAST THOUGHTS
There are so many factors that determine our health. But do we wait until things get so bad that we can collectively agree that our food quality is fair at best? Do we ignore the alarming statistics of rising preventable diseases? Do we rely on the pharmaceutical industry to heal us of all our problems while neglecting the fact that their business ties are the ones making us sick in the first place? (I know it’s a lot, but I’ll explain later)
Or.. can we do something about it? Can you or I make a choice to put our bodies in a better state merely by mimicking the lifestyle of someone who has proved resiliency?
I look at the lifestyle of my grandma, who chances of being alive today are less than 0.1%, yet she is thriving. And her mother, who still lives in Mexico today, is disease free at the age of 100. And while many doctors would ignore the diet all together and say it’s a genetic fluke, I disagree. I think the diet is everything.
My great-grandmother eats the same foods to this day, and while my grandma has been in the US for decades, her nutritional foundation that built her genetic code is the same. This is epigenetics at play. Now, just imagine what your diet is doing to your DNA, is your nutritional foundation strong?
-Dr G
