Part II: Your Ancestral Diet and How to Find It

A food not properly broken down to components the body can use decomposes into toxic compounds. In a word, undigested food rots . . . Nutritional work is foundational to all holistic or natural healing. Dr. Ananda Kramer

Welcome to Part II of our interview with Naturopathic Physician and Homeopath, Dr. Ananda Kramer. We left off with the differences in eating styles of cultures around the world. People of Asia, Africa and Europe, for example, all have a different basis to the diets which they have been eating for centuries.

MMS: Are you saying that over the centuries the bodies of our ancestors developed the ability, passed down through their DNA coding, to digest the foods of their areas? But because they didn’t have a need to digest other types of foods they didn’t produce the enzymes necessary to do so, making adaptation to moving afar very difficult?

AK:  Yes. Changes in genetics take more than a few centuries.

MMS:  All of my grandparents came from Italy, a country that uses a lot of cheese, butter and milk. Yet, I have a dairy intolerance (I am only the second generation to be born here.) I should be able to digest dairy then, shouldn’t I?

AK:  Dairy intolerance is more complex than you might think. You’d have to look back to your ancestors in about 1000 A.D. There have been significant migrations of peoples and foods since recorded history.

So, for example, lets look at pasta, a food very much identified with Italy. Noodles have been discovered in China made from millet as long ago as 2000 BC. The notion that Marco Polo introduced pasta to Italy from China may not be true. There is evidence that pasta made from Durum wheat (as it is today) was introduced by Arabs during their conquest of Sicily in the late 7th century.

My point being, in reference to your question about dairy, that the foods associated with a culture may or may not be original with that culture.

MMS:  I didn’t realize how complex this is. It makes me better appreciate the foods I can digest. People have been asking how they can achieve digestive harmony and find their ancestral diets. What can you tell them?

AK: We need to find out if there is a food our bodies will not tolerate. I do a test – it is a simple test that can be done at home – I call it the Food Intolerance Test or FIT.  It has been around since the 1920’s and is also know as the Carroll Test.  By having this test done one can find out the food, usually only one food, that an individual cannot digest. I would direct your readers to my website, Article section, for more detailed information:   www.doctorananda.com.

MMS:  Do patients ever say to you their digestion is fine, they don’t have problems, when you think otherwise?

AK:  Yes. Sometimes people will tell me they don’t have any digestive problems, and I look at them and see they look pasty, no color in their faces. They may be overweight or bloated (can’t always tell which is which by looking) and they look tired. They complain about joint pain and muscle aches, problems with sleep and skin conditions. The bell goes off in my head:  how will they get better if they eat a diet that’s creating inflammation in their body? How will they get better if they don’t identify this food? Nutritional work is foundational to all holistic or natural healing.

MMS:  As a maturing boomer I specially appreciate this information. Your last sentence is very powerful to me. Thank you, Dr. Ananda.

Next time, we’ll continue with Part III of our interview with Dr. Ananda Kramer on Digestive Harmony and Transformational Healing. Love your comments; please keep sharing them.

Question for You:  Are you aware of how the foods you eat affect you?