We’re midway through a six-part guide to feeling good. Thus far, we’ve explored the importance of breathing, sleep, rest, pleasure, human connection and this week we’re focusing on ‘soul’ food.

Now, before we get into all the chocolatey details, I want to talk a little about the importance of soul food from my perspective.

Having spent a couple of decades in search of the best diet for humans and in the process, experimented with the bulk of the dietary and detox protocols out there, I can tell you firsthand that overly restrictive eating isn’t the best path to feeling good.

Naturally, eating well is important, however for some, it can be a slippery slope to becoming obsessive or fixated on compartmentalising foods as ‘good’ or ‘bad’.

The importance of soul food

One thing I’ve come to know is that soul food, whether it’s homemade or even the processed store-bought variety (gasp!), is an extremely important...

This week we’re hearing from my friend, local Dentist Dr Steven Lin who practices out of Luminous Dentistry in Long Jetty. He’s the author of the international best-seller, ‘The Dental Diet’ which touches on many of the dietary concepts we’ve been discussing over the past few weeks – namely, the importance of returning to a diet based on traditional foods, based on the findings of pioneering Dentist, Dr Weston Price.

Steven and I are equally passionate about the oft-overlooked vitamin K2 and this article expands on my introduction of this important nutrient from last week.

How Vitamin K2 Fuels Jaw Growth, by Dr Steven Lin

One of the biggest problems of modern dentistry has been a failure to address the cause of crooked teeth. However, as we’ll find out, nutritional science has misunderstood the vitamin that caused the problem in the first place.

Today, at least 75% of kids have some level of dental malocclusion. Many patients ask me,...

We’re mid-way through a discussion of the work of Dr Weston A. Price, who studied the diets of traditional people and found them to be almost entirely responsible for their near-perfect health.

Activator X: a missing nutrient

In his research, Dr Price discovered a fat-soluble vitamin he called ‘Activator X’, which we now know to be vitamin K2. He referred to it as an activator because, as we discussed last week, like vitamins A and D, it’s an important catalyst which helps the body absorb and utilise minerals.

Price observed that “people of the past obtained a substance that modern generations do not have” and that its absence from the diet could explain many of our modern diseases. He was able to reverse dental decay and cure degenerative conditions in his patients by supplementing foods rich in this nutrient – the foods that all traditional cultures revered as sacred: animal fats, eggs, concentrated forms of dairy like butter and cheese,...

We’re mid-way through a discussion of the work of Dr Weston A. Price, who studied the diets of traditional people and found them to be almost entirely responsible for their near-perfect health.

I thought I’d expand on what was arguably his most important discovery, especially with respect to the diets of our modern children – that these indigenous diets contained ten times the amount of fat-soluble vitamins (A, D and what we now know to be K2) than their Western counterparts.

Ten!

Just to make sure we’re clear on the impact this deviation from tradition has had, especially with the anti-fat and anti-cholesterol campaigns over the past seven decades, there are now widespread epidemics of deficiencies of these vitamins.

Some 85 per cent of Australians are now deficient in vitamin D, despite our sunny climate.

And because so little is known about vitamin K2 and deficiency has also reached epidemic proportions particularly in children and adults over forty,...

Last week we introduced the findings of Dr Weston A Price, who studied the diets of indigenous peoples. His work demonstrated exceptionally clearly that any deviation away from their nutrient dense traditional diets would inevitably lead to a rapid decline in overall health, with rampant tooth decay, mental health issues and susceptibility to infectious and degenerative disease.

Principles of traditional diets

Given that Price travelled to all corners of the globe, the foods consumed by each indigenous group varied widely, however, regardless of where he went, they intuitively followed the same dietary principles and there were no exceptions.

These principles can serve as a flexible blueprint for us in this modern age.

I thought I’d expand on just a few of the ways we’ve deviated from the traditions and practices that Price noted were common to these cultures.

Thankfully we’re already witnessing a resurgence in popularity of some of these ideas.

1. Proper...

Bitter: the abandoned flavour

It’s a flavour that is universally associated with harshness, pain and the downright intolerable, yet bitter foods (and especially greens like radicchio, endive and dandelion) are an overlooked and very essential food group. It’s possible that many of the health complaints that plague us in the modern era, such as reflux, indigestion and type 2 diabetes, may in fact be traced to a deficiency of bitters in the diet.

For the health conscious folk among you, who probably prioritise getting enough fibre, vitamin C, iron and calcium – and for the finger-on-pulse types, probably also bone broth, liver, kale and chia seeds – when was the last time you pondered whether you’re including sufficient bitter foods in your diet? Did it ever make your checklist, I wonder?

Certainly not mine, until several years ago when my all-time favourite food author, Jennifer Mclagan penned the modern classic “Bitter: a taste of the...