Book excerpt: Explores how the traditional foods of ancient cultures can naturally help prevent and treat degenerative disease and chronic conditions • Examines the protective nutrients inherent in primal foods, such as wild seafood, grass-fed meat, and raw dairy, explaining how they differ from Western refined foods • Explains how to create your own commonsense primal diet, tailored to your specific needs and conditions, such as allergies, eczema, arthritis, and even cancer • Builds upon the work of Dr. Weston A. Price, Dr. Francis Pottenger, and other nutritional health pioneers The human body’s innate mechanisms for healing and immunity extend beyond the mending of cuts and broken bones or recovery from colds and flu. Given the foods we evolved to thrive on, foods our ancestors knew well, the body can naturally prevent and overcome a host of degenerative conditions and chronic illnesses, from allergies, eczema, and arthritis to dental caries, heart attack, and even cancer. Drawing on the work of Dr. Weston A. Price, Dr. Francis Pottenger, and other nutritional health pioneers, Dr. Ron Schmid demonstrates that the strongest and most disease-resistant indigenous cultures around the world lived on whole, natural foods--seafood, wild game, healthy grass-fed domestic animals, and, in some cases, whole grains and raw dairy. He explores how modern refined diets differ from ancestral ones, the dramatic declines in health seen in indigenous cultures that adopt modern diets, and the steps you can take to build health with traditional foods. He observes that the foods considered essential and “sacred” in native cultures--the foods around which rituals and ceremonies evolved and that were emphasized prior to and during pregnancy--were invariably animal-source foods such as seafood, liver, and raw milk products, thus underscoring the importance of these foods to overall health and immunity, a fact that modern nutritional science has overwhelmingly proved true. Blending the wisdom of traditional eating patterns with modern scientific knowledge, Dr. Schmid explains how to apply these principles to create your own commonsense primal diet, tailored to your specific needs, to rebuild health and improve longevity.