Build Your Ancestral Diet: How to Make Your Kitchen Ancestral Eating Friendly

When we talk about our ancestors, people have a lot to say about their short lifespans, lack of modern conveniences, and how terrible it would be to live without modern medicine.

Sure, our ancestors didn’t have the tools and resources to perfect painkillers, drive-thrus, or mass-produced toilet paper.

But you know what they did perfect? Food.

Over thousands of years, the people who came before us used their intuition and passed-down knowledge to find and preserve methods for survival. Nutrition and farming were directly connected to how long our ancestors lived—so it was important for them to be good at it.

Today, while we have a lot of incredible resources and conveniences that weren’t available to our forefathers, we’re missing out on a key element: the ancestral diet.

Stricken with autoimmune diseases and mystery illnesses, our communities desperately lack the nutritional knowledge and practices that were passed down—and safeguarded—for generations.

It’s my experience that people who commit to the eating patterns of our ancestors experience better health and are at less risk for illnesses.

But exactly how can we follow in the footsteps of our ancestors? Let’s explore the ancestral diet:

Table of Contents

What Is the Ancestral Diet?

The ancestral diet follows principles of eating that were perfected by “primitive” cultures. Ancestral eating focuses on low-waste recipes that rely on nature—rather than industrial processing—for health and nutrition. Essential minerals, vitamins, and nutrients are all gleaned from natural sources (hunting, gathering, and planting).

Since early cultures didn’t have vitamins and supplements to fall back on, they learned to rely completely on their food intake to fill their nutritional needs. Their diet and lifestyle show the way we should eat—and it’s uninfluenced by clever marketing, inconsistent health trends, and the modern lifestyle.

The Principles of Ancestral Eating

Surviving during primitive times wasn’t easy. To this day, our bodies remain programmed for survival. Even though we don’t face a lot of the same challenges, we still have the same nutritional needs as our ancestors. And increasingly, they aren’t being met.

Although many early cultures lived in isolated areas, they remarkably all followed similar eating principles:

• Follow your intuition. A lot of people will try to influence the way you eat—and it’s important to follow the wisdom of holistic doctors and medical professionals. However, remember that you’re wired for survival, and your own intuition can tell you a lot, too.

• No processed foods. Our ancestors did occasionally eat things like wheat and sugar, but they were in their whole-food form and unprocessed.

• Consume lots of animal protein. Compared to our ancestors, we don’t eat nearly as much animal protein. And the animal protein we do eat (thighs, breasts, etc.) isn’t even the most nutritious part of the animal.

• Prioritize grass-fed meats. We consume the nutrients our animal protein consumes. Grass-fed beef and other meats have shown significantly more nutritional benefit than typical grocery store brands.

• Eat nose-to-tail. By consuming the whole animal, we cut down on waste—and it seems nature rewards us. There are a lot of nutrients in organ meats and bone marrow—in fact, they can act like a natural (and more bioavailable) multivitamin.

Are There Benefits to Ancestral Eating?

Absolutely. Over thousands of years, primal cultures lived with the land and followed their own intuition for guidance when it came to food and medicine.

Unlike us, their life goal wasn’t to get a promotion, make a lot of money, or even to see the world. Their goal was simply survival. With the tools and resources they had available, they were incredible at it.

Dr. Weston A. Price studied these primal cultures with the purpose of learning the exact environment and factors that created healthy teeth and bone structure.

He discovered that primal cultures had immaculate bone structure that allowed their wisdom teeth to come in normally. Their teeth were straight, white, and rarely got cavities.

And it had everything to do with their diets.

Most primal cultures consumed four times the minerals and water-soluble vitamins that we do today. Even more astonishing, our ancestors’ diets included almost ten times the fat-soluble vitamins.

Ancestral eating allows us to follow the tried-and-true principles that our ancestors perfected over thousands of years. It’s the only diet available to us that truly fills our nutritional needs and allows us to feel our best.

Three Steps to Building Your Own Ancestral Diet

“Explain ancestral eating to me like I’m five.” We’ve all said something like this at the beginning of our ancestral eating journey. The learning curve is half the fun—but it doesn’t have to be so steep.

These three steps to building your own ancestral diet can help you get started:

1) Become Friends with Your Local Farmers

No one understands food production more than your local farmers. Seriously, they’re fully dedicated to the growth and production of their crops—and they know exactly what chemicals and additives are included (and aren’t included) in their farming process.

Local farmers are also extremely knowledgeable about things like raw milk and organ meats. They know what to watch out for when it comes to production and sanitation (two things that are extremely important when we’re talking about raw dairy).

2) Make Your Own Food

It’s difficult to maintain an ancestral diet without cooking your own food. This is a hang-up for many families, since most couples are working—and time is difficult to come by. Processed foods became popular for this very reason—they’re so much easier to prepare on a busy schedule.

There are ways to make ancestral eating work on a limited schedule, though.

Here are some things to try:

• Meal prep basic ingredients on the weekends. Boil eggs, chop veggies, and cook staple meats you’ll use throughout the week.

• Use a crockpot or instant pot. These can be instrumental for things like homemade bone broth and stews, especially if you’re out a lot during the day. A nutrient-loaded crockpot meal may not fit the ancestral “aesthetic,” but it can make all the difference for your wellness.

• Figure out what you’re going to buy from the store. There are easy instant meal options you can purchase from places like Whole Foods, Azure Standard, or even Costco. Figure out your budget and make a plan, deciding exactly what foods you plan to buy from the local grocery store and what you can afford to source from the farmer’s market.

• Figure out how many meals you can realistically cook in a week. If you reasonably have time to cook 3-4 full meals per week, be honest with yourself about that. Plan to make those meals especially nutrient-dense—and eat throw-together meals the rest of the time (sandwiches, cottage cheese, yogurt and berries, beef sticks, etc.).

3) Join Your Local Weston A. Price Chapter

Ancestral eating has obviously been around for a long time, but Dr. Weston A. Price is credited with rediscovering it in the 1930s. His studies are the motivating factor for most ancestral diets—and the people who closely follow his work are involved in local groups.

These local communities often run how-to workshops and provide support for people who are new to ancestral eating. If you don’t have a local Weston A. Price group, you can join the Facebook Group.

Ancestral Diet Food List: Pantry Staples You Need to Get Started

A slow transition is a sustainable transition. If this is your first time learning about ancestral eating, start to slowly add different food groups to your pantry—and pay attention to how they make you feel.

Raw Dairy

When industrialization of dairy became mainstream, it helped many people avoid milk-related illnesses. Bacteria found in unpasteurized milk can have serious medical consequences. But over-processing milk can be just as problematic.

When we pasteurize milk, we remove a great deal of the nutrient content (enzymes, protein, vitamins, and minerals). The better option is to find raw dairy from a dairy farmer you trust. Talk to your farmer and find out their methods of testing for diseases and ensuring milk is sanitary—without pasteurization. This way, you can glean all the benefits of raw dairy safely.

Ancient Wheat Varieties or Milled Flour

Premade flour has certainly saved a lot of time for modern generations—but not without consequences. Most flour today is so stripped of nutrients that manufactured vitamins and minerals are “fortified” back into the flour (hint: these are not bioavailable to the body).

It’s surprisingly easy to mill your own flour. But if you don’t have the time, you can purchase an ancestral wheat blend (that’s unbleached and glyphosate-free) to feed your family.

Grass-Fed Meats and Animal Organs

You can actually get plant compounds into your diet from eating grass-fed beef (things like polyphenols, antioxidants, and phytochemicals). Grass-fed beef has also shown to have more omega-3 fatty acids and can even reduce the risk of heart disease (the exact opposite of what we hear about red meat and the standard American diet).

The nutrients in animal organs are our bodies’ reward for eating the entire animal without letting anything go to waste. Animal organs are a superfood—filled with enough vitamins, minerals, and other goodness to be considered a natural multivitamin.

In-Season Fruits and Veggies

In Ayurveda (an ancient Indian medicine), it’s encouraged for women especially to consume in-season produce—and to consume warm meals in the winter and cooler meals in the summer. It makes sense that our bodies would respond better to the produce when it’s in season, since this is how our ancestors ate.

It’s naïve to assume the rhythms our ancestors created over thousands of years no longer apply to modern humans—just because we have more tools and more access to produce year round.

Other benefits of eating in-season fruits and veggies are that they’re typically on sale, you can support your local farmer, and (my favorite) you can eat from your own garden.

Local Eggs

Choline is one of the nutrients I encourage for my pregnant and pre-pregnancy mamas. It’s responsible for neural tube development during pregnancy and helps grow the brain of your little one.

Besides mothers, choline is a much-needed nutrient that most people probably aren’t getting enough of. Local eggs are a rich source of choline—and can also provide vitamin A, vitamin E, and double the omega-3 fatty acids of store-bought eggs.

Healthy Natural Fats

No matter how many vitamins and minerals we consume, we can’t use them without healthy fats. They are the avenue by which our vitamins and minerals are absorbed. Low-fat diets most often mean low-level brain energy—and low-quality health.

You can get more healthy fats by eating animal meats, raw dairy (cheese, butter, milk, cottage cheese), and by eating plant-based fats (Seeds, nuts, avocadoes, etc.).

Where to Shop to Encourage Ancestral Eating

My clients and friends know these are my ride-or-die ancestral eating resources. (I’m not sure how my family would survive without Azure Standard.)

There are certainly times when you’ll need to rely on Whole Foods, Sprouts, Costco, and other local health food stores (especially in the beginning of your ancestral eating journey). But these resources can provide more consistent nutrient-dense meals, since they’re more open about their standards, processes, and commitment to quality.

• Azure Standard — Pantry staples!

• Primal Kitchen — Condiments, dressings, sauces, and supplements.

• US Wellness Meats — All things grass-fed meat.

• Dutch Meadows — Raw milk produce if you can’t find a local farmer.

• Force of Nature — Grass-fed meats and awesome options for organ meats.

Taking a Food-First Approach to Ancestral Eating

When I work with individual clients, the topic of supplements often comes up when we’re creating a customized ancestral diet and health plan. I regularly use supplements for myself and my clients—they’re an essential tool that can help fill nutrient gaps and get people feeling healthy faster.

However, supplements aren’t everything.

And to assume we can get people well on supplements and medications alone, I think is a bit naïve.

My goal with my clients is to take a food-first approach to wellness. Remember, food was one of our ancestors’ biggest tools for preventing illness and promoting whole-body wellness. When you’re eating ancestrally—with a healthy balance of animal meats, organs, healthy fats, and in-season fruits and veggies—you create a natural defense against illness.

After that’s accomplished, adding in supplements to fill gaps can be helpful. But it’s always my goal to get people feeling well without relying on an expensive cocktail of natural supplements and remedies.

Is the Ancestral Diet Right for You?

Many of us grew up believing our ancestors lived an inferior lifestyle to the one we live today. And it’s certainly true that our quality of life is much higher now. Modern advancements in technology, medicine, and food production have helped us fill extreme gaps and live better lives overall.

But this doesn’t mean our ancestors had nothing to teach us—or that we should be so quick to ditch every ancestral practice in favor of new methods.

I personally believe that achieving good health comes from a combination of modern science and age-old wisdom.