Fatigue, Eczema, Chronic Strep, And Weight Issues: All Resolved By Real Food

To celebrate this milestone episode, we are sharing stories from guests who have resolved health challenges thanks to nutrient-rich diets and traditional wisdom.

You’ll hear from Saritah on addressing military-related weight issues with keto principles and nutrient-rich foods; Corey Dunn on managing her child’s severe eczema by eliminating gluten and dairy; and Janine Farzin on revitalizing her diet with sacred foods high in fat-soluble vitamins. Medea Galligan breaks down the importance of fermented soy products and the pitfalls of non-fermented soy, while Erin Meschke recounts her recovery from a challenging childhood through dietary changes. Finally, Kristen Files shares how living foods rejuvenated her energy levels.

They each offer practical tips, along with captivating stories and insights into traditional dietary practices.

Guest websites include:

Saritah – WAPF chapter in Madison WI

Corey Dunn – For Nutrient’s Sake

Janine Farzin – Offally Good Cooking

Kristen Files – Forest Creek Wellness

Erin Meschke – WAPF chapter in Boulder CO

Become a member of the Weston A. Price Foundation (using the code pod10)

Find your local chapter leader on our website: westonaprice.org

Check out our sponsors Paleo Valley and American Blossom Linens

Key Takeaways:

Principles of the Weston A. Price Foundation
Nutrient-Dense Foods
Cultural Practices and Modern Diets
Overcoming Health Issues with Food
Breastfeeding and Early Nutrition
Holistic Approach to Wellness

Episode Timestamps:

00:00 – Introduction

00:43 – Weight Struggles and Keto Diet Discoveries

04:09 – Transitioning to a Nutrient-Rich Diet with Organ Capsules

07:47 – Benefits of Frozen Liver Pills and Fermented Cod Oil

10:16 – Health Issues Arising from a Strict Low-Fat Diet

13:02 – Challenges of Eating Liver and Unpleasant Tastes

17:19 – PaleoValley Beef Sticks: Sustainable and Nutritious

19:48 – Eco-Friendly US-Made Natural Fiber Sheets at a Discount

23:41 – Overcoming Struggles and Finding Healing Through Food

27:43 – Health Tips Recommended by Podcast Guests

31:06 – The Foundational Role of Nutrition in Wellness

33:29 – Life-Changing Spanish Podcast for Families

37:40 – Outro

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Listen to the episode here

Episode Transcript

Within the below transcript the bolded text is Hilda Labrada Gore and the regular text is Saritah.

Weight Struggles And Keto Diet Discoveries

A kid covered with eczema, a woman born tired, a soldier bedeviled by weight issues, another woman on the sad American diet, a woman with an eating disorder, and another with chronic strep. This is episode 500, and in honor of this milestone, we wanted to share some of your stories of how real food and ancestral traditions have changed and touched your lives. All of the aforementioned concerns were resolved, thanks to the shifts each person made to improve their health, based on ancestral wisdom and information they found at the Weston A. Price Foundation.

You’ll hear seven stories in approximately 30 minutes. Most of the guests on this episode are chapter leaders who have benefited so much from the foundation that they are giving back and sharing resources to make a difference for their communities and the world. You can find your local chapter leader on our website, by the way, WestonAPrice.org. You’ll hear from Saritah, Corey Dunn, Juliana Fajardo, Janine Farzin, Kristen Files, Medea Galligan, and Erin Meschke. Each of them has an amazing and compelling story to tell. Not all of these women are chapter leaders yet, but maybe one day they will be.

If you’re just getting going with the Weston A. Price Foundation and the Wise Traditions Diet and Way, join hands with us by becoming a member. Go to WestonAPrice.org and join the movement by contributing just $30 for the year with the code POD10. That’s it. Membership is only $30 for the year with the code POD10. I know gym memberships that are $30 for the month. This is the deal of the century. Go ahead and join, and welcome to the family.

By the way, as you listen, please keep in mind that we’ve recorded these interviews live at the Wise Traditions Conference. The audio quality isn’t perfect on a couple of the interviews, but hang in there. It is powerful content and worth listening to. This is Hilda Labrada Gore, and you’re listening to Wise Traditions.

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Saritah – WAPF chapter in Madison WI

Corey Dunn – For Nutrient’s Sake

Janine Farzin – Offally Good Cooking

Kristen Files – Forest Creek Wellness

Erin Meschke – WAPF chapter in Boulder CO

Become a member of the Weston A. Price Foundation (using the code pod10)

Find your local chapter leader on our website: Weston A. Price

Check out our sponsors Paleo Valley and American Blossom Linens

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Welcome to Wise Traditions, Saritah.

Thanks for having me.

We’re trying to get everybody’s stories. Tell me a little bit about yours. I know it started when you were on duty with the military in Afghanistan.

I did thirteen months in Afghanistan and I had always been on the line of being overweight in the military. I was like, I’ll eat less and that’ll be fine. I was running a ton and would get on the chow menu and get like chicken breasts and carrots. That worked while I was there. I got home and then gained 30 pounds. I was over 155 pounds and I’m only 5 ft. Every little pound makes a difference. What can I do? I started learning about keto. I was like, keto. I started absorbing podcasts and learning about that. Every time I’d listen to a keto podcast, it was like, “The research of Dr. Weston Price.” “Dr. Weston Price’s research.” All of a sudden, I was like, let me find out more about that. I went to the website and I was like, there’s chapters. I’m like, There’s chapters? I’m like, Madison, Wisconsin. There’s a chapter right in the middle of Madison, Wisconsin. I called my chapter leader and I said, I’m sold. Give me some raw milk and let’s do it. That’s how it started.

Just to clarify, you don’t have to become a member to go to a chapter. It’s just like an organizing group that helps you find real food in your community, right?

Yeah, and the chapter leader who was present before I inherited the chapter, she had been a chapter leader for a long time. She had been doing it and had a lot of community connections, and our farmer list is excellent. It’s really good.

What changes did you notice when you went from keto, let’s say, to more of the wise traditions way?

Nutrient-Rich Diet With Organ Capsules

When I started the keto journey, my body just changed rapidly, but I don’t think it was as nutrient dense as I’m eating now. When I started learning about Weston Price, I added in raw milk and that’s when I really started adding in organs and liver pate and dabbling with, like, I’m not going to eat it every week or if there are certain things I’m like, I don’t know if I can get that, doing organ capsules, that kind of thing. My husband got more on board with having more nutrient-dense food and like, Honey, let’s buy a cow. So, like, sorry, we need to buy a freezer.

Speaking of your husband, I saw that you have a little baby.

Three months old.

Congratulations.

Thank you, she’s a little Weston A. Price baby.

By that, I take it, you mean you’re nourishing yourself well, and you’re doing your best to have your breast milk be nutrient-dense for the baby.

That’s been a high priority for me. I know getting in the fats, definitely protein.

Let’s just wrap up with the question I love to pose at the end. If the listener could just do one thing to improve their health, what would you recommend?

Take one thing out of your pantry that you know is bad for you.

That’s good. Just one thing?

Yep. Just take a look at the shelf. Pick one thing. You’re like, “That’s not nourishing me, not serving me.” Get rid of it. Throw it away.

Check your shelf, find what doesn’t nourish or serve you, and toss it out. Refresh your choices!

I love it. Thank you, Saritah. What a pleasure.

Thank you, Hilda.

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Welcome to Wise Traditions, Corey.

Thanks, Hilda.

I know a little bit about your story because we’re friends, but you’re also a co-chapter leader. I wanted to ask you to tell the world, what was it that precipitated your finding the Weston A. Price Foundation? What was going on health-wise with your family?

When my second baby was born, she had eczema all over her body. We went down the traditional wellness doctor path for about six months and realized it wasn’t doing anything. It was making things maybe worse. Thankfully, my mom had already read Sally’s book. She said, I think you should try cutting out gluten, and you should try cutting out dairy. We did that and her body cleared up completely. I’m telling you, she had eczema from her neck down all the way to her ankles, and it was gone within a week. That had a light bulb in my brain and I went, there’s something to what we’re eating. It doesn’t just have to do with weight because before that, food went to weight and it didn’t really affect anything else. That really shifted my mindset.

It’s like you realized what Hippocrates said so many years ago, let thy food be thy medicine. It literally was for your daughter.

A hundred percent.

What other shifts did you make?

Frozen Liver Pills And Fermented Cod Oil Benefits

I was a young mom at that point. I had two babies. I was slowly making changes. We went paleo for a while. By the time I had my third baby, I had actually read Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats. I myself had read it, and I started incorporating. We drove across the state line to buy raw milk. I started taking frozen liver pills, where you like cut the liver up really tiny, and then I took fermented cod liver oil. I had such a beautiful, healthy baby because I was doing that through my pregnancy, and then I had another baby, same thing. She was just so healthy and so beautiful. It’s just every year or every six months, or whenever I felt comfortable, I would just add more things into our lifestyle.

How does that work when you’ve got four kids? You’re a busy mom. You’re homeschooling too. You’ve got a podcast of your own. How do you manage it all? Is it hard to feed them this nutrient-dense food consistently?

Sometimes. Let’s be honest. It’s more work, but it’s worth it. I’ve got to the point where it’s mostly normal for us, but I’ve been doing it for years. I don’t think it’s something that is very easy to do in a heartbeat, but I think it’s something that’s worth working towards.

It’s like more often than not, you’re stacking your hacks over time. You’re building that into your schedule to go get the raw milk and to, this is how we do it. I’ve seen your meal planning stuff on Instagram and stuff. That’s fabulous. I’m so happy for you and your family, and that your second is now eczema-free. I want to pose to you now the question I like to pose at the end of the podcast. If you could just do one thing, Corey, to improve their health or their family’s health, what would you recommend that they do?

When I was on the podcast the last time, I think I said, “Cook from scratch.” I’m going to stick with it because I think that if you’re cooking at home from scratch, you’re already doing way more than most Americans are doing. When you’re cooking at home, you get to choose the ingredients. It’s easy to avoid those things that don’t align with your values.

When you cook at home, you select the ingredients. It’s simple to avoid things not in line with your values.

You’re putting in that extra vitamin L for love. That’s what I say. Thank you so much, Corey. I appreciate your time.

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Welcome to Wise Traditions, Janine.

Thanks, Hilda.

I know that your health wasn’t perfect and actually maybe it was far from perfect when you were in your teens. Tell me a little bit about what it was like.

Health Issues From A Strict Low-Fat Diet

The crazy thing is I actually thought because I followed the standard American guidelines and I was really strict about low fat and things like that. I thought that I was healthy, but I was so tired all the time and I had menstrual problems, and I was often in pain, and I would get sick really easily. One time I bumped into a chair and I actually broke my toe, like just from bumping into a chair. I just felt so fragile and weak. I thought, I really felt like that was normal.

When did you realize that it was common, but not normal?

A friend of mine encouraged me to read Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, told me about the book, and said, “You might be interested in this,” and I did. I checked it out from the library. I read it cover to cover and I realized that radiant health was our birthright.

Wise Traditions | Real Food — Nutrition and Physical Degeneration

How old were you when that happened?

I had two kids. I was 32.

I just think that book, it’s a little bit challenging. It was written by Dr. Weston A. Price himself.

It is. It’s a technical book. It’s a research tome.

You went for it.

I did. I checked it out from the library. I had three weeks before I had to return it. I didn’t really think I would read it, but I started, and it was a page-turner for me, at least. It’s broken up into chapters, like different people groups that he visited, and every story was more compelling than the last. I just couldn’t believe that these existed. It was true that I almost felt like I’d been lied to, like that this was our birthright. I didn’t even know it was an option. I thought that what I was experiencing was normal and healthy.

He talked about the vibrant health of the indigenous people. They weren’t eating the packaged processed foods. They were eating their traditional, local, seasonal, organic food. What was the first shift you made after that?

I really made all the shifts. I cleaned up my pantry and I started driving and picking up raw milk. It was several-hour drives. I was in Illinois at the time, and on-farm sales were legal. I had to drive way out of the city to pick it up. The thing that I took away from that book, like the thing I really internalized, was that every one of these cultures had sacred foods, and these are the foods that have the fat-soluble vitamins. In some cultures, it might have been insects because arthropods actually have these nutrients. Insects do, but we don’t eat those in our culture.

We eat the sea insects like crab and lobster, but even now it’s hard to get the whole thing. When you buy it, often the most nutrient-dense part has been removed. You can buy a crab, you can buy the crab legs, but it’s very hard to get the tamale and like the actual shell. What I perceived from my own understanding of this after reading it was that the organ meats were the most accessible sacred foods that I could access. I was all in. I just decided, I had no idea. I’d never eaten or cooked any of these foods before, but I decided that we’re going to eat organ meats every week starting today, and that was it.

What changes did you notice for your health and energy?

Challenges Of Eating Liver And Unpleasant Tastes

Everything changed for me. I had a sense immediately, like the first time I ate liver. I didn’t know the food. It tasted really bad to me. I was so nervous about it. I sat down at the table by myself and I cut the smallest little pieces, and I would just chew and chew and chew. The taste was weird and it was very fatty. I hadn’t been eating any fatty meats, and I could barely swallow it, actually. I would chug it down with sparkling water and maybe with some lemon or lime added to it. I really needed something to get me over that hurdle, but I could really feel right away that I felt nourished at a deep cellular level. That’s what brought me back for more. In the beginning, I did not like the flavor. I did not like it at all, but I could feel that something was changing in my body and that I needed that food. I needed that energy. I was like, okay.

I also learned during this time that my grandma had served these foods every week of my mom’s life, that she grew up eating nose to tail and had grown up eating liver, but hadn’t served it to us because she didn’t really like it herself. She didn’t want us to be American. She came from an immigrant family. I would just do it the way my grandma did it. I would just serve it once a week. I was scared about it. I was nervous. It was hard. It was just so awkward and uncomfortable. I felt so squeamish even taking the meat out of the package because it doesn’t have the same texture as like a steak or a chicken thigh or a chicken breast. That was really awkward, but I could feel the difference, like really at a deep level, and that’s what drew me back for more.

That’s so beautiful. You picked the tradition back up again that your mother dropped. Hopefully, your kids will carry it on. I imagine they eat organ meats too.

They do. They were so young, they really didn’t know any different at the time, and now this is part of our family.

When did you find the foundation named after Weston A. Price?

Honestly, it was not right away. I actually got to the end of the book and on the very last page, it says, like, “kept in print or published by the Price Pottinger Foundation,” and I looked them up and I consumed all their resources. I don’t even know, I think it was actually a friend of mine, just by chance, maybe six months later, put a physical copy of Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats, Sally Fallon’s book, in the mail and sent it to me.

She had found this information at the same time I had. It was a friend of mine from college, out of the blue. I hadn’t talked to her in years. She mailed me this book. I felt like, “You needed this.” I was like, “What is this? I know about Weston Price and this is his namesake foundation. What is this?” I was all in after I read that book from the beginning.

I know you’re all in because we’ve actually had you on the podcast talking about organ meats. I know you’re a chapter leader. You really make a difference in this space. I want to ask you now the question I like to pose at the end of the podcast, which you already know, but I’m curious what your answer would be. If the listener could just do one thing to improve their health, what would you recommend that they do?

Absolutely nose to tail. Nose to tail eating. I think that right now we’re really in a fad of high protein, but muscle meat is not going to save you. It really has to be balanced with all the connective tissue. There are other amino acids that are in these other cuts. They are very high in the organ meats. They’re very high in the bones and the bone broths and tendons and ligaments, all these other cuts. If we can really seek those out from our local farmers, we both support them because they may not be as in high demand. Also, we nourish our bodies at the deepest level.

Muscle meat isn’t enough. Balance it with connective tissue, amino acids from organ meats and bones. Support local farmers for deep nourishment.

You don’t waste a thing, so I think that’s beautiful too.

It also honors the animal. It’s so much more sustainable. There are so many things that resonate with me, but it’s really like how I feel. I really come back to it over and over again because when I drink broth every day, when I’m in that habit, like I feel it in my skin. I see it. I see it in my hair, so it’s like things like that that keep me going. The liver, I do feel like we do eat liver pretty much every week, but if we might be out of town or something and we notice it, I feel like people are like, “You haven’t had that in a long time.” I’m like, “I know, I feel it too.”

I’ve got to get back to it.

We do. We just stick with it and keep them in rotation. I would definitely say nose to tail, find a way.

Nose to tail. I love it. Thanks for your time today.

Thank you, Hilda.

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Coming up, we hear the story of a woman who says she was simply born tired and how she has turned things around.

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You’re listening to the Wise Traditions podcast from the Weston A. Price Foundation. We pause now to recognize our sponsors.

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This is Hilda Labrada Gore, and you’re listening to WISE Traditions.

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Welcome to Wise Traditions, Kristen.

Thanks for having me.

We’ve been friends for a while, and I know that before you found the Weston A. Price Foundation, you were super exhausted. Tell me more about that time of your life.

I was tired all the time. I was born tired, I raised kids tired, and then I overcame my tired. It used to be anything I did, I had to take a nap. If I went to the grocery store, it required a three-hour nap. All my basic tasks.

What did you do to try to pump up your adrenals, or to heal yourself at that time?

First, I went to conventional medicine, and that was a script, so it didn’t work. Two things, I think Weston Price Foundation was pivotal in my healing, so that ancestral Wise Traditions diet. I came to this because of our dental health, which was really poor at the time. Also, I had a child, my fourth child, and we were weaning, and she could not drink milk. We brought raw milk into our lives, and that made a huge difference, and that was just a snowball effect for me.

As the older kids, how did they respond as you transitioned to a more nutrient-dense diet, more ancestrally aligned?

They actually loved it, because I was cooking real food, and so it was bursting with flavor, and carrots actually tasted good, and potatoes tasted good. I remember my husband just complaining about the cost of a farm potato versus a Walmart potato. One time I made baked potatoes, and he was like, this is the best potato I’ve ever had in my life. That’s the farm potato you didn’t even have to pay for. I think real food made a difference. They loved it. They were totally on board. Raw milk was great.

That’s beautiful. I know I feel that way. I have to pose to you the question I love to pose at the end. If a listener could do one thing to improve their health, and in your case, it might have to do with fatigue, what would you recommend that they do to overcome that?

Usually, I say taking ownership of your health, and I’m going to go a little bit further and say eat living foods. You could add in some ferments, some raw milk, some good quality meats. I think those things can go a long way, and focusing maybe first on what you can add into your diet, because I feel like that’s a little bit easier for people than cutting everything out of their diet.

I say taking ownership of your health means incorporating living foods like ferments, raw milk, and quality meats. Focus on what you can add to your diet first.

I love that. Adding in, it’ll crowd out the other stuff. I love it. Thanks, Kristen.

No problem.

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Welcome to Wise Traditions, Medea.

Thank you so much, Hilda. I’m so happy to be here, and what a great experience.

It’s so fun. We’re at the conference together, and I heard you say that you feel like you’re healthier at 58 than you were at 28. Can you explain?

Yes, absolutely. Knowledge is power. After growing up in the 80s and dieting, and you can’t be too thin, and having a difficult time through high school and college, like a lot of young women with dieting and eating disorders, which I will say a lot of people have struggled with, especially women, and there’s men, too. When I finally came out of that, and I was very severely depressed for a lot of years, too, and I was a pre-med student in college, I really wanted to understand. How does the body heal? How does food become medicine?

Finding Healing Through Food

Somehow, as a pre-med major, you still didn’t link those two?

That’s not what they were teaching me. You’re studying for the MCAT, you’re memorizing, and you’re regurgitating, but you’re not really learning what I learn now is anatomy and physiology. How does the body work? How does the pH of the stomach affect the release of bile from the gallbladder? How does the intestines take food, digest it, and allow the body to absorb and get nourished? We are healthy. Over the last 40 years, these are the things I’ve learned for myself and that I teach.

You were telling me that you have very practical ways in which you help your clients and others understand that real food can be delicious and nutrient-dense. I want to ask you, when did you come across the Weston A. Price Foundation?

After I got a degree, I ended up doing environmental science after pre-med. I said, I can’t go down that path. I want to know really how preventative medicine works. It wasn’t available in the 80s, and I spent time in South America as a Peace Corps volunteer seeing people who were 100, chopping wood first thing in the morning, healthy, functional people living in very rural environments. That was a real learning experience. When I came back and I started my family, I ended up getting a master’s in nutrition. I moved to South Florida. I remember leaving Nutrition World in West Palm Beach as a new functional medicine nutritionist, or at that time, I was doing holistic nutrition, and seeing a pamphlet that said, Soy Alert. This was at the time when, in the early 2000s, you couldn’t get enough soy.

There was TVP, textured vegetable protein. Meat? We want to get away from it. Meat’s bad. It’s causing heart disease, we were told. Soy? Soy’s good. Hot flashes? Soy is good. Soy milk, soy bars. I see this thing that has Soy Alert with an X through it, and I was like, huh. This is what was so great. It let me open my mind. When we’re learning about science and health and nutrition, not to confirm what we already think is true, but be open to new perspectives and new information. That’s what was most interesting. I was like, I didn’t know the importance of fermentation, and that there’s a huge difference between fermented soy and unfermented soy.

That’s true.

Miso, natto, and tempeh being the only forms of fermented soy, and how those are really beneficial for us. But of course, soy milk and soy oil and all this stuff is not helping us and creating hormonal imbalance. That was my introduction. From then, I joined Weston A. Price, and I had the information. I’ve been using it for myself and with my clients for years, educating them about the importance of cholesterol, the truth about heart disease. It’s one of my main resources about mental health, about depression and anxiety really coming from the gut.

So many things. We have Wise Traditions podcast episodes on all those subjects. We did a series this past summer on high cholesterol. We’ve interviewed Dr. Kelly Brogan about depression. I’m really glad that you found the foundation and that you’ve had that open mind about exploring different things. I want to pose to you, Medea, the question I like to pose at the end of the podcast: If the listener could just do one thing to improve their health, what would you recommend that they do?

I think tuning into your podcast. I think going to Weston A. Price. I think, I am a chapter leader in Naples, Florida. I had started a chapter back in 2011 in Burnsville, North Carolina first. I think finding your chapter leader, using the resources, learning about the power of real food, of fermentation, of bone broth. When we eat better, we feel better. We’re supporting the body in healing itself. Stop chasing symptoms. Stop chasing band-aids and really enjoy simple, healthy, easy, delicious, affordable food, and your life will change.

Discover your leader. Dive into the world of real food, fermentation, and bone broth. Elevate well-being, nurture your body, and witness self-healing.

Simple, healthy, easy, delicious. I like that. Thank you so much, Medea.

Thank you, Hilda.

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Welcome to Wise Traditions, Erin.

Thanks for having me.

I’ve heard you say you grew up sick. Tell me more about that.

I grew up in the Midwest. I was on a standard American diet, which basically consisted of casseroles and sugar, and because of that and living in a moldy basement, I actually grew up with chronic strep. I had strep 4 to 6 times a year, which means I was constantly on antibiotics.

4 to 6 times a year?

Yeah, until my early 20s. When I graduated from college, my husband and I moved to Colorado. The drier environment and not being in mold helped to alleviate a little bit of those problems, but the small food changes I was making were making a much bigger difference.

How did you find out about the Weston A. Price Foundation?

I didn’t find out about the Weston A. Price Foundation until about eight years ago. I was having some gut issues. I was listening to some summits. You were interviewed on one of them. I found the podcast, and I blew through 300 episodes in six months. Every time my kids would be at school, I would be cooking, I would be walking, I’d be running errands. I always had a podcast on, listening through all of them. I actually bought Sally’s cookbook, the Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats cookbook, in the early 2000s, like probably within the first few years that it was released. It was so overwhelming to me because of my background that it was like a reference occasionally, but the recipes, I never had all the ingredients.

It was so overwhelming to think about how to make these nourishing things. I thought I was a good cook because I could, like, reheat some pasta sauce and cook some noodles, and it tasted good. I had no idea about nutrient density. When we fast forward a couple decades, I’m teaching a cooking class now that’s all based on the wise traditions, ancestral ideas. I’m a chapter leader, and I help people find raw milk and farms and things like that. It’s completely transformed my health, my children’s health. I also help the community around me because that’s such a big deal.

You’re glowing. You were sick, and it’s come full circle. You are helping other people heal. That is so beautiful. I want to ask you the question I love to pose at the end. If a listener could just do one thing to improve their health, what would you recommend that they do?

There is such a long list, and it can be so overwhelming, but I think one of the biggest things, it does start with nutrition. It does. I could say breathing and sleeping and all of these things, and proper movement. The food is the piece that’s at the root of all of it. You can’t make these changes if your brain’s not nourished. You can’t actually move forward if you’re constantly sick and you don’t have motivation. Those are the things that, the food is really, I think, where it starts. Everything else falls in place afterwards.

Food is foundational. Thank you, Erin. I appreciate your time.

Thank you.

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Welcome to Wise Traditions, Juliana.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Foundational Role Of Nutrition In Wellness

You are a young mom, and you said that you started getting into this health space because you were curious about vaccinations. Tell me a little bit about that story.

I used to think that people who didn’t vaccinate their kids were just dumb, really. Sorry, but why would you not give your kid this life-saving thing? A friend of mine, my best friend, her baby was injured by a vaccine. Hearing her story, I was still really skeptical. My college roommate, her kid was also injured. Two other friends, not serious injuries, but still injuries nonetheless. I was like, something’s going on. Seeing all the rising rates of autism and chronic disease in children, I just got really curious. If I had time to research what stroller I should get for my baby, what’s the best car seat, and all these things, I figured I should also research what’s going to go into my child’s body.

How did your family react?

They’re very pro-Western medicine. Don’t question the doctor. They think I’m crazy for not vaccinating my kid. When he was born, I received a lot of phone calls like, “Juli, please vaccinate Wyatt. This is not okay. You need to protect him,” the whole thing. I was like, thanks. We’ll see. I’ll talk to my husband about it, but that’s it. I didn’t really want to give any details at first. As they started opening up a little bit, I’ve been sharing things, and now my mom is super on board with me. My uncle is seeing the light there. I feel like they’re shifting.

That’s so exciting. I think you said the podcast has been a tool for you too, right?

Yeah, 100%. I was telling you earlier, I was in tears because it’s just been so life-changing. All the information that you provide, the people that you interview, then finding the podcast in Spanish, because my family all speaks Spanish, it’s made all the difference. They can hear for themselves this information. It’s not just me telling them. They’re able to hear from experts that you interview or that Annette and Alberto interview.

Otherwise, they could be like, that’s Juli. She’s saying her stuff, but now they can hear other people share it, and so it’s changing their life. Tell me about your mom, for example.

Life-Changing Spanish Podcast For Families

My mom loves butter. Butter has been demonized for years. She was really relieved to hear that butter was great for you because she slathers butter on everything. That was one thing that was really exciting for her. She used to feed me liver, actually, when I was little. I used to hate it, and then growing up, I was like, that was so dumb. Why would she feed me liver? I’m like, thank you, Mom. Thanks for feeding me all the liver because I’m sure it made a huge difference.

All of this has helped you and your family embrace Wise Traditions.

A hundred percent.

That’s so beautiful.

I don’t think that we would have found all of this information so, like, maybe quickly and accessibly, and all put together if it wasn’t for the Weston A. Price Foundation and the Wise Traditions podcast, which makes it so easy. I can just listen to it when I’m in the car, doing dishes, or whatever.

That’s the goal, just to put it out there as a tool. You have listened to the podcast. I want to pose to you the question we love to pose at the end of the show. If the listener could just do one thing, or the viewer, if they could just do one thing to improve their health fully, and we know you’re just a mom, you don’t have to have all this health background, what would you recommend that they do?

Go outside. I think that’s one thing that’s made a big difference in our lives as well. We’re just trying to get outside as much as we can. Lose the screens, go outside. That would be my message, and also listen to Wise Traditions.

I love it. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

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Our guests today were Sarita, Corey Dunn, Janine Farzin, Kristen Files, Medea Galligan, Erin Meschke, and Juliana Fajardo. I’ll put their websites and links to connect with them in the episode description. I am Hilda Labrador, the host and producer of this podcast, on behalf of the Weston A. Price Foundation. You can find me at holistichilda.com. For the transcript for this episode, visit our website, WestonAPrice.org, and click on the podcast page.

For a recent review from Apple Podcasts, Montero, California said, “Best ever. You do such a good job at keeping the interviews on track and real. It has changed my life. The content is relevant. You don’t get confused by fads, diets, and crazy things. It’s so Weston Price.” Thank you so much for your review. It is so Weston Price because this is the Weston A. Price Foundation’s podcast, Wise Traditions. I am happy to host and produce it on their behalf. You too can rate and review our show. Simply go to Apple Podcasts, give us as many stars as you would like, and let the world know that this show is worth listening to. Every review makes a difference. Thank you so much for listening, my friends. Stay well. Remember to keep your feet on the ground and your face to the sun.