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What can traditional cultures teach us about fertility, pregnancy, babies, and lifelong health?
Nutritionist Mariรฉlli Pahim spent 15 years traveling through more than 35 countries, living and working alongside indigenous and traditional communities and observing how they grow, prepare, and eat their food. Along the way, she discovered remarkable similarities across culturesโfrom the importance of animal foods and organ meats to fermentation, traditional food preparation, and the role of community.
In this episode, Mariรฉlli shares how her experiences in places like Tonga, Fiji, Indonesia, Thailand, Turkey, and Norway challenged what she had learned in conventional nutrition schoolโand how discovering the work of Dr. Weston A. Price and Sally Fallon Morell helped her connect the dots.
She also explains why preparing for pregnancy begins with both the mother and the father, the nutrient-dense foods she emphasizes during pregnancy, and what traditional cultures understand about nourishing women during the critical postpartum period. Mariรฉlli shares the unusual first foods she gave her own son, including fish eggs and reindeer, and why she believes restoring ancestral food traditions can give children a healthier start in life.
Finally, Mariรฉlli offers one simple place to begin if you want to bring ancestral nutrition into your own kitchen today.
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To learn more about Mariรฉlli Pahim visit https://www.mariellipahim.com
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Episode Transcript
Within the below transcript theย bolded text is Kendall Nelson
Welcome to the show. When Mariรฉlli Pahim graduated with a degree in nutrition from one of Brazil’s top universities, she expected to help people reclaim their health. Instead, she found herself questioning much of what she had been taught. Convinced there had to be a better way, she and her husband left behind conventional life and spent the next fifteen years traveling through more than 35 countries, living alongside ancestral, indigenous, and peasant communities in search of the nutritional wisdom that modern society has largely forgotten.
This is episode 602, and our guest is Mariรฉlli Pahim. Mariรฉlli is a Brazilian nutritionist who specializes in ancestral and regenerative nutrition with a particular focus on fertility, pregnancy, postpartum recovery, and early childhood. Her journey has taken her from the villages of Tonga and Fiji to regenerative farms in Norway, France, Turkey, and beyond, where she has studied not only traditional foods but also the customs, farming practices, and family traditions that have nourished healthy generations for centuries.
Inspired by the work of Dr. Weston A. Price and Sally Fallon Morell, Mariรฉlli now helps families restore health by returning to nutrient-dense ancestral foods. In this conversation, Mariรฉlli shares the remarkable experiences that transformed her understanding of nutrition. From living with a family in Tonga that helped convince her to abandon vegetarianism, to discovering that nearly every traditional culture she visited revered animal foods, fermented foods, and time-honored methods of food preparation.
We discuss why traditional societies place so much emphasis on preparing both mothers and fathers for conception. The nutrient-dense foods they prize during pregnancy, the sacred 40-day postpartum period, and what she recommends as the first foods for babies. Along the way, she reminds us that food is about much more than nutrients. It’s about family, community, and preserving the ancestral wisdom that has sustained healthy people for generations.
Before we get into the conversation, I’d like to tell you about an exciting new project from Weston A. Foundation. We are producing our very first feature-length documentary, The Greatest Gift, bringing Dr. Price’s groundbreaking discoveries to life while exploring our modern health crisis, including the alarming decline in fertility and the health of future generations.
The film will tell the story of how we got here, the wisdom of traditional diets, and the hope that comes from returning to the foods that have nourished healthy people for centuries. The foundation is funding this project through the generosity of people like you, and we’d be so grateful for your support. To learn more or make a tax-deductible donation, visit WestonAPrice.org/Film. Every contribution, no matter the size, helps bring this important story to the screen. Thank you for being part of it.
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Mariรฉlli, welcome to the show. Thank you.
Thank you for having me. I’m very excited.
I’m very excited, too. First of all, you traveled to more than 35 countries over a 15-year period studying ancestral, indigenous, and peasant nutrition. Most nutritionists do not take this path. I’m curious what first inspired you to leave home and start your search for this type of nutritional wisdom.
Escaping Modern Food Dogma Through Permaculture
I studied nutrition at a very conventional university that they said is the best University in Sรฃo Paulo. I was very frustrated with what they actually taught me there because it was very commercial. I did not believe what they taught me. I was like, โI have to learn by myself. How am I going to do that?โ My husband and I started this journey of learning about nutrition and agriculture because we also work with agriculture. It’s very connected. We started in Australia, working with agriculture. Actually, the universe just started taking us to places. It was very fascinating. We were living in a non-monetary economy. I did not mention that, but we wanted to learn from traditional people because we knew that we could learn a lot from them.
Conventional dietary dogma often fails us. True nourishment begins by getting back to the land and honoring ancestral farming wisdom.
You mentioned that you went to Australia, and I know you studied permaculture there. Can you tell me who you studied with, why that was so special, and what you learned?
We studied with David Holmgren. He’s like one of the co-founders of permaculture. It was incredible. He and his wife changed a lot of our lives and how we live, because they lived in the most sustainable way that we ever saw, apart from traditional people. Our modern people, they were just doing what traditional people do. They are amazing. They were very self-sufficient. They had basically everything. I would say 99% of what they had in their property, like food, energy, everything. I learned a lot from him and from his wife. She’s incredible. She knows a lot about food. This couple they were a little bit like our first inspiration for everything that we started doing.
Talk to me a little bit more about permaculture. Tell me what it is and paint a little bit more of a picture of what you saw when you went to go live with this couple.
Permaculture can be lots of things. For me, I would say we mimic what traditional people do, but with modern techniques, I would say. We take the wisdom from traditional people in terms of everything in life, like food, agriculture, communities, everything, and we just bring it into permaculture. That’s it. Permaculture is not just about agriculture. It’s everything that we have in life. A healthy mind and community. It’s the inspiration from traditional people also. It’s another thing.
It involves water and energy and food production and is like a community design. Is that correct?
Yes, exactly that.
I would love for you to tell us about when you went to Tonga. That was one of the first places that you went as well. Tell me what you saw there. What were they eating?
Shedding Vegetarian Myths In Coastal Tonga
Tonga was amazing. We spent two months with a family in Tonga, by the sea, a little bit by the sea. There was no intentional community there. They just lived like this. Everything was interesting there. Itโs still very wild, and living very traditionally. There is very little from the modern arrived there. We learn a lot from them. Things that really stayed in my mind are the gatherings that they make every week. Every Sunday they have a gathering where they cook in an oven called umu.
Traditionally, it’s called umu. They cook underground. They make a whole underground oven. They put very hot stones. They put very simple food. The food in Tonga is really simple. They take the taro leaves, and they put in meat or any seafood, fish shells, and coconut cream. They always make it fresh. Also, they have a lot of coconuts in Tonga. They just wrap it in these taro leaves, and they put it on top of these stones, and they cover and they let it cook for at least five hours. It’s a slow cook. After all the families, they take this food, and they gather in a space together, and they eat it all together. For me, it was amazing.
A lot of other things are incredible there. The food that they eat is really based on animal food. We were vegetarian there. It was really hard for us in the beginning to stay with them. We were like, โWe’re going to survive on cassava and sweet potatoes.โ Afterward, we started to realize, โWhat are we doing?โ They’re eating all this fresh food. We start to understand a little bit that makes sense, what they were doing. Little by little, we start to learn.
Actually, they did not understand why we’re not eating meat. For them, it’s just food. For them, it was just like, โYou’re not eating the food I’m offering you?โ It was really weird, like this. Vegetarianism is something that they do not know. It was interesting to see that also. This was another thing that really changed our minds about food and the like because we were always taught at that moment that the best way to be healthier is to be vegetarian.
When we started to see that, the industry did not arrive in this place, and they were eating the best quality of meat, fresh seafood, and pork that they were eating. They were feeding the pork dried coconut. I would say nine percent of the pork was dried coconut. It’s amazing food. How come we can say this is not healthy?
How did you feel when you started eating meat? Did you feel different?
It was weird in the beginning. It’s more because of the mind, because I was so much like, โI will never eat meat again.โ My mind was always like that. It was a little bit, I felt that I was doing something wrong. Actually, after I was just like, it was natural, I started to feel good. It was after that when, I do not know, the Weston Price book and Sally Phelan book came into our lives, just after Tonga and Fiji. We were in Australia, and then we went to Tonga, Fiji, and then we went back to Australia. We were on this farm in the north of Australia.
Rediscovering Weston Price And Sally Fallon
It was with a beekeeper. We were learning about bees. It was something that we wanted to learn also. I saw these Norse traditions, and I thought the cover of the book was so beautiful when I started reading, and I got fascinated. I was like, โEverything that we lived in Tonga and Fiji makes so much sense.โ This farmer gave me the book by Weston Price, and I read everything, and I was like, โThat’s what we are going to start doing from here.โ
We are still doing our research with agriculture, but we’re going to intentionally visit isolated villages because we really wanted to learn from them. It made a lot of sense for us when we lived with the traditional people, and then we read the book by Sally Fowler and Marcel Price, just connected the dots, and it was amazing. I feel like I’m on the right path again. I feel relieved. It was something like that.
I feel the same way when I read those books. For me, Sally’s book is the Bible of nutrition. Of course, Dr. Price’s book is also just the most fascinating book. I’m so glad it fell into your hands, those two books fell into your hands. Tell me, what were some of the other countries that you went to? What did all of these people have in common when it came to their foods?
After Tonga and Fiji, we went to Asia. We went to Indonesia and then Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia also. We spent some time in these countries. We went to India. After India, we went to Europe. We started in Sweden and Norway, really in the north. We started going down to Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, and Bosnia. We went to the normal places in Europe, Italy, and yeah. These were the easiest ones to find the people that I mentioned before. The first thing is meat.
Every Traditional culture has meat, for sure, like everywhere. Being meat is a big part. I would say the sacred. Honestly, it’s what they’re aiming to eat. The most common are meat, animal food, and fermented food, as well as traditional ways of preparation and methods of soaking. We saw that a lot in Asia. I remember we were living in a family, with a family. They were rice farmers in the north of Thailand. It was amazing. Also, this family was really interesting. We learned a lot from them.
They were eating a lot of wild food also. It’s something that’s part of them. They eat a lot of wild food. They were eating different things like frogs and snakes and different mushrooms that they collected. The woman in this family always used to soak the rice the day before, always. I observed that, and I think these preparations are still part of their daily life. We had that in our lives. I’m sure our grandmothers used to do that, but we forgot, I think. We forgot these traditions. The industry just came and made everything so much easier in a way for us. We lost these traditions. Fortunately, these people, they still have that. It was interesting to see.
Traditional diets across the globe aren’t a coincidence. They represent time-tested human biology we can’t afford to forget.
What’s so fascinating to me is that you basically are following in the footsteps of Dr. Price. You got the book, and then you’re probably on this path already, but you went to all of these different countries and looked at the way that they were eating their ancestral diets. Were you inspired by Price? Was that part of what sent you to so many different places?
Yes, I would say that Price inspired a lot. To do that, yes, we already wanted to travel. It was something that was something inside both of us. We wanted to travel and learn because the world is amazing. There is so much to see and learn from, especially from people. I do not say places. Places are beautiful, but people are the most interesting part of the journey. Western Price definitely was a big inspiration for us to do that.
After we read the book, we were fascinated. We were like, I started to get crazy about it. Everything was about Weston Price. Weston Price made me go back to nutrition, actually, because there is a point where I stopped working with nutrition because I did not see the point anymore. Weston Price and Sally Fallon. She is also amazing. They made me go back to this path of helping people with nutrition. I work a lot on farms, but I started slowly working with nutrition again because, for me, it started to make sense to help people again.
I was lost in a moment with nutrition. I was so confused. They put a light in my life again. Like, I believe what they say. That’s the thing. I saw it, I observed, I experienced, and I’m reading all these things. It makes so much sense. I want people to know that also. People need to learn about that. Much information that’s not right over there. People need to learn all this. Traditional knowledge cannot be lost.
When you are working with clients and what you specialize in now, you’re very interested in helping people with fertility. Everything from preconception to going through their pregnancies and postpartum, and then I imagine also early childhood nutrition. Can you tell me a little bit about your practice and what you, what do you believe most when it comes to having wonderful fertility? What’s most important?
Building Strong Offspring Before Conception Starts
With fertility, I’ve been talking a lot with my clients about that because I think in our modern society, we forgot about that also. We just think, we want to be pregnant, so let’s be pregnant. We do not think about it before, and if it does not work, we just take some hormones. We go to the doctor, and he’s going to fix it somehow. I explained to my clients that traditional people thought about that before, too. They really focused on having healthy offspring.
They knew that to have healthy offspring, they needed to start from the sperm of the father and the egg from the mother. They needed both, you know? The health of the mother and father was important. I observed a little bit of this in Indonesia. Maybe I can say that in Indonesia, it was an interesting story because I always wanted to work with pregnant women and babies and children because, for me, it’s amazing. It’s where everything starts. If we start to write from the beginning, we do not have to fix after. It’s good. I was already observing.
The family we stayed with in Indonesia, they were also rice farmers, and it was an interesting place. In Indonesia, usually they all live together in a space, and they have some rooms inside of this space. I would say different little houses. All the family lived together in this space. There was the father and the mother and two brothers and a young couple. This young couple wanted to have a child soon. There was one day that the father killed a duck, and he saved the whole duck to make a stew. He made sure that he also saved the blood. He really wanted this couple to eat the blood.
He made an amazing dish that I tried to search for on the internet, and I could not find it, but it was a very interesting dish, very simple, but it tasted so good. From the coconut milk, he saved the dried coconut, and then he mixed the blood that he collected from the duck with dried coconut and some spices that they use in Bali, like galangal and ginger. I do not remember exactly which spices they used, but it was something that tasted so good. I was a little bit skeptical in the beginning about eating blood and coconut. I was like, weird.
I never thought about that. With the whole preparation, like rice and meat, like a stew, and with this coconut and blood was so good. He really made sure that this couple would eat that. Blood is amazed with iron. This is something really important also for preconception to already have. It’s really important for the structure of the sperm and for the man. There is also zinc, and yeah, I think he wanted this couple to eat blood especially.
I’m so glad that you mentioned that the health of the father is also incredibly important before conception. A lot of times the responsibility is placed on the woman. Whether she can conceive or not, sometimes it’s not true, of course, but we tend to think that it’s her responsibility. It’s refreshing, of course, to know that the man also has to have proper nutrition in order to have healthy offspring. What about once somebody does conceive, what are you seeing or recommending? Through pregnancy, what kinds of foods would you like to see your clients eating, or what were they eating traditionally in all of these places that you visited?
I recommend, for sure, a lot of animal foods, and if they have access to seafood, I think it’s a wonderful food for pregnancy. Seafood has a lot of zinc, so fertility and pregnancy are really important. Fats are amazing for vitamins A, D, and K. Liver is something that I always ask mothers if they can eat. I always tell them to eat liver at least once a week. If they cannot, I supplement. Liver is important to be present. Eggs. There was another story about pregnancy, if you want to hear. When we get pregnant, we start to get scared about everything. Modern medicine makes us fearful.
Embracing Nutrient Density In Pregnancy And Infancy
We have fear of everything that can happen to our child. The advice is always not to eat raw food when we are pregnant. I ate a lot of raw food when I was pregnant, actually. I made sure, actually, to eat raw food. I made sure I drank raw milk. I ate a lot of oysters and liver, also raw. Butter. Had access. When I was pregnant, I was in France. France is a place where it’s really easy to find raw butter and raw milk. It’s like everywhere. I made sure to eat that. When we were in Tonga, we were in a village. I loved this village because it was by the river and was also very isolated.
They were still living very, very traditionally, which was amazing. They were eating a lot of fresh fish there. There is a dish that’s called kokoda. It’s a ceviche from Peru. They take very fresh fish, cut in cubes, marinate it in lime, and then mix it with coconut also. It’s similar to tonga in a way, the food in Fiji, but I think they are fancier in a way. They have spices already. Not so rustic, I do not know. It’s still rustic, but they have spices.
They have herbs. There was a pregnant woman in this village, and she was eating this kokoda normally. It was just something normal. They never thought that could be a risk because it’s just a part of their diet. They know it’s good for them. They know it’s full of nutrients. They did not think that it could be a risk for the mother to eat this fish. If people can have access to good quality, I also recommend that pregnant women eat raw meat and raw milk also.
It’s so different from what we hear here in the United States. It’s so different from what we hear in recommendations. You mentioned that you were pregnant and that you were eating these foods. You have a one and a half year old son, I know. What were his first foods? Where were you when he was born, and what was he first eating?
He was born in France. When he was four months old, we went all the way to Norway again. It was the second time we were in Norway. My husband was working on a farm there, close to a lake also. It was a goat cheese farm. We had a lot of access to fish. My husband collected some fish eggs. That was the first food that I gave to my child when he was four and a half months old, I would say. We gave him fish eggs. It’s amazing with a lot of omega-3, is easy to digest, good fat, good protein, gentle for his digestive system, and he loved it, actually. It was something like that he wanted. I tried it once, and he was really into this fish egg because I think it’s the taste of the sea.
It’s a little bit salty already. A little bit of salt is something that I also recommend to babies. It’s also something that is not usually recommended in modern medicine. It’s really important for all the minerals that the salt has. For the brains of babies, they also need a little bit of salt. This natural salt from the fish eggs, I think, was so important for him. His first meat was reindeer, because that’s what we had there. We had a lot of wild meat. Reindeer and moose, eaten in Norwich. After that, I started giving him some meat stock that I was making from the goat on the farm. I was giving him reindeer puree. This was like a fish egg, meat stock, and reindeer puree.
I love it.
It’s quite street food.
I know, it’s great. We’re talking a lot about all of these nutrient-dense foods. I know you have a lot of expertise as to what these foods actually do. Can you tell me what some of the benefits are from eating these types of foods? When we’re talking about digestion and absorption and mental clarity and all of those sorts of things, can you be a little bit scientific for me and tell me what happens when you eat these foods?
Babies need bioavailable nutrients. Fish eggs, meat stock, and wild meats give developing systems the foundational minerals they crave.
If we start eating nutrient-dense food, I think we are feeding what the bacteria in our body need. We are giving the bacteria exactly what they need. They are full of nutrients, like vitamins A, D, and E, the fat-soluble vitamins that are for the development of the brain, for the absorption of the other vitamins and minerals, and also for the hormones. It’s good for so many things.
It’s hard to just explain what this food does because I think it’s the food that we should eat for everything that we need in our body. It’s like a lot of people nowadays, they have problems with the gut. When we start with the food that’s supposed to be for us to eat. We start to recover our gut. We start to populate our gut with the bacteria that we need again, and then we start to feed them with the nutrients that they are supposed to be eating. It’s a cycle. It’s all connected, you know? Like we recover the body. It’s from what we were supposed to eat, I would say.
I know you have clients that come to you. When a client comes to you, are they typically in distress? Are they looking for an incredibly new way to a new lifestyle and a new way to eat? Can you just talk to me a little bit about, I do not know, maybe pick a particular case and tell me what you’re seeing, what would be a frequent occurrence that you’re seeing amongst your clientele?
Now I’m focusing on children and pregnancy. I just had a client who has a three-year-old boy. It’s something that it’s really common to have children who do not eat. They’re struggling with eating food. They just do not want to eat food anymore. This child basically just eats instant noodles and rice crackers. He does not eat anything else. I’m working with this family to introduce exactly what I said before, like introducing a little bit, like we are healing his gut before. Before that, I was investigating a little bit, actually. Why is this happening? Of course, lots of things could be for sure.
The pregnancy, as we talked about before, the preconception, the health of the mother, the health of the father, everything. It could be something that is why he’s not eating anything. Something in particular that I really like to focus on was when he was born. The doctor thought he could have an infection. He just gave him antibiotics. He had just been born. He gave this baby an antibiotic, and he advised the mother to keep giving this antibiotic until he was nine months old, just because he was afraid that he could have an infection from something that he had when he was inside the mother.
The mother decided not to take these antibiotics anymore because she was like, “That’s not common. I do not think it’s all right to give this medicine every day of the life of my child.” She decided to stop. When she told me that, I was like, “That’s incredible. I never heard of someone who was born and took antibiotics for five months.” That’s a lot.
Of course, I think he does not have a palate anymore. He just cannot taste food anymore. The bacteria that were left in his gut are just sending the message to the brain that it’s like food does not taste good. We are working on this with this child to recover a little bit of his gut. I’m starting with fermented food and probiotics. It’s really hard because he does not accept anything. We have to start with probiotics and everything that is not a lot.
What he eats for now, we are introducing meat stock and some liver. I advise her to freeze some liver and grate some raw liver also, the food that he accepts. She’s doing that. For now, he’s eating at least liver, meat stock, and probiotics. Little by little, we are going to start to introduce more nutrient-based foods into his life again. I’m working a lot with clients, especially with children. I’ve done so much work with people with skin problems also, like psoriasis and eczema, or fertility and hormones. I work with women who want to be pregnant.
I know you also work with women after they give birth during the postpartum period, and there’s that sacred 40-day window. What do you recommend during that time?
Honoring The Sacred Postpartum Window
That’s interesting that you mentioned it because when we were living in Turkey, I was so blessed that I had the opportunity to see that also. In Turkey, they have a period of 40 days, exactly 40 days, that is called Lohusalik. I’m not sure if it’s spelled right, but where the woman is really supported after that. When we were there, I saw around three or four women in this house. The woman had just had a baby, and these women were doing everything for her. It was really beautiful, actually. They were cooking, they were cleaning, they were taking care of the baby, and they would make sure she ate a lot.
For them, like the Turkish people, they believe that in the postpartum period, they need warm foods and the mother needs to be warm all the time. They really believed that to recover the tissues, to recover the nutrients that she lost, and to have the right nutrients for breastfeeding, she needs to rest, and she needs warmth. They were making a lot of bone broth for her, lamb stews, because this place that we were in, they had a lot of sheep, so they were eating a lot of lamb stews and soups.
Organs also. It was part of the preparation that this woman was doing. They also made a drink in this, especially in this place, that was made with water, cinnamon, and cloves. They put pekmez. Pekmez is a great molasses. They also believe that a little bit of natural sweetener is important for the mother, for energy, like a slow energy for her. For breastfeeding, they were making this drink for her. That’s it from what I remember.
From this inspiration, I recommend a lot of this for women if they have the chance, of course, to have all this rest, because nowadays, our modern society, they are so in different directions. We are in the opposite direction of our nature, actually. We have a baby, and after, I do not know, a week, they want us already to be working and to be ready for society again. It’s so soon, so if the mother has the opportunity, I also recommend rest and a lot of bone broth.
Bone broth is something that is really important for recovery. Easy to digest, of course. She can sip the whole day. When you just have a baby, you do not have energy. Sometimes you do not remember that you have to eat. If you have something that is practical to always drink, I think it’s important. When I was postpartum, I also drank a lot of raw milk, like warm raw milk. For me, it was important, and I think breastfeeding.
People say a lot about oats and chia seeds nowadays. Usually, I do not follow this. I do not think it’s so important. Not that oats are bad, especially if we cook traditionally. When we see the nutrients, it’s not something that I prioritize in a postpartum period. I really prioritize animal food, a lot of fat, but lard. I really think that, to recover all the tissues that were opened, I think it’s important to have a lot of soups and fat.
I love what I’m hearing about all the different places that you traveled. You’re talking about Turkey and Tonga and Fiji, about the gathering and the support that happens amongst the families. That’s just such a beautiful concept that, in our modern society, we tend to forget about. Do you have places that you’re going to go next? Do you have something new on your list?
Yes. We always go somewhere else. We are in Portugal now, and we are going to Denmark. We’re going to start heading to Denmark. We are going to work on a regenerative farm there. Also, a cheese farm. I also make cheese. Usually, we work on dairy farms. This is a very interesting farm, very small. They have just nine cows. They follow all the regenerative principles and animal rotation. They try to make a lot of raw cheese and raw products. It’s a little bit hard in Denmark with the law. I’m very used to working in France.
France is a place that it’s amazing with this. They are really protective of this raw milk. Raw milk, for them, is something that it’s really precious. Usually, sometimes when you go to a cheese shop, for example, to buy cheese in France, I would say even 95 % of the cheese is raw. It’s amazing. It’s just part of their life. It’s going to be interesting also to see a different place to work with cheese, with, like, the law that is a little bit harder, but they try anyway to use wood. They try to still have raw milk. We are excited to join this project now. We are going to start heading to Denmark.
I wish you the best of luck on your travels. I hope that someday you too, like Sally and Dr. Price, will write a book about all of these experiences that you’ve had so that I can read it. I’ll be very excited to read it. Before we say goodbye, I’d like to ask you just one final question. That is, if the audience could do just one thing to better their health, what would you suggest?
Healing The Modern Gut With Bone Broth
Just one thing. I would say start making bone broth at home. Bone broth is something that’s easy to make. It’s cheap. It’s simple to introduce into the routine. It’s going to make all your food richer in terms of nutrients. It’s easy to digest. It helps a lot with the gut. It’s easy. It’s a good way to start. If someone asks me something like, “How am I going to start introducing ancestral food in my life?” Start with Bone broth. It’s a good start.
If you want to bring ancestral nutrition into your home today, start with bone broth. It’s affordable, deeply healing, and simple to make.
Perfect. Mariรฉlli, thank you so much for being here with us. I really appreciate your time, and I wish you the most wonderful travels.
Thanks a lot, Kendall. Thank you. I’m very honored to be here.
Thank you.
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Our guest was Mariรฉlli Pahim. To learn more about her work, visit MariรฉlliPahim.com, where you can find information about her nutritional practice, her travels, and her passion for ancestral and regenerative nutrition. This conversation took us around the world in search of timeless nutritional wisdom.
We heard how Mariรฉlli left behind conventional nutrition to learn directly from traditional cultures, discovering that despite their differences in geography and customs, they shared remarkably similar principles, nutrient-dense animal foods, fermented foods, traditional methods of food preparation, and a deep respect for the sacred role of food in creating healthy families.
We also explored how these cultures prepared both mothers and fathers for conception, nourished women during pregnancy and the postpartum period, and introduced babies to their very first foods. Perhaps the greatest takeaway from this episode is that while the modern world is constantly searching for the next breakthrough, many of the answers we’re looking for have been with us all along.
Traditional cultures understood that the health of future generations begins long before birth with the way we nourish ourselves, care for one another, and honor the wisdom passed down through generations. As Mariรฉlli reminds us, preserving that knowledge may be one of the most important gifts we can give our children.
I’m Kendall Nelson, the host and producer of the show on behalf of Weston A. Foundation. For a full transcript of this episode, visit WestonAPrice.org and click on the showโs page. If you’re enjoying the show, we’d be grateful if you’d take a moment to leave a rating or review wherever you listen. Your feedback helps others discover the podcast and become part of this growing community. Thank you for spending this time with us. Be well, be nourished, and be free.
About Mariรฉlli Pahim
Mariรฉlli Pahim is a nutritionist specializing in ancestral and regenerative nutrition, with a focus on fertility, pregnancy, and early childhood. Over the past decade, she has lived and worked alongside traditional communities across regions including Tonga, Fiji, Indonesia, India, Thailand, Romania, Norway, Bulgaria, and Turkey, as well as with small-scale farmers in Europeโexperiences that shaped her understanding of ancestral and peasant food systems.
Her work integrates clinical practice with anthropological and ecological perspectives, supporting foundational health through nutrient-dense nutrition, digestive support, and alignment with human biology. She is particularly interested in how traditional food practices can be adapted to modern life in a practical and sustainable way. She works with clients worldwide through online consultations.
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