Page 15 - Spring 2019 Journal

system. Only months later, I can now say I’m free of most of the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome I had also been diagnosed with, and it’s been a while since I felt any physical or mental sign of depression. I’m positive I will keep improving. Daily, I eat tons of ghee, raw butter, raw cheese, fermented raw milk, coconut oil, lard and several egg yolks, and I am progressively in- cluding more and more organ meats in my diet. In my experience and research, eating this amount of fat is mandatory for depression and anxiety.
Eating this way has also been a way to rediscover the traditional foods of my country. Peruvian food is full of shellfish, red meats, organ meats, blood, cheese and lard. Now I’m also includ- ing more grains and legumes since I no longer have trouble digesting them (as long as I prepare them correctly).
This is a little bit of what happened to me. I have never felt this good and I have never eaten such delicious food. I’m deeply thankful to WAPF for edu- cating me and giving me what feels like a second chance to live. I’m very happy to be spreading the word about fats!
Verónica Belli Lima, Perú
FOOD TRADITIONS IN HANOI
I live near Washington, DC, where, like everywhere else in the U.S., the food culture contains little resemblance to a pre-industrial tradition. Most Americans have no idea what to eat, and
they do not appear to care very much. In February 2019, I visited Vietnam for the first time. I went for one week with my fiancé, Ha, to meet her family and to celebrate the Lunar New Year.
SPRING 2019
Letters
What I saw amazed me and gave me hope that, at least somewhere, healthy food traditions still exist.
Ha grew up in a small village in the city of Hanoi. Her parents still live there along with numerous extended family members, and that is where we stayed. On the first morning of my visit, we visited a huge farmers market. It was amazing. The U.S. has farmers markets too, but this one had a raw, disorga- nized, and unpolished quality. Nowhere to be seen were freezers containing pre-packaged meats sealed in plastic with labels and government stamps of approval. I also saw no pastries, jams, and other sweet things often present at U.S. farmers markets. Instead there was simply row after row and table after table where farmers sold fresh pork, beef and poultry, including the liver, heart, kidney, and intestine—all laid on a table in the warm air, unre- frigerated, unpackaged, uninspected, and unapproved. There was a woman sitting next to a small pool containing large swimming fish, and she was gut- ting and chopping one for a customer. There were cages and cages of cluck- ing chickens next to farmers who were happy for you to pick one and watch it be killed, gutted and plucked.
There were farmers selling buckets of crabs and other exotic live seafood. I saw countless fruits and vegetables and much more, as well as hundreds of customers eagerly shopping for their holiday meal. While the U.S. boasts that it’s “the land of the free,” these people experienced true freedom at this mar- ket. No applications, licenses, waiting times, fees or approvals were required.
During my visit, we ate at several
restaurants. Hanoi is a huge city, and its vast number of streets and alleys are filled with thousands of tiny restaurants and sidewalk vendors that serve just one or two dishes, often called “street food.” Like the farmers market, these restau- rants face little if any regulation. They do not provide a menu. Instead, you just sit down, usually on a small plastic stool, and they bring you their dish—of- ten a bowl of their signature soup called “pho.” Two other favorites are snail- noodle soup and oyster-noodle soup. All of these soups contain rice noodles, meat or seafood, a few vegetables, and the most important ingredient—lots of broth. Sometimes a raw egg is added. These soups are made with very little processing.
I saw a worker preparing bones to make broth. The meat used for the soup often contains chewy bits of cartilage, which are left in. I saw no microwaves but only hot steaming vats from which the soup is ladled. Another favorite dish in Vietnam is “balut,” which is a devel- oping bird embryo that is hard-boiled in its egg and eaten from the shell. Ev- eryone there loves it—even the kids. A favorite snack to have along with beer is dried squid.
We enjoyed several meals prepared by Ha’s family. Their homemade dishes routinely included ample amounts of organs, including intestine, heart and kidney. Ha told me that one of her fa- vorite foods is pork brain. Their meals also included an abundance of broth, either in soup or in a “hot pot,” which is a pot of boiling broth that is placed in the center of the table into which they dip raw meat or fish to be cooked and immediately consumed.
Wise Traditions
13