The Ancestral Indigenous Diet: A Whole Foods Meat-Based Carnivore Diet

by Frank Tufano

  I was open minded. I was willing to start at square one. I set off in search of health — not gains. With a little luck, and by finding some new knowledge that made me question everything I had been taught, I was able to forget conventional wisdom. That was the moment everything in my life turned for the better.

  Indigenous Wisdom: Roots of the Ancestral Diet

  Early on, I began to come across more and more information about the diets of indigenous groups and our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

  I already had been following a Paleo Diet for awhile before discovering research into native diets, and this information was drastically different. Paleo, at the time, as practiced by most people, was mostly lean meats, vegetables, sweet potatoes, fruits, nuts, and seeds. This was billed as what people would have consumed before agriculture.

  My friend told me to "eat the rainbow." I remember trying to eat at least a dozen different fruits and vegetables every single day on top of all the other recommended foods. On paper, according to modern standards, it was a perfect diet. But it wasn't working.

  Then I started to learn just how incomplete — and simply wrong — a lot of this was. I was starting to learn about what our ancestors actually ate.

  "How to Eat, Move, and be Healthy," by Paul Chek, was the first book that turned me on to studying indigenous diets. My mind was opened up by the early writings of Weston Price, a pioneering Canadian dentist who founded the National Dental Association and examined indigenous groups across the world in the early 1900s. I took a lot away from “The Fat of the Land,” a book by Vilhjalmur Stefansson, an arctic explorer and Harvard-educated anthropologist who lived with indigenous Inuit Eskimos for years.

  From these three men, and other sources I found along the way, I came away realizing one thing: Every group of indigenous people depended upon certain animal foods to survive.

  Once I studied these foods, I learned that they have incredibly high amounts of vitamins. And the forms of these vitamins are very different from those found in plant foods. This instilled in me the idea that the presence of these nutrient-dense animal foods in the human diet is the most important factor for health, especially during developmental periods of life.

  It became undeniable once I started eating like this. What really sold it was when I tasted these foods. I felt an almost-instant energy boost, especially when consuming liver and fish eggs.

  Close to Home

  This final factor is something that has always resonated with me for very personal reasons. Fixing my own health problems, having more energy, looking better, and generally improving my whole life were major motivations for my health journey. But my desire to learn more about nutrition also goes deeper.

  I am a triplet, and my sister was unfortunately born mentally disabled. I had always known that triplets tend to have a harder time in infancy because it is difficult for one mother to nurse multiple newborns. Because of this, we were largely raised on soy formula that I was allergic to.

  To make matters worse, my mother also had a botched caesarian procedure. She spent months in the hospital and nearly died. She underwent countless dialysis treatments before eventually receiving the double kidney transplant that kept her alive. Needless to say, fighting for her own life left my mother not only unable to provide all the nutritional needs of three newborns but staring down the barrel at a lifelong personal health struggle that she continues to battle with to this day.

  I can never know exactly what circumstances led to my sister’s condition and how much any nutritional deficiencies may have played a role. But I personally believe that dietary factors and stress on my mother may have contributed to my sister’s developmental issues. In every newborn, there are specific bacteria that can only be obtained through natural childbirth and breastfeeding that helps cultivate a healthy microbiome.

  This always weighed heavily on my mind when I thought about health. It is a big reason that learning more about the links between diet and human development became a passion.

  In recent years, I have also applied the principles I’ve learned to help my sister lose a ton of weight. She is 4’11” and spent most of her life suffering with obesity. By transitioning to animal-based, carnivore eating — along with some calorie restriction early on — she has become much healthier and has much more energy. Physically, she is now skinny and in the best shape of her life. She will always face challenges. But she is now able to live a fuller, less-sedentary lifestyle, and what she eats is the biggest reason.

  The Variety of Indigenous Diets

  Due to my own family history, I was particularly struck by indigenous traditions surrounding pregnancy, breastfeeding, and infant development.

  Weston Price wrote that the Massai, a semi-nomadic cattle-herding people in Kenya and Tanzania, would allot a ration of raw cow’s blood for pregnant women, nursing mothers, and young children as long as it was available. The indigenous people of Fiji would gather certain shellfish to give to expectant mothers, and many coastal people would do the same thing with fish roe. Similar practices have been reported across the globe with different prized foods that we know to be incredibly nutrient dense — but that have been largely abandoned in modern U.S. culture.

  Why have we gone against our own history? Why do we no longer eat like our grandparents — let alone our wise ancestors Why have convenience, processed crap, and unnaturally palatable foods become the foundation of the modern diet?

  Looking back, indigenous people got the majority of their calories from animal foods. By some estimates, there are some groups that derived three-fourths of calories from animal sources (although two-thirds was likely closer to the norm). In pre-agricultural times, the rest of the hunter-gatherer diet came from wild plants, which were increasingly replaced by harvested grains within settled civilizations of the past few thousand years.

  There were certain groups of people, particularly Inuit Eskimos and certain Plains Indians, who got drastically higher rates — even above 85% — of their calories from animal foods. That said, most native people did eat plant foods in some form.

  Knowing this, why do I personally follow a carnivore diet that consists entirely of animal foods?

  A few reasons. One is that ancestral indigenous groups mostly ate these plant foods out of necessity. Today, by contrast, I never have a problem finding more than enough animal foods to meet my energy needs. Two is that the modern plant foods that we have access to are far different from the ones our ancestors consumed.

  Then there is inflammation. Removing all plant foods also allows for an elimination-style approach to understanding how different foods affect your body. And, from a calorie perspective, it also just tends to be easier and less expensive to purchase quality animal foods.

  More than anything, my decision to eliminate plant food ties in to food quality — far and away the biggest factor in optimizing your health.

  Food Quality Is King

  Before we even consider the exact makeup of ancient diets, it is critical that we understand that the food these people were consuming was all of the highest quality. The animals were either wild game that truly lived naturally or livestock raised on pristine pasture. Today, even consumers who only eat organic usually fail to realize that food quality — whether it is fruits, vegetables, or animals — is directly linked to the quality of soil and the season of the year.

  That gallon of pasteurized, homogenized, white, bland milk from the supermarket is miles away from the deep yellow, nutty, sweet, and delicious raw, grass-fed milk straight from the farm. And even today’s farm-raised, grass-fed animals are, in the context of nutrient density, largely well below the standard of quality of those our ancestors ate. Because our soil, and thus the pasture our livestock eat, has become depleted of minerals and elements after decades of agricultural production.

  You know how they say “you are what you eat?” Well, the same goes for a cow. And even the humanely raised, grass-fed cows of 2019 are eating grass that is much less nutritious than
the livestock that were being raised during the height of the Roman Empire. And if the pasture they eat is less nutritious for them, eating them is less nutritious for us. Animals today are also slaughtered too young, not grazing for enough time in natural patterns.

  It gets worse. Not only is today’s milk missing the nutrient content it is supposed to have, modern pasteurization destroys the beneficial enzymes and bacteria that contribute to a healthy microbiome. Homogenization makes the fat globules more likely to cause gut issues due to the artificial particle size. Other modern production factors similarly make other foods oxidized and rancid, causing inflammation.

  The same goes for plants. Forget the fact that the kale and broccoli we eat today didn’t even exist in the past. Even compared to the vegetables that our great grandparents ate, the nutritional content of modern crops is dramatically lower.

  This means that we need to work very hard to source the highest quality foods we can find.

  This means purchasing grass-fed pastured beef over grain-fed meat, especially for fat and organs because that is where the animal stores its vitamins. It means selecting wild-caught fish over farm-raised salmon to optimize Omega-3 ratios and reduce pollution concerns. It means going to the farmer’s market for pastured eggs since conventionally raised chickens are fed corn and soy that leave them full of undesirable Omega-6 fatty acids. It means striving to find raw dairy, if you tolerate it, to improve your nutrient intake and remove the negative effects associated with feedlot cattle. It means making sure shellfish is from the best available water source. In doing so, you remove as many inflammatory factors as possible, and optimize your consumption of vitamins, minerals, elements, and fatty acids.

  It all sounds exhausting honestly, and, believe me, I know it can be. But devoting energy to sourcing high-quality food has become essential. It is unfortunate that we have reached this point. It is, however, the only real path to living better and feeling great.

  My Diet, My Mission

  All over New York and everywhere I travel, I see unhappy people. Fat. Sick. Depressed. Unhealthy. I see it in my mother, my father, and my sister. I used to see it in the mirror — even when I was living in the gym and convinced I was eating perfectly. Even now, I have to question what's going on with our national food supply and eating habits when I am the only healthy-looking person on the street.

  It breaks my heart that so many of the problems of our modern life would have never occurred if we were living even in the recent past. There are many people on this planet suffering through desperate conditions. No, a better diet cannot fix everything and, yes, modern medicine and technologies have helped millions who would have died or suffered through much worse had they been born just a few centuries ago.

  But millions of others can attribute some of their biggest issues to the processed, nutrient-devoid food of convenience that they eat today. It doesn’t take much to change all that. They really can start living a better life if they start giving their bodies the basic vitamins, minerals, elements, and other things it needs. People have been doing it for tens of thousands of years. It just takes a little bit of knowledge, some level of commitment, and the realization that the standard American diet bears no resemblance to how human beings are meant to eat.

  Helping these people — and you — is my goal. By providing the information, educating people on the importance of nutrients that can only be found in animal foods, and showing modern society the forgotten wisdom of our ancestors, your author Frankie Boy hopes that he can inspire many more people to wake up every day feeling great. With a little luck, you too might even look like a Roman statue forged in marble.

  This is the reason why I started my YouTube channel. This is why I have published hundreds of videos over the past few years. This is why I am now writing a book that details my philosophy of nutrition and the core principles of the Ancestral Indigenous Diet. And this is why I hope you will come to understand just how important it is to obtain all the essential nutrients that were once a staple of every human diet.

  I have already taken the long journey toward achieving my own optimal health.

  Now, it’s time for you to come along.

  Chapter 3

  The Fundamental Four:

  The Nutritional Foundation of the Ancestral Indigenous Diet

  Our ancestors probably didn't think much about nutrition. They acted on instinct, living naturally in the sun, eating wild foods, and sleeping under the stars. But there are signs that they understood that eating certain things were beneficial even if they didn't know the difference between Omega-3 and Omega-6 fats or why the animal form of Vitamin A (retinol) is more bioavailable and beneficial to humans than the plant form (beta-carotene).

  They praised organ meats like liver and kidneys, and they knew — whether instinctively or through generations of passed-on wisdom — to eat bone marrow. Yes, they probably spent most of their time trying to obtain calories and they definitely didn't understand the science behind the fact that wild animals store the critical vitamins we need in their organs, fat stores, and marrow. But nature and learned knowledge had a way of compelling them to consume the nutrients that they needed most.

  “Hunting man is a connoisseur of fats and has a definite sequence of preferences in the different fats according to their origination in different parts of the body,” wrote adventurer Vilhjalmur Stefansson about the Inuit preferences for caribou in his landmark 1956 book The Fat of the Land. “The marrows are best, and range in excellence from the hip and shoulder joints down — the farther down, the better … The ratings in descending order are: the fat from behind the eye, the kidney fat, the fat on the brisket near the bone, the fat of the ribs, and other parts where it is mixed with the lean. Last comes the back fat.”

  When seeking fat and organs, these people might not have known that Vitamin A is important for eye health. But many did understand that consuming eyeballs — a food high in Vitamin A — would fix eye problems. They also knew what foods to eat during various stages of development, something we know was practiced by various groups. They would feed certain items to nursing mothers, couples trying to conceive, people dealing with illness, and older members of the community.

  We see similar practices — even among groups still living apart from modern society today — when it comes to medicine and hydration. Indigenous groups living deep in the Amazon cannot tell you about the biochemistry and other processes that regulate immune system responses. But they know exactly what type of tree bark may help treat hernia and what vines they can cut down to acquire a safe source of drinking water.

  Their understanding of the natural world around them, and especially their diet, was somewhat mechanistic in this sense. Over thousands of years and hundreds of generations, collective wisdom was learned and passed down. This practical knowledge became essential to their health and survival. It’s a shame that it has been lost in just a few decades.

  This was their “conventional wisdom.” But it has somehow mostly been lost to time, replaced by decades of rapid change that has provided some invaluable scientific insight — especially about bacteria and pathogens — but has also largely been warped by an underlying drive to feed as many people as possible, as cheaply as possible.

  But optimal human health for the individual fell by the wayside. From the top, everything about discussion moved toward the goal of preventing acute nutrient deficiencies among a population of 330 million people. And all of the advice is wrapped up in the underlying biased view that mass production and transportation of food is necessary. Guidelines from the FDA only consider if preservatives and additives are actually toxic rather than starting from a viewpoint that none of this should be in our food!

  Massive corporations came to dominate the food supply. Their goal was not to raise animals that provide people with the best nutrition. They wanted to raise animals as cheaply as possible. This meant keeping cows indoors on relatively small feedlots and force-feeding them the cheapest feed available. T
hey were given corn and soy that were drenched with agrochemicals that would help these crops grow faster. Then they pumped the cows with steroids and hormones to get even more meat per cow. And to keep the animals from catching diseases and dying before slaughter due to this horrific lifestyle, they had to shoot them full of antibiotics.

  The same thing was happening for plant foods. The focus was always on maximizing yield and engineering drought- and blight-resistant crops. There were good intentions — helping society avoid the famines of the past that killed so many people. This was great! But those noble goals would be overtaken by corporate profit goals, and the nutrient content of plants would plummet over the decades.

  Why? The answer is always money.

  The Dorito Effect, a 2015 book by author Mark Schatzker, details just how drastically that modern farming practices and crop engineering has taken away from plant foods in something the scientists that conducted the research have called “The Dilution Effect.” The following represent just a few of the many changes highlighted. “1950s kale had twice as much riboflavin (Vitamin B2) as modern kale. 1950s cauliflower had twice as much thiamine (Vitamin B1). And 1950s asparagus had almost three times as much ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) … It was as though modern produce had been nutritionally dumbed down.”

  The government’s role in all of this is also not motivated by improving the health of individuals. They merely evaluate all the unnatural parts of the process and decide whether this chemical, that hormone, or some other antibiotic will cause serious damage to the consumer.

  They do not ever say the obvious: None of this should be in our food! And they don’t warn people that, beyond all the negative substances, the end product is meat that is much lower in the nutrients we need to live in optimal health.

  The decline of food quality is the biggest factor in the decline of our health, as we will discuss much more in future chapters. For now, the key message to remember from this brief history is this: We have abandoned everything we learned over the past hundred thousand years. And while it may have helped to provide sustenance to billions of people more efficiently, it is now destroying our individual health.