Moon of Making Fata name that comes from the Lakota (Sioux) calendar. I must admit I love the shock value of a moon name that celebrates something so many modern people shrink away from. I believe that the Lakota used this name because it was the time of year when the game they hunted were eating lots of summer grasses and other blooming plants, and after the long lean winter were finally starting to fill out. This was important because as soon as the game was plump enough, the Lakota could begin their hunting season and be well fed themselves. The Lakotalike all hunting peoplesprized animals with plenty of fat on them and eschewed those that were lean.
Hunting societies’ preference for meat with fat on it wasn’t just a matter of flavor, it was a matter of nutrition. The quality of the traditional fats valued by traditional peoples was extremely high. Fats from animals that grazed on pasture growing in mineral-rich topsoil on expansive plains or pristine mountainsides were concentrated with vitamins and nutrients. These fats contained the life of the soil and the solar energy of the sun harnessed by the grasses through photosynthesis. Carotenes in the grass are converted to Vitamin A by the body of the animal, and then concentrated in that animal’s fatty tissue. This is what gives butter its naturally yellow color.
On old-fashioned farms, the family enjoys deep yellow butter in the springtime when the April showers have fed the pastures that the cows are eating. In the middle of winter, when the cattle feed on stored hay, the butter is a pale yellow. Many butter producers now use annatto or other colorings to give their butter a yellow color, since the cattle are kept in feedlots without access to green grass.
This yellow color can also be found in the body fat of animals that have eaten a grass-based diet. We have all heard of how much steak is eaten by the Argentines, and we may marvel at how such a diet produces the stunning, slender, active, and healthy population we see in Tango films. We are rarely informed that the cattle of Argentina are not raised in feedlots, but rather on the grasses of the expansive plains. I have heard stories of Argentines coming to the U.S. and being quite dismayed to see the white marbling of the steaks, since back home the sign of a good piece of meat is the yellow color of the fat. American consumers, on the other hand, have been hoodwinked into thinking that the white marbling is preferable and that yellow fat means there is something wrong with the meat when it really indicates that it contains vitamins. The fat of the American buffalo (properly called bison) that were hunted by the Lakota people would have been similarly yellow and rich in nutrients, due to their natural grazing on the Great Plains.
The same principle applies to the fats of wild sea animals eaten by people in northern coastal climes. These animals were at the top of the food chain that started with plankton and other sea plants that harvested solar energy and grew in the mineral-rich waters of the ancient ocean. Today, we might wonder how a people like the Inuit who ate a diet made up largely of animal fat and meat with very few vegetables could have an adequate supply of vitamins in their dietbecause we don’t understand that vitamins concentrate in the fats of animals that eat high on the food chain. Weston Price studied the Inuit diet as part of his travels, and he notes:
“Seal oil provides a very important part of their nutrition. As each piece of fish is broken off, it is dipped in seal oil. I obtained some seal oil from them and brought it to my laboratory for analyzing its vitamin content. It proved to be one of the richest foods in vitamin A that I have found.”
Weston Price also emphasized the vitamin content of the butter and other dairy products he found in use by the traditional pastoralists he studied. He considered this factor crucial in enabling the human body to absorb and utilize other nutrients that are in our foods:
“I have referred to the importance of a high vitamin butter for providing the fat-soluble activators to make possible the utilization of the minerals in the foods. In this connection, it is of interest that butter constitutes the principle source of these essential factors for many primitive groups throughout the world. In the high mountain and plateau district in northern India, and in Tibet, the inhabitants depend largely upon butter made from the milk of the yak and sheep for these activators. The butter is eaten mixed with roasted cereals, is used in tea, and in a porridge made of tea, butter and roasted grains. In Sudan, Egypt, I found considerable traffic in high vitamin butter which came from the higher lands a few miles from the Nile Basin. This was being exchanged for and used with varieties of millet grown in other districts. This butter, at the temperature of that area, which ranged from 90º to 110º Fahrenheit, was, of course, always in liquid form. Its brilliant orange color testified to the splendid pasture of the dairy animals. The people in Sudan, including the Arabs, had exceptionally fine teeth with exceedingly little tooth decay.”
I don’t think the importance of eating traditional, nourishing fats derived from healthy animals living in healthful environments can be overstated. The word for fat in Sanskritsnehaalso means “lavish love,” and it seems to me that it is in traditional fats that the earth offers us her most generous gift. Human beings need these fats and the nutrients they contain in order to thrive. Although many experiments are underway to create, through genetic engineering, artificial substitutes“pharmafoods” and “nutriceuticals” such as rice with genetically added carotenesI believe these attempts will either fail or have grave unforeseen side effects. Better to protect the availability of vitamin-rich, traditional fats and protect people’s access to them.
Traditional animal fats do need protection. While the Inuit were among the healthiest people Weston Price found and studied, in the seven decades since he visited them, a new and unforeseen culprit jeopardizes the health of a people that thrived for many millennia in one of natures most challenging environments. Despite our pristine image of the Earth’s northern climes, toxic pollution is beginning to wreak havoc on the very people who have been most steadfast in protecting and upholding their traditional way of life. This is happening through the degradation of traditional fats in their diet. As Marla Cone wrote in her important article, Dozens of Words for Snow, None for Pollution:
“Traditionally, this marine diet has made the people of the Arctic Circle among the world’s healthiest. Beluga whale, for example, has 10 times the iron of beef, twice the protein, and five times the vitamin A. Omega-3 fatty acids in the seafood protect the indigenous people from heart disease. A 70-year-old Inuit in Greenland has coronary arteries as elastic as those of a 20-year-old Dane eating Western foods
Yet the ocean diet that gives these people life and defines their culture also threatens them. Despite living amid pristine ice and glacier-carved bedrock, [Inuit] people are more vulnerable to pollution than anyone else on earth. Mercury concentrations in Qaanaaq mothers are the highest ever recorded, 12 times greater than the level that poses neurological risks to fetuses, according to U.S. government standards
The Arctic has been transformed into the planet’s chemical trash can, the final destination for toxic waste that originates thousands of miles away.”
Once we acknowledge the benefits of traditional fats in diets throughout the world, we see the widespread presence of industrial toxins in our environment in its most insidious and destructive light. We then fully understand how important it is to eliminate harmful chemicals from our industrial and technological systems. Just as minerals, vitamins, carotenes, and chlorophyll concentrate in the fats of animals that are higher on the food chain, so too do poisons. The animals that the Inuit traditionally rely upon for food are no longer living in pristine waters; they are living in waters polluted by our industrial lifestyle. The sources of the pollutants that are poisoning the Inuit are such common items as flame retardants used in mattresses and computers, Teflon used to coat pots and pans, and insecticides used in farming.
Healthy fats are based on healthy ecosystems. Period. There is no substitute, no replacement, no other option. Life on Earth has as its basis one source: the Earth herself. And though she is abundant and intricate, and though she operates from an intelligence that is beyond our comprehension, she is not infinite. The universe may be, God may be, but the Earth is, like a mother, a finite being. She has a great, great deal to offer, but we cannot continue to view our relationship with her as a one-way street. All indigenous cultures knew, all of our ancestors knew, that we must each do our part to honor and protect this relationship, our source of life.
On the Moon of Making Fat, I say a prayer that cultures such as the Lakota and Inuit may thrive and renew, along with the populations of American buffalo on the Great Plains and the seals and whales of the Arctic. And may we all do our part to protect and restore the ecosystems of planet Earth, who offers us her “lavish love” in the form of nutrient dense traditional fats.
Many blessings for a rich and generous moon,
Jessica
About the Author...
Jessica Prentice is a professional chef, a passionate home cook, and a Weston A. Price Foundation chapter leader. She writes, cooks, and teaches in the San Francisco Bay Area.Jessica Prentice is a professional chef, a passionate home cook, and a Weston A. Price Foundation chapter leader. She writes, cooks, and teaches in the San Francisco Bay Area. Jessica’s Full Moon Feast: Food and the Hunger for Connection, is a wonderful book. Check out her website: wisefoodways.com.
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