Sample Menus

General Menus

Many people discover that eating the bulk of one’s food at breakfast and lunch often improves energy level and the sense of well being. Digestion is stronger during the day than at night, so this eating style is more in synch with the natural rhythms of the body. Eating less in the evening can also be an effective aid in losing weight. The following are different possibilities for each of the three basic meals, presented with the big meal at lunch time. If this does not work for your family, simply switch the lunch and dinner meals.

Breakfast

  • Rolled oats soaked overnight with a bit of whey either cooked or eaten raw in the morning. You can add a variety of seeds, nuts, sprouts, cream, raw milk, butter, yoghurt, sprouts, or honey.
  • Eggs, prepared in a variety of ways, with homemade sourdough bread and butter.
  • Pancakes made with freshly ground flour, soaked overnight, topped with fruit and maple syrup.
  • A variety of sausages or bacon with homemade bread.
  • Vegetable soup with a chicken broth base with leftover re-heated brown rice.
  • Steel-cut oats, soaked overnight and cooked for about 5-10 minutes in the morning, topped with of the above seeds, nuts, sprouts, etc.

Add to these basic breakfasts a cup of warm soup broth with the addition of 1Tbsp of coconut butter in the winter to provide a wonderful hot morning drink. Also drink about one cup of a fermented beverage to aid digestion.

Lunch
It is helpful to begin each main meal with a bowl of soup made with broth and to which a small amount of cultured cream has been added. This time-honored practice is so important as it stimulates the digestive juices and prepares your body for the meal. A variety of homemade soups are found in Nourishing Traditions.

After this, think in thirds to prepare the rest of the meal. The rest of the meal will therefore include an animal food, such as fish, poultry, an organ meat, such as liver with onions, or some other meat. A whole-grain dish will also be part of the main meal, such as brown rice or millet casserole.

The final components of the meal will be a variety of cooked vegetables and a small salad with homemade dressing. On the table can be a variety of lacto-fermented condiments such as sauerkraut or kimchee. The beverage should be one of the lacto-fermented beverages found in the beverage section. Of course, these basic components can be combined in infinite variations depending on your family’s tastes.

Dinner
The dinner meal can be a lighter version of the big meal at lunch. This is a good time to have soup and a salad, or homemade sourdough bread with some raw-milk cheese. If this meal is your lunchtime meal, a good quality thermos is valuable in providing nourishing soups at lunch-time. Another good light dinner could be hummus and homemade Essene bread crackers, or yoghurt-dough homemade pizza with a variety of vegetable toppings.

Sometimes, especially if you are trying to overcome illness, it is best to use this meal as a time to increase your enzyme supply. In that case, one might eat a large raw salad with lots of sprouts and an olive oil and flax seed oil dressing. Thus, dinner can be a meal with no cooked or heated foods of any kind. Again, use your tastes and creativity to guide you in your meal planning.

Suggested Menus for Weight Loss

The key to weight normalization is to relearn the difference in feeling between hunger and satiety. The first step in restoring the body’s ability to sense hunger and to feel satisfied is to take advantage of our universal healer, which is rhythm. This means eating three meals a day with no food whatsoever in between. The second principle for weight loss is to eat only foods that supply an abundance of nutrients. The feeling of satiety is designed to tell us when we have taken in enough to nourish the body.

Both of the diets outlined below are preceded by a period when the patient eliminates refined grains, refined fats and oils and all sweeteners except for 1 Tbsp of raw honey per day. Otherwise the patient eats normally of nutrient-dense foods three times a day for eight weeks. Then, for a two-week period the patient follows Plan A, a diet containing about 80 percent animal food from pasture-raised animals (meat, fish, chicken, eggs, whole raw milk, raw cheese and butter) and the other 20 percent mostly as vegetables — raw, cooked and fermented. Water or fermented drinks can be drunk liberally throughout the day, but no grains or fruit are allowed. There are no caloric restrictions in Plan A as we let your fat “sensors” regulate your intake.

After the two weeks of the stringent diet, the normal diet is followed for six weeks, and then by another two weeks of the weight-loss approach. Usually 7-10 pounds will be lost during each subsequent two-week period until the comfortable weight is attained. To maintain weight, the patient  follows the normal diet, eating three times a day and avoiding all refined carbohydrates, vegetable oils and sweeteners.

Those who don’t do well with the high-fat intake of Plan A can follow a different approach, Plan B which contains more carbohydrates but fewer calories. Once again, the patient eats three meals a day, but there is less restriction on carbohydrate consumption and lower levels of fat in the diet. Refined carbohydrates and vegetable oils are once again completely eliminated.

Typically the Plan B approach results in a 20-pound weight loss every 2 to 3 months until the comfortable weight is reached. At this point the patient should resume the normal diet suggestions with the same caveats as for Plan A.

It is important for dieters to eliminate all synthetic vitamins, minerals and other pills except those that are absolutely necessary. Supplements of cod liver oil and other super foods are fine. Under both plans the dieter should take 2 Tbsp of melted coconut oil mixed with warm herb tea or warm water about 20 minutes before each meal.

Diet Plan A

Breakfast
Two eggs scrambled or fried in butter or coconut oil with no-nitrate bacon with one cup whole milk or yogurt, or Raw Milk Tonic, or Yoghurt Smoothie

Lunch
Chicken broth with coconut milk, or
Wild salmon with butter with salad and olive oil dressing, or
2-3 oz. raw cheese and 1/3 cup crispy nuts, or several thin whole grain crackers spread with butter and chicken liver pate

Dinner
Chicken, lamb, beef or fish; cooked vegetables with lots of butter, and sauerkraut, or
Calves liver and bacon with sautéed onions and sauerkraut

 Diet Plan B

Breakfast
4 oz. (½ cup) animal protein and fat, ½ cup (measured uncooked), cooked oatmeal or other whole grain (soaked first overnight), and 1 cup fruit

Lunch
4 oz. (½ cup) animal protein and fat, 1 cup cooked vegetables with 1 Tbsp butter, 1 cup raw vegetables with dressing containing 1 Tbsp oil, clear soup broth

Dinner
Same as lunch, with addition of sauerkraut and 1 cup fruit

Suggested Menus for Children (ages 3-14)

In the years between age three and 14, there is not much difference between the optimal diet for the child and the adult. The main issue at this age is how to account for the child’s tastes. To this the answer is often that unwitting parents often try to encourage a diet that actually does not suit their children. Children need and often crave fat. They need fat for proper neurological development in the early years, healthy immune function in the school age years, and for sexual development in the teenage years. If they are not provided with adequate good fats in the diet, invariably they will end up like so many American children as carbohydrate cravers. The only solution to the child who will eat only a white diet of rice, pasta, white bread and candy is a vigorous outdoor life and food with a liberal amount of healthy fats.

A healthy child’s diet in these years would look something like this:

Breakfast
French toast with homemade sourdough bread doused with fresh cream (crème fraiche), cooked in butter and coconut oil, topped with maple syrup and berries; porridge with soaked grains and lots of butter, cream, and fruit; eggs and naturally made sausage

Snacks
A snack should always include at least a small amount of fat or it will not satisfy their hunger and they will get into the cycle of eating tremendous amounts of carbohydrate-type foods between meals. Examples could include whole-milk yoghurt and fruit, hard-boiled eggs, peanut butter on Essene bread crackers, or roasted nuts and seeds. All these are nutritious, balanced snacks that will curb the carbohydrate urges of children.

Lunch
Lunch often presents a challenge because the child is at school and must carry a lunch to school. Often there is also a hot lunch provided, which is inferior nutritionally. Again, with some effort nutritious and inviting lunches can be made. I often encourage parents to invest in a good thermos or hot lunch receptacle, which allows you to send to school things like soup or warmed up casseroles from last night’s dinner. The other standby is sandwiches, which can contain the three food groups: a turkey sandwich with cheese, homemade mayonnaise, lettuce, sprouts, and an apple often goes over well. Again, if you use a liberal amount of mayonnaise, the child will be less likely to seek out sugary desserts.

Dinner
Dinner should be a family time if at all possible, when the family comes together and talks about their day and their lives, when family tradition can be passed on. A good amount of time at dinner should be taken, as is the custom in many parts of the world. Dinner suggestions can be found above under General Menus, and these are fine for the children of this age.

Other issues that come up around the feeding of children include choice of beverages and what if any supplements to give. The best beverages for children of this age are whole, raw milk if available, water, or fermented fruit beverages as found in Nourishing Traditions. Pasteurized fruit drinks, sodas, sports drinks, or other high carbohydrate beverages should be avoided for as long as possible. As for supplements, the only one I routinely give to children of all ages is 1 teaspoon per day of cod liver oil, especially during the winter months.

During the teenage years one invariably loses a lot of control of the child’s diet. During this stage the child must be allowed to make his own choices about food when he is away from home. The only protection I can offer is that during these years and earlier, boys especially often love and need to eat meat. It is not unusual to need to feed a teenage boy some sort of meat three times per day. As long as the meat is of the best quality, this will actually foster a robust muscle development. Boys will have much less interest in satisfying their nutritional needs outside the home if they’re served plenty of meat supplemented with grains and salads. For girls the equivalent food is fat, especially cream and butter. These are necessary for hormonal development, functioning like meat for boys, helping to meet their cravings and to stop them from looking outside the home for food.