Weston A. Price Foundation President Sally Fallon is our guest today in Episode 711 of “The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show.”
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In what is sure to be a highly-anticipated MUST-LISTEN for everyone in the Paleo, low-carb and real food movement, we’ve got the woman at the center of a firestorm of backlash in the Paleo community today as we bring to you an exclusive interview with Weston A. Price Foundation (WAPF) President Sally Fallon Morell. After she received numerous requests from WAPF members about the differences between the diet her organization promotes and low-carb as well as Paleo diets, Sally decided to address it directly in her “President’s Message” in the Summer 2013 Wise Traditions newsletter. What she wrote in that newsletter upset a lot of people primarily from the Paleo community who support the work of the WAPF but didn’t understand why she chose to single out a narrowly-defined interpretation of Paleo for her criticism.
Listen in as Jimmy and Sally share why she has major concerns with the use of the term “Paleo,” her problem with the heavy promotion of lean meats as espoused by Loren Cordain and Robb Wolf, whether she has heard of other members of the Paleo community who promote many of the principles of the WAPF, what would make her more comfortable with the idea of Paleo, and a whole lot more! If you’ve been concerned about this rift that has taken place between the WAPF and Paleo, then you won’t want to miss this conversation.
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– Sally Fallon Morell bio
– Welcome Message From Sally at Weston A. Price web site
– Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats
– The Weston A. Price Foundation
– Eat Fat, Lose Fat: The Healthy Alternative to Trans Fats
– Wise Traditions Summer 2013 President’s Message: Myths and Truths about the Weston A Price Foundation
– The Paleo Mom: Rebuttal to Wise Traditions Summer 2013 Newsletter article (titled Myth:The WAPF Diet is Like the Paleo Diet)
– The Balanced Bites Podcast Episode #97: A rebuttal to Sally Fallon’s Take on Paleo
– Gary’s Health Tips: Sally Fallon – President of the Weston A. Price Foundation Attacks the Paleo Movement: My Take and Rebuttal
– Live Wild: Do You Want To Know Where Your Food Comes From?
– Primal Docs: Trouble in Paradise: An Open Letter to the Weston A. Price and Paleo Communities
– Robb Wolf: Weston Price vs. Paleo
– The Paleo Drummer: Petty tribalism helps no one, or why that WAPF hit piece on paleo is beyond stupid and ill-conceived
– The Paleo Network: Weston A Price v The Paleo Diet
– The Paleo View Podcast Episode 49: Paleo Philosophy – Part 2
– Critical MAS: Paleo vs Weston Price
– Wise Traditions 2013 Conference in Atlanta, Georgia on November 7-11, 2013
– RELATED PODCAST: The LLVLC Show #681: LLVLC Classic – Sally Fallon Of The Weston A. Price Foundation
Lean? I’ve never eaten so much fat in my life!!
I had to go Paleo after discovering (on the WAPF diet) many new food allergies that weren’t alleviated with all the soaking and other food-prep techniques promoted in the program. It was easier for me to just plain old AVOID these foods than to try to find a way to be able to eat them without reaction.
I’m new to Paleo and have never seen anything anti-fat in the Paleo community. It’s actually more fat than I have ever eaten.
Ms Fallon seems to be suffering the same affliction as Marlene Zuk; She hasn’t updated her “paleo” in a decade.
~getting enough protein is not an issue in the Western diet~
I just read this over at Gary’s Health Tips as part of his article/rant about Sally’s recent diatribe, and it scares me that she said this at all. The last time I read this exact statement was in a vegetarian cookbook that advocated veganism: the More With Less cookbook written by Francis Moore Lappe back n the 70’s.
Is Sally going over to the dark side?
I agree with Sally. people in western lands, Especially Americans get plenty of meat. Excluding vegetarians and vegans. Most people in the west do not subscribe to such diets, though. Most eat meat everyday. I don’t know where this idea comes from that we have to have so much meat. And I’m an unapologetic red meat-eater.
Animal fats are what we are not getting enough of. I don’t know much about Cordain but I have heard Wolf on a number of occasions on his podcast advocating eating lean mean over fatty meat. It’s one of the reasons why I stopped listening.
She didn’t do herself or the Weston A. Price Foundation any favors on this show. To me she came off as rigid and set in her way being exactly correct and the only possible way. I like a lot of what WAPF says but not everything and she’s way too defensive and obnoxious to people who are mostly in her camp.
I agree with the previous commentators. I don’t think she came off very well. She didn’t provide any evidence, just anecdotes about friends of hers or some meeting attended.
The reasons she sites the Paleo folks want grassfed is HOGWASH!!!!!! It has NOTHING to do with leanness and everything to do with nutrition! Where did she get that info??? Robb Wolf says LEAN MEAT if grassfed cannot be found because the fat in grainfed cattle is no good! Even he says there’s nothing wrng and everything good about grassfed fats. UGH. I was hoping she would aknowldge that the modern Paleo pursues high quality fats but she insists that we don’t.
Sally made some really good points. I Googled “the paleo diet” myself, and here are the top results:
1. Cordain’s site: FAQ describes diet as “high protein” and emphasizes benefits of protein over both fat and carbs.
2. Nerdfitness.com: “Get a really good protein source with each meal along with some vegetables and fruit.” Then, “Add some healthy fats: avocado, almonds/walnuts, almond butter, olive oil.” No mention of butter, tallow, lard, etc…….
3. Stuff.co.nz: Refers to experts that “emphasize the consumption of lean animal products, high in protein and low in fat.”
4. Wikipedia article (some might not think this counts, but I’ll include it as a top result): “Some sources advise eating only lean cuts of meat.” Also, “They recommend a diet high in protein.”
5. Wolf’s site: the top category in his food group recommendation is “Lean Proteins,” and he includes “lean meats” in his “Okay to eat” column of good vs. bad.
6. A video interview of Cordain by Oz, in which Cordain states at the very beginning, “It’s a high-protein diet.”
(I could go on, but you get the point.)
Jimmy, I think you’ve got some blinders on, buddy. A lot of us see what we want to see in these organizations and -isms that we identify with. But if the top Google results emphasize protein over fat, that is a clear difference between Paleo and Price. I don’t see how any of us can blame Sally for taking issue with being associated with Paleo, given that difference.
She wasn’t saying, “Death to the Paleo diet!” She was saying, “WAPF is not the same as Paleo, for these reasons.” Is that really such a big deal?
Also, Jimmy, I was surprised that she had to remind you that more modern versions of the Atkins diet (contrasted with the original) became more politically correct and both deemphasized fats and increased protein recommendations. You two have discussed that very issue on a previous podcast!
Sally did not say anything that was untrue. I guess Jimmy felt the need to argue on behalf of Paleo due to his personal and professional association with the Paleo community. But Sally was spot on here.
Not sure what your beef is with me. I agree the fats should be emphasized more.
That is why I find your position during that interview so confusing. I would expect a person like yourself, who advocates high-fat and discourages high-protein, would be concerned when it is brought to light that prominent Paleo voices are emphasizing lean meats and “high protein” composition–and that you would certainly understand Sally’s refusal for the WAPF to be associated with Paleo on those grounds. Instead, you persistently defended Paleo and insisted that it stands for high-fat. While you made valid points about emerging experts and experienced grassroots participants, you seemed completely unconvinced by Sally’s issue with folks like Cordain and Wolf using those aforementioned terms. You and I both know that Paleo newbies–who have spent their lives eating the S.A.D. and whose mental paradigms about nutrition revolve around the horrible low-fat advice pushed by the USDA, AMA, et al–will see an emphasis on “lean meats” and “high protein” and conveniently ignore the part about fat, because they do not want to “take the risk” of getting heart disease (you and I know that thinking is bogus, but those new folks have believed it their whole lives). To that end, I think Sally made an extremely good point. I have no beef with you, not a personal one anyway. It’s just confusing. Like I said before, I think you were reluctant to accept her argument, because it contradicts your own interpretation of the diet. But evidently you are not alone, because, to my surprise, I have yet to see one other commenter (as of this writing) expressing a similar opinion. I think it is important for us to view the advice associated with these diets as it will be perceived by the general public, and many of us appear not to be doing that, which I think is a mistake. Just my opinion.
But my point is I DO agree with Sally about lean meats but that’s not the mainstream Paleo movement position on fat. She narrowly focuses on Cordain and Wolf, but there’s more to the Paleo community than just those two guys.
I think that interpretation of the Paleo mainstream is debatable, Jimmy. It’s tough to say the movement stands against lean meats and high protein when the two arguably most prominent experts say otherwise. Sally’s focus was narrow because she was concerned with newcomers, and she knows newcomers will cluster around those top search results.
I hear ya. But as I am typing this I’m attending one of the major Paleo conferences (the Ancestral Health Symposium) right now and only ONE speaker (Boyd Eaton) talked about lean meats. Everyone else is glorifying the fat from animal-based sources as being part of our evolutionary model. I disagree that Cordain is the ultimate source for most people getting into this. But I agree with Sally that he needs to change his website if he changed his mind.
Bret, in all of you comments here you are spot on! I’m glad she addressed this issue in her journal because frankly, there are a number of issues I have with Paleo and the Paleo community anyway (first and foremost much of this diet is based on pure conjecture) and I do not care for it being associated with Price.
Great interview! I’d be happy to find a new term for grain-free, legume-free, processed sugar-free dining. Given that Cordain jealously guards his “Paleo Diet” branding, and the subsequent modifications I have made to the framework (raw cream, raw butter), good to eliminate the confusion by calling it something else. I like ancestral diet.
Hi Jimmy,
I am a great fan of Sally Fallon and the foundation and enjoyed the interview.
One of the assumptions that she voiced, that seems to be taken for granted by the anthropology community, and is quite amusing the the “hide tanning” community, is that the tool marks that indicate that our ancestors prized animal brains means that they ate them.
The brian of a dear is just the right size to provide the necessary chemicals to tan the hide of the animal. This varies with other species. This technique seems to be well know in the tanning community and has been know in many cultures and at many times in history.
Please pass this on to her as she may find it of interest.
Here are some links:
http://animal.discovery.com/mammals/deer-tan-own-hide.htm
http://www.manataka.org/page27.html
http://www.primitiveways.com/buffalo_hide.html
http://www.braintan.com/articles/bbhtitle.html
Here’s the response I heard back directly from Sally Fallon Morell regarding your comments:
Very interesting. Still, I don’t think they tanned all the animals they ate, and brains were a highly valued food in many traditional societies.
I lived in Iran in 1965 and my family there bought a lamb once a week. The lamb was butchered in the kitchen and the first day we ate the brains.
We also know from tool marks that they removed the tongue and splintered the bones to get the marrow.
Dear Americans and other paleo friends.
Here in Scandinavia we call our low carb diet,LCHF (low carb high fat) We are not afraid of dairy products other than milk as a beverage. We eat / drink a lot of Greek yogurt, butter, cream and sour cream. Of course all fats from animal and coconut oil, That many are still afraid of fat must be to protect the food industry and their bad fat free products. The Swedish LCHF physician Andreas Eenfelt has a facebook page in English. Diet Doctor https://www.facebook.com/TheDietDoctor?fref=ts
Have a great fall to all low carb friends
Bjorn https://www.facebook.com/naturalnordic/diet…
We know and love Dr. Eenfeldt very well in America.