Food Supplies and Nutrition

Two features of indigenous food supply systems stand out. One is that materials from cultivated crops and domesticated animals, are supplemented with a wide variety of foods from wild sources. The other is that, taken overall and in unstressed conditions, traditional diets are healthy ones, coming much closer to World Health Organization targets than do many Western diets. “Relishes” from wild species materials often represent compact sources of vital nutrients and effectively complement bulky starchy staples. Additionally, traditional techniques for flour grinding retain more fibrous material and B vitamins than do modern milling processes. Perhaps most importantly, traditional diets lack the undesirably high concentrations of simple sugars, saturated fats and salt that characterise most Western diets mainly for commercial reasons.