Ancestral foods in a modern time.
how to do it and easy recipes
Ancestral Eating: A Return to Real Food
Ancestral eating invites us to return to the food wisdom of our ancestors - the way they grew, gathered, prepared, and honoured what nourished them. It’s about slowing down, reconnecting with traditional ways of cooking, and choosing whole, nutrient-dense foods that our bodies instinctively recognise.
What food used to be like…
Before supermarkets and ingredient labels, food came directly from the earth and the sea. It was hunted, gathered, or grown. It was soaked, sprouted, fermented, roasted over fire, or simmered slowly. Harvests were celebrated with ceremony. Songs, dances, and gratitude were offered to the land, the waters, and the animals who gave of themselves.
What makes a food ancestral?
It's local, seasonal, organic, and free from GMOs.
It’s made at home, with hands and intention - not machines.
It’s cultural - rooted in the food traditions of our heritage.
It’s instantly recognisable by our ancestors - no instruction manual needed.
It comes from nature: wild-caught, hand-picked, foraged, or freshly harvested.
It requires little packaging, no fancy labeling, and only a few real ingredients - if any at all.
It’s low-glycemic, deeply nourishing, and slow to digest, just as nature designed.
Ancestral foods are simple: fish, meat, fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds, eggs, and fermented foods. If it’s in a package, it should have no more than 4–5 whole ingredients - no additives, no artificial anything, no sugar or strange fillers.
This way of eating honours food as sacred. It’s about knowing where your food comes from, who grew it, how it was raised, and how it got to your table. It’s about sharing meals with your community and reconnecting to your roots, culture, and body.
Following an ancestral way of eating means eating wholesome, natural, organic Indigenous foods – just like our ancestors did for thousands of years.
Ancestral foods:
Meat and full-fat raw dairy from grass-fed, wild animals. The whole animal is consumed, with the organ meats and fats preferred
Wild seafood
Pastured chickens and eggs
Organic fruits and vegetables
Healthy, traditional fats like olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil, lard, butter etc.
Fermented foods
Now, it is right to say that tribes who did not grow olives, would not have had olive oil. We can become sticklers to this and be so extreme that we only eat foods that are available in our local area, however, to be more realistic, we can still eat to most of the ancestral principles and also enjoy foods that are not grown in our region.
Another voice in this space is Weston Price who was a dentist and travelled extensively throughout the globe and found that many of the indigenous peoples had straight teeth free from cavities and deformities. He concluded that after seeing what these people ate, that their diet had a lot to do with their excellent oral health as they included many of the traditional, cultural and nutrient dense foods of their region into their diets. His research led to creating these principles around what foods we should eat from an oral health point of view:
Weston Price Principles:
Animal Foods: meat and organ meats, poultry and eggs from pastured animals, fish, whole cheese, milk and dairy products from pastured animals, bone broth made from animal bones.
Grains, legumes and nuts: wholegrain baked goods, porridges, wholegrain rice, beans and lentils, nuts and seeds. The grains were prepared properly by being soaked and/or fermented before use.
Vegetables and fruit: preferably locally grown and seasonal, both raw and cooked and lacto-fermented.
Fats & oils: unrefined saturated and monounsaturated fats and oils: olive oil, butter, ghee, cod liver oil, avocado, coconut oil.
Much of what we call food today has become so heavily altered from its original form that it can barely be considered real food anymore.
What is food now?
Convenient
Shelf stable
Processed
Genetically modified
High in salt and sugar
High in trans fats
Excessive amount of ingredient and chemical added
Not all processing is bad - take canning and freezing for example. These processes help food maintain their freshness and for some people living in challenging climates, these processes are lifesaving. For me, the problem lies when unnecessary and artificial preservatives, colours and flavours are used, which remove the food so far from its natural state.
Let’s break it down now and see how we can apply this
Now that we have learnt about ancestral foods – let us talk about my approach. I like to have a fine balance of ancestral foods and modern foods. The role of a woman has changed dramatically over the centuries and many women now are not only homemakers but are also balancing a career, raising children, and often studying.
In this modern day, most women do not have endless time to prepare foods from scratch and spend all day gardening, preserving, cooking and homemaking. How do we eat a whole foods diet containing traditional nutrient dense foods on our current schedules? Let’s simplify it and focus on a balanced and realistic approach.
My top foods to make from scratch (that take little preparation) include:
Stocks & broths
Sauerkraut (so easy and much cheaper than store bought)
Homemade snacks for children (plus some good quality ones from the Supermarket for convenience).
If you have more time:
Butter & ghee
Sourdough bread
Fermented dairy products
Liver pate
Soaked and activated nuts and seeds
To avoid overwhelm, why not just choose one of these foods and start making it regularly, then begin to add more and more as it seems achievable to your schedule.
In returning to the wisdom of ancestral nutrition, we begin to see just how far modern food has strayed from what once sustained human health for generations. Ultra-processed products, synthetic additives, and convenience-driven choices have replaced the nutrient-dense, whole foods our bodies were designed to thrive on. It’s time we bring elements of this past wisdom back into how we live and eat today.
For my paid subscribers, here are 13 Ancestral recipes for you to try.