The human body has evolved to eat a wide variety of animal and plant foods. All other things being equal, to the extent that we eat as are evolved to eat, we will enjoy good health and well-being. In our opinion, our most important foods are sea foods of all sorts, birds, small animals, nuts, seeds, large animals, roots, vegetables and fruits. We are discussing whole foods, in the case of grains.

Not all natural foods are benign-our ancestors had to leach toxic chemicals from some tubers, eat some fruits sparingly, and roast some nuts to make them digestible, for example. We still have to use common sense. We can create a fairly natural diet by using minimally processed easy food preparation, exploring other cultures natural foods, substituting animal fat and monounsaturated fats for hydrogenated vegetable fats, substantially ignoring refined sugars, preferring rice over wheat, (there is some opinion that wheat is not well tolerated by some genetic makeups) and using products such as yoghourt that are derived from fermentation of the foreign milk proteins we obtain from stealing the secretions from the mammary glands of non human animals.

Obviously, we have to exercise prudent discrimination when buying food, and where practical prefer to buy from those who can give quantifiable assurances on freedom from heavy metals, excessive numbers of bacteria, excessive residual chemical compounds, and freedom from biologically derived toxins such as aflotoxins.

Technology has brought us pollution-ultimately fixable- but it has also brought us the ability to find and buy a diversity of fruits, vegetables, roots, sea foods, seeds, nuts and meats that is at last beginning to be arguably a reflection, albeit a poor reflection, of the diversity our ancestors would once have had available in their hunting and gathering in our former natural wild environment.

In our opinion, grain fed meat is certainly the last word in succulent tenderness. The only concern is that the fat in grain finished animals is relatively evenly distributed throughout the meat, rather than being in a layer on the outside. While animal fat ( so long as it is eaten along with protein) is in our opinion a natural and good food for the human animal, some people are concerned about the possibility of residues from chemical insect controls being present in the fat. It is easy to trim the fat from grass fed animals. In addition, there is some suggestion that grass fed animals have more of a particular form of fatty acid which has particular health benefits. Given the prevalence of low level iron deficiency in Western countries, it is primarily important to eat red meat. Grass or grain fed is a secondary and relatively unimportant consideration.

Organ meats are the most prized parts of a dead animal in all hunter gatherer cultures. Today, cultural conditioning means we regard livers, brains (unsafe, due to BSE), pancreas, and kidneys as at least 'strange' if not 'gross!'. Organ meats are repositories of huge amounts of vital vitamins and minerals in a natural form. Today, we can buy organ meats as and when we want. Be sure livers you buy are form a young animal, as there is the issue of accumulation and concentration of the heavy metal cadmium in liver tissue when the animal is more than two years old. This is due to the cadmium content that naturally occurs in some important phosphate fetiliser sources.

The interface between the sea and the land can be one of the richest food sources there is. And where rivers meet the sea, it is richer still. Here can be found marshes full of birds, crabs, vast shellfish beds, shallows swarming with small schooling fish, tiny prawns, rock clinging mussels and oysters, estuaries with flatfish, eels, perhaps turtles, crocodilians; seas, rivers and lake shores would have been prime hunting and foraging grounds. The male compulsive urge to go fishing may be genetic!

The oils found in fish are of proven health benefit. As with dried animal muscle, dried fish has been an important storable primary food source to carry over the lean times. The urban hunter gatherer can now chose from fish hunted from all over the world, as well as a few 'farmed' species. Fish, specially fatty fish, is a premium food for humans.

FRUIT	NUTS SEEDS and Oils
MEAT	VEGETABLES & HERBS
	THE NATURAL FOOD HUB