Wherever we look nowadays there is a new diet or diet ‘guru’ trying to grab our attention, promising almost instant results with the nutritional silver bullet that you have spent your adult life looking for. Often some celebrity will smilingly endorse this effortless transition from couch potato to honed athlete.
There is a problem however … Diets do not work, at least not in the long term. All those powders, potions, and promises that you will have consumed at great expense, prove to be yet more snake oil.
Periodically entire food groups become demonised; carbohydrates, saturated fats, fruit, sugar, meat, grains, pulses, etc. only to reappear as superfoods in the next miraculous offering. The headline writers take great delight in telling us that if we only eat or drink X then all our health problems will disappear, or conversely that consumption of Y will surely lead to a quick and painful death.
At Earth Strength, we like to cut through the static. For us food is nourishment and a joy, it something that is central to our courses; taste, provenance, freshness and the cooking of real foods is what excites us. We don’t want to teach diet by exclusion, rather we advocate the inclusion of high quality, local and seasonal whole foods. We are creating our very own Blue Zone.
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These foods we cook and eat together, enjoying companionship and flavour in equal measure. For us food is more than just a fuel, it is the glue that binds groups and communities together. What we see on our plates represents the landscape around us – it is the village telling its own story of sun, soil and season with the palette subtly changing throughout the months of the year.
We believe eating is something that should be a complete experience; understanding where the food is grown, who grew it and its place within the tradition of the community. Foods should be appreciated with all the senses, touched, smelt, looked at as well as being tasted.
A perfect example of this is the bread that we eat on our courses.
Wheat is one of the most commonly demonised foods and something that should be avoided according to many diet ‘experts’. The Paleo community in particular often deride its consumption – yet here’s the irony, our Mesolithic and Neolithic ancestors were regularly eating and trading in milled wheat – undoubtedly for making into a basic bread.
The evidence is now growing that is is not the wheat per se that is bad for us, creating the intolerance’s that so many people claim to suffer from – rather it is industrial farming methods, modern engineered wheat varieties and industrialized yeast.
Here in Facinas the flour we use for our breads comes from locally grown ancient wheat varieties, which is then stone-ground in a water mill just on the other side of the village. We don’t use any added yeasts, rather we have made what is called a ‘mother’ which is a living breathing entity in its own right. Water and flour are mixed together and slowly over a week the wild yeasts from the air and on the grains of wheat start to come alive. First one bubble appears, then another and with them the slightly acidic smell of brewing. Once made the mother can last decades slowly growing in flavour and goodness.
We mix this mother with our flour and the resulting dough will be left to rise for a further 24 hours. Nothing more is added other than a pinch of local sea salt. Finally we light our traditional wood fired bread oven and within an hour we are sharing the most delicious bread that you will have ever tasted. Not only does it taste wonderful, but the long slow natural rising of the dough neutralizes the phytic acid which prevents absorption of so many of the nutrients of real bread.
We will be making this bread together as a part of your course, and it is the perfect accompaniment to the local handmade goats cheeses, olive oil and wild oregano and it features at all of our meals. And perhaps, best of all, it continues centuries of tradition, working in harmony with the environment, for the benefit and health of everyone.
At Earth Strength, we don’t teach nutrition we practice nourishment and a hands on approach to all that we do.
Neil Hill is one of Europe’s top outdoor, wilderness and survival coaches. He believes that our modern disconnect from nature has led to many of our personal, physical and social problems. He has led courses into some of the worlds most hostile and wild environments. His passion is to reconnect people with their aboriginal roots in nature, enabling them to have adventures and experiences that unlock their massive potential, Neil is the founder of Rewilding Bushcraft.
I think the Paleo diet is great. I am seeing and feeling the benefits of the diet for a long time now. Not only have I lost weight, but I feel much more energised, and much better in myself. I think the reason is that whilst the paleo diet may be a diet, I do actually eat much much varied food than I did previously. All I’ve done is taken out the stodge that my body finds hard to digest, and added more types of fruit, veg, and indeed meat. I’ve now actually taken an interest in cooking paleo meals,… Read more »
Photo courtesy of the author
I think the Paleo diet is great. I am seeing and feeling the benefits of the diet for a long time now. Not only have I lost weight, but I feel much more energised, and much better in myself. I think the reason is that whilst the paleo diet may be a diet, I do actually eat much much varied food than I did previously. All I’ve done is taken out the stodge that my body finds hard to digest, and added more types of fruit, veg, and indeed meat. I’ve now actually taken an interest in cooking paleo meals,… Read more »