Leaving aside the causes of confusion, populations that eat according to the rules of traditional food culture, are generally much healthier than populations that have adopted contemporary Western diet. This is valid for Japanese cuisine and for other Asian cuisines, as well as for traditional food from Mexico, India and the Mediterranean regions, including France Italy and Greece. Probably there are some exceptions to this rule-for example lets think about my ancestors Eastern European Jews nutrition.

But who knows? You may find that chicken fat and duck fat are much healthier than expected now at the present. (Weston Price would not be at all surprised) I tend to believe that all traditional nourishments are healthy, otherwise, nutrition and population in question would have disappeared long ago.

Traditional nourishments have two dimensions- the consumed food and the way it is prepared- and it is possible that both can be equally important for our health. Let us talk first about the content of traditional food, regarding the form in the next section.

In some ways, traditional diets resemble other cultural autochthon creations, such as architecture. During a long process of trial and failure, cultures discover strategies that works- the best way to reconcile human needs with what nature can offer in a certain region.

Thus, as the inclination of a roof reflects the amount of rain or snow in that area, they are greater as a rainfall is more abundant, and the degree of seasoning in some kitchens reflects in another way the local climate. Spicy food helps people to face high temperature; also many spices have properties against germs, so essential in regions with a hot climate, where food can easily alter. According to research, the more the climate is warmer, the spicier are the local dishes.

Of course, traditional food concerns only health or biology, many of the culinary practices are arbitrary and possibly inappropriate, such as refined rice. Kitchens can have purely cultural functions, which is one of the ways by which a society expresses its identity and shows their differences in relation to other societies. (For example kashrus is a set of Jewish dietary laws that fulfill these functions for Jews respectively for Islam)

This would explain why traditional kitchens refuse changes; it is said that in an immigrant household, the last place you’ll find signs of assimilation is the storehouse. But as shown by food psychologist Paul Rozin, “aromatic principles” of a sustainable kitchen- Whether it is lemon and olive oil in Mediterranean, soy sauce and ginger in Asia or even the ketchup in America- allow that culture to assimilate new and useful food easier, which we might think they taste so completely foreign.

Yet, the act of eating is more than other cultural practices, deeply linked to nature-on one hand it is linked to the human biology, and on the other to the natural world. The specific food combinations of a certain kitchen and the food preparation methods are a source of knowledge stored in terms of diet, health and region. Many traditional culinary practices are the product of a biocultural evolution so the modern science is trying to decode its ingenuity.

In Latin America, corn is traditionally consumed in combination with beans; each of the two plants has a deficiency of a specific type of essential amino acid that is plenty contained in the other one; therefore, consumed together, corn and beans make up a balanced and no meat Menu. Also, in countries from Latin America, corn is milled or macerated with limestone to achieve to contain vitamin B, without which people will get sick of pellagra.

Often when a society adopted a new food, but without adopting the afferent culinary culture, as happened when the maize was brought to Europe, Africa and Asia, people got sick. The context in which a particular food is consumed can be as important as the food itself.