Folk Medicine: Dieting For Each White Subrace

enjoy your pickled herring, moss and seaweed sandwiches, Nordic man!

Folk Medicine was written by Dr. DeForest Clinton Jarvis, a fifth-generation Vermonter and true Amerikaner. The book, published in 1958, was enormously popular in its time, but seems to be almost totally forgotten today. Part of the reason for that is no doubt due to the racial aspects of his health recommendations. I’m actually surprised it found a publisher at all, even back then.

Over the course of this month I am going to attempt to implement Jarvis’s health recommendations. I will report back next month on my failures and successes in this new Folk Diet. Luckily, I am a Nordic/Med mix, so my diet will not as strict and rigorous as it is for those of a purer type.

As the farmer adapts the daily food intake to a specific breed of cattle, so Vermont folk medicine includes the theory that the individual should follow the food habits of his particular division of the race. By doing this a long step will be taken in prevention of sickness because the cells of the body will receive the kind of food they can use best.

We learn from plants that racial strain shows itself in physical characteristics. Take the cactus for example. We recognize cactus by certain features developed through countless generations. IT has a natural immunity to heat, retains moisture, and thrives under environmental conditions its ancestors learned to combat and use. For, say, a tomato plant or water cress, these conditions would not do at all.

In Europe, the three white racial strains are Nordic, Alpine, and Mediterranean. The word Nordic means northern. The Nordics occupy the most northerly part, living in the north European coastal regions, which for several months of the year support no vegetation. Therefore, Nordics are largely fish eaters, eating about ten times as much fish as meat.  For vegetation, commonly land-grown elsewhere, they depend to a great extent on seaweed washed up on shore, and moss harvested from seacoast rocks.

The most striking physical characteristic of Nordics is blondness. A degree of blondness found in no other race. Nordics are generally tall, with blue, gray or green eyes, blond or light brown hair, narrow noses, very white skin, and long heads, by which is meant that the head measure more from front to back than from side to side.

The person living in a Nordic ‘human house’ who is willing and able to follow the diet of his racial strain should find a newness of health, greater freedom from sickness, less dental decay, and renewed energy. Wheat bread and wheat cereals will not be for you; your bread is rye bread. White sugar is not for you. Your proper sweetening agent is honey. Muscle meats are not for you. Instead of eating beef, pork and lamb, you should live out of the ocean eating fish and other seafood. As for obtaining the values of Nordic vegetation, it is possible to by seaweed tablets at health food stores. They are generally called kelp tablets. The tablets include all of the forty-five different minerals which constitute kelp. One kelp tablet a day will provide the composite minerals which the Nordic body has been conditioned through the centuries to receive.   

You live in an Alpine ‘human house’ if you have brown or hazel eyes, chestnut brown or black hair, and a round head. Land-grown foods, such as cereals, and meat from game, flocks and herds are for you.

If you have dark eyes, dark skin, black hair, and a long head, your ‘human house’ is Mediterranean. You can eat all classes of foods, such as seafood dairy products, cereals, and fruit. Your system will especially favor corn cereals, grapes, and the juice of grapes.