Dr. Bill Schindler - Eat Like a Human

Deep in central Kenya, amidst barren grasslands and bushwillows, days and miles from anything approaching modern civilization, my family and I were about to drink blood. We were among the Samburu, semi-nomadic warrior people of East Africa who herd cattle, goats, and other livestock, and whose diets depend on a combination of raw milk and fresh blood drawn daily from the teats and necks of their animals.

After days of travel, we had come to a remote river village to witness and share in this practice. The final leg of our journey was driving for an hour up the middle of a wadi, or dried riverbed, since anything resembling a road had disappeared long ago. We arrived in the late afternoon, and the land shimmered with heat. Only the hum of insects broke the quiet.

Three young Samburu warriors stood sentry over the entrance to the trail that led to their village. They all wore brightly colored traditional attire, and their physiques were striking. In fact, for all of my travels around the world I had never encountered anyone who looked as healthy. Tall, lean, and muscular, they had broad faces split with wide smiles of straight, gleaming teeth. Their eyes were white and their skin glowed. And they looked this way despite a diet of very little meat, fruits, or vegetables. They had no access to supplemental vitamins, grocery stores, health care, nutritionists, or even fluoride. How did they do it? What was their secret? As an experimental archaeologist and food anthropologist, I wanted to find out.

I had brought my family with me: my wife, Christina; 12-year-old son, Billy; and 10- and 14-year-old daughters, Alyssa and Brianna. We were ready, or we thought we were. Billy and the girls stood by nervously, at once spellbound and alarmed by what was about to transpire. We watched one of the tribesmen lead a cow forward. Another held its head, steadying it. The animal huffed, shuffling its hooves in the dust, and then stilled. It regarded us with dark, wet eyes.

Then everything happened quickly. With a practiced dart of the wrist and a small bow and arrow crafted just for this purpose, one man efficiently pierced the cows jugular. A second caught the blood flowing from the cows neck in a gourd, about a liter. A third patched the small wound with dirt. Then the creature was released. It ambled off into the brush, unperturbed and seemingly unaffected. The tiny wound was not meant to kill the cow but rather to release a relatively small amount of blood, similar to the way we humans donate at a blood bank. The Samburu view blood the way most of the world views milkas a renewable resource of high-quality nutrition.

In the moments that followed, one of the men filled a second gourd with fresh milk and then poured the two fluids, milk and blood, back and forth from one gourd to the other, mixing them thoroughly.

Finally, he handed the gourd to me. The moment had come.

I paused, looking out across the boundless savanna, the land stretching past the river, over expanses of whistling thorn and star grass. Then I looked down at the gourd, lifted it up, and took my first swallow of fresh blood.

What surprised me was how good it felt in my mouthits density, warmth, and even flavor, akin to a rich chocolate milkshake with a little iron and salt thrown in. And after a few more swallows, it felt satiating. With very little, my body felt full and satisfied, almost as if it instinctively knew that it had just received a huge dose of nutrients that it could really do something with.

I passed the gourd to Christina, who swallowed and widened her eyes, feeling the same. Billy, who is always ready to jump in with both feet, took a healthy swig, but Briannas was tiny, a mere taste. Take a real sip, I encouraged her gently, and she did. But my youngest, Alyssa, couldnt be persuaded. Shed been afraid the cow was going to be hurt (or worse), and it was too far a cultural divide and too big a personal step for her to take. This was OK, too. As the dusk gathered, we stood together in amazement of this place and these people, talking about what we had shared.

So why, you might ask, would I bring my family to this remote African bush to drink blood and milk with a group of Samburu warriors? The answer is both complicated and simple. Today, our relationship to food is filled with confusion and insecurity. Vegan or carnivore? Vegetarian or gluten-free? Keto or Mediterranean? Fasting or Paleo? Every day we hear about a new ingredient or food that is good or bad, a new diet that promises us everything. Our conversations are filled with a dizzying array of perspectives on our relationship to this most essential element of being human: food.

What if I told you that none of these dietary labels mattered? That you should never exclude a food source, no matter how alien or strange? What if I told you that you do not need to count calories, measure your portions, go hungry, or feel deprived? And, at the same time, that you can eat in such a way that you can become healthier, lose the extra pounds, live a more pain-free and energetic life, and contribute to the health of our planet?

How? By learning to eat like a human again. Simply put, this means finding food that is as nutrient-dense as possible, and preparing that food using methods that render it safe and make its nutrients available to our bodies. Thats it. Whatever diet you follow, whatever your food preferences, the goal is to find and prepare food so that it provides the most nutrients. Eating in this way will maximize your health and simultaneously simplify the process of knowing how, what, and when to eat.