Leisha This is about ancestral food, not as nostalgia, but as pattern recognition. It is also about the future Gratitude Meals we will offer at the Gratitude Cafe, meals that come from lived experience and are anchored in something deeply personal.
This article will discuss my Healing Soup , but it is really about what we have forgotten. Before food became something to optimise, restrict, moralise, or perform, it was built to sustain human bodies over long stretches of time. Ancestral meals were shaped by necessity, soil, labour, and care, not trends or rules, and they fed people in ways that were quiet
The word “diet” has perhaps become one of the most damaging concepts in modern food culture, not because people lack information, but because they have been taught to mistrust their bodies and moralise their meals. In trying to eat “well,” many people believe they are choosing health, while quietly undermining the long-term resilience of their nourishment and their relationship with food itself.
Over the years, both in my own body and through watching others, I have noticed a quiet pattern that is rarely spoken about. Those who hold most tightly to rigid food identities, strictly raw, fruit-based, or highly restricted diets without diversity, are often the very people I see struggling with mineral depletion, unstable energy, and immune systems that remain constantly switched on.
In live blood, this often appears as chaos rather than coherence, heightened immune activity, poor mineral buffering, and clear signs of a body working hard to compensate instead of resting into nourishment.
This is not a criticism of these approaches, many of them can be useful for a time, but an observation of what happens when relief is mistaken for resilience and restriction replaces rebuilding.
I speak from lived experience. I have tried on many diets throughout my life, including extended periods of eating high raw, vegan, and vegetarian. I know what these approaches can offer, and I also know where they begin to fall short. I have felt both the short-term clarity they can bring and the longer-term cost they can extract.
While I weave some science into this sharing, my perspective comes from decades of cooking, eating, and watching patterns repeat with my clients. I have seen entire generations cycle through nutritional trends while the ancestral meals of the past quietly and consistently kept people full, functional, mobile, and relatively sane.
This is not about restriction, optimisation, or doing food “right,” and it is not an argument meant to win anyone over.
I have been consulting, researching, cooking and feeding myself and others for over forty years. It is long enough to observe many cycles, watch trends rise and fall, and recognise what actually sustains people over time.
I also know, personally, the damage I have done to myself through extreme dietary approaches, and that knowledge shapes everything I share here.
Ancestral food was not accidental. It was not trendy. It was never aesthetic-driven, because it was never meant to perform. It worked. As these ways of eating fell out of favour, we began to see a rise in chronic disease. Many factors are involved, of course, but diet remains a central one.
This is why people raised on stews, soups, and broths often do not complain about joint pain until much later in life. Not because they stretched more or followed better protocols, but because their tissues were fed, slowly and consistently, over time.
In my experience, protein powders do not do this. Lean, isolated muscle meat does not do this either.
Cuts like shin of beef matter, not because they are old-fashioned or economical, but because hard-working muscles feed hard-working humans. Connective tissue-rich meat offers something the body recognises. Cooked low and slow, collagen becomes gelatin. Glycine supports nervous system regulation. Proline feeds tissue repair. The protein digests at a pace that stabilises blood sugar rather than provoking it.
Potatoes are another place where modern food culture has completely lost the plot. I know many people who have cut out starches entirely. Starch itself was never the problem. Behaviour was. When potatoes, rice, or pasta are cooked, cooled, and reheated, their structure changes, creating resistant starch. This resists early digestion in the small intestine and instead becomes nourishment for beneficial gut microbes further along the digestive tract.
The result is steadier energy, calmer blood sugar signalling, and greater digestive comfort.
Root vegetables such as carrots, parsley root, white carrots, parsnips, and potatoes are mineral delivery systems shaped by the soil they grow in. They provide potassium for blood pressure regulation, magnesium cofactors for enzymatic reactions, and slow-releasing carbohydrates that the liver can actually work with. When cooked in fat, they also deliver fat-soluble compounds in a form the body can properly absorb.
I have watched digestion come back into rhythm and inflammation soften when vegetables are cooked gently instead of blended into raw drinks that overwhelm an already stressed gut.
Warmed plant fibres change their structure in ways that make them easier to process. Heat loosens the tight cellulose lattices of raw vegetables, allowing digestive enzymes to do their work with less strain. This also supports the soil lineage within us, the microbes that break down plant matter and transform it into nourishment rather than stress signals. When vegetables are slowly simmered or lightly sautéed, resistant starches shift, polyphenols become more available, and the meal lands as soothing rather than demanding. In people with tired or inflamed terrain, gentle cooking becomes a bridge that allows the microbiome to reorganise and stabilise.
Garlic, leeks, and onions deserve their own respect. They are not just flavour extras. They actively shape how the gut ecosystem functions. Their fibres feed beneficial microbes, supporting steadier digestion and a more resilient gut lining.
These plants also carry sulphur compounds that support cellular communication, nutrient processing, and structural integrity, much like sulphur-rich soils support strong plant growth. When prepared gently and eaten within real meals, they tend to strengthen the gut barrier and support immune balance.
When people react poorly to them, it is rarely because these foods are inherently problematic. More often, it reflects a digestive terrain destabilised by years of refined and ultra-processed foods, leaving the gut less adaptable and more reactive to foods that were once supportive.
You do not remove the plants.
You remove the food that broke the system.
Salt and fat are another place where fear has done real damage.
I have watched generations under-eat both, then wonder why they crave sugar, feel dizzy, struggle to concentrate, and need constant snacks. Salt supports fluid balance and nervous system signalling. Fat communicates satiety and hormonal safety. A properly built meal tells the body it can stand down, that nourishment has arrived, and that vigilance is no longer required.
This is where my Leisha’s Healing Soup lives.
My healing soup is not a recipe in the modern sense. It is a pot of goodness that changes every time. It is extremely slow cooked and becomes a kitchen sink of melded ingredients.
It begins with a deep bone broth and expands outward into onions, garlic, potatoes, vegetables, roots, greens, herbs, a little of this and a little of that, guided by season, intuition, and how my body feels.
I make this soup when I am depleted, unwell, or simply needing to come back into myself. It warms me from the inside out, settles my nervous system, and supports repair and restoration.
Anyone who cooks this way understands that nourishment is cumulative, not precise. The body responds not only to nutrients, but to warmth, rhythm, and familiarity.
Because this soup has become such a reliable anchor, we freeze-dry it so it can be easily rehydrated and enjoyed without losing the integrity of the original preparation.
What this meal ultimately represents is a remembering. The human microbiome is an extension of the soil biome. What feeds microbes in the earth also feeds microbes in the gut. Diversity, preparation, and patience matter far more than dietary allegiance.
I no longer believe in diets. I have watched too many people lose trust in food and in themselves trying to do it “right.” The most nourishing meals are the ones that invite you to soften, not perform.
This is not about dying to a diet.
It is about returning to food that knows how to keep us alive.
