Improve your health - by eating like a human

Modern-day hunter-gatherer Bill Schindler reconnects our dietary past with our present-day lives to make food as safe and as nourishing as possible

NATURE’S BEST: Bill Schindler believes in going
back to primitive ingredients and food production -he drinks blood, forages in the wild, and makes his own butter.

A professor of anthropology is not necessarily someone that you expect to find writing a book about healthy food but in Eat Like a Human: Nourishing Foods and Ancient Ways of Cooking to Revolutionise Your Health (Yellow Kite) Dr Bill Schindler does exactly that. He’s adamant that this is not a diet book: “It’s an exploration of food,” says Schindler. “I don’t like the word diet, the connotation is short term for one specific goal. This is more of a healthy lifestyle book. It’s not restrictive.”

The wide-ranging nature of the book — with chapters focusing on food from plants, animals, grains, maize, dairy, bugs, earth/ash/charcoal and sugar — bears this out, as Schindler drinks blood, forages in the wild, plays with sourdough and makes his own butter. It’s experiential research with Schindler learning by doing: documenting nose-to-tail yak butchery in northern Mongolia, travelling to Thailand with his family to eat insects, a valuable source of protein, and discovering traditional tortilla production in Mexico City.