I often get questions, such as: What’s the difference between ancestral and paleo? Does an ancestral diet include grains? What foods can you eat on an ancestral diet? And what did our ancestors really eat?

Their answers are more complex – and, often, more interesting – than many articles online and in books would have you believe. They also give each of us, no matter where we live, what our health goals are and how much money we have, a positive way out of our society’s unhealthy, industrial food world.

The ‘ancestral diet’, as I see it here at Ancestral Kitchen, is not a rigid set of rules, but a way of learning from the wisdom of food traditions that nourished generations before us. Rather than cutting food groups, worrying about calories or following the latest trend, this way of eating turns to traditional food cultures for its foundations, practises and inspiration.

In this guide, we’ll explore what an ancestral diet is, what foods it includes, how traditional peoples prepared their food, and how you can begin eating ancestrally in your own home.

What Is the Ancestral Diet?

The ancestral diet is an approach to eating based on traditional foods and traditional methods of food preparation. It does not prescribe a single list of approved foods. Instead, it asks us to consider and learn from how people ate before industrial food production transformed the food supply.

>> What is Ancestral Eating? (Ancestral Kitchen Podcast episode)

Not all traditional cultures around the world ate the same way. Scottish crofters, English farm labourers, Mediterranean villagers and Arctic hunters all ate different diets. Yet certain principles appear again and again:

• Real, minimally processed foods
• Seasonal ingredients
• Traditional animal fats
• Fermented foods
• Home cooking
• Time-tested methods of preparation

The ancestral diet is therefore best understood not as a set of rules but as a philosophy of food rooted in history, tradition and practical kitchen skills.

Ancestral Diet Foods: What Can You Eat?

One of the most common questions people ask is: what foods can you eat on an ancestral diet?

No traditional food group is excluded, which means the answer is surprisingly broad.

Animal Foods

• Meat
• Fish and shellfish
• Eggs
• Organ meats
• Bone broths and stocks >> Bones & Water: The Magic of Stock (Ancestral Kitchen Podcast episode)

Dairy Foods

• Milk
• Cream
• Butter
• Cheese
• Yoghurt
• Kefir

Vegetables and Fruit

Fresh, seasonal produce formed an important part of many traditional diets. Depending on the season, foods were eaten fresh, dried, fermented or preserved.

Grains and Legumes

• Oats
• Wheat
• Rye
• Barley
• Peas
• Beans

Contrary to popular belief, grains and legumes have played important roles in many traditional diets. But they were rarely eaten as they are today – ancient varieties were standard and special preparation methods, which we can easily recreate in our modern kitchens – were employed to make them more nutritious.

>> Baking with Ancient Grains (free 30-page downloadable guide)

Traditional Fats

• Butter
• Tallow
• Lard
• Dripping

>> The Fats We Love, The Fats We Leave (Ancestral Kitchen Podcast episode)

Ancestral Diet Foods: A Historical Perspective

The Industrial Revolution began in the UK in the late 1700s. Ancestral food encompasses the food ways and traditions that came before it. Many modern discussions of ancestral eating focus almost exclusively on what stone-age man ate, missing the nigh on 5,000 years between the end of pre-history and the beginning of industry. In those 5,000 years our ancestors practised local, sustainable food ways that enabled their communities to thrive.

Fermented foods, slow-cooked stocks, nose-to-tail eating, saturated fat and sourdough – these were routinely part of traditional food cultures right up until industrialisation.

Over that time, there was never a single ancestral diet. Instead, there have been countless ancestral diets shaped by climate, geography, culture and available ingredients.

What Did Our Ancestors Really Eat?

Our ancestors ate what was available to them – the land shaping their diets.

In Scotland, oats formed the foundation of daily life for centuries – porridge and oatcakes sustaining generations of families. In parts of northern Europe, sourdough rye breads were staple foods. Across much of the Mediterranean, bread, legumes and dairy products featured prominently.

Most traditional diets included a mixture of plant and animal foods. Meat was often valued and celebrated, but in many communities it was eaten less frequently than modern assumptions suggest.

The ancestral diet is about recognising the common threads that connect traditional food cultures around the world: real food, careful preparation, seasonal eating and practical kitchen wisdom.

Traditional Food Preparation Is Central to the Ancestral Diet

When people discuss ancestral diet foods, they often focus on ingredients. Traditional cultures, however, paid equal attention to preparation. Their methods included:

• Fermenting
• Soaking
• Sprouting
• Culturing
• Slow-cooking
• Drying and preserving

A traditional sourdough loaf differs significantly from a modern industrial loaf. Likewise, a long-cooked bone broth is a different food to a powdered stock cube.

Understanding these methods helps us appreciate that the ancestral diet is about more than simply choosing different ingredients.

Why Fermented Foods Matter in an Ancestral Diet

Fermentation appears repeatedly in traditional food cultures around the world.

Milk became yoghurt and cheese. Vegetables became pickles and sauerkraut. Grains became sourdough breads and porridges.

Fermentation preserved precious food harvests, improved flavour and made food more digestible, Cheese and salami are just two examples of how it also created entirely new culinary traditions.

>>What We’re Fermenting Right Now (Ancestral Kitchen Podcast episode)

Can Grains Be Part of an Ancestral Diet?

Yes. History tells a much more nuanced story than many modern diet debates.

Many traditional societies relied on grains as staple foods. Oats sustained much of Scotland. Millet was integral to many communities in Africa and Eastern Europe. Heritage wheat featured prominently across the Mediterranean and Middle East.

The much more useful question to ask is not whether grains were eaten, but how they were prepared.

>> Baking with Ancient Grains (free 30 page PDF with instructions and five recipes!)

Is the Ancestral Diet the Same as Paleo?

No. While the two approaches overlap in some areas, they are not identical.

Many traditional cultures consumed dairy foods, grains and legumes.

The ancestral diet draws inspiration from a wide range of traditional food cultures rather than attempting to recreate a single prehistoric menu.

What Does an Ancestral Diet Look Like in Practice?

An ancestral diet can be a lot simpler than you may imagine. Here’s an example of what’s eaten in my house:

Breakfast

Sourdough porridge topped with soaked nuts/seeds, cream with optional seasonal fruit.

Midday meal

A slow-cooked beef stew served with ancient grain sourdough bread.

Supper

Eggs scrambled in lard, millet cooked in bone broth, seasonal salad.

Snacks

Cheese, oatcakes spread with butter, soaked nuts/seeds, seasonal fruit.

An ancestral diet is nutrient-dense, delicious and satisfying – yet it need not be complicated. Leftovers regularly feature in our meals and foods are often repeated. The aim is not perfection or historical re-enactment. The goal is to bring traditional food wisdom into modern life.

>> A Week of Ancestral Meals: What We Really Ate (Ancestral KItchen Podcast episode)

How to Start an Ancestral Diet

Many people ask me this question! I like to suggest picking one thing that appeals to you and starting there. Below is a list of places you could begin, each followed by a resource of mine which will help you get going:

• Learn to make stock >> Bones & Water: The Magic of Stock (Ancestral Kitchen Podcast episode)
• Create a sourdough starter and learn how to bake a loaf >> Make & Maintain a Rye Sourdough Starter (pay what you can mini-course)
• Ferment some vegetables >> Super-Simple Sauerkraut Recipe (blog post)
• Cook more meals from scratch. >> Preparing Nutrient-Dense Meals from Scratch Every Day (Ancestral Kitchen Podcast episode)
• Replace ultra-processed snacks with traditional foods (blog post coming soon!)
• Swap out industrial seed oils for traditional fats >> How to Render Fat at Home (with Q&A) (Ancestral Kitchen Podcast episode)
• Ferment your morning oats >> The Best Way to Soak Oats (blog post)

Small steps are the key to making sustainable change. If you’d like a guide to help you get started, download 20 Small Steps to an Ancestral Kitchen from the top of any page on website of the show I co-host, Ancestral Kitchen Podcast.

Frequently Asked Questions About the Ancestral Diet

Is the ancestral diet the same as the paleo diet?

No. The ancestral diet takes a broader historical view and includes many foods that traditional cultures ate, including dairy products, fermented grains and legumes.

Can you eat grains on an ancestral diet?

Yes. Many traditional cultures relied heavily on grains such as oats, rye, barley and wheat. Traditional preparation methods were often as important as the grains themselves. >> All About Grains: Preparing, Processing & Digesting! (Ancestral Kitchen Podcast episode)

Is sourdough part of an ancestral diet?

Absolutely. Sourdough is one of the oldest and most widespread traditional methods of grain preparation.

Can you eat dairy on an ancestral diet?

Many traditional cultures consumed dairy foods, particularly butter, cream, cheese, yoghurt and other cultured dairy products. They traditionally ate non-pasteurised milk >> Raw Milk: Our Ancestral Heritage (Ancestral Kitchen Podcast episode)

Are potatoes part of an ancestral diet?

Yes. Potatoes have nourished traditional communities for centuries and fit comfortably within an ancestral approach to eating.

Can you eat rice on an ancestral diet?

Yes. Rice has sustained traditional societies across Asia for thousands of years and remains one of the world’s most important staple foods.

What foods should be avoided on an ancestral diet?

Most people focus on minimising ultra-processed foods, industrial seed oils, sugary soft drinks and highly refined snack foods.

Do I need to make everything from scratch?

Although we can all get passionate about making change, trying to do everything at once is, as I know, a recipe for disaster! Start with one practice such as making broth, baking sourdough or fermenting vegetables and build gradually.

Final Thoughts: What Is the Ancestral Diet Really About?

At its heart, the ancestral diet is about learning from the generations who came before us.

It is not a rigid meal plan; there is no list of forbidden foods.

Rather, it encourages us to explore traditional foods, traditional preparation methods and traditional kitchen skills.

Whether that means baking sourdough, making broth, fermenting vegetables, cooking with traditional fats or rediscovering regional food traditions, the goal is the same: to bring the wisdom, joy and flavour of real, ancestral food into our modern kitchens.

More Resources:

Ancestral Kitchen Podcast has over 130 episodes focusing on all aspects of eating ancestrally in our modern-world kitchens.

If you’d like some recipe inspiration, check my stash here.

The Ancestral Kitchen Challenge is a fun, no pressure way to explore an ancestral diet, giving you achievable goals to work at in your kitchen.

But I don’t spend my whole life in the kitchen! Instead, it’s well-loved routines that help me to provide nutrient-dense food at our table day in, day out. Like a comforting blanket or favourite meal these rhythms create backdrops to my days and serve myself and my family well – ensuring that what we are eating supports both our values and our health.

In this post I’ll share the daily, weekly and monthly routines that keep mytraditional, ancestral kitchen running. In doing so, I hope you’ll see how rhythms have such horsepower and be inspired to work with them in your own home.

Daily routines in my Ancestral Kitchen

Soak/Ferment Oatmeal

During the week we usually have oatmeal (called porridge here in the UK) for breakfast. I prepare this the night before by soaking rolled/flaked oats in water. Most often I include a live starter and/or some phytase-rich, freshly-ground flour.

You can watch my You Tube video Healthy, Fermented Oats here.

If you prefer to read, this post How To Make Fermented Oats will talk you through it.

Time needed: 5 minutes

Result: Delicious, healthy breakfast every day!

Make Tibicos/Water Kefir

As a family, we drink 1 litre/quart of Tibicos (often known as water kefir) every day.

My son (who is 10 years old) is in charge of this process. Once a day he strains the jar of fermenting water kefir into a swing top bottle for a second fermentation, adding flavourings (like fruit and ginger). He then prepares a new jar, using sugar, water and our water kefir grains, for a first fermentation.

To see how check my post How To Make Tibicos (Water Kefir).

Time needed: 5 to 10 minutes

Result: A litre of probiotic water kefir everyday.

Cooking!

I prepare three meals a day from fresh, local ingredients. That does not, however, mean that I spend hours and hours in the kitchen every day.

Breakfast:

Our breakfast most days is oatmeal. This takes 15 minutes to cook.

Main meal:

Our main meal is at noon and usually consists of previously-made bread, seasonal vegetables and either freshly-cooked (or leftover) meat/fish/eggs or frozen food prepared on previous days. I usually start preparing this meal about 45 minutes before we eat.

Evening meal:

We eat our last meal of the day around 5pm. This is lighter and often consists of grains cooked in stock, seasonal vegetables and cheese or eggs. This meal usually takes around 30 minutes to prepare.

If you’d like to hear me talking about how I do this, you’ll enjoy my podcast episode Preparing Nutrient-Dense Meals From Scratch Every Day.

Time needed: 1 1/2 hours

Result: 3 meals a day

Weekly Routines in my Ancestral Kitchen

Roll Oats

Home-rolled oats taste much better than those that have been rolled industrially. Once a week we roll a kilo (about 2 pounds) of oat groats in a manual Marcato Marga grain mill. This provides our oatmeal/porridge for the week. If you wanted to do this process more quickly, you could buy an electric flaker. See my post How to Roll Oats at Home for more details.

Time needed: 30 minutes

Result: The oats for our breakfast all week taste great!

Make Oatcakes

Flatbreads are so versatile and the traditional British flatbread, oatcake, is something that I make every week. It’s great as a snack, a compliment to soup or a quick supper. I make oatcakes once a week and store them in an airtight container.

You can follow my recipe for Traditional Scottish Oatcakes here.

Time needed: 30 minutes hands-on

Result: A container of oatcakes that will last all week.

Process my Kitchen Waste into Bokashi Compost

Cooking with real food everyday means that I have a lot of organic food waste. I recycle this waste into amazing soil for my plants using the bokashi compost system – a clean, simple method that uses the power of fermentation to produce compost quickly. It can even be used in an apartment!

Daily, I collect waste in a caddy on my kitchen counter. When this is full, I transfer it to my bokashi bin and layer it with a bran that has previously been inoculated with lactobacillus. Once a week I drain off the liquid, which I used to water my plants. Once the bin is full I leave for two weeks to ferment before digging into my garden.

Listen to the lowdown on bokashi here.

Time needed: 15 minutes.

Result: Much better/happier vegetables and plant; they grow so well in bokashi!

A Trip to the Farmers Market

The majority of the food that comes into my house is from my weekly local farmers market. We look forward to this as a family trip out – it’s time together outside and there is always good conversation to be had.

Time needed: 2 hours

Result: A fridge/freezer full of the food that we will eat that week; virtually no need to do any other shopping.

Milk Kefir

As well as water kefir, we consume milk kefir. Once a week, I decant a litre/quart of milk into a glass jar and add in some milk kefir grains. This is then a hands-off ferment, taking 4 to 5 days to complete. During that time, I stir it once a day. Once it is finished, I strain it through a plastic sieve into a fresh glass jar and conserve the milk kefir grains in a small amount of water in the fridge until next time.

Time needed: 5 minutes

Result: Probiotic-rich milk kefir all week.

Kefir Cheese

Cheese is one of our more expensive purchases, and to help with the cost, I love to make a simple kefir cheese at home. Using fresh, very creamy milk, I decant a litre/quart into a glass jar and then add milk kefir grains. I stir this daily, watching for when it starts to separate. Once I see the whey in pockets distinct from the curds, I stir it well, looking for and picking out the kefir grains, then strain it through a cheesecloth. This leaves me with cheese in the cloth and whey in the jar.

I use the whey as a starter for fermented drinks or cook grains and it.

Time needed: 15 minutes

Result: Inexpensive cheese for a week.

Make Sourdough Bread

We eat sourdough bread made from the ancient grains spelt and rye every day. I make these once a week, ideally both on the same day so that I can efficiently use our oven.

Ancestral Kitchen Podcast episode: Your Sourdough Questions Answered

My e-book: Spelt Sourdough Every Day

 I freshly-grind flour for these breads using my Mockmill

My post all about the Mockmill is here.

Time needed: 60 minutes hands-on

Result: Sourdough bread at every main meal.

At the same time as making our sourdough bread I will also refresh my sourdough starter.

Refresh my Sourdough Starter

I maintain a thick, low-hydration, wholegrain rye sourdough starter. I love this method because it gives you a really active starter with very little fuss. I keep it in the fridge most of the time and only refresh it once a week – usually the evening before I make sourdough bread

How to Create a Sourdough Starter

Time needed: 15 minutes

Result: A sourdough starter without having to worry about it for the rest of the week.

Make the Probiotic Millet Drink, Boza

My family love the home-made probiotic drink boza. It’s gluten-free and dairy-free – I started making it for my son who, early in his life, had a dairy intolerance. Now, my whole family adores it!

To find out what boza is, read my article What is Boza Drink?

Boza is how I usually start my week. I cook up the millet on a Monday morning and, by Monday evening, I’ve blended all the necessary ingredients and the drink is fermenting on my counter. It’s usually ready to tuck into by Wednesday.

Time needed: 20 minutes hands-on

Result: A delicious, inexpensive probiotic drink that is dairy-free.

Make One Batch Meal

Once a week I will take more time to prepare food, making four or five servings at one time so that I can stock our fridge/freezer with quick, nutritious meals.

I usually choose dishes that will cook without me having to give them much hands-on attention like a big pot of soup or a slow-cooked stew.

Here are two examples:

Chicken and Vegetable Soup

Beef and Barley Stew

Time needed: 2 hours hands-on

Result: A meal that day plus 3 to 4 further ready-to-go meals for later in the week.

Monthly Routines in my Ancestral Kitchen

Make Bone Broth

Bone broth is one of the fundamentals of a traditional food diet and it is so cheap and easy to make. I buy bones for next to nothing from a local farmer and, in addition, I save the bones from any whole meat that I cook, keeping them in the freezer until I’m ready to make a batch of broth.

I use the slow cooker to make bone broth, putting in the bones, some root vegetables and water. I set the cooker to low and leave it for 18 to 24 hours before straining out the protein-rich, delicious broth.

Podcast episode: Broth Q & A

My 5 Favourite Ways to Use Bone Broth

I store about a litre/quart of broth in the fridge (with the fat cap still on it to help it last longer) and freeze the rest.

Time needed: 1 hour hands on

Result: Broth for a month, ready when I need it.

Make Sauerkraut

Most meals are better with sauerkraut! Not only is the flavour profile delicious, but you’re adding a spoonful of live probiotics to your plate. Sauerkraut using my method is super-simple. I make it this way once a month, leaving it on the counter to ferment before I transfer it to the fridge the following month, when I make the next batch.

Super-Simple Sauerkraut Recipe

Time needed: 45 minutes

Result: Probiotic-rich sauerkraut for 4 to 6 weeks.

Home-Render Lard

I am a lard lover. We use lard to cook with, in breads and pastries and we spread it on sourdough bread (as you would butter) before sprinkling with salt!

Supermarket lard tastes horrible. Home-rendered lard made from the fat of well-fed pigs is a completely different food. It’s also very economical and easy to make. I source back fat from our local pig farmer and I use the slow cooker to render it into lard.

How to Render Lard (in a Slow Cooker)

Time needed: 2 1/2 hours

Result: Delicious, economical, sustainable fat that will last 1 to 2 months.

Purchase Grains and Other Foods in Bulk

Our house is very small, yet we still find enough space to store our grains for a month, which I purchase in bulk. Our supply includes whole spelt grain, whole rye grain, whole millet grain, whole oat grain, Scottish oats (called oatmeal in the UK), linseed (flaxseed) and nuts. Bulk purchasing means that I’m not worrying about running out of grains and also saves me so much money!

Time needed: 1 hour

Result: A cupboard full of grains that will last at least a month.

Bringing Routines into Your Own Kitchen

As with any other long-term journey, bringing ancestral food routines into your own kitchen is about picking up one thing at a time. You may want to do it all (I always have done and am sure I always will!) but in my experience that results in overwhelm, which does not help. Select one thing that you would really like to make part of your kitchen rhythms and focus on it exclusively until it feels a natural part of your life and then move onto the next. Good luck!

For more inspiration you can listen to Ancestral Kitchen Podcast. In particular the episodes 20 Small Steps to a Ancestral Kitchen and the Ancestral Kitchen Challenge contain lot of step-by-step inspiration.

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