Talking Shmaltz

I've been thinking about the staple foods that are part of the GAPS introduction diet: chicken soup with vegetables, sauerkraut and chicken fat, or as my parents and grandparents called it: shmaltz. That pale yellow floating blanket that I've always skimmed off the top of my soup and thrown away. Pleh! Bad for you! Good riddance. Well apparently our bodies need saturated animal fat to survive. And my ancestors from eastern Europe, ate plenty of it. Who knew? They did, it seems. My paternal grandfather lived to 102, and boy did he enjoy his shmaltz! Without the aid of nutrition books or the resources of the world wide web, that generation knew enough to eat chicken soup. And sauerkraut. The old common wisdom that when you get sick you should eat chicken soup, has also been proven to be beneficial in more than a hot-soothing-liquid-like-Mom's-homemade kind of way. Here's just one article about the science of chicken soup: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/the-science-of-chicken-soup/
We also now know that sauerkraut and other fermented foods such as kimchi have an abundance of probiotics, vitamin B and copious quantities of C, all in a form highly available to our bodies. So for now I'll be eating like I'm from the old country.