What if some of the best ancestral wisdom for picky eaters isn’t found in a new strategy, supplement, or approach to mealtimes?

What if it has been hiding in traditional cultures for thousands of years?

This week on the Livin’Sky Podcast I sat down with Hilda Labrada Gore, known online as Holistic Hilda, a world traveler and educator who has spent years living alongside indigenous and traditional communities in Ethiopia, Mongolia, Ecuador, Peru, and Australia to uncover the simple health principles that have sustained human families for generations.

What she has found challenges almost everything we have been told about feeding our children.

The Lost Diet and What It Actually Means

Hilda points to the work of Dr. Weston A. Price, a dentist researcher who traveled the world in the 1930s visiting 14 different people groups in search of the healthiest people on the planet. He found them. And he found that every single one of them was eating what Hilda calls the lost diet: local, organic, seasonal, and traditional foods.

Price took food samples from these communities and shipped them back to his lab for analysis. What he found was stunning. Indigenous people eating their traditional diets were consuming ten times more fat soluble vitamins, specifically vitamins A, D, E, and K, than people eating modern Western diets.

Ten times.

Not from more vegetables. From animal foods. From organ meats, fish roe, dairy, eggs, and the fat of animals raised on their natural diet.

This is the nutritional foundation that builds healthy brains, strong immune systems, properly formed jaws, and children whose bodies are ready and willing to eat. And it is almost entirely absent from the modern diet we are feeding our kids.

What Traditional Cultures Can Teach Us About Feeding Our Kids

In every traditional community Hilda has visited, there is no separate kids menu.

In Mongolia, she sat with Kazakh Eagle Hunters around a central platter shared by the entire family, children included. The diet was almost entirely meat, fat, and dairy because that is what the environment provided. And the children had the most beautiful wide faces and strong jaws, with room for all of their teeth.

In Ethiopia, the children were running barefoot, eating what the family ate, and the community knew exactly which trees to turn to for fever and which plants to make tea from for malaria.

In Ecuador, the Quechua people shared food not just within families but across the entire community. Hilda was told that when COVID came in 2020, the women gathered medicinal plants and herbs and brought them to every affected household. Nobody was hospitalized. Nobody died.

These communities are not following a feeding program. They are simply eating real food together, from birth, without pressure, without a kids menu, and without anyone deciding in advance that their child will not like something.

Ancestral Wisdom for Picky Eaters: What This Means at Home

As a feeding specialist I think about this constantly. Because the families I work with are doing everything they have been told to do. They are offering variety. They are hiding vegetables. They are trying reward charts and exposure strategies. And their children are still struggling.

But when I look at what Hilda found in her travels, the answer becomes clearer.

Children are not picky in traditional communities because they have been nourished from the very beginning with foods that actually build their bodies. Their nervous systems are regulated because they are outside in the sun and eating fat. Their sensory systems are not overwhelmed because they are not spending hours under artificial light and in front of screens. And they are exposed to real food at every meal because the family eats together and there is no alternative.

This is not about forcing children to eat. It is about creating the conditions where eating becomes natural. And it starts long before the meal.

Fat Is Not the Enemy. It Is the Foundation.

Hilda is passionate about fat and so am I.

Butter, tallow, lard, and coconut oil are the saturated fats that have nourished human families for thousands of years. They are the building blocks of the brain, the nervous system, and the hormonal system. Dr. Price found that the fat soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K, which come primarily from animal fats, were the single most important nutritional difference between the healthiest people on the planet and those eating modern diets.

And yet we have been told for decades to avoid them.

Hilda puts it simply: if you are anxious, fat. Brain fog, fat. Fatigued, fat. This is what the body wants to run on. And for children whose brains are still developing, whose nervous systems are still forming, and whose bodies are working hard to grow, fat is not optional. It is essential.

If your picky eater is dysregulated, reactive, and anxious at mealtimes, one of the simplest things you can do is make sure they are getting enough quality fat every single day.

Eating Outside Is a Feeding Strategy

This was one of my favorite moments in the conversation. Hilda shared a story about a trainer who wore a continuous glucose monitor and ate the exact same meal one day inside and one day outside. His blood glucose spiked significantly less when he ate outside.

For our picky eaters, this matters enormously. A nervous system that is dysregulated and a blood sugar that is spiking and crashing make mealtimes harder than they need to be. Taking the meal outside, even occasionally, can shift the entire experience.

And as Hilda shared, children in traditional communities are outside constantly. They are grounding. They are in the sun. They are regulated before they ever sit down to eat.

How to Apply This at Home Right Now

The beauty of this ancestral wisdom for picky eaters is that it does not require perfection. Small shifts toward real food, outdoor time, family meals, and nutrient density can begin changing the environment around eating. Hilda mentions that:

Get fat straight first. Switch from seed oils and fake spreads to butter, tallow, lard, and coconut oil. Your family will notice the difference within days in terms of satiety, energy, and mood.

Buy ground beef with organ meats mixed in. Hilda does this with beef from Amish farmers. She makes burgers, meatloaf, and spaghetti sauce and her family has never known. This is one of the simplest ways to dramatically increase nutrient density.

Use Pluck organ based seasonings. Sprinkle them on safe foods your child already eats. Start with a speck. Add more over time.

Eat together as a family without a separate kids menu. Always have something your child will eat at the table, but let them be present with the real food the family is eating. Exposure over time without pressure is how traditional children develop adventurous palates.

Eat outside when possible. Even once a week. Watch what happens to your child’s willingness to try something new.

Get outside in the morning sun before screens. This regulates the nervous system, the circadian rhythm, and the appetite in ways that make mealtimes go more smoothly all day long.

Ancestral wisdom for picky eaters reminds us that feeding children is about far more than what ends up on the plate.

About Holistic Hilda

Hilda Labrada Gore is a world traveler, speaker, educator, and host of the Wise Traditions Podcast. She is the founder of the Mother Code, a course on six ancient habits for endless energy, and is writing a book called You on Sunshine. She also partners with Birthright, a whole food animal based supplement company. Find her at holistichilda.com and on Instagram at HolisticHilda.

About Lena Livinsky

Lena Livinsky is a speech language pathologist and holistic pediatric feeding specialist and the founder of Livin’Sky Kids. She helps overwhelmed moms of picky eaters understand what is actually driving their child’s food refusal using the BLOOM Framework. Book a free Picky Eating Clarity Call with Lena.

Explore More Episodes of the Livin’Sky Podcast

If this conversation resonated with you, you will love these other episodes where we go deep on the root causes of picky eating and what is really happening inside your child’s body:

Are Toxic Superfoods Harming Your Child? The Truth About Oxalates with Sally K. Norton