The Original Hunza Diet Bread

Here is an article that makes a very interesting reading.

The British General and soldiers arrived in the summer during the 1870s as did everyone who traveling to Hunza. This was the harvest season for the grains, fruits, and vegetables from the gardens, and much of the food was consumed raw. Because fuel for cooking was saved to be used in winter for boiling meat and providing some heat for the stone dwellings, very little meat was consumed in summer, and vegetables were eaten raw.

Curious visitors who followed the British soldiers to Hunza Valley years later naturally arrived in summer also, and the summer diet of the people led visitors to assume they were mainly vegetarian and ate very little meat. This was typical of the summer harvest season. Many primitive cultures including cavemen lived in a similar manner, gorging themselves on available fruit during the short season and eating mostly meat for the rest of the year. The people of Hunza differed in that they never had an abundance of anything except rocks. They did not have enough animals to provide abundant meat during the winter because of the lack of fodder. They did not want to kill female animals that were milk producers unless the animal was old or lame.

Other world cultures who have had vast lands of rich, lush pastures always lived an easier life by eating the domesticated or wild animals. Hunza was always the opposite. Pasture land was nonexistent. The animals were kept in pens and fed with gathered vegetation waste from the gardens consisting of leaves, twigs, and grasses. It was a highly labor-intensive culture, but they had no choice. They eventually ate every animal that was born.

Most of the males were eaten upon reaching near full size and as fodder ran low. A few were kept for breeding purposes only. The females were killed and eaten when milk production ran low or when they failed to produce an offspring. The oldest females were killed and eaten as fodder ran low during the harsh late winter season. Hunza was never a "Garden of Eden" as falsely claimed in numerous books full of distortions, myths, and lies.

The Hunzakuts are said to have cultivated plants included barley, millet, wheat, buckwheat, turnips, carrots, dried beans, peas, pumpkins, melons, onions, garlic, cabbage, cauliflower, apricots, mulberries, walnuts, almonds, apples, plums, peaches, cherries, pears, and pomegranates. John Clark did not find green beans, wax beans, beets, endive, lettuce, radishes, turnips, spinach, yellow pear tomatoes, Brussel sprouts, or parsley.

Cherry tomatoes and potatoes are thought to have been brought in by the British. The long list of currently grown plant varieties should not be a consideration when discussing the longevity of the Hunzakuts and their past diet.

Apricot trees were very popular, and the fruit was eaten raw in season and sun dried for winter. The pits were cracked to obtain the kernel that was crushed to obtain the oil for cooking and lamps. The hard shell was kept for a fire fuel. The kernel and oil could be eaten from the variety of apricots with a sweet kernel, but the bitter kernel variety had an oil containing poisonous prussic acid. Click the picture to see an enlargement.

The apricot trees were allowed to grow very large in order to obtain the maximum yield. Picking the maximum amount of fruit was more important than the difficulty in picking. The children would scamper to the higher branches to pick or shake off the fruit. Planting new trees required several years of growth before any fruit was produced. The special garden silt or glacial milk did not contribute to the age or size of the trees as is commonly claimed. Our modern orchards are not managed that way because we have abundant space and picking is expensive. Our trees are cut when the size makes them difficult to harvest, not because they fail to live as long as those in Hunza.

Mulberries, which resemble blackberries in size and shape, are a favorite fruit. When fully ripe, their flavor is sweet-sour but somewhat bland. The variety grown in Hunza was most likely a golden color.

A large variety of indigenous wildlife including markhors sheep, Marco Polo sheep, geese, ducks, pheasants, and partridge provided the early Hunza hunters with meat in addition to their sheep, goats, and domesticated Yaks. Chickens were also raised for meat and eggs until sometime in the 1950s when they were banned by the Mir.

The Queen and her children traveled on Yaks while the King and other men rode horses. The Yak is a strong wild animal which they domesticated for for traveling in the mountains as a beast of burden pack animal. In addition to Yaks, which provided milk and meat, the Hunzakuts also had goats, sheep, cows, and horses.

However, there were very few cows or horses in Hunza in 1950 because they consumed a lot of fodder compared to goats and sheep. The Yaks, goats, and sheep were herded in the summer to areas just below the snow line for feeding on sparse grasses and plants. They were milked by the herders who made butter that was delivered back to the people in the villages below. The herders had plenty of milk to drink that valley people lacked. The Yaks were also milked. Cows and horses could not be herded to the higher elevation because the vegetation there was simply to sparse.

A great celebration was held to commemorate the barley harvest, the first harvest of the early summer to break the spring starvation period. The barley was ground, mixed with water, and fried to make a pancake style bread called chapatis, and hot stones were used for cooking the bread prior to the availability of steel plate or cast iron griddles.

The bread recipe would change to whatever grain was available. Wheat was harvested later in the summer. The Hunza bread recipe found in books and on websites is nothing whatsoever like the various breads of the Hunzakuts. The primitive Hunzakuts ground grains between two rocks much like the North American Indians. They had constructed a water wheel-powered stone grinder by the time John Clark had arrived, but many people still ground the grain by hand.

To their credit, the Hunzakuts did developed a double-crop farming method. Barley was the first crop harvested, then replaced by millet. Wheat was harvested later in the summer followed by winter buckwheat. The double-crop planting method was done to make the maximum use of the valuable land, not because grains matured faster in Hunza as often claimed.

In summer, meat was conserved for very special occasions and festivals. Livestock were much too valuable to be killed indiscriminately, so animals became a major source of food only during the cold winter when other foods ran out. The Original Hunza Winter Diet.

The Hunza people sun dried fruit in the summer and stored grain for winter consumption. They also had some meat. They consumed all parts of the animals, not just the flesh. They ate the animal's brain, lungs, heart, liver, tripe, flesh, and everything else except the hide, wind-pipe, and genitalia. They cleaned bones to a polish and broke them to eat the marrow. The fat was highly favored for cooking, and a stew was made by boiling meat and grains.

The Yaks, goats, and sheep were bred each year for the meat and to keep the milk production flowing. The females were kept for breeding and milk production until reaching a nonproductive age when they were also slaughtered for food. Any lame animal was slaughtered to prevent the loss of meat. The food supply was critical, and springtime starvation was always a concern for hungry children.

The Hunzakuts had a major flaw in their method of raising animals. They kept equal numbers of males and females, which reduced the productivity. If a Hunza farmer had six sheep he would have three ewes and three rams. The ewes would have three lambs each spring. The production could have been increased to five lambs each spring if they had kept five ewes and one ram. The rams also ate more fodder but produced no milk. The same was true for goats. This faulty farming practice reduced the amount milk, meat, and number of offspring each year.

During the winter, a major part of the diet consisted of milk, buttermilk, yogurt, butter, and cheese. The diet was a high-fat diet throughout the year contrary to false claims that they ate a low-fat diet. The milk was more than 50 percent fat on a calorie basis and nothing was wasted.

The spring starvation was a difficult period for the Hunzakuts. This was the period when the fodder stores for animal feed ran dangerously low or was totally consumed. The animals suffered as well and those who were vulnerable were killed and eaten by the starving people. The children were extremely thin and malnourished. Diseases abound and many died. The "healthy Hunza" claim made in many books and websites is strictly false.

Article published on Biblelife.

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