Luscious lemon balm - a plant for what ails ya

Lemon balm

Melissa officinalis 

Plant Family: Lamiaceae (mint)

Plant energetics: Cooling and drying, aromatic

Parts used: Aerial leaves, just before flowering

Plant Properties: relaxing nervine, anti-viral, relaxing diaphoretic, aromatic digestant, antispasmodic

What’s in a name? 

Well, when it comes to Lemon balm, Melissa officinalis, quite a lot! 

It gets its common name from the fresh lemony scent that emanates from its freshly bruised leaves. Sometimes it’s only referred to as balm, which is defined as something that is soothing, healing or comforting. 

The genus name of Melissa comes to us from Greek, meaning ‘honey bee’ or simply ‘honey’. In Greek mythology Melissa was a nymph who shared the wisdom and honey of the bees. Lemon balm is a favorite plant of the bees. Not only does it produce lots of nectar, it has also been used by bee keepers to keep bees from swarming. 

The species name, officinalis, let’s us know this plant was once a part of the official US Pharmacopeia. 

Just by understanding more about lemon balm’s many names we already know a lot about this plant. But, of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg. 

One of the best things about lemon balm is its crowd-pleasing scent and taste. Most people will drink of this herbal medicine gladly. Sometimes we think that effective medicine needs to make our nose scrunch in disgust, but lemon balm packs a tasty powerful punch. 

Lemon balm originally comes to us from the Mediterranean. It’s been used for medicine for thousands of years. Pliny, Hippocrates, Galen, Culpepper and even Shakespeare all spoke of its attributes. There are also records of Thomas Jefferson growing lemon balm at Monticello. 

Maude Grieve writes the following in her classic two-volume set A Modern Herbal:

The London Dispensary (1696) says: 

'An essence of Balm, given in Canary wine, every morning will renew youth, strengthen the brain, relieve languishing nature and prevent baldness.' John Evelyn wrote: 'Balm is sovereign for the brain, strengthening the memory and powerfully chasing away melancholy.

12th century herbalist Saint Hildegarde von Bingen said “Lemon balm contains within it the virtues of a dozen other plants.” 

As we’ll see, it does have many varied uses. 

When I think of lemon balm the first thing that comes to my mind is of its calming and relaxing properties. Officially we call this a relaxing nervine, an herb that relaxes, soothes and supports the nervous system. It can be used for anxiety, hysteria, frayed nerves, stress, insomnia, seasonal affective disorder, nervous tension and general feelings of “I’m on my last straw!”. 

Older sources list it as being helpful for heart palpitations as well. In more modern times Kiva Rose says, “I personally use it for panic attacks with heart palpitations where the panic is very buzzy feeling.” 

Heart palpitations, nervous tension, insomnia, hyperactivity are all classic indications for lemon balm and these combined described what some people experience when their thyroid becomes overactive such as the case in Grave’s disease. In fact, lemon balm, bugleweed (Lycopus spp.) and motherwort (Leonorus cardiacus) is a classic western formula for a hyperactive thyroid. 

In a conversation with Kiva Rose she explains that she likes to use lemon balm when it is specifically indicated: 

I especially like it for those wound-up pitta people who are addicted to overworking themselves, or even just addicted to being addicted to various foods, drugs, activities. It seems to somehow help them pull back from the compulsion that has them frantically attached to self-destructive activities. These people tend to have clear heat signs, complete with an often flushed face and their enthusiasm/interest may come off as a bit on the feverish side.

Lemon balm is a member of the mint family and, like other mints, it has complicated energetics. Thermally it has been classified as both warming and cooling. This is explained partly by understanding different perspectives within the major living herbal traditions today. 

Lemon balm has a sour taste. In Ayurveda sour is classified as hot and wet while in Traditional Chinese Medicine sour is thought to be cooling and moistening. In western herbalism sour is generally thought to be cooling. 

Matthew Wood explains: 

Lemon balm has a sour taste, as its name indicates – it is one of the few sour mints. Like most sour plants, it is cooling and sedative. It combines this property with the typical nerve-calming powers of the mint family to make a strong, but safe and simple sedative. These powers are much more marked when the plant is tinctured fresh. A tincture of fresh melissa should be on the shelf in every household as a general sedative.

In recent years lemon balm has been researched extensively for its anti-viral properties, especially in relation to herpes simplex 1 and 2. This is the virus that causes cold sores and genital sores. Lemon balm can both lessen the severity and speed the healing of an acute attack and, when taken regularly, can prevent future outbreaks. That’s a pretty powerful plant! For a thorough listing of scientific studies for this plant go to http://www.greenmedinfo.com and type in Melissa officinalis as your keyword search. 

Herbalist Karta Purkh Singh Khalsa recommends lemon balm applied externally to chicken pox eruptions, a virus closely related to herpes simplex. 

As a mild spasmodic it can help relieve tension headaches, back pain and other mild pain due to tension. As an aromatic and carminative herb it can relieve stagnant digestion, easing abdominal cramping, and promote the digestive process in general. 

It’s been used as a mild emmenagogue to promote late menstruation as well as relieve menstrual cramping. 

Lemon balm has even been used for children who are teething to soothe and calm this sometimes painful process. 

A couple of years ago I was out hiking in an old growth forest with a group of people in the Pacific Northwest. We were following an overgrown trail covered with giant ferns and other undergrowth. While enjoying the giant trees towering above us, someone inadvertently stepped on a wasp nest. We were quickly surrounded by these powerful stinging beasts and I escaped with a handful of nasty stings. Looking around for plantain I soon found lemon balm instead. I chewed this up, applied it on the wounds and watched in amazement as the pain and swelling was greatly reduced. 


Just recently I was with a four year old who was stung on his upper ear by a wasp. Again I searched for plantain, couldn't find it, but found plenty of lemon balm. Within a minute of applying a spit-poultice of lemon balm leaves the child had stopped crying and hours later there was no indication he was even stung. Later that week his parents (who are NOT herbalists) bought a lemon balm plant. 

According to Maude Grieve lemon balm has a long history of use for wounds and even for venomous stings

The juice of Balm glueth together greene wounds,' and gives the opinion of Pliny and Dioscorides that 'Balm, being leaves steeped in wine, and the wine drunk, and the leaves applied externally, were considered to be a certain cure for the bites of venomous beasts and the stings of scorpions.

Botanically speaking...

As mentioned, lemon balm is in the mint family and has many attributes or identifying features common to this family. 

It has square stems and leaves are in an opposite branching pattern. 

Lemon balm flowers are white and have the classic “lipped” look of the mint family. It typically flowers from June to September. 

Photo by Leo Michels 

This is a perennial plant that is easy to grow. Watch out! It will spread readily in your garden. 

If you crush a leaf in your fingers you’ll be introduced to that wonderful lemon scent of lemon balm. In the past it was considered a “strewing herb,” which is an herb hung in the rafters or strewed on the ground to emanate a pleasant scent. 

Using lemon balm

When using this plant many people find fresh lemon balm to be the best choice. Freshly dried lemon balm certainly retains many of its virtues, but you’ll most likely find that the older it gets the more it loses its pizazz. 

You can prepare this plant in a lot of different ways. One of the simplest ways is to enjoy it as a delicious tea. It can also be tinctured in alcohol, extracted with vinegar, blended with honey and even infused in oil. That oil can then be made into a salve or lip balm for general use or for herpes sores. 

An astringent toner can be made by infusing the fresh plant in witch hazel. 

Teething youngsters may like to gnaw on a wash cloth that has been soaked in lemon balm tea. Children young and adults will love lemon balm popsicles! 

Don’t forget to use lemon balm in the kitchen! It goes well with meats, fish, vegetables, in sauces, sprinkled in salads, fruit salads, herb butters or simply crushed and added to water. Very refreshing for those hot summer months!

You can even use this plant as potpourri. 

Lemon balm is considered safe for most people, but of course you should really get to know this plant if you have any special conditions. 

It is often said that Lemon balm is contraindicated for people with hypothyroidism. Prior to writing this I asked around the herbal community and several herbalists reported using lemon balm with people who had under-active thyroids and it did not change their thyroid blood tests. If you have an under-active thyroid you probably don’t want to consume this plant in excess. 


Lemon balm is simply delightful to work with. Easily grown in the garden, it tastes wonderful and can be used in so many powerful ways. What's your lemon balm story? Have a favorite recipe to share? 

Gathering Wild Grains

From the book Lost Crops of Africa:  Volume 1: Grains published by the National Academies Press:

"Over large areas of Africa people once obtained their basic subsistence from wild grasses. In certain places the practice still continues—especially in drought years (see boxes, pages 258 and 264). One survey records more than 60 grass species known to be sources of food grains.²

Despite their widespread use and notable value for saving lives during times of distress, these wild cereals have been largely overlooked by both food scientists and plant scientists. They have been written off as ''obsolete"—doomed since hunting and gathering started giving way to agriculture thousands of years ago. Certainly there has been little or no thought of developing wild grains as modern foods.

This deserves reconsideration, however. Gathering grains from grasslands is among the most sustainable organized food production systems in the world. It was common in the Stone Age³ and has been important almost ever since, especially in Africa's drylands. For millennia people living in and about the Sahara, for instance, gathered grass seeds on a grand scale. And they continued to do so until quite recently. Early this century they were still harvesting not insignificant amounts of their food from native grasslands.

However, in previous centuries the grains of the deserts and savannas were harvested in enormous quantities. In the Sahel and Sahara, for example, a single household might collect a thousand kilos during the harvest season.⁴ The seeds were piled in warehouses by the ton and shipped out of the region by the caravan-load. It was a major enterprise and a substantial export from an area that now has no equivalent and is often destitute."

If possible in relatively recent centuries, why not during the stone age?

By the way, in prehistoric sites the evidence points to consumption of sorghum, a gluten-free grain, at about 100,000 years before present. 

If so, then what about leading up to that?  Evolutionary explanations generally involve gradual changes over long periods of time.  A species generally does not change its means of subsistence suddenly, or even over a few millennia.   Adaptation to a new niche (if truly new) generally takes a very long time.

The hypothesis that grains were hardly ever consumed before about ten thousand years ago suffers from lacking a plausible explanation for why and how a species never adapted or even interested in cereal grains would so suddenly (on an evolutionary time scale) adopt a totally new behavior and means of subsistence.

Supposedly gathering grains would be a poor time investment for a forager.  Put to the experimental test, this turns out to be untrue.  From Kislev et al, "Impetus for sowing and the beginning of agriculture: Ground collecting of wild cereals" [1 full text]:

"We found that hand gathering of wild barley and emmer spikelets from the ground in Korazim and Mount of Beatitudes (Israel) is simple and efficient. About 0.25–0.5 kg (0.337 kg on the average) of pure grain could be gathered per hour by a single person, which provides on the average between a half and a whole day of the nutritional requirements for an adult individual."

So, in one to two hours a forager could collect enough wild grain to feed himself for a day, just collecting it off the ground by the handful.  Eight hours of collecting could supply him with grain for a whole week.  A smart forager would quickly come up with ways to make the work easier and more efficient.  Kislev et al continue:

"Our results are in accordance with Harlan, who, after experimental hand stripping of pre-full-ripe ears of wild einkorn at Karacadag, southeast Turkey, claimed that in three weeks, a family group could gather more grain than it could possibly consume in an entire year (28)."

Three weeks investment for more food than you can eat in an entire year doesn't count as optimal foraging?  More from Kislev et al:

"The significance of recognizing the practicality of spikelet gathering from the ground is that the gathering of large-seeded cereals as a staple food is not restricted to early summer. Rather, it can continue throughout the summer into the autumn, July through October, when the first heavy rains arrive and the dispersed grains begin to sprout. In other words, the collecting of grains from the ground would supply hunter-gatherers with a ready source of vegetal food until October, when acorns, their second most important plant resource, matured (29). The availability of acorns in October enabled them to invest part of the harvested grains for sowing. Moreover, stored grains and acorns would have provided nourishment until the following summer. There would then have been no period of vegetal food shortage due to seasonality of the two major harvests that helped support human groups in Western Asia at least from the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic."

Has the bubble burst yet?

Put this together with evidence that Paranthropus boisei, a human relative dating to 1.4 to 1.9 million years ago,  grazed on grass [2].  Paranthropus and humans both descended from Australopithecus, but the Paranthropus went extinct.  To several scientists working with this information, this new data on Paranthropus suggests a reinterpretation of previously collected data on Australopithecine diet, i.e. that Australopithecus may also have eaten grasses.

Perhaps we can start to put together a plausible path for the incorporation of cereal grains--grass seeds--into human diets.  Perhaps human ancestors used grasses as food more than 2 million years ago. Human evolution might look something like this: the grass-eaters went extinct, but the grass-seed eaters thrived.

The Progression of Disease According to Oriental Medicine: Part 1

Warning:  This series of blogs presents an alternative Chinese-scientific perspective on the development of disease.  I won't and can't provide 'research' to back everything largely because modern scientists have not shown much interest in understanding the directly observable marks of deteriorating health, due to their entrancement by laboratory tests which may distract them from direct observation of the people they attempt to help.

In the Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine (Huang Di Nei Jing), Qi Bo, the emperor’s personal physician, says (paraphrased): 

“Those who wait to treat disease until it has already arisen are like those who wait until they are thirsty to dig a well, or wait until they are in battle to forge weapons.  Are not these actions too late?”

Due to this preventive perspective, for several thousand years of development Chinese physicians focused on identifying early signs of imbalance so that they could take actions to avert health disasters by adjusting their own, and their patient’s diets and lifestyles.   Perhaps as a consequence, famous traditional Chinese physicians had extraordinary healthy lifespans for their times.    For example:

Dr. Sun Su Mao (Ssu-Mo) (581-682) – lived 101 years, an impressive feat for the 6th century.  He once said “Anyone over 40 years old should try to avoid laxatives, which will weaken his body, and begin to take tonics.  Anyone over 50 years old should take tonics all year round; such are the secrets of nourishing life to enjoy longevity.”

Dr. Meng Shen (621-713) – lived 92 years.  He once said “A person who really knows how to nourish the body should always keep good foods and herbs handy.”

Dr. Luo Ming Shan (1869-1982) lived 113 years.

In Chinese Foods for Longevity, Henry Lu points out that according to Outstanding Chinese Physicians in the Past and their Medical Theories published by Peking College of Chinese Medicine in 1964, the 37 most outstanding Chinese physicians between 581 CE and 1964 CE had an average lifespan of 80.56 years.

Many of these guys lived well before the 18^th century, yet, on average they lived 10 years longer than the average modern citizen of modern industrialized nations.

Over the millennia of its development,  due to their considering dietetics one of the essential branches of medicine, Chinese physicians realized that many supposedly ‘minor’ symptoms arise from dietary imbalances, and that if left unchecked the process producing these 'minor' symptoms would eventually produce a major disease.  Gradually this came to formulation as an understanding of how the bodymind (Chinese medicine considers mind and body as one unit) progresses from minor to major diseases based on an imbalance between dietary intake and elimination or expenditure.

The Chinese perspective rests on the realization that to maintain homeodynamics (health) the bodymind must have just the right amount of nutrition, neither too much nor too little.  Like Plato, ancient Chinese physicians noticed a clear division of disease incidence between wealthy aristocrats and ordinary peasants.  

So long as they had adequate quantity and variety of simple plant foods and a little animal products, the peasants remained lean, healthy and fit and had long lives.  If they suffered food shortages, often due to excessive taxation (taxes were paid in bushels of grain) by overlords, they developed deficiency diseases marked by infectious disease susceptibility, weakness, wasting,  mental and physical listlessness, and pallor. 

In contrast, among wealthy and overfed overlords who used some of the grains procured by taxation to produce grain-fed animal products for their own feasting, physicians saw diseases of excess marked by abnormal accumulations:  obesity, diabetes mellitus (identified by Chinese physicians by 700 AD,  900 years before Europeans), tumors, restlessness, tension, and sluggishness.

This led the Chinese philosopher-physicians to both political and medical conclusions.  On the political side, they vigorously opposed taxation, as recorded in the Tao Te Ching and many works of Confucius, Mencius, and other so-called Confucians:

"Human hunger is the result of overtaxation; For this reason, there is hunger."  Tao Te Ching Chapter 75

They also developed a unique view of the role of the physician, and identified three ranks of physicians:

Lower doctors:  Those who treat and heal sicknesses symptomatically but do not treat the whole personality of the patient or guide to a healthy lifestyle.

Middle doctors:  Those who treat and heal by guiding the patient to change his or her personal habits and attitudes, including diet, exercise, meditation, and ethics.

Highest doctors:  Those who treat and heal the sicknesses of society, nation, and world through philosophy and education to align self with others, and humanity with nature. 

The "Confucian" Classic of Great Learning encapsulates some of the central tenets of "higher medicine" as conceived by Chinese philosopher-physicians.

On the medical side, by treating both the wealthy and the poor, Chinese physicians developed a clear understanding of how disease develops. 

On the one hand, deficiency of intake relative to requirements (elimination and expenditure) will create deficiency diseases, and on the other hand, excessive intake relative to requirements will create diseases of excess, accumulation, congestion, blockage, and stagnation. Chinese philosopher-physicians saw this process occurred whether talking about diet (excess or deficiency of food) or other matters (excess or deficiency of clothing, shelter, possessions, etc.).  

To the Chinese, health, whether personal, mental, social, or political, could arise only through achieving the Golden Mean, a concept held in common with Aristotle.

These days, in modernized industrial nations, a majority of the people live like the royalty of the past, with plenty of rich food to eat.  Consequently, people in modern industrialized nations suffer primarily from nutritional excess diseases such as obesity (accumulations of body fat), diabetes (excess fat and sugar in the blood), cardiovascular diseases (accumulations, congestion, and blockage of blood vessels causing stagnation of blood circulation), neurological diseases involving accumulation of plaque (Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis), and numerous others. Among affluent populations, deficiencies occur almost always in a context of excesses.

Oriental medical theory maintains that in most cases these late stages of psychophysical degeneration are preceded by a long gradual process of apparently minor alterations in health that herald the oncoming or eventual disaster and offered opportunities for self-correction.   Chinese physicians taught their patients to stay aware of this process and to self-correct using food therapy.  

However, one must understand that these food therapy methods work well only in the context of the basic healthy diet developed and integrated into Asian cuisine:  starch-based, low in fat and animal products, rich in colorful vegetables.  You can't overturn the ill effects of a very imbalanced diet by adding a few servings of a medicinal food.  

Basically, if you understand how disease progresses from minor to major, you can interrupt the process before it becomes so deeply rooted that you will have trouble correcting it with natural approaches.  Updated application of this perspective using traditional Chinese medical theories (yin-yang, Eight Principles, and Five Transformations) can easily incorporate and make sense of otherwise inexplicable medical findings, such as why many people with skin disorders have a history of respiratory allergies or asthma as well.    

In outline form, the progression looks like this:

1. Health:  Balanced intake and normal discharge

2. Abnormal discharge and general fatigue

3. Impairment of blood circulation and aches and pains

4. Impaired blood quality with chronic discharge

5. Accumulation of excess material in circulation

6. Storage of excess material in various compartments

7. Nervous disorders
8. Diseases of mind and spirit, summed as self-delusion

1. Healthy condition: Balanced Intake and Discharge

We take in nutrients from foods and beverages as well as influences from climate (hot, cold, damp, dry) and social environment (emotions, sounds, colors, etc.).  All of these inputs have some effect on our physiology.  To maintain health we have to retain what we need and discharge any excess.

We all transform or discharge inputs through respiration, perspiration, urination, defecation, and physical and metal activities. Women have additional avenues of discharge through menstruation, parturition, and lactation.

 

Every physical or mental activity we express reflects the quality of what we have ingested.

Accordingly, in addition to climate, time and place, diet exerts an influence on culture through its psychophysical effects on the creators/participants.  Thus, different climates and diets produced different historical qualities of art, music, architecture, literature, games, sports, etc..  For example, the traditional Chinese diet produced people who resonated with the traditional Chinese music, the Indian diet produced people who resonated with traditional Indian-style music, and the diet of certain youth in the U.S. produced people who resonated with heavy metal rock.  

What comes out reflects what went in.

 2. Excessive intake and abnormal discharge.

If from a healthy state you ingest or inhale or otherwise absorb an input that supplies something that exceeds the bodymind’s needs and the capacity of normal routes of discharge, the bodymind will manifest alterations of function, most moving the excess input out of the body, such as:

• coughing and sneezing
• more frequent defecation
• more frequent urination
• increased and spontaneous sweating and sudden rashes
• fidgeting, tapping, muscle spasms and tension, acute hyperactivity
• rapid blinking
• irritability, anger
• anxiety, excitability

The more extreme the imbalance of intake, more extreme the output, such as:  shivering, trembling, nausea, vomiting, crying, shouting, screaming.

The input here could include healthy food (subtle reactions), spoiled food or an allergen (strong reactions), or traumatic experience like witnessing some aweful crime, losing a loved one, or enduring a natural disaster, among many other possibilities. 

Chinese physicians did not recognize a dichotomy of body and mind, nor did traditional Western physicians or culture. Chinese physicians watched the development of internal organ disorders and saw mental and emotional effects of those disorders, and also the reverse, that sudden emotions resulted in altered operations of internal organs.  They correlated fear with the kidneys, anger with the liver, joy with the heart, rumination with the digestive system, and grief with the lungs, by noticing how emotions affected or were affected by the organs.  

So for example, in fear people may lose control of urination, in anger they may get indigestion marked by reflux, bloating and pain, rumination can destroy the appetite, overjoy (excitement) can affect heart rate and strength, and grief affects respiration (sobbing).

 In English, we still have words reflecting this ancient understanding.  For example, an disrespectful person "has the gall,"  referring originally to an imbalance of the gall bladder,  a depressed person has 'melancholy,' an imbalance of the bile (chol-), and an aggressive or angry person is 'bilious' or 'choleric,' again, an imbalance of the bile, or liver/gallbladder system [1].  And how about being "pissed off" and "so scared I shit my pants"?  Chinese medicine has a way of physiologically understanding the actual experiences that gave rise to these locutions as well.

I know, where are the 'studies' to support this?  I don't know of any, yet.  Chinese physicians discovered that eating animal liver would treat night blindness hundreds of years before laboratory science discovered retinol (vitamin A) and showed that night blindness results from retinol deficiency.  If they had waited for double-blind, placebo-controlled studies and modern biochemistry to confirm that eating animal liver treats night blindness, thousands of people would have gone blind from deficiency over the years.  

Modern laboratory and clinical science creating 'top-down' knowledge only studies a quite small part of reality and moves very slowly compared to empirical discovery growing from 'bottom-up.'

Check your own experience. For my part, I see these relationships in my clinic on a daily basis.

Anyway, these signs, among others, indicate that the specific organ(s) have taken the brunt of the dietary excess:

• A tendency to obsessive thinking, rumination, whining, complaining can indicate an overload of the digestive system.

• A tendency to anger, impatience, or shouting can arise from an overload of the liver and indecision can arise from an imbalance of the gall bladder.

• A tendency to anxiety and fear can arise from an imbalance affecting the kidneys, urinary bladder, or endocrine system.

• A tendency to fall into crying or grief can indicate an imbalance affecting the lung or large intestine.

• A tendency to nervousness, hyperexcitability, or inappropriate laughter can indicate an imbalance affecting the heart.

At this stage of imbalance we may also feel general fatigue resulting from the burden placed on body organs by the overload of input. 

At this stage of disease, recovery requires removal of the dietary and other causes, and improvement of diet and exercise.  Since the imbalance does not have deep roots, it may take only several hours to several days to recover.

I'll go through the  rest of the stages in future posts.

Micronutrient Comparison: High fat vs. High carb; Plus: Ancient Greek Diet and Diseases

A reader emailed me asking, in his words:

"I would love to hear what your current diet includes, how you get enough vitamins/minerals on a relatively low protein/fat diet and if you have any good resources on what a traditional western diet would include."

So I thought I would do a little post on this topic.

My Current Diet

My current diet includes, ranked from highest to lowest volume:

1.  Starches:   brown rice, oatmeal, sorghum, whole corn tortillas, sweet potatoes, white potatoes, yucca root, kabocha squash, occasional white rice

2. Vegetables:  various greens, onions, carrots, radishes, celery, tomatoes, etc.

3.  Fruits:  Apples, oranges, berries, grapes, etc.

4.  Animal products:  mostly fish and shellfish (almost daily) > eggs > poultry ( a few times in the past month) > red meat (once in the past two weeks); total of 3-6 ounces daily (one egg substituting for one ounce)

5. Some soy products:  tofu and soy milk (total of a few times a week)

6. Very small amounts of olive oil and flax oil (1-3 tsp. daily)

Where Are Those Vitamins and Minerals?

Now, on to the question, how can anyone get adequate vitamins and minerals on a low protein/low fat diet?

Let's take a look at two menus I created, each about 2400 kcal, for a moderately physically active male of about 150-160 pounds, one low in animal products and fat, the other high in animal products and fat.

Here's the one low in animal products and fat, about 64/14/21 carb/pro/fat percent energy, with the micronutrient analysis; take note of the quantities of rice, potatoes, and sweet potatoes; this is the way I eat:

The menu has 100 g protein, more than enough to sustain muscular growth for anyone weighing up to 100 kg.  It exceeds all of FitDay's standard requirements for micronutrients except calcium where it reaches 86% of the 1000 mg standard.  In fact this also exceeds the requirements of most people; research has shown that the actual average requirement for calcium is only about 740 mg per day [1, 2 full text], so this menu exceeds the requirement.

Just a brief note on quantity:  In my experience, when people try low-fat diets, they don't consume anywhere near enough food to satisfy energy requirements.  They feel hungry, and they erroneously conclude that eating carbs makes them hungry, when in reality, they are hungry because they aren't eating enough quality starch.  Asians eat an average of 1/2 to 1 pound of rice (precooked weight) daily [full text], plus other grains, potatoes and other starches, with people eating lesser amounts of animal products eating the higher amount of rice.

To create the high fat menu, I took the above menu and removed all the starchy foods (brown rice, oatmeal, and potatoes), leaving in one sweet potato (the starch with the highest nutrient density), getting the carbs down to 100 g, then added bison and increased the meat and fish portions so that the total menu would supply protein equivalent to the above low-fat menu.  I kept the same non-starchy, high nutrient density vegetables and fruits as in the low-fat menu so as to minimize difference.  Then I added approximately equal portions of olive oil and butter to get the kcalorie count up to 2400, same as the other menu.  The macronutrient ratio came to 15/16/68 carb/pro/fat % energy (about the opposite carb/fat ratio to the low-fat menu).  Here's the menu and micronutrient analysis:

This menu has 200 mg less calcium than the low-fat menu, failing to meet even the new standard of ~740 mg, and fails to supply the RDA for magnesium, potassium, zinc, thiamin, and pantothenic acid.  The following table compares the two menus relative to the RDA for the listed micronutrients.  Red numbers indicate values that fall below the RDA:

Nutrient	Low-Meat, Low-Fat %RDA	High-Meat, High-Fat %RDA	Highest Level LM or HM
Vitamin A	761	839	HM
Vitamin B6	336	188	LM
Vitamin B12	254	329	HM
Vitamin C	523	458	LM
Vitamin D	262	266	=
Vitamin E	108	164	HM
Calcium	86	60	LM
Copper	386	167	LM
Iron	250	176	LM
Magnesium	175	61	LM
Manganese	543	135	LM
Niacin	160	108	LM
Pantothenic Acid	225	87	LM
Phosphorus	270	151	LM
Potassium	124	75	LM
Riboflavin	124	125	=
Selenium	137	285	HM
Thiamin	209	74	LM
Zinc	111	79	LM

1.  Despite retaining the high-nutrient density vegetables and fruits, the high-meat, high-fat, low-carb menu fails to provide the RDA for six of nineteen nutrients (32%).  This occurred while including 100 g nutrient-dense sources of carbohydrate daily.  If I cut the carbs further, the menu would get even weaker in micronutrients. Could this explain why Atkins Nutraceuticals exists?

2.  The low-meat, low-fat menu supplies the higher amount for 13 of 19 nutrients, the high-meat, high-fat menu supplies the higher amount for only 4 of 19 nutrients, and the two menus have approximately equal amounts for two nutrients.

So, I get my nutrients by eating nutrient-dense plant foods.  Even though I included some of the most nutrient-dense of plant foods in the high-fat menu, it didn't match the nutrient-density of the low-fat menu.  So I can turn the question around now and ask, how does one get adequate vitamins and minerals eating a low-carbohydrate, high-meat, high-fat diet?

Traditional Western Foods

Try reading about ancient Greek diet:

"Cereals formed the staple diet......The cereals were often served accompanied by what was generically referred to as ὄψον opson, "relish".^[26] The word initially meant anything prepared on the fire, and, by extension, anything which accompanied bread.^[27] In the classical period it came to refer to fruit and vegetables: cabbage, onions, lentils, sweet peas, chickpeas, broad beans, garden peas, grass peas, etc.^[28] They were eaten as a soup, boiled or mashed (ἔτνος etnos), seasoned with olive oil, vinegar, herbs or γάρον gáron, a fish sauce similar to Vietnamese nước mắm. According to Aristophanes,^[29] mashed beans were a favourite dish of Heracles, always represented as a glutton in comedies. Poor families ate oak acorns (βάλανοι balanoi).^[30] Raw or preserved olives were a common appetizer.^[31]

Among the ancient Greeks, the wealthy ate substantial animal products but the peasants did not. Before you follow their example, you might want to know something.  This dietary division of the classes gave ancient Greek philosophers and physicians the opportunity to observe a distinct division of health between the classes. In describing the mode of life of the citizens of The Republic, Socrates says:

"They will feed on barley-meal and flour of wheat, baking and kneading them, making noble cakes and loaves; these they will serve up on a mat of reeds or on clean leaves, themselves reclining the while upon beds strewn with yew or myrtle. And they and their children will feast, drinking of the wine which they have made, wearing garlands on their heads, and hymning the praises of the gods, in happy converse with one another. And they will take care that their families do not exceed their means; having an eye to poverty or war......of course they must have a relish-salt, and olives, and cheese, and they will boil roots and herbs such as country people prepare; for a dessert we shall give them figs, and peas, and beans; and they will roast myrtle-berries and acorns at the fire, drinking in moderation. And with such a diet they may be expected to live in peace and health to a good old age, and bequeath a similar life to their children after them."[2, 3]

Glaucon protests that this substantially plant-based diet seems fit only for pigs, that the people should have "sauces and sweets in the modern style." Socrates retorts that doing so will create a "State at fever heat" and goes on:

"Now will the city have to fill and swell with a multitude of callings which are not required by any natural want; such as the whole tribe of hunters and actors, of whom one large class have to do with forms and colours; another will be the votaries of music--poets and their attendant train of rhapsodists, players, dancers, contractors; also makers of divers kinds of articles, including women's dresses. And we shall want more servants. Will not tutors be also in request, and nurses wet and dry, tirewomen and barbers, as well as confectioners and cooks; and swineherds, too, who were not needed and therefore had no place in the former edition of our State, but are needed now?  They must not be forgotten: and there will be animals of many other kinds, if people eat them."[3]

To which Glaucon says: "Certainly."

And Socrates says:

"And living in this way we shall have much greater need of physicians than before?"

To which Glaucon says:  "Much greater."  

In other words, Plato or Socrates had already observed, more than 2000 years ago, that the rich people eating their rich diet had affluent diseases and early mortality, and the peasants eating a frugal diet could expect "health to a good old age."  

I referred to this, among other ancient writings, when I wrote "the currently popular concept of paleo diet—animal-based, relatively high in protein and fat and relatively low in carbohydrate—conflicts with empirical nutrition knowledge accumulated over the course of 5 thousand years in both Asian and Western medicine"[4].  The knowledge that humans thrive on low-fat plant-based nutrition and get sick on high-fat animal-based nutrition is not some 20th century aberration in the West; we find it expressed by the very founders of Western civilization. 

I just find it uncanny that modern mainstream Western nutrition research seems to be reaching the same general conclusions about optimal human nutrition as Plato/Socrates, traditional Chinese medicine, and traditional Ayurvedic medicine, despite coming at the question from different angles in different ages and in different populations.

The irony:  Armed with their so-called 'scientific' method, which they haughtily consider superior to any previous method of discovery, a team of modern scientists climbs the mountain of Truth and when they get to the top, they find the best ancient philosophers and physicians from East and West have been sitting there for millennia.