I noted a long time ago that my very healthy Grandparents and Greats had fermented pickles/sauerkraut or something similar at every meal except breakfast.
They also ate at least a small scoop of cottage cheese at nearly every meal (including breakfast sometimes with a sprinkle of sugar).
Whatever we were eating, pickles & cottage cheese were there too...whether they complimented the dish at hand or not:)
That probably kept them healthy! My grandfather loved slices of bread so dark and nubbly and thin (don’t know what that kind of bread is called) spread with a thin layer of butter or cream cheese, then a fat slice or two of raw onion on top.
And some healthy tribes being studied in Africa for their diets today will eat porridge of grain, sometimes with vegetables, that was cooked days ago. Remember that old nursery rhyme, “ pease porridge in the pot, nine days old?”
And all ate more literal dirt than we did. They were out in the healthy dirt more, they may have only lightly brushed or washed some of their veggies from the garden, they were exposed to a lot of elements and bacteria that way.