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Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, by Weston A. Price.
In the 1930's, numerous commentators were proffering
all sorts of unlikely explanations for the alarming
rise in tooth decay, including the alleged 'soiling'
of racial stock by interbreeding. Accomplished
dentist Weston A. Price had long suspected faulty
nutrition. To find out just whether inter-racial
marriages or substandard diets were to blame, Price
decided to visit isolated communities around the
world. He reasoned that if genetics were the sole
explanation, then native peoples would have the same
incidence of tooth decay regardless of whether they
ate traditional diets or imported Western foods.
During his extensive travels, Price examined
Australian Aborigines and Torres Strait islanders,
African tribes, isolated Swiss and Gaelics,
Polynesians, Melanesians, New Zealand Maoris,
Eskimos, North American Indians and Peruvians. Among
all these isolated populations he noted one
recurring theme; when people lived on their native
diet of unrefined whole foods they enjoyed excellent
health and an almost complete absence of tooth
decay.
However, when people from the same racial stock were
exposed to western-style processed and refined
foods, including canned goods, sugar and white
flour, Price noted that their health took a sharp
turn for the worse and the incidence of tooth decay
would skyrocket. Price documented his findings with
photographs comparing those on a native diet with
those who lived near ports or other areas where
"modern" foods were sold. Many of these are included
in the book and the differences are striking. Those
eating the traditional diet show clear complexion
and excellent facial and jaw structure while those
eating western foods exhibit marked dental and
facial deformities.
Price called for a return to real food, warning that
the widespread consumption of denatured foods would
lead to much illness and suffering in Western
nations and in developing nations where these foods
were becoming ever more readily available. Price's
warnings were ignored, and his prophecies fulfilled.
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration has to be
one of the most important texts ever written on
nutrition. Forget all those infomercial-style diet
books--this is the real deal! A timeless classic
that should be on the shelf of every serious student
of nutrition.
-Anthony Colpo.
Dr.
Price's Nutrition Studies
Price noticed
that his patients were suffering more and more
chronic and degenerative diseases. He
also noticed that his younger patients had
increasingly deformed dental arches, crooked teeth,
and cavities. This definitely concerned him: he had
not seen such things just ten or fifteen years ago.
Why was it
happening now? Price also noticed a strong
correlation between dental health and physical
health: a mouth full of cavities went hand in
hand with a body either full of
disease, or
generalized weakness and susceptibility to disease.
In Price's time, tuberculosis was the major
infectious illness, the White Scourge. He noticed
that children were increasingly affected, the ones
with the lousy teeth.
Dr. Price had
heard rumors of native cultures where so-called
primitive people lived happy lives, free of disease.
He hit on an idea: why not go find these people and
find out (1) if they really are healthy, and (2) if
so, find out what they're doing to keep themselves
healthy. Being rather well off financially, he and
his wife started traveling around the world to
remote locations. They were specifically looking for
healthy peoples who had not been touched yet by
civilization - at that time, such groups were still
around.
Price's work is
often criticized at this point for being biased.
Critics claim that Price simply ignored native
peoples that were not healthy, therefore, his data
and conclusions about primitive diets are unfounded.
These critics are missing the point and motivation
for Dr. Price's work. Dr. Price was not interested
in examining sick people because he'd seen enough of
them in America.
Price wanted to
find HEALTHY
people, find out what made them so, and see if there
were any patterns among these people. During his
nine years of journeys, Price did indeed come across
groups of primitives who were having problems for
various reasons. Price noted these groups down, what
appeared to be their difficulty, and then passed
them over. Again, he was not interested in sick
people. Price often found that the health
problems were caused by food shortages
(especially a lack of animal products), droughts,
things people living off the land must face from
time to time, or contact with white European
civilization.
Dr. Price and his
wife went just about everywhere in their journeys.
They traveled to isolated villages in the Swiss
alps, to cold and blustery islands off the coast of
Scotland, to the
Andes mountains in Peru, to
several locations in Africa, to the Polynesian islands, to
Australia and New Zealand, to the forests of
northern Canada, and even to the Arctic Circle. In
all, Price visited with fourteen groups of native
peoples.
After gaining the
trust of the village elders in the various places,
Price did what came naturally: he counted
cavities and physically examined them. Imagine
his surprise to find, on average, less than
1% of tooth decay
in all the peoples he visited!
He also found
that these people's teeth were perfectly straight
and white, with high dental arches and
well-formed facial features. And there was something
more astonishing: none of the peoples Price examined
practiced any sort of dental hygiene; not one of
his subjects had ever used a
toothbrush!
For example, when
Price visited his first people, isolated Swiss
mountain villagers, he noticed right away that the
children's teeth were covered with a thin
film of green slime, yet they had
no tooth decay. What a difference this was from
the children in Ohio!
Dr. Price also
noticed that, in addition to their healthy teeth and
gums, all the people he discovered were hardy
and strong, despite the sometimes
difficult living conditions they had to endure.
Eskimo women, for example, gave birth to one healthy
baby after another with little difficulty.
Despite the Swiss
children going barefoot in frigid streams, there had
not been a single case of tuberculosis in any of
them, despite exposure to TB. In general, Price
found, in contrast to what he saw in America, no
incidence of the very diseases that plague us
moderns with our trash compactors and cellular
phones: cancer, heart disease, diabetes,
hemorrhoids, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's,
Alzheimer's, osteoporosis, chronic fatigue syndrome
(it was called neurasthenia in Price's day), etc.
Dr. Price also
noticed another quality about the healthy primitives
he found: they were happy.
While depression was not a major problem in Price's
day, it certainly is today: ask any psychiatrist.
While certain natives sometimes fought with
neighboring tribes, within their own groups, they
were cheerful and optimistic and
bounced back quickly from emotional setbacks. These
people had no need for antidepressants.
Lest you think
Dr. Price made all of this up, he was sure to take
along with him one modern invention that would
forever chronicle his research and startling
conclusions: a camera. Dr. Price and his wife
took pictures - 18,000 of them. Many of the pictures
are contained in Price's masterpiece Nutrition and
Physical Degeneration. The pictures show native
peoples from all over the world smiling wide as the
Mississippi river, their perfect teeth shining
bright. What the People
Ate
In addition to
examining the natives, Dr. Price also gathered
considerable data about their distinctive
cultures and customs, and these
descriptions fill many of the pages of his book.
Price took great care to observe what these people
were eating for he suspected the key to good health
and good teeth was in good food.
He was surprised
to find that, depending on the people in question
and where they lived, each group ate very
differently from the other.
For example, the
Swiss mountain villagers subsisted primarily
on unpasteurized and cultured
dairy products,
especially butter and cheese. Rye also formed an
integral part of their diet. Occasionally, they ate
meat (beef) as cows in their herds got older. Small
amounts of bone broths, vegetables and berries
rounded out the diet. Due to the high altitude, not
much vegetation grew. The villagers would eat what
they could in the short summer months, and pickle
what was left over for the winter. The main foods,
however, were full fat cheese, butter, and rye
bread.
Gaelic fisher people of the Outer
Hebrides ate no dairy products, but instead had
their fill of cod
and other sea foods,
especially shell fish (when in season). Due to the
poor soil, the only grain that could grow was oat,
and it formed a major part of the diet. A
traditional dish, one considered very important for
growing children and expectant mothers, was cod's
head stuffed with oats and mashed fish liver. Again,
due to the extremely inhospitable climate, fruits
and vegetables grew sparsely. Price noted that a
young Gaelic girl reeled in puzzlement when offered
an apple: she had never seen one!
Eskimo, or Innu, ate a diet of almost 100% animal
products with hefty amounts of fish.
Walrus and seal, and other marine mammals also
formed an integral part of the diet. Blubber (fat)
was consumed with relish. Innu would gather nuts,
berries, and some grasses during the short summer
months, but their diet was basically all meat and
fat. Price noted that the Innu would usually ferment
their meat before eating it. That is, they would
bury it and allow it to slightly putrefy before
consuming it. Innu would also eat the partially
digested grasses of caribou by cutting open their
stomachs and intestines.
The Maori
of New Zealand, along with other South sea
islanders, consumed sea
food of every sort - fish, shark,
octopus, sea worms, shellfish - along with fatty
pork and a wide variety of plant foods including
coconut and fruit.
African cattle-keeping tribes like the Masai consumed virtually no plant foods
at all, just beef,
raw milk, organ meats, and blood (in times of
drought).
The Dinkas
of the Sudan, whom Price claimed were the
healthiest of all the African tribes he studied,
ate a combination of
fermented whole grains with
fish, along with
smaller amounts of red meat, vegetables, and fruit.
The Bantu, on the other hand, the least hardy of the
African tribes studied, were primarily
agriculturists. Their diet consisted mostly of
beans, squash, corn, millet, vegetables, and fruits,
with small amounts of milk and meat. Price never
found a totally vegetarian culture. Modern
anthropological data support this: all cultures and
peoples show a preference for animal foods and
animal fat.
Hunter-gatherer
peoples in Northern Canada, the Florida Everglades,
the Amazon, and Australia, consumed game animals of
all types, especially the organ meats, and a variety
of grains, legumes, tubers, vegetables, and fruits
when available.
Price noted that
all peoples, except the Innu, consumed insects
and their larvae. Obviously in more tropical areas,
insects formed a more integral part of the diet.
Price noted that: The natives of Africa know that
certain insects are very rich in special food values
at certain seasons, also that their eggs are
valuable foods. A fly that hatches in enormous
quantities in Lake Victoria is gathered and used
fresh and dried for storage. They also use ant eggs
and ants. Bees, wasps, dragonflies, beetles,
crickets, cicadas, moths, and termites were consumed
with zest also, particularly in Africa.
Price also noted
that all cultures consumed fermented foods
each day. Foods such as cheese, cultured butter,
yogurt, or fermented grain drinks like kaffir beer
(made from millet) in Africa, or fermented fish as
with the Innu were an important part of native
diets.
Curiously, all
native peoples studied made great efforts to obtain
seafood, especially fish roe which was
consumed so that we will have healthy children. Even
mountain dwelling peoples would make semiannual
trips to the sea to bring back seaweeds, fish eggs,
and dried fish. Shrimp, rich in both cholesterol and
vitamin D, was a standard food in many places, from
Africa to the Orient.
The last major
feature of native diets that Price found was that
they were rich in fat, especially animal fat.
Whether from insects, eggs, fish, game animals, or
domesticated herds, primitive peoples knew that they
would get sick if they did not consume enough fat.
Explorers besides Dr. Price have also found this to
be true.
For example,
anthropologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who lived for
years among the Innu and Northern Canadian Indians,
specifically noted how the Indians would go out of
their way to hunt down older male caribou for
they carried a 50 pound slab of back fat.
When such animals were unavailable and Indians were
forced to subsist on rabbits, a very lean animal,
diarrhea and hunger would set in after about a week.
The human body needs saturated fat to assimilate and
utilize proteins and saturated animal fats contain
high amounts of the fat soluble vitamins, as well as
beneficial fatty acids with antimicrobial
properties.
Of course, the
foods that Price's subjects ate were natural
and unprocessed. Their foods did not contain
preservatives, additives, or colorings. They did not
contain added sugar (though, when available, natural
sweets like honey and maple syrup were eaten in
moderation). They did not contain white flour or
canned foods. Their milk products were not
pasteurized, homogenized, or low fat. The animal and
plant foods consumed were raised and grown on
pesticide-free soil and were not given growth
hormones or antibiotics. In short, these people
always ate organic.
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