40.
Dr. Weston A. Price
Pioneering Research In Nutrition And Modern Foods
Dr. Weston A. Price was an American dentist who traveled around the world, camera and film in hand, in the late 1920s and
early 1930s.
Dr. Price had the wisdom and persistence to study the dietary habits of healthy nonindustrialized people before they disappeared from the face of the earth. His research led to the radical conclusion that the diet that supports good health is in all respects the very opposite of the dietary recommendations given by all those smart people who work for the medical/ agricultural complex and the government.
His travails took him to many isolated human groups which included sequestered villages in Switzerland, Gaelic communities in the Outer Hebrides, Eskimos and Indians of North America, Melanesian and Polynesian South Sea Islanders, African tribes, Australian Aborigines, New Zealand Maori and the Indians of South America.
Price specifically sought out native peoples who were still eating their native foods. He asked about their dietary habits, then examined and took photographs of their teeth. At the same time, he undertook similar studies and took similar photos of people from the same cultures who had become exposed to Western foods, and who had begun to substitute foods like white flour, white sugar, marmalade and canned goods for their native diets.
The differences, as shown in Price’s 1939 book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, were startling. Time and again, Price found that those people who were still eating their native diets had very few if any dental caries (decay or crumbling of teeth), and appeared to be in radiant health, while their counterparts who were now eating refined and processed foods from the West were exhibiting massive tooth decay and malformation of their dental arches, and were suffering from a growing cascade of illness and dysfunction.
Price came to believe that dental decay was caused primarily by nutritional deficiencies, and that the same conditions that promote tooth decay also promote disease elsewhere in the body.
Price photographed the teeth and dental arches of the people he encountered. He found that as long as these people consumed their native diet, their mouths and jaws developed so that they never experienced crowded teeth, overbites, underbites, or tooth decay. When their wisdom teeth came in, they always had plenty of room.
But as his photographs poignantly showed, once they left the wisdom of their native foods for “civilized” foods the results were ruinous. Now all kinds of dental problems that had been previously unknown became rampant.
And it wasn’t just dental problems Price found that as people shifted to refined foods, birth defects increased, and people became more susceptible both to infection and to chronic disease. As people ate ever more refined and devitalized foods, he said, they and their offspring became increasingly weaker and more prone to all kinds of illnesses.
early 1930s.
Dr. Price had the wisdom and persistence to study the dietary habits of healthy nonindustrialized people before they disappeared from the face of the earth. His research led to the radical conclusion that the diet that supports good health is in all respects the very opposite of the dietary recommendations given by all those smart people who work for the medical/ agricultural complex and the government.
His travails took him to many isolated human groups which included sequestered villages in Switzerland, Gaelic communities in the Outer Hebrides, Eskimos and Indians of North America, Melanesian and Polynesian South Sea Islanders, African tribes, Australian Aborigines, New Zealand Maori and the Indians of South America.
Price specifically sought out native peoples who were still eating their native foods. He asked about their dietary habits, then examined and took photographs of their teeth. At the same time, he undertook similar studies and took similar photos of people from the same cultures who had become exposed to Western foods, and who had begun to substitute foods like white flour, white sugar, marmalade and canned goods for their native diets.
The differences, as shown in Price’s 1939 book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, were startling. Time and again, Price found that those people who were still eating their native diets had very few if any dental caries (decay or crumbling of teeth), and appeared to be in radiant health, while their counterparts who were now eating refined and processed foods from the West were exhibiting massive tooth decay and malformation of their dental arches, and were suffering from a growing cascade of illness and dysfunction.
Price came to believe that dental decay was caused primarily by nutritional deficiencies, and that the same conditions that promote tooth decay also promote disease elsewhere in the body.
Price photographed the teeth and dental arches of the people he encountered. He found that as long as these people consumed their native diet, their mouths and jaws developed so that they never experienced crowded teeth, overbites, underbites, or tooth decay. When their wisdom teeth came in, they always had plenty of room.
But as his photographs poignantly showed, once they left the wisdom of their native foods for “civilized” foods the results were ruinous. Now all kinds of dental problems that had been previously unknown became rampant.
And it wasn’t just dental problems Price found that as people shifted to refined foods, birth defects increased, and people became more susceptible both to infection and to chronic disease. As people ate ever more refined and devitalized foods, he said, they and their offspring became increasingly weaker and more prone to all kinds of illnesses.
“Me and the folks who buy my food are like the Indians -- we just want to opt out. That's all the Indians ever wanted -- to keep their tepees, to give their kids herbs instead of patent medicines and leeches. They didn't care if there was a Washington, D.C., or a Custer or a USDA; just leave us alone. But the Western mind can't bear an opt-out option. We're going to have to refight the Battle of the Little Big Horn to preserve the right to opt out, or your grandchildren and mine will have no choice but to eat amalgamated, irradiated, genetically prostituted, barcoded, adulterated fecal spam from the centralized processing conglomerate.”
~Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
Today, Price’s work has attracted a loyal and devoted following among those who rebel against processed foods and who seek a way of life more in tune with nature’s laws.
Some of the most zealous of his followers now run an organization called the Weston A. Price Foundation. They are heavily into meat eating. Dr. Price gave no such indications in his works. It is clearly a speculation on their part. No traditional culture uses meat as a staple but these followers seem to be promoting that. It appears they have found a convenient excuse to go on a meat eating spree.
Not a single culture examined by Price had a regular slaughterhouse operating in their community. Slaughterhouse culture is unique to our modern civilization. These tribals had to go to great lengths to obtain their meat supply.
Price discovered many native cultures that were extremely healthy while eating a lacto-vegetarian diet. Describing one lacto-vegetarian people, for example, he called them, “The most physically perfect people in northern India… the people are very tall and are free of tooth decay.”
Some of the most zealous of his followers now run an organization called the Weston A. Price Foundation. They are heavily into meat eating. Dr. Price gave no such indications in his works. It is clearly a speculation on their part. No traditional culture uses meat as a staple but these followers seem to be promoting that. It appears they have found a convenient excuse to go on a meat eating spree.
Not a single culture examined by Price had a regular slaughterhouse operating in their community. Slaughterhouse culture is unique to our modern civilization. These tribals had to go to great lengths to obtain their meat supply.
Price discovered many native cultures that were extremely healthy while eating a lacto-vegetarian diet. Describing one lacto-vegetarian people, for example, he called them, “The most physically perfect people in northern India… the people are very tall and are free of tooth decay.”