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REJUVENATION FORUM >
ANCIENT DIETARY WISDOM
ANCIENT DIETARY WISDOM
Jan 12, 2007
Ancient Dietary Wisdom for Tomorrow's Children
By Sally Fallon
More than sixty years ago, a Cleveland dentist named Weston
A. Price decided to embark on a series of unique
investigations that would engage his attention and energies
for the next ten years. Possessed of an inquiring mind and
a spiritual nature, Price was disturbed by what he found
when he looked into the mouths of his patients. Rarely did
an examination of an adult client reveal anything but
rampant decay, often accompanied by serious problems
elsewhere in the body such as arthritis, osteoporosis,
diabetes, intestinal complaints and chronic fatigue. (They
called it neurasthenia in Price's day.) But it was the
dentition of younger patients that gave him most cause for
concern. He observed that crowded, crooked teeth were
becoming more and more common, along with what Price called
"facial deformities"--overbites, narrowed faces,
underdevelopment of the nose, lack of well-defined
cheekbones and pinched nostrils. Such children invariably
suffered from one or more complaints that sound all too
familiar to mothers of the 1990s: frequent infections,
allergies, anemia, asthma, poor vision, lack of
coordination, fatigue and behavioral problems. Price did
not believe that such "physical degeneration" was God's
plan for mankind. He was rather inclined to believe that
the creator intended physical perfection for all human
beings, and that children should grow up free of ailments.
Price's bewilderment gave way to a unique idea. He would
travel to various isolated parts of the earth where the
inhabitants had no contact with "civilization" to study
their health and physical development. His investigations
took him to isolated Swiss villages and a windswept island
off the coast of Scotland. He studied traditional Eskimos,
Indian tribes in Canada and the Florida Everglades,
Southsea islanders, Aborigines in Australia, Maoris in New
Zealand, Peruvian and Amazonian Indians and tribesmen in
Africa. These investigations occurred at a time when there
still existed remote pockets of humanity untouched by
modern inventions; but when one modern invention, the
camera, allowed Price to make a permanent record of the
people he studied. The photographs Price took, the
descriptions of what he found and his startling conclusions
are preserved in a book considered a masterpiece by many
nutrition researchers who followed in Price's footsteps:
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. Yet this compendium of
ancestral wisdom is all but unknown to today's medical
community and modern parents.
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration is the kind of book
that changes the way people view the world. No one can look
at the handsome photographs of so-called primitive
people--faces that are broad, well-formed and
noble--without realizing that there is something very wrong
with the development of modern children. In every isolated
region he visited, Price found tribes or villages where
virtually every individual exhibited genuine physical
perfection. In such groups, tooth decay was rare and dental
crowding and occlusions--the kind of problems that keep
American orthodontists in yachts and vacation homes--non
existent. Price took photograph after photograph of
beautiful smiles, and noted that the natives were
invariably cheerful and optimistic. Such people were
characterized by "splendid physical development" and an
almost complete absence of disease, even those living in
physical environments that were extremely harsh.
The fact that "primitives" often exhibited a high degree of
physical perfection and beautiful straight white teeth was
not unknown to other investigators of the era. The accepted
explanation was that these people were "racially pure" and
that unfortunate changes in facial structure were due to
"race mixing". Price found this theory unacceptable. Very
often the groups he studied lived close to racially similar
groups that had come in contact with traders or
missionaries, and had abandoned their traditional diet for
foodstuffs available in the newly established stores—sugar,
refined grains, canned foods, pasteurized milk and
devitalized fats and oils--what Price called the
"displacing foods of modern commerce." In these peoples, he
found rampant tooth decay, infectious illness and
degenerative conditions. Children born to parents who had
adopted the so-called civilized diet had crowded and
crooked teeth, narrowed faces, deformities of bone
structure and reduced immunity to disease. Price concluded
that race had nothing to do with these changes. He noted
that physical degeneration occurred in children of native
parents who had adopted the white man's diet; while mixed
race children whose parents had consumed traditional foods
were born with wide handsome faces and straight teeth.
The diets of the healthy "primitives" Price studied were
all very different: In the Swiss village where Price began
his investigations, the inhabitants lived on rich dairy
products--unpasteurized milk, butter, cream and
cheese--dense rye bread, meat occasionally, bone broth
soups and the few vegetables they could cultivate during
the short summer months. The children never brushed their
teeth--in fact their teeth were covered in green slime--but
Price found that only about one percent of the teeth had
any decay at all. The children went barefoot in frigid
streams during weather that forced Dr. Price and his wife
to wear heavy wool coats; nevertheless childhood illnesses
were virtually nonexistent and there had never been a
single case of TB in the village. Hearty Gallic fishermen
living off the coast of Scotland consumed no dairy
products. Fish formed the mainstay of the diet, along with
oats made into porridge and oatcakes. Fishheads stuffed
with oats and chopped fish liver was a traditional dish,
and one considered very important for children. The Eskimo
diet, composed largely of fish, fish roe and marine
animals, including seal oil and blubber, allowed Eskimo
mothers to produce one sturdy baby after another without
suffering any health problems or tooth decay. Well-muscled
hunter-gatherers in Canada, the Everglades, the Amazon,
Australia and Africa consumed game animals, particularly
the parts that civilized folk tend to avoid--organ meats,
glands, blood, marrow and particularly the adrenal
glands--and a variety of grains, tubers, vegetables and
fruits that were available. African cattle-keeping tribes
like the Masai consumed no plant foods at all--just meat,
blood and milk. Southsea islanders and the Maori of New
Zealand ate seafood of every sort--fish, shark, octopus,
shellfish, sea worms--along with pork meat and fat, and a
variety of plant foods including coconut, manioc and fruit.
Whenever these isolated peoples could obtain sea foods they
did so--even Indian tribes living high in the Andes. These
groups put a high value on fish roe which was available in
dried form in the most remote Andean villages. Insects were
another common food, in all regions except the Arctic. The
foods that allow people of every race and every climate to
be healthy are whole natural foods--meat with its fat,
organ meats, whole milk products, fish, insects, whole
grains, tubers, vegetables and fruit--not newfangled
concoctions made with white sugar, refined flour and rancid
and chemically altered vegetable oils.
Caption: The photographs of Dr. Weston Price illustrate the
difference in facial structure between those on their
native diets and those whose parents had adopted the
"civilized" diets of devitalized processed foods. The
"primitive" Seminole girl (left) and Samoan boy (third from
left) have wide, handsome faces with plenty of room for the
dental arches. The "modernized" Seminole girl (second from
left) and Samoan boy (right), born to parents who had
abandoned their traditional diets, have narrowed faces,
crowded teeth and a reduced immunity to disease.
Price took samples of native foods home with him to
Cleveland and studied them in his laboratory. He found that
these diets contained at least four times the minerals and
water soluble vitamins--vitamin C and B complex--as the
American diet of his day. Price would undoubtedly find a
greater discrepancy in the 1990s due to continual depletion
of our soils through industrial farming practices. What's
more, among traditional populations, grains and tubers were
prepared in ways that increased vitamin content and made
minerals more available--soaking, fermenting, sprouting and
sour leavening.
It was when Price analyzed the fat soluble vitamins that he
got a real surprise. The diets of healthy native groups
contained at least ten times more vitamin A and vitamin D
than the American diet of his day! These vitamins are found
only in animal fats--butter, lard, egg yolks, fish oils and
foods with fat-rich cellular membranes like liver and other
organ meats, fish eggs and shell fish.
Price referred to the fat soluble vitamins as "catalysts"
or "activators" upon which the assimilation of all the
other nutrients depended--protein, minerals and vitamins.
In other words, without the dietary factors found in animal
fats, all the other nutrients largely go to waste.
Price also discovered another fat soluble vitamin that was
a more powerful catalyst for nutrient absorption than
vitamins A and D. He called it "Activator X". All the
healthy groups Price studied had the X Factor in their
diets. It could be found in certain special foods which
these people considered sacred--cod liver oil, fish eggs,
organ meats and the deep yellow Spring and Fall butter from
cows eating rapidly growing green grass. When the snows
melted and the cows could go up to the rich pastures above
their village, the Swiss placed a bowl of such butter on
the church altar and lit a wick in it. The Masai set fire
to yellow fields so that new grass could grow for their
cows. Hunter-gatherers always ate the organ meats of the
game they killed--often raw. Liver was held to be sacred by
many African tribes. The Eskimos and many Indian tribes put
a very high value on fish eggs.
The therapeutic value of foods rich in the X Factor was
recognized during the years before the second World War.
Price found that the action of "high vitamin" Spring and
Fall butter was nothing short of magical, especially when
small doses of cod liver oil were also part of the diet. He
used the combination of high vitamin butter and cod liver
oil with great success to treat osteoporosis, tooth decay,
arthritis, rickets and failure to thrive in children.
Other researchers used such foods very successfully for the
treatment of respiratory diseases such as TB, asthma,
allergies and emphysema. One of these was Francis Pottenger
whose sanitorium in Monrovia, California served liberal
amounts of liver, butter, cream and eggs to convalescing
patients. He also gave supplements of adrenal cortex to
treat exhaustion.
Dr. Price consistently found that healthy "primitives",
whose diets contained adequate nutrients from animal
protein and fat, had a cheerful, positive attitude to life.
He noted that most prison and asylum inmates have facial
deformities indicative of pre-natal nutritional
deficiencies.
Like Price, Pottenger was also a researcher. He decided to
perform adrenalectomy on cats and then fed them the adrenal
cortex extract he prepared for his patients in order to
test its effectiveness. Unfortunately most of the cats died
during the operation. He conceived of an experiment in
which one group of cats received only raw milk and raw
meat, while other groups received part of the diet as
pasteurized milk or cooked meat. He found that only those
cats whose diet was totally raw survived the adrenalectomy
and as his research progressed, he noticed that only the
all-raw group continued in good health generation after
generation--they had excellent bone structure, freedom from
parasites and vermin, easy pregnancies and gentle
dispositions. All of the groups whose diet was partially
cooked developed "facial deformities" of the exact same
kind that Price observed in human groups on the "displacing
foods of modern commerce"--narrowed faces, crowded jaws,
frail bones and weakened ligaments. They were plagued with
parasites, developed all manner of diseases and had
difficult pregnancies. Female cats became aggressive while
the males became docile. After just three generations,
young animals died before reaching adulthood and
reproduction ceased.
The results of Pottenger's cat experiments are often
misinterpreted. They do not mean that humans should eat
only raw foods--humans are not cats. Part of the diet was
cooked in all the healthy groups Price studied. (Milk
products, however, were almost always consumed raw.)
Pottenger's findings must be seen in the context of the
Price research and can be interpreted as follows: When the
human diet produces "facial deformities"--the progressive
narrowing of the face and crowding of the teeth--extinction
will occur if that diet is followed for several
generations. The implications for western
civilization--obsessed as it is with refined, highly
sweetened convenience foods and low-fat items--is profound.
The research of Weston Price is not so much misinterpreted
as ignored. In a country where the entire orthodox health
establishment condemns saturated fat and cholesterol from
animal sources, and where vending machines have become a
fixture in our schools, who wants to hear about a
peripatetic dentist who warned about the dangers of sugar
and white flour, who thought kids should take cod liver oil
and who believed that butter was the number one health
food?
The irony is that as Price becomes more and more forgotten,
more and more research appears in the scientific literature
proving he was right. We now know that vitamin A is
essential for the prevention of birth defects, for growth
and development, for the health of the immune system and
the proper functioning of all the glands. Scientists have
discovered that the precursors to vitamin A--the carotenes
found in plant foods--cannot be converted to true vitamin A
by infants and children. They must get their vital supply
of this nutrient from animal fats. Yet orthodox nutritional
pundits are now pushing low-fat diets for children. Neither
can diabetics and people with thyroid conditions convert
carotenes to the fat soluble form of vitamin A--yet
diabetics and people with low energy are told to avoid
animal fats.
The scientific literature tells us that vitamin D is needed
not only for healthy bones, and optimal growth and
development, but also to prevent colon cancer, MS and
reproductive problems.
Cod liver oil is an excellent source of vitamin D. Cod
liver oil also contains special fats called EPA and DHA The
body uses EPA to make substances that help prevent blood
clots, and that regulate a myriad of biochemical processes.
Recent research shows that DHA is essential to the
development of the brain and nervous system. Adequate DHA
in the mother's diet is necessary for the proper
development of the retina in the infant she carries. DHA in
mother's milk helps prevent learning disabilities. Cod
liver oil and foods like liver and egg yolk supply this
essential nutrient to the developing fetus, to nursing
infants and to growing children.
Butter contains both vitamin A and D, as well as other
beneficial substances. Conjugated linoleic acid in
butterfat is a powerful protection against cancer. Certain
fats called glycospingolipids aid digestion. Butter is rich
in trace minerals, and naturally yellow Spring and Fall
butter contains the X factor.
Saturated fats from animal sources--portrayed as the
enemy--form an important part of the cell membrane; they
protect the immune system and enhance the utilization of
essential fatty acids. They are needed for the proper
development of the brain and nervous system. Certain types
of saturated fats provide quick energy and protect against
pathogenic microorganisms in the intestinal tract; other
types provide energy to the heart.
Cholesterol is essential to the development of the brain
and nervous system of the infant, so much so that mother's
milk is not only extremely rich in the substance, but also
contains special enzymes that aid in the absorption of
cholesterol from the intestinal tract. Cholesterol is the
body's repair substance; when the arteries are damaged
because of weakness or irritation, cholesterol steps in to
patch things up and prevent aneurysms. Cholesterol is a
powerful antioxidant, protecting the body from cancer; it
is the precursor to the bile salts, needed for fat
digestion; from it the adrenal hormones are formed, those
that help us deal with stress and those that regulate
sexual function.
The scientific literature is equally clear about the
dangers of polyunsaturated vegetable oils--the kind that
are supposed to be good for us. Because polyunsaturates are
highly subject to rancidity, they increase the body's need
for vitamin E and other antioxidants. (Canola oil, in
particular, can create severe vitamin E deficiency.) Excess
consumption of vegetable oils is especially damaging to the
reproductive organs and the lungs--both of which are sites
for huge increases in cancer in the US. In test animals,
diets high in polyunsaturates from vegetable oils inhibit
the ability to learn, especially under conditions of
stress; they are toxic to the liver; they compromise the
integrity of the immune system; they depress the mental and
physical growth of infants; they increase levels of uric
acid in the blood; they cause abnormal fatty acid profiles
in the adipose tissues; they have been linked to mental
decline and chromosomal damage; they accelerate aging.
Excess consumption of polyunsaturates is associated with
increasing rates of cancer, heart disease and weight gain;
excess use of commercial vegetable oils interferes with the
production of prostaglandins--localized tissue hormones--
leading to an array of complaints such as autoimmune
diseases, sterility and PMS. Vegetable oils are more toxic
when heated. One study reported that polyunsaturates turn
to varnish in the intestines. A study by a plastic surgeon
found that women who consumed mostly vegetable oils had far
more wrinkles than those who consumed traditional animal
fats.
When polyunsaturated oils are hardened to make margarine
and shortening by a process called hydrogenation, they
deliver a double whammy of increased cancer, reproductive
problems, learning disabilities and growth problems in
children.
The vital research of Weston Price remains largely
forgotten because the importance of his findings, if
recognized by the general populace, would bring down
America's largest industry--food processing and its three
supporting pillars--refined sweeteners, white flour and
vegetable oils. Representatives of this industry have
worked behind the scenes to erect the huge edifice of the
"lipid hypothesis"--the untenable theory that saturated
fats and cholesterol cause heart disease and cancer. All
one has to do is look at the statistics to know that it
isn't true. Butter consumption at the turn of the century
was eighteen pounds per person per year, and the use of
vegetable oils almost nonexistent, yet cancer and heart
disease were rare. Today butter consumption hovers just
above four pounds per person per year while vegetable oil
consumption has soared--and cancer and heart disease are
endemic.
Caption: Dr. Weston Price discovered that healthy tribal
groups fed special foods to parets before conception and
during pregnancy; and to children during their growing
years. His analyses showed that these foods were
exceptionally rich in the fat-soluble nutriets found only
in animal fats such as butter and marine oils. The
universal "primitive" tradition of feeding nutrient-rich
foods to pregnant women and growing children puts western
medical practices to shame.
What the research really shows is that both refined
carbohydrates and vegetable oils cause imbalances in the
blood and at the cellular level that lead to an increased
tendency to form blood clots, leading to myocardial
infarction. This kind of heart disease was virtually
unknown in America in 1900. Today it has reached epidemic
levels. Atherosclerosis, or the buildup of hardened plague
in the artery walls, cannot be blamed on saturated fats or
cholesterol. Very little of the material in this plaque is
cholesterol, and a 1994 study appearing in the Lancet
showed that almost three quarters of the fat in artery
clogs is unsaturated. The "artery clogging" fats are not
animal fats but vegetable oils.
Built into the whole cloth of the lipid hypothesis is the
postulate that the traditional foods of our ancestors--the
butter, cream, eggs, liver, meat and fish eggs that Price
recognized were necessary to produce "splendid physical
development"--are bad for us. A number of stratagems have
served to imbed this notion in the consciousness of the
people, not the least of which was the National Cholesterol
Education Program (NCEP), during which your tax dollars
paid for a packet of "information" on cholesterol and heart
disease to be sent to every physician in America. As the
American Pharmaceutical Association served on the
coordinating committee of this massive program, it is not
surprising that the packet instructed physicians on ways to
test serum cholesterol levels, and what drugs to prescribe
for patients whose cholesterol levels put them in the "at
risk" category--defined arbitrarily as anyone over 200
mg/dl, the vast majority of the adult population.
Physicians received instruction on the "prudent diet," low
in saturated fat and cholesterol, for "at risk" Americans,
even though studies indicated that such diets did not offer
any significant protection against heart disease. They did,
however, increase the risk of death from cancer, intestinal
diseases, accidents, suicide and stroke. A specific
recommendation contained in the NCEP information packet was
the replacement of butter with margarine.
In 1990, two generations after Weston Price conceived of
studying isolated nonindustrialized people as a way of
learning how to confer good health on our children, the
National Cholesterol Education Program recommended the
"prudent diet" for all Americans above the age of two. The
advantage of such a diet is supposed to be reduced risk of
heart disease in later life--even though not a single study
has shown such an hypothesis to be tenable. What the
scientific literature does tell us is that low fat diets
for children, or diets in which vegetable oils have been
substituted for animal fats, result in failure to
thrive--failure to grow tall and strong--as well as
learning disabilities, susceptibility to infection and
behavioral problems. Teenage girls who adhere to such a
diet risk reproductive problems. If they do manage to
conceive, their chances of giving birth to a low birth
weight baby, or a baby with birth defects, are high.
Caption: These two beautiful girls were born to mothers
whose nutrition had not been optimal during their growing
years. However, they were able to reverse the trend of
physical degeneration by eating a rich diet during
pregnancy and by feeding their daughters whole,
nutrient-dense foods including animal protein, whole milk
products, butter, whole grains, fresh fruits and
vegetables, and cod liver oil. This diet allowed these
girls to reach their optimum genetic potential. Both
mothers had crowded teeth, while these two girls have
naturally straight teeth, needing no orthodontics.
Compared to this folly, the wisdom of the so-called
primitive in regards to ensuring the health of his children
has inspired the awe of Weston Price and all who have read
his book. Again and again he found that tribal
groups--especially those in Africa and the South Pacific--
fed special foods to young men and women before conception,
to women during pregnancy and lactation, and to children
during their growing years. When he tested these
foods--things like liver, shellfish, organ meats and bright
yellow butter--he found them to be extremely rich in the
"fat-soluble activators"--vitamins A, D and the X Factor.
Special soaked grain preparations of high mineral
content--particularly millet and quinoa--were fed to
lactating women to increase milk supply.
Price also discovered that many tribes practiced the
spacing of children in order to allow the mother to recover
her nutrient stores and to ensure that subsequent children
would be as healthy as the first. They did this by a system
of multiple wives, or in the case of monogamous cultures,
deliberate abstinence. Three years was considered the
minimum time necessary between children to the same
mother--anything less brought shame on the parents and the
opprobrium of the village.
The education of the young in these tribal groups included
instruction in dietary wisdom as a way of ensuring the
health of future generations and the continuance of the
tribe in the face of the constant challenge of finding
food, and defending the group against waring neighbors.
Modern parents, living in times of peace and abundance,
face an altogether different challenge, one of
discrimination and cunning. For they must learn to
discriminate between hyperbole and truth when it comes to
choosing foods for themselves and their family; and to
practice cunning in protecting their children from those
displacing products of modern commerce that prevent the
optimal expression of their genetic heritage--foodstuffs
made of sugar, white flour, vegetable oils and products
that imitate the nourishing foods of our
ancestors--margarine, shortening, egg replacements, meat
extenders, fake broths, ersatz cream, processed cheese,
factory farmed meats, industrially farmed plantfoods,
protein powders, and packets of stuff that never spoils.
For a future of healthy children--for any future at all--we
must turn our backs on the dietary advice of sophisticated
medical orthodoxy and return to the food wisdom of our
so-called primitive ancestors, choosing traditional whole
foods that are organically grown, humanely raised,
minimally processed and above all not shorn of their vital
lipid component.
The Weston A. Price Foundation can be contacted @
PMB 106-380
4200 Wisconsin Avenue, NW
Washington, DC. 20016
Or by Telephone 202-333-heal
Website: www.WestoAPrice.org
email: WestonAPrice@msn.com
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