Every time I have looked on the Internet for a resource to answer a question about health, nutrition, or diet, I seem to find a thousand different answers. These days, a google search seems to bring up more message boards with “the most popular answer” rising to the top as the expert opinion rather than an actual expert opinion. Or worse yet, I’ll stumble across a government funded website that is simply perpetuating misinformation (See my post: The Truth About Fats or read anything by Gary Taubes to learn how the government has deceived us about the most important health topics.) But after learning about the work of Cleveland dentist, Dr. Weston A. Price (1870-1948) and The Weston A. Price Foundation founded by Sally Fallon and Mary Enig, I finally have a resource that I can trust.
Why do I trust Weston Price? His research makes sense to me. It’s simple, straightforward, and sums up everything I believe in a nutshell. Dr. Price traveled the world doing field work in the 1920s and 1930s for his 1939 book, Nutritional and Physical Degeneration. His original goal was to record and study the dental health of pre-industrial populations including tribal Africans and Pacific Islanders, Inuit, North and South American Natives, and Australian aborigines. His findings led him to the belief that dental deformities were merely a sign of physical degeneration resulting from what he suspected were nutritional deficiencies. When Dr. Price analyzed the foods used by these people, he found that they provided four times the calcium and other minerals and at least ten times the fat-soluble vitamins from animal foods such as butter, fish, eggs, shellfish, and organ meats. Further research by Dr. Price showed that these primitive people valued not only the nutrition of the pregnant and lactating mother, but the nutrition of both parents preconception along with child spacing so that the mother could regain her full health and nutrition. Their diets were VERY rich in fat soluble vitamins A and D (nutrients ONLY found in animal fats).
The people that Dr. Price studied all had beautiful straight teeth that were free from decay, healthy lean bodies, emotional stability, and they were free from the modern illnesses of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. When their diets were “modernized” with sugar, white flour, pasteurized milk and convenience foods filled with extenders and additives, they quickly succumbed to deformed dental arches resulting in crowded, crooked teeth, narrowed face, and a reduced immunity to disease.
Photos Copyright © Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation®, All Rights Reserved, www.ppnf.org
The “primitive” Seminole girl (left) has a wide, handsome face with plenty of room for the dental arches. The “modernized” Seminole girl (right) born to parents who had abandoned their traditional diets, has a narrowed face, crowded teeth, and a reduced immunity to disease.
The Weston A. Price Foundation has literally been my FOUNDATION for everything I am learning about health. Whenever I have a question about something like, “Should women take statins?” or “What should we do about high blood pressure?” I type in my question along with the name “Weston Price” and when I do, I don’t find advice about what drugs to take, I find advice that shows me how food can be our medicine and that makes sense to me!
