In the 1930’s a dentist named Weston A. Price suspected that the dental problems (cavities, disease, and deformities) he was seeing in his practice seemed to be related to poor nutrition. He wanted to study a group of people that did not have these problems to see what they were eating compared to the diet of the modern Western culture of that time.
Besides dental disease and deformities, already in the 1930’s chronic diseases like heart disease, rheumatism, and “nervous” diseases were rampant in the U.S. and becoming an economic drain on the country.
At that time there were still people living in isolation eating traditional food in Switzerland, Scotland, Canada, Polynesia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and South America. Weston Price and his wife traveled the world, visiting these places, examining the teeth of the local people, and taking food samples to send home to analyze for vitamin and mineral content.
At each location they visited, there was a stark difference between the local people that ate a traditional diet versus the local people who had adopted a Western diet consisting of white flour, sugar and vegetable fats (what we call seed oils today).
The people following their traditional diet–be it rye bread and cheese in the Swiss alps, seafood and oat porridge in the Scottish Hebrides, or milk, blood and meat from cattle in Africa–were healthy. They had symmetrical faces, straight teeth, no cavities and were free of disease.
The same local people who followed a Western diet, for example the ones living near the port or the trading post and had access to the Western foods, had facial deformities, cavities, and were more prone to diseases like tuberculosis. Many of them were suffering in severe pain because they did not have access to dental care and had to live in their condition.
Weston Price detailed all his findings in a comprehensive book called Nutrition and Physical Degeneration in 1939. He found the connection between lack of nutrition in the Western diet and the rampant disease that was already occurring in the 1930’s.
White flour, white sugar and vegetable fats strip the body of nutrition rather than nourish it. Our soils are stripped of minerals and even if we try to eat healthy foods, the foods themselves provide little nutrition. Our modern society has left us sick. It’s unfortunate that we did not listen to Dr. Price back in the 1940’s and change course, but I believe there is a lot we can do now, and that starts with informing ourselves.
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