Nutrition and Physical Degeneration

 April, 25 2008


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Dr. Price visited and studied eleven different areas ranging from isolated valleys in Switzerland to the Polynesian Islands. He sought out native populations where he could find groups who were still eating the traditional diet of their people and closely related groups who had recently switched to the modern diet.

What Dr. Price found in his studies was an apparent connection between diet and health. In each case, those living on their traditional foods had excellent health, while those who were eating the modern diet had a common set of dental and health problems.

The traditional diets, based on what was available locally to eat, had in common the consumption of whole fresh natural food, and a menu that contained lots of animals, plus fruits, and vegetables in season, and little or no grain, beans, or dairy. If grain, beans, and dairy were consumed, they were typically fermented or cultured, and the dairy usually had a high butterfat content. Those who did eat grain ate whole grain products that were processed and consumed directly after milling. He did find people living entirely on animals, but none living entirely on plants.

The modern diets were predictably static wherever he went; the majority of calories coming from white bread, cakes, jams & jellies, white sugar, and candy, and the substitution of vegetable oils for animal sourced cooking fats.

Dr. Price’s investigation centered around dental problems and the contrasts he found there were striking. Populations eating native diets had uniformly healthy straight teeth. He typically found very low percentages of cavities, technically called dental carries, often as low as one cavity for every three or four people, and the decay stopped itself before the tooth was badly damaged.

Those eating the modern diet were afflicted with massive tooth decay. He found many people who were missing many teeth and those teeth that were left were badly decayed. Decay rates ran from 25% - 50% of all teeth examined, and upwards of 90% of the modern diet eaters had substantial tooth decay.

Children raised on the modern diet had deformed dental arches, crowded and overlapped teeth, and in some cases their faces were so deformed that they could not breathe through their nostrils, and were classified as mouth breathers.

Progressive degeneration could be seen in family portraits. In a number of cases, Dr. Price was able to assemble three generations for photos, and it could be clearly seen how the grandparents had excellent facial development and straight healthy teeth, while their children and grandchildren showed progressive degeneration, which reflected their individual childhood level of consumption of modern foods.

In addition to the distortions of facial geometry, he observed several other effects of the modern diet.

A characteristic of the modern diet that Dr. Price observed was a shortening of stature, and reduced bone density. This could be seen in family photographs, and by measuring ancient native skulls where he was allowed to examine them and comparing them to the skulls of modern local inhabitants.

Natives who ate the traditional diet seldom had tuberculosis. He found large numbers of those who had tuberculosis were eating modern foods, and had the facial features and massive tooth decay consistent with the modern diet. He did measurements of the chests of tuberculosis patients and compared them with the healthy and found a change in the ratio of width to depth. Those who had tuberculosis generally had chests that were narrower side to side but deeper front to back. This was interesting in that there is a distortion of the normal shape of the face when eating the modern diet, and if a similar distortion if found in the chest dimensions of tuberculosis patients, there could be some connection between the disease and modern diet. What that would be is hard to say. It could be the reduction of the strength of the immune system, or it could be an offshoot of the rampant tooth decay.

Another thing common to most of the native cultures he observed was the attention given to the nutrition of mothers, both before and during pregnancy, specifically to insure the birth of healthy babies. Special effort was made to provide expectant mothers with foods of high nutritional content.

Parents in most of the native cultures studied carefully spaced the birth of children so that each child could get the full attention of the mother during the first few years of their lives, and the mother could fully recover from one birth before becoming pregnant again.

Dr. Price took samples of the native foods, tested them for nutrient content, and compared them to the modern foods being eaten by those groups he was observing and found that the traditional diets had far more minerals and vitamins and far less sugar. The traditional diets contained far more animal protein and fat as well.

Dr. Price tested the Nutrient levels in foods available in American markets and found that nutrient levels were far lower than in traditional native diets and that nutritional content varies with the seasons, and in winter nutrient levels are lowest. Disease and death rates also vary with the seasons and peak at the times of lowest nutrient content in available foods. This can explain why winter is the cold and flu season. We are weakened, because we are eating fewer fresh foods, which contain fewer nutrients.

Dr. Price also found a strong correlation between mineral depletion in soil and nutrient content of foods; soil that is well stocked with nutrients grows more nutritious plants He recommended that US agriculture work to preserve the mineral content and quality of the soil, in order to provide nutrient rich foods.

Dr. Price tested the quality of both dairy products and meats, and found that grazing cattle on fresh grass provided the best nutrition and that keeping them in stalls and feeding them grain and old hay the worst.

He pointed out that the failure of classic societies often begins with depletion of the soil, which reduces the nutrition the people receive, which in turn saps their health and vitality, which leads to the final decline of the society.

Dr. Price surmised that there was a link between poor nutrition of youth and poor behavior, hyperactivity, allergies, delinquency, and poor scholastic performance.

While none of this is hard scientific evidence, based on traditional double blind experiments, it is an interesting observation. We all know that you have to feed a nutritionally balanced diet to farm animals and pets if they are to grow to full size, health, and vigor. It only makes sense that the same basic rules apply to Humans. What Dr. Price did was show specific harm done by modern foods beyond the increase in body fat.

His recommendations to eat fresh whole foods in order to maintain optimum health not only seem to be common sense, but were born out by his observations in the field.

While it is impossible for most of us to live on the native diets of fresh foods harvested from the wild, we can do much to move closer to that ideal. We can read labels and pick the most whole foods, the ones that use traditional simple ingredients. We can choose to avoid the heavily processed snack and convenience foods, and buy plain fresh produce and meat and use those as the mainstay of our diet.

I am a proponent of the Paleo-diet, and therefore am not in full agreement with Dr. Price on the eating of any grain, beans, or dairy. However, I have to agree with his prescription of eating as much whole fresh food as possible, and avoiding industrial process foods wherever possible. Nothing in the book indicated any danger in eating Paleo, and the majority of the tribes he studied were effectively eating Paleo.

I found the book interesting. The style of observational science followed by conclusions drawn from those observations is one that has largely been displaced by controlled experiments in our time. This has led some to discount such works as opinionated rubbish, but in this case it is hard to disagree with his core conclusions as to the need to eat a diet of whole fresh food. A series of double blind experiments would not make the conclusions any more valid.

There is an institute named after him, dedicated to promoting his style of healthy eating, the Weston A. Price Foundation.

You may download a copy of this book here:

Download Book

Here is the link to the Weston A. Price Foundation.

The Weston A. Price Foundation

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