Health and Nutrition around the World
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Dr. Price's Nutritional Study In research studies it is often mentioned that certain peoples and tribes eat various diets that are much better than the modern diet in the Western world. Why should this be so? A researcher, who carried out a lot of work in this field, was Dr. Weston Price of Cleveland, Ohio. He was a dentist in private practice in the 1990s and he had a truly glorious and distinguished career. He also made great strides in his research by promoting the link between good nutrition and good health.
His Book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration is a treasure trove of nutritional information that can only help to lead modern people to greater wellbeing and vitality, and away from the scourge of chronic disease.
Dr. Price's Nutrition StudyDr.Price noticed that his patients were suffering more and more chronic and degenerative diseases. He also noticed that his younger patients had increasingly deformed dental arches, crooked teeth, and cavities. This definitely concerned him: he had not seen such things just ten or fifteen years before.
Why was it happening now? Price also noticed a strong correlation between dental health and physical health: a mouth full of cavities went hand in hand with a body either full of disease, or generalised weakness and susceptibility to disease. In Price's time, tuberculosis was the major infectious illness, the White Scourge. He noticed that children were increasingly affected, especially the ones with really bad teeth.
Dr. Price had heard rumours of native cultures where so-called primitive people lived happy lives, free of disease. He hit on an idea: why not find these people and find out if they really are healthy, and if so, what they're doing to keep themselves healthy.
Being rather well off financially, he and his wife started travelling around the world to remote locations. They were specifically looking for healthy peoples who had not been touched yet by civilization - at that time, such groups were still around.
This was a health study with a major difference. Rather than examine those people who were unhealthy, Price wanted to find HEALTHY people, find out what made them so, and see if there were any patterns among these people. During his nine years of journeys, Price did indeed come across groups of primitives who were having health problems for various reasons.
Dr. Price often found that the health problems were caused by food shortages (especially a lack of animal products), droughts, things people living off the land must face from time to time, or contact with white European civilization.
Where did this Research take place?Dr. Price and his wife travelled to isolated villages in the Swiss alps, to cold and blustery islands off the coast of Scotland, to the Andes mountains in Peru, to several locations in Africa, to the Polynesian islands, to Australia and New Zealand, to the forests of northern Canada, and even to the Arctic Circle. In all, Price visited with fourteen groups of native peoples.
After gaining the trust of the village elders in the various places, Price did what came naturally: he counted cavities and physically examined them. Imagine his surprise to find, on average, less than 1% of tooth decay in all the peoples he visited!
He also found that these people's teeth were perfectly straight and white, with high dental arches and well-formed facial features. And there was something more astonishing: none of the peoples Price examined practiced any sort of dental hygiene; not one of his subjects had ever even used a toothbrush.
Dr. Price also noticed that, in addition to their healthy teeth and gums, all the people he discovered were hardy and strong, despite the sometimes-difficult living conditions they had to endure. Eskimo women, for example, gave birth to one healthy baby after another with little difficulty.
Despite the Swiss children going barefoot in cold streams, there had not been a single case of tuberculosis in any of them, despite exposure to TB. In general, Price found, in contrast to what he saw in America, no incidence of the very diseases that plague us modern people: cancer, heart disease, diabetes, haemorrhoids, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, osteoporosis, chronic fatigue syndrome, and so on.
Dr. Price also noticed another quality about the healthy primitives he found: they were happy. While depression was not a major problem in Price's day, it certainly is today: ask any psychiatrist. While certain natives sometimes fought with neighbouring tribes, within their own groups, they were cheerfuland optimistic and bounced back quickly from emotional setbacks. These people had no need for antidepressants.
What did Native Peoples eat ?Price took great care to observe what these people were eating for he suspected the key to good health and good teeth was in good food. He was surprised to find that, depending on the people in question and where they lived, each group ate very differently from the other.
The Swiss mountain villagers lived mainly on unpasteurised and cultured dairy products, especially butter and cheese. Rye also formed an important part of their diet. Occasionally, they ate meat (beef) as cows in their herds got older. Small amounts of bone broths, vegetables and berries rounded out the diet.
Due to the high altitude, not much vegetation grew. The villagers would eat what they could in the short summer months, and pickle what was left over for the winter. The main foods, however, were full fat cheese, butter, and rye bread. Gaelic fisher people of the Outer Hebrides ate no dairy products, but instead had their fill of cod and other sea foods, especially shell fish (when in season). Due to the poor soil, the only grain that could grow was oats, and it formed a major part of their diet.
A traditional dish, one considered very important for growing children and expectant mothers, was cod's head stuffed with oats and mashed fish liver. Again, due to the extremely inhospitable climate, fruits and vegetables grew sparsely. Dr. Price noted that a young Gaelic girl reeled in puzzlement when offered an apple: she had never seen one!
Eskimo, or Innuit, ate a diet of almost 100% animal products with hefty amounts of fish. Walrus and seal, and other marine mammals also formed an important part of the diet. Blubber (fat) was consumed with relish. The Innuit would gather nuts, berries, and some grasses during the short summer months, but their diet was basically all meat and fat. Price noted that the Innuit would usually ferment their meat before eating it. That is, they would bury it and allow it to slightly putrefy before consuming it. Innuit would also eat the partially digested grasses of caribou by cutting open their stomachs and intestines.
The Maori of New Zealand, along with other South sea islanders, ate sea food of every sort - fish, shark, octopus, sea worms, shellfish - along with fatty pork and a wide variety of plant foods including coconut and fruit.
African cattle-keeping tribes like the Masai consumed virtually no plant foods at all, just beef, raw milk, organ meats, and blood (in times of drought). The Dinkas of the Sudan, whom Price claimed were the healthiest of all the African tribes he studied, ate a combination of fermented whole grains with fish, along with smaller amounts of red meat, vegetables, and fruit. The Bantu, on the other hand, the least hardy of the African tribes studied, were mainly agriculturists. Their diet consisted mostly of beans, squash, corn, millet, vegetables, and fruits, with small amounts of milk and meat. Price never found a totally vegetarian culture. Modern anthropological data support this: all cultures and peoples show a preference for animal foods and animal fat.
The hunter-gatherers of Northern Canada, the Florida Everglades, the Amazon, and Australia, , ate game animals of all types, especially the organ meats, and a variety of grains, beans and peas, tubers, vegetables, and fruits when available. Price also noted that all cultures ate fermented foods each day. Foods such as cheese, cultured butter, yogurt, or fermented grain drinks like kaffir beer (made from millet) in Africa, or fermented fish as with the Innuit were an important part of native diets. Furthermore, all the native peoples studied made great efforts to obtain seafood, especially fish roe, so that they had healthy children. Even mountain dwelling peoples would make semi-annual trips to the sea to bring back seaweeds, fish eggs, and dried fish. Shrimp, rich in both cholesterol and vitamin D, was a standard food in many places, from Africa to the Orient.
The last major feature of native diets that Price found was that they were rich in fat, especially animal fat. Whether from insects, eggs, fish, game animals, or domesticated herds, primitive peoples knew that they would get sick if they did not consume enough fat. Explorers besides Dr. Price have also found this to be true.
How much fat did they eat?Anthropologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who lived for years among the Innuit and Northern Canadian Indians, specifically noted how the Indians would go out of their way to hunt down older male caribou for they carried a 50 pound slab of back fat. When such animals were unavailable and Indians were forced to subsist on rabbits, a very lean animal, diarrhoea and hunger would set in after about a week. The human body needs saturated fat to assimilate and utilize proteins and saturated animal fats contain high amounts of the fat-soluble vitamins, as well as beneficial fatty acids.
Of course, the foods that Price's subjects ate were natural and unprocessed. Their foods did not contain preservatives, additives, or colourings. They did not contain added sugar (though, when available, natural sweets like honey and maple syrup were eaten in moderation). They did not contain white flour or canned foods.
Their milk products were not pasteurised, homogenised, or low fat. The animal and plant foods consumed were raised and grown on pesticide-free soil and were not given growth hormones or antibiotics. In short, these people always ate organic.
What Did their Diets show?Basically, the diets of these healthy peoples contained 10 times the amount of fat-soluble vitamins, and at least 4 times the amount of calcium, other minerals, and water-soluble vitamins than Western diets at that time. No wonder these people were so healthy! Because of their consumption of fermented and raw foods (including raw animal products), Price noted that native diets were rich in enzymes. Enzymes assist in the digestion of cooked foods.
Price noted that all peoples had a natural feeling and dietary urge towards foods rich in the fat-soluble vitamins. Price considered butter from pasture-fed cows, rich in these vitamins as well as minerals, to be the premiere health food. Fat-soluble vitamins are found in fats of animal origin, like butter, cream, lard, and tallow, as well as in organ meats. Above all, they all lived long healthy lives. Price took numerous photos of healthy peoples and most of them were well past 60 but looked much younger.
What is the evidence of their long lives?The Aborigines, for example, had a special society of the elderly. Obviously, if there were no old people amongst them, they would have had no need for such a group. It was also found among the Innuit (Eskimos) that they too lived long healthy lives. It is true that death rates at younger ages were higher among some groups, but this was because of dangerous lifestyle these people lived, not from their diet. When you live in the Arctic Circle, for example, constantly fighting the elements, polar bears, ice flows, and leopard seals, you run the risk of an early death.
There is another common misconception that modern nutrition holds towards native peoples. It says that as a result of their high meat and fat diets, they suffered from all sorts of degenerative diseases, especially osteoporosis and heart disease.
The facts, however, do not support this theory. Despite some studies done in the past 20 years that tried to show the high rates of osteoporosis among the Innuit were due to their high protein diet, other studies have shown no such thing.
The work of Drs. Herta Spencer and Lois Kramer conclusively proved that the protein/calcium loss theory to be nonsense. As it turns out, the negative studies on the Eskimo were done, not on them following their traditional diet, but among modernised Eskimo, who had adopted modern eating habits and alcohol.
This is not to say that native peoples did not have ANY problems – this is certainly not the case. Price learned of native remedies for a host of minor ills such as headaches, colds, wounds, and burns. But as far as degenerative diseases go, he found nothing. This brings up the other major finding of Dr. Price's research: the effects of a modern diet on native peoples.
What is the effect of the Modern Diet on Native Peoples?The native Hawaiians are a tragic example of this shift. Dr. Price did visit the Hawaiian Islands on his journeys. He, of course, noted that Hawaiians who ate their traditional diet of coconut, fish, shellfish, taro, sweet potatoes, and fresh fruits were healthy and strong. Today, however, the health of native Hawaiians is frightening. Obesity and diabetes are rampant. Because canned meats with nitrates in them are popular there, (like Spam) rates of stomach cancer are high (nitrates convert into carcinogens in the stomach - vitamin C halts the conversion). Hawaiians today eat their fair share of sugar, soft drinks, vegetable oils, macaroni salad, white flour, and white rice. Coconut is sometimes eaten, but usually as part of a sugary snack. High blood pressure and heart attacks are common. Rates of Alzheimer's are elevated as well. Such is the effect of processed foods on a whole race of people.
In the last decade or so, however, a diet was proposed called the Hawaii Diet. Though it is a little low in fat, it advocates a full return to traditional eating patterns: fish, taro, sweet potatoes, fresh fruit and vegetables, and, occasionally, pork (wild boar and feral pig are native to the islands). Specifically avoided are white rice, sugar, and processed foods in general. The change is dramatic and shows that :
Price noticed a pattern: that if a native abandoned his ancestral eating habits in favour of modern foods, ill health and dental cavities followed. If that same person switched back to the original eating pattern, however, health returned and the progression of dental decay stopped and reversed itself. This is perhaps the most uplifting aspect of Price's work: one can always reverse the trend; and there is always hope.
Price accurately and ominously predicted that as Western man consumed more refined sugar and substituted refined and processed vegetable oils for animal fats, disease would increase and reproduction would be more difficult. Today, some 25% of Western couples are infertile, and rates of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease have skyrocketed. Price was truly a modern "politically incorrect" prophet of the truth, but with no one listening to what he had to say.
A Return to Sanity?For many decades, Price's work has been buried and forgotten. Due to the efforts of the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation, however, and the re-publication of Price's book for the public, that is fortunately starting to change. Price's conclusions and recommendations were shocking for his time. He advocated a return to breast-feeding when such a practice was discouraged by Western medicine. He urged parents to give their children cod liver oil every day. He considered fresh butter to be the supreme health food.
He warned against:
· pesticides
In short, all the things that modern nutrition and agriculture have embraced and promoted the last few decades. Price believed that margarine was a demonic creation. However, with recommendations like these, he was REALLY unpopular! But the result of his research speaks for itself.
Why Dr. Price’s Work is BelittledKnowing that his health data flatly contradicts virtually everything that politically correct nutrition holds, it is common to find his work belittled. If Price's studies are accurate, then the low-fat school is discredited. It is also typical, for critics to say that Price only superficially examined the peoples he encountered and made simplistic conclusions about their health. Price is also accused of ignoring the nutritional deficiencies of the peoples he studied, as well as their high rates of infant mortality. It's also asserted that the modern foods that Price argued were these people's downfall, were actually wholesome, but the primitive peoples over ate too much of them and didn't balance their diets correctly, hence their high rates of disease after adopting modern food stuffs.
Critics also claim that malnourished people usually don't have dental problems, so it is immaterial that the natives Price photographed had perfect teeth, or that the modernised ones had poor ones.
It is truly amazing how far some “health” experts will go to defend the processed food industry and shaky nutritional therories! Even a cursory look at Price's book will tell any rational person that Price did not superficially examine the people he studied. The detail about native customs, eating habits, and history of the various areas argues against any accusations of superficiality.
Dr. Price was also a physician with many years of experience; it is ludicrous to claim that he would make a superficial examination and reach simplistic conclusions about people's health.
If there were nutritional deficiencies, he would have noted them down, but no such descriptions exist for the simple reason that no such deficiencies existed. If we examine the modern descendants of Price's subjects, we find that they enjoy robust health and freedom from both dental cavities and more chronic diseases, IF they have not abandoned their native diets.
It is true that high infant mortality rates existed, but only AFTER exposure to and adapting to the white European way of life. Further, if the foods of modern commerce were so wholesome, then they would have provided the nutrients within them to avert death, dental decay, and disease in the person who ate them, regardless of how they ate them. Claims of unbalanced diets of modern foods do not stand the test of logic.
The last claim about dental condition not being related to the body's nutritional state is simply false. Numerous researchers have noted the clear and obvious connection between dental and bodily health. They all assert without hesitation that the health of the body is reflected quite accurately in the health of the teeth.
The Health Message for MankindThe obvious conclusion of Price's research is that for humanity to survive, it must eat better. And the foods it must eat must be whole, fresh, and unprocessed. More and more, people are beginning to see this and have been changing their eating patterns.
For the majority, however, the continuation of negative dietary habits will inevitably lead to decreased vitality, unhealthy children, and the degeneration of the human race. In this world of survival of the fittest, we need to take every opportunity to bolster our position or we risk going into extinction.
Besides, eating whole foods tastes good! The first happy lesson to be learned from traditional diets and Dr. Price's work is that good food can and should taste good. Its OK to sauté vegetables and meats with butter. It’s OK to consume whole (unpasteurised, non-homogenised) milk, meat with its fat, eggs, shrimp and lobster, and liver with onions and bacon. Its OK and healthy to eat home made soups made from gelatine-rich bone broths and sauces made from drippings and cream. Eating whole foods is good for the environment as well. The building blocks of a whole foods diet are pesticide-free plant foods raised on naturally enriched soils, and healthy animals that live free to graze and manure the paddocks of their farms, as opposed to standing in a cramped stall, never seeing sunlight, being fed soybeans and corn meal, and being injected constantly with steroids and antibiotics.
Eating whole foods is better for the economy too. Small farms usually raise organic foods. Each time you buy an organically raised plant or animal product, you are helping someone to earn a living. Isn't that preferable to giving your money to a multinational food company that mass produces its product, not caring about the health of the soil, the planet, the animals, or ourselves?
Finally, eating whole foods is healthier. We humans evolved eating certain foodstuffs in certain ways. You did not see a caveman trimming the fat off of his meat, a Swiss Alps villager eating low fat cheese, or a Maori fishermen avoiding shellfish for fear of cholesterol - they ate the whole thing!
Natural whole Foods are packaged in ways that Nature intended: they contain all the nutrients within themselves for optimal use by our bodies. Eating whole foods insures us the highest amount of nutrients food has to offer. Tampering with them is bad for health and ill advised.
Our Health and Nutrition OpportunityWesterners live in countries where food is always available and plentiful, unlike other parts of the world where people routinely starve or are malnourished. Further, we live with a choice between two ways of eating: the way of whole foods, and the way of processed, new fangled junk foods.
With such a privilege, we owe it to ourselves and to our children to choose the way of whole foods. By making this decision, we can stem the tide of chronic disease that threatens to consume our bodies and minds. It is up to us to make that decision and embrace the ways of our ancestors. It is only by turning to the wisdom of traditional diets that we can find our nutritional salvation.
Further Reading
The nutritional properties of different foods
Read more about the practice and research into longevity medicine
The dangers of too many additives in our food
What are superfoods? Find out here
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