Day 45: Nutrition and Physical Degeneration
Weston Price, DDS: Nutrition and Physical Degeneration: A Study of Health Impact of a Westernized Diet on Indigenous Cultures; Manifestation of Poor Nutrition and How the Degeneration Process Can Be Prevented and Reversed
Today we have for you our file on Weston A. Price and his book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration.
This book is important on many fronts, and is cited most often when the modern fallacious argument is made that the poor health of Western society has nothing to do with nutrition, and much more to do with our polluted environment and genetic realities.
Weston Price showed conclusively that when indigenous cultures–free of “Western” diseases–took on Western dietary habits, they developed many if not all of the same problems which ravage our nation today.
Briefly from the attached file:
Weston Price: “In my search for the cause of degeneration of the human face and the dental organs I have been unable to find an approach to the problem through the study of affected individuals and diseased tissues. . . . The evidence seemed to indicate clearly that the forces that were at work were not to be found in the diseased tissues, but that the undesirable conditions were the result of the absence of something, rather than the presence of something. This strongly indicated the need for finding groups of individuals so physically perfect that they could be used as controls. In order to discover them I determined to search our primitive racial stocks that were free from degenerative processes with which we are concerned in order to note what they have that we do not have. These field investigations have taken me to many parts of the world though a series of years. The following chapters review the studies made of primitive groups, first when still protected by their isolation, and, second, when in contact with modern civilization. (p. 21)”
What proved to be the something missing was nutrition. Remember, dear reader, that Price (and interestingly, Rudolf Steiner) began practice shortly after a massive change occurred in peoples’ food habits. The degenerations observed during the 1920s came about thirty years after the introduction of the roller mill and the consequent wide-spread consumption of denatured white-flour products. Price started researching Nutrition and Physical Degeneration around 20 years after nationally-distributed devitalized brand-name prepared packaged food products began to dominate the food shops and peoples’ dietaries.
Weston A. Price did humanity a great and largely-unappreciated service by establishing an easily-understandable standard of human health, clearly demonstrated with photographs. A really good picture really is worth many thousands of words and Price offers the reader a narrated slide show of over a hundred photos, many of them of extremely healthy people contrasted with degenerated ones, photos taken all over the world, of people of different races living in climates eating totally different dietaries, accompanied by sensitive, compassionate narration. This coupling of the visual image with narration increases the power of Price’s argument by a hundred-fold. Price’s book is basically a photographic travelogue, the story of a world-wide search for a standard by which to judge human health. This makes Nutrition and Physical Degeneration the most convincing and powerful awakener of health-consciousness I have ever encountered.
Please enjoy this file, and consider purchasing Weston Price’s important book as a reference and support for you. Never again will anyone convince you that genetics is driving our Western health crisis – or lead you to believe that food plays second or third fiddle in your health reality.
Deficient Diet: A Cause of Mental and Physical Degeneration
Today we are also pleased to offer you this excellent chapter from Conscious Eating by Dr. Gabriel Cousens, M.D. to address two very critical concerns: one regarding the poor state of health in the United States; and the health implications of live/raw foods vs overcooked foods as verified by some astounding research.
When the question is asked, “Why are we so sick in the U.S.?” you will often hear the answer that what we eat has nothing to do with it – that our sickness has everything to do with things outside of our control, such as pollution, stress in the American workplace, or our genes. What this file will help you to answer for yourself and those you discuss this important matter with is this: The level of our health as individuals and as a society is determined more greatly by the foods we eat than any other factor.
It is not our genes 99.5% of the time, though the Medical Pharmaceutical model does heavily benefit financially from our believing that genes determine the fate of our health.
Across the lines of gender, race, age, culture, and religion, we have been kept down by the propaganda of modern medicine and the pharmaceutical industry, which has not only promoted symptom management with drugs and surgery, but has downplayed or lied about the importance of food for our health. It is the worst form of institutionalized abuse in western society today.
For some incredible reading, enjoy the highlighted file available for you!
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Book and National Geographic Documentary
Based on Jared Diamond’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name, Guns, Germs and Steel traces humanity’s journey over the last 13,000 years – from the dawn of farming at the end of the last Ice Age to the realities of life in the twenty-first century.
Inspired by a question put to him on the island of Papua New Guinea more than thirty years ago, Diamond embarks on a world-wide quest to understand the roots of global inequality.
Why were Europeans the ones to conquer so much of our planet?
Why didn’t the Chinese, or the Inca, become masters of the globe instead?
Why did cities first evolve in the Middle East?
Why did farming never emerge in Australia?
And why are the tropics now the capital of global poverty?
As he peeled back the layers of history to uncover fundamental, environmental factors shaping the destiny of humanity, Diamond found both his theories and his own endurance tested.
The three one-hour programs were filmed across four continents on High Definition digital video, and combined ambitious dramatic reconstruction with moving documentary footage and computer animation. They also include contributions from Diamond himself and a wealth of international historians, archeologists and scientists.
Guns, Germs, and Steel is a thrilling ride through the elemental forces which have shaped our world – and which continue to shape our future.
Today’s Downloads
Online Articles
[Article] The Greatest Nutrition Reseacher of the 20th Century by Dr. Joseph Mercola
Dr. Weston A. Price was one of the major nutritional pioneers of all time.
He was a dentist around 1900 who noticed something that health care practitioners still try to deny today: that with the introduction of processed food, health started to decline.
Specifically, Dr. Price noticed an incredible increase in tooth decay when people began eating processed foods. When he began his journey around the world, he found that, as he suspected, native people who were still eating their traditional diets had nearly perfect teeth.
I am constantly amazed at how powerful a predictor of health your teeth are!
[Article] Introduction to Traditional Eating by Sarah Pope
Imagine a community of people where nearly every member was free of chronic disease, mental illness and even dental decay. Children and adults alike were strong, sturdy and attractive with wide faces and perfect smiles with plenty of room even for the wisdom teeth.
Fertility came with ease and robust, intelligent, and happy children were produced generation after generation.
Sound like a utopia?
This is the world discovered by Dr. Weston A. Price during the 1920’s and 1930’s as he traveled across the globe. He discovered fourteen isolated traditional societies still untouched by what he called “the displacing foods of modern commerce”.
Great Books
David and Katrina Rainoshek: You can see that food and nutrition are at the heart of a successful personal life, and are of vital importance for the survival of any society. We want to suggest some resources for you for further information on this reality, which will be very engaging and enlightening. Maynard Murray, author of Sea Energy Agriculture said, “Health begins in the soil.” When I mentioned this to 45+ year organic farmer Eliot Coleman, he agreed entirely. By health, we mean personally or societally. Follow up on these great resources:
Media, Films, & Documentaries
[Documentary Series DVD] Guns, Germs, and Steel on National Geographic
Is the balance of power in the world, the essentially unequal distribution of wealth and clout that has shaped civilization for centuries, a matter of survival of the fittest… or merely of the luckiest? In Guns, Germs, and Steel, UCLA professor (and author of the best-seller bearing the same title) Jared Diamond makes a compelling case for the latter. Diamond’s theory is that the predominance of white Europeans (and Americans of European descent) over other cultures has nothing to do with racial superiority, as many have claimed, but is instead the result of nothing more, or less, than geographical coincidence. His argument, in a nutshell, is that the people who populated the Middle East’s “fertile crescent” thousands of years ago were the first farmers, blessed with abundant natural resources (native crops such as wheat and barley, domesticable animals like pigs, goats, sheep, and cows). When their descendents migrated to Europe and northern Africa, climates similar to the crescent’s, those same assets, which were unavailable in most of the rest of the world, led to the flourishing of advanced civilizations in those places as well. Add to that their ability to control fire, and Europeans eventually developed the guns and steel (swords, trains, etc.) they used to conquer the planet (the devastating diseases they brought with them, like smallpox, were an unplanned “benefit” to their subjugation of, for instance, Peru’s native Incas). Spread out over three episodes and two discs and presented with National Geographic’s usual style and thoroughness, the program uses location footage (from New Guinea, South America, Africa, and elsewhere), interviews, reenactments, maps, and Diamond’s own participation to support his thesis. And while one might disagree with his conclusions, there is no doubt that Guns, Germs, and Steel is a provocative piece of work.