Nutrition and Physical Degeneration

Rating:
Summary: rare and important research
Review: This book distills the research of Weston A. Price, a dentist and independent nutrition researcher. In a decade of travel around the world, Price and his wife studied the health, dietary habits, and chemical composition of food of dozens of traditional peoples of various racial backgrounds. His research was done at a time when many such groups still lived free of the influence of Western civilization and what he called "foods of commerce," i.e. heavily refined and denatured foods.

One could question whether 60 plus year old research is relevant today, but I found his work powerful and persuasive for a very simple reason.

Health problems sent me on a quest to find the best dietary information, but I soon found myself mired in contradictory claims, opposing research and special interest groups, as well as outright deceit. First I would read about how one vitamin or mineral was good for this. Then I would read that the very same item was bad for that. You shouldn't combine X with Y, or needed to add tons of Z or W, except on Sundays when the moon was almost 3/4 full. I became very disillusioned with the incredible complexity of nutrition. As I read more and more deeply, I also became annoyed at all the disinformation and profiteering behind much of the so-called research.

I reached this bottom line: While we understand proteins, carbs, and fats reasonably well, and have a pretty good handle on most vitamins and about a dozen minerals, there is simply an immense amount we just don't know. We are researching minerals at about 5 per decade (around 50 to go - a hundred more years at our current rate). There are around 5000 enzymes in bee pollen alone, and few of them have been researched. There are an unknown number of phytochemicals and other things we have yet to discover that have been constituents of our food for perhaps millions of years. Science moves very slowly, and it could easily be several hundred or 1000 years before we get it all sorted out. And that doesn't take into consideration the power groups who insist on muddying the waters for profit's sake. Modern science is quite obviously incapable of giving us complete answers to our nutritional questions. It just plain doesn't have them to give, nor will it for a long, long time.

Then I found Price's work. Basically, he was the Tony Robbins of diet - he sought out the healthiest people on Earth and studied what they had done for hundreds and thousands of years to stay healthy. He looked at their Traditional diets as well as what happened when they adopted Western diets. The results are in this book, and it is well worth your taking the time to read. While others have followed his work, the changing nature of the world now make it impossible to duplicate his research today. His work stands as a pivotal piece in science and health as well as in history. This represents the cumulative knowledge of millions of people over thousands of years in a laboratory that includes the entire world. Definitely non-trivial.

There are also books by Ronald Schmid and Sally Fallon that introduce and give overviews of Price's work. I recommend them also. Today, when we must all become advocates for our own health, arming yourself with the best information is vital.

Rating:
Summary: Best book I have ever read.
Review: This is not just a book about nutrition, although even in that ambit it is the best of its kind ever published.

This is a book about mankind, human progress, the evil of capitalism, social harmony, the roots of crime, the foundation of happiness.

If what Weston Price had alarmingly brought to our attention in the 1930s about the foods we should not eat had been followed, the people in this world now would be healthy, happy and in harmony. Instead we have a society where 95% are overweight, 60% have vitamin/mineral deficiencies, almost every child need orthodontia, 80% do no daily exercise, etc,etc, etc.

Why has this happened? Capitalism. That creed based on providing us maximally seductive food based on sugar, additives, flour, trans fat, in huge quantities, aggressively marketed to ensure maximum profit to the corporation ( but in the process destroying our health). What a way for human society to run itself!

Rating:
Summary: Required Reference Material on Health.
Review: This is one of the most amazing books on health I have ever read! Complete with pictures and documentation of various native races and the deterioration of their teeth, face, and bone structure when they went from their "native" diets and switched to "white man's" food. That is, mainly "white" flour, and "white" sugar (as well as other processed food). From this book I learned that these foods alter bone structure in ways not imaginable! Not only ruining the health of natives but destroying their magnificent and perfect teeth, thinning their skulls (and I thought I was a hardhead) and destroying their heritable bone lines within one generation!

If one examines his teeth, one can see the influence of eating these foods. You can even see the devastation in family and friends. Obviously, "enriched" flour still doesn't cut it as WHOLE foods have the right PROPORTIONS of vitamins and minerals. I have since quit eating "health" sugars such as turbinado (it's not whole sugar) and have switched to Rapadura(TM), (it's whole sugar) and avoid white flour and nearly anything processed. This book really explains why we get cavities. We don't need to flouridate the water. There are many other things that Price mentions in his book of the devastation of modern diet too numerous to mention here but important.

Though this book was written in the 1930's it is remarkable how it seems to read like a modern day diet book, sometimes, as it mentions osteoporosis, heart disease and other supposedly "modern" ailments.