“The first modern researcher to take a careful look at the health and eating habits of isolated traditional societies was a dentist, Dr. Weston Price. During the 1930’s, Dr. Price traveled the world over to observe population groups untouched by civilization, living entirely on local foods. While the diets of these peoples differed in many particulars, they contained several factors in common. Almost without exception, the groups he studied ate liberally of seafood or other animal proteins and fats in the form of organ meats and dairy products; they valued animal fats as absolutely necessary to good health; and they ate fats, meats, fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds and whole grains in the whole, unrefined state. All primitive diets contained some raw foods, of both animal and vegetable origin.
Dr. Price found fourteen groups – from isolated Irish and Swiss, from Eskimos to Africans – in which almost every member of the tribe or village enjoyed superb health. They were free of chronic disease, dental decay and mental illness; they were strong, sturdy and attractive; and they produced healthy children with ease, generation after generation.
Dr. Price had many opportunities to compare these healthy so-called “primitives” with members of the same racial group who had become “civilized” and were living on the products of the industrial revolution – refined grains, canned foods, pasteurized milk and sugar. In these peoples, he found rampant tooth decay, infectious disease, degenerative illness and infertility. Children born to traditional peoples who had adopted the industrialized diet had crowded and crooked teeth, narrowed faces, deformities of bone structure and susceptibility to every sort of medical problem. Studies too numerous to count have confirmed Dr. Price’s observations that the so-called civilized diet, particularly the Western diet of refined carbohydrates and devitalized fats and oils, spoils our God-given genetic inheritance of physical perfection and vibrant health.” Nourishing Traditions, Sally Fallon, xi-xii
