A Pioneer in the Field of Nutrition
Who is Weston A. Price?
In the 1930s, a Canadian dentist travelled the world to study the diets of indigenous peoples who exclusively ate local traditional foods. He compared their glowing good health, excellent bone structure, and mental stability to the Americans of his day, who were suffering from dental problems, mental illness, allergies, arthritis, asthma, heart disease, diabetes, digestive disorders and cancer.
“Around 1900, young Dr. Price left his native North Dakota to practice in Cleveland. Although Cleveland was a place of great financial and social opportunity, Price took more interest in prevention research than repairing teeth. However, he couldn’t determine how the nutritional connections worked because, as he put it, he lacked a control group. Yes, he would have an occasional patient with excellent teeth. But why did this person have such good fortune? And what, if anything, could those with poor teeth have done to prevent their condition from developing? This puzzle was especially confusing because an extraordinarily healthy and long-lived person sometimes thrived on a diet of overcooked red meat, potatoes stewed in greasy gravy and whiskey. The only way to scientifically work these confusions out is to first establish a healthy control group and then see what happens when something different is applied to part of that healthy control group. The problem was, there were no groups of people in or around Cleveland, or even in or around the entire United States, that had consistently healthy teeth. And if such a group could be located, how could a researcher get them to agree to control their diets? Or trust that they had actually eaten as promised?
Fortunately, in Price’s era, people still existed that did possess excellent teeth. They all lived in highly inaccessible places. These folks were to become Price’s control groups. Starting around age 60, Dr. Price went traveling with Mrs. Price to see what they might discover. They journeyed to Europe, Africa, the wild north of Canada, the west coast of South America, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Polynesia and Melanesia (Fiji). Their dental connections opened doors; local health authorities were enlisted to guide the Prices. Guide? Why guide?
Before World War II, remote communities still existed that had no access to the foods of civilization. No village store sold white flour, marmalade, sugar, tinned sardines. None of that. These peoples survived almost entirely on what they hunted, fished for, gathered or grew locally. The visiting Prices conducted mass dental examinations and developed statistics on the incidence of caries (tooth decay). They searched the communities for the sick people and, through interviews, developed an impression of what diseases were routinely faced. The Prices took excellent photographs, most of them showing facial bone structure, and sometimes, wide-open mouths. They drew correct and highly useful conclusions about why these people were so healthy. By 1939, when he published "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration", Price had learned almost everything needed for us to transform this planet into a healthy place. If only we, collectively, had wanted to do that. If only those with political and economic power had been willing to lead us in that ethical direction.”
(The Intelligent Gardener - Steve Solomon).
Well developed facial features and absence of tooth decay. Such faces are usually associated with properly proportioned bodies. Tooth decay is rare in these mouths as long as they use an adequate selection of the native foods.
Photos extracted from the book "Human Nutrition and Physical Degeneration"