The Pioneering Reseach of Dr. Weston A. Price

It has been said that great discoveries often take decades to percolate into popular awareness. What we are about to share is one such discovery, which is not well known yet, though the very fate of our species may rest upon its widespread implementation. Fortunately the tide is turning as more and more people discover that much of what we have been taught about nutrition for the last fifty years is wrong or even backwards – and that we are paying the price for this with our very lives. A great awakening is sweeping the country – a search for truth and wellness, which is probably why you are reading this right now.

Our story begins in the 1920’s with a man named Weston Price. A highly esteemed researcher, Dr. Price’s day job was as a dentist, practicing in Cleveland in the 1920’s. Dr. Price was an extremely observant and inquisitive man and as the 1920’s wore on, he began to notice an increasing number of problems in the teeth and overall health of his younger patients. More and more of these young people came in to see him with dental cavities, and Price noticed that they also had narrow dental arches and crooked teeth, as well as a host of other health problems - problems that previous generations were largely free of. Puzzled by this, Dr. Price speculated that these problems were related to dietary changes appearing in the United States at the time. In order to test his theory, Dr. Price decided to study isolated, non-industrialized indigenous peoples who had managed to avoid contact with Western civilization and maintain their traditional diets. Dr. Price hoped to determine whether the overall health of people who had never eaten refined, "civilized foods" was significantly different from that of modern Americans.

Over the next decade, Dr. Price and his wife traveled every summer to a new point on the globe in search of isolated cultures which had maintained their traditional diets. Dr. Price visited such diverse peoples as South Pacific islanders, African tribes, American Indians, Eskimos, isolated Swiss villagers in high mountain valleys, Australian Aborigines, fishing peoples of Ireland, and many others. Dr. Price carefully surveyed the condition of each group's teeth. He was stunned at their astonishing level of dental and overall physical health, even finding several groups who didn't have a single dental cavity. (And most of these people did not brush their teeth!)

Excellent dental health was just the first of many revelations for Dr. Price, for the groups who maintained their traditional diets also had not just good teeth or straight teeth: they often had perfect, string-of-pearls teeth. Generation after generation, these peoples had never known crowded teeth, overbites, underbites, or problem wisdom teeth, much less decaying teeth and toothache. In contrast to what he saw in the United States, they also enjoyed an almost complete lack of diseases such as diabetes, cancer, heart disease, multiple sclerosis, and osteoporosis. What's more, Dr. Price noted that these peoples also exhibited an extraordinary level of overall physical development in their bones and muscles. Their faces were wide, dental arches broad, and skeletons sturdy, thick, and strong. Price commented that there was an integrity about their development such that the men of a tribe looked like brothers whether they were related or not, and the women looked like sisters. As far back as he could look, the ancestral record of skulls and bones showed that these remarkable characteristics of robust health were the natural condition of these groups.

When Dr. Price visited neighboring traditional peoples who had incorporated what he called "the displacing foods of modern commerce" such as white flour, sugar, jams, jellies, cookies, condensed milk, canned vegetables, margarine, vegetable oils, and other refined foods, a different picture emerged. Not only did these peoples suffer from rampant tooth decay and increased health problems, but subsequent generations of children born with this new diet looked different. Their teeth were crooked. Their faces were narrower. Their entire skeletal structure was altered in ways that diverged from the ancestral record. Over many years, visiting over a dozen locations around the globe, Dr. Price saw the same patterns, over and over again.

Why does all this matter to you and me? The changes Dr. Price observed in the people exposed to Western foods were startlingly like those he was seeing in American children back in his Cleveland clinic.

(Upper pictures) Young people born to parents who ate traditional nutrient-rich diets.

(Lower pictures) Children born to traditional people who had largely abandoned traditional foods for refined and processed foods.

Note the difference in the width of the faces, and in the perfection of the teeth and bite.

1) Traditional Wisdom
2) The Pioneering Research of Dr. Weston A. Price
3) Summarizing Dr. Price's Findings
4) What is our full genetic potential? How do we reach it?