Meet Weston A. Price

Every month we'll introduce you to great healers past and present.

Weston A. Price was dentist in Cleveland, Ohio. IN the 1940's he often wondered about the state of his patients teeth...cavities, overbites, crooked teeth. Not only that but degenerative diseases were commonplace. He also noticed a connection between dental health and overall physical well-being.

He asked himself, how this could be? Did God create us to be sickly and unhappy? He decided to find some answers. Being a man of means, he and his wife set off to find people untouched by modern men and their modern foods (white flour, sugar, canned goods, pasteurized dairy etc.). This was no small feat in those days; travel was arduous and costly. In the end he and his wife visited 14 separate groups of people.

Dr. Price and his wife traveled to every continent, visiting the Masai in Africa, Eskimos in the Arctic Circle, Aborginies in Australia to name a few. He observed their diets, examined their teeth and bodies, took meticulous notes and thousands of photographs to document his research.

And what did he find? Beautiful, healthy people with beautiful healthy teeth. No overbites, no crooked teeth and less than 1% of teeth he examined had cavities. Most of these people had never owned a toothbrush and they definitely didn't have any floss or mouthwash.

Dr. Price would first observe a group of people eating their native diet. Then he would find neighboring communities where people of that same nationality were eating modern foods. The difference was night and day as you'll see in a moment.

Look at these beautiful Fijians, all consuming their native diet (fish, fruit, coconuts, pig):

Straight teeth, broad dental arches, beautiful smiles.

And look at this group of Fijians, all eating a Western diet:

Cavities, missing teeth, overbites and crooked teeth.

It's pretty simple. You are what you eat. The foods we modern people eat cause many (if not all) of our illnesses: cavities, arthritis, cancer, stroke, heart disease.

So now we've got the bad news. The good news is that you can improve your diet and, by the same token, your health by eating traditional foods; foods that people have eaten for thousands of years. And what are those foods?

Here are the top 10 traditional foods:

1. Meat from grass-fed, free roaming animals
2. Bone broths (fish, chicken, and beef)
3. Lacto-fermented vegetables (think sauerkraut or kimchi)
4. Milk, cheese, butter, and other dairy products – preferably raw from grass- fed, free range animals
5. Sourdough bread
6. Eggs from free-roaming chickens getting plenty of sunshine and insects
7. Vegetables from organic, bio-diverse local sources
8. Lacto-fermented beverages such as kombucha, kefir, beet kvass
9. Properly prepared nuts, seeds, and grains
10. Cod liver oil and other nutrient-dense seafood

You might say this is Dr. Price's masterpiece . Shane and I loved it so much we couldn't put it down. Long forgotten wisdom from a nutrition genius. Read it and it will change your life.

P.S. There is so much to write about this topic but I want to keep these blog entries short if I can (I don't think this entry is one of those). You can go here to read a fascinating and thorough article on Dr. Price and his research.