While I was at school for nutrition years ago, we were exposed to the plethora of diets out there. However, I will never forget the day we spent with Sally Fallon, President of the Weston A. Price Foundation. All of the research, slides and information that she shared with us (from Dr. Price’s work) made SO much sense to me. Here is an excerpt from her book, Nourishing Traditions, giving the gist of it all:
“Dr. Price was a dentist in the 1930’s who traveled the world to observe population groups untouched by civilization, living on entirely local foods. He concluded that all primitive diets contained some raw foods, of both animals and vegetable origin. These groups were free from 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 have 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 people 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.”
The more time I spend with clients and working on my own diet, I find that it is the most healing when I stick to whole, real foods from the earth…just as Dr. Price (and nature!) encouraged us to eat. This is a very primal way to approach what we should be eating, as all of this food comes from the earth. Definitely check out Sally Fallon’s cookbook above (your library should have a copy) and be sure to check out the amazing Weston A. Price Foundation, Wise Traditions website. Dr. Price’s book, Nutrition & Physical Degeneration is solid gold information, another one your library should have. It’s loaded with timeless information about healthy eating, and sadly about how our food system is so broken and how it’s effecting our health.