The Darwin of nutrition

Buy the book at Amazon.com (8th edition, 2008) Read the book online in full at the Small Farms Library

"Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" by Weston A. Price, DDS, 1939, Paul B. Hoeber, Inc, New York, London

Weston A. Price (1870-1948) discovered what health is made of, and proved it. In the early 1930s Price and his wife ("Mrs Price") travelled more than 100,000 miles to study the diets and health of isolated primitive peoples in Africa, South America, Australia, Polynesia, Europe and northern Canada, at a time when such communities still existed.

Price undertook amazing journeys into the wilds to seek out people "who were living in accordance with the tradition of their race and as little affected as might be possible by the influence of the white man".

Weston A. Price

Wherever he found them -- regardless of race, diet and climate -- they were a "picture of superb health": they had superb physiques, perfect teeth, no arthritis, no tuberculosis, no degenerative diseases, and they were cheerful, happy, hardy folk.

That changed radically when he compared them to other, less isolated groups of the same peoples, charting a catastrophic health decline the closer they got to the "trade foods" produced by industrial society (processed foods grown by synthetic farming methods), in the shape of the "white man's store".

He found it takes only one generation of eating industrialized food to destroy health and immunity.

Price was a fine scientist and a thorough investigator and collected an enormous amount of data with thousands of supporting photographs -- his case simply doesn't leave any room for argument. We are all victims. But he leaves us with the promise of regeneration. Thwarted health can be recaptured.

Price's book makes fascinating reading -- it's a great travelogue, full of interest and charm, and essential to understanding the nature of food and health. Price is truly "the Charles Darwin of nutrition".

Preparing the potato beds in Loetschental Valley high in the Swiss Alps, spring 1987 -- in 1931 Weston Price found a secluded community here of healthy mountaineers who had no doctor and no dentist, and never needed them. (Keith Addison)

Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price -- full text online at the Small Farms Library

Note: "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" is in the public domain in many countries, and in other countries it is still under copyright protection. Please check your country's rules at the following website to see if you are entitled to free access or not (the book was written in 1939, Dr. Price died in 1948):
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/okbooks.html

Buy the book at Amazon.com: Nutrition and Physical Degeneration

Two reviews by Sally Fallon of the Weston A. Price Foundation -- "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration", with photographs and tables:
http://www.westonaprice.org/nutritiongreats/price.html
Weston A. Price and his work:
http://www.westonaprice.org/bookreviews/napd.html

Nasty, Brutish and Short, by Sally Fallon, The Ecologist, Jan/Feb 1999
http://www.westonaprice.org/traditional_diets/nasty_brutish_short.html

The Pioneering Research of Dr. Weston A. Price: The Whole, Natural Food Diet, by Sally Fallon, Chronogram, 07 2004
http://www.chronogram.com/issue/2004/07/wholeliving/

The Neglected Nutritional Research of Dr. Weston Price, DDS -- Stephen Byrnes

Reflections on Reading Weston A. Price: Price's Dietary Wisdom by Michael Babcock
http://www.thaifoodandtravel.com/features/price.html

Buy "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" and read more reviews at amazon.com:
http://snipurl.com/1jjp7

See also:

The Medical Testament published by the 31 doctors of the Cheshire Panel Committee in England on March 22 1939, full text online at the Journey to Forever Small Farms Library.

The Saccharine Disease: Conditions caused by the Taking of Refined Carbohydrates, such as Sugar and White Flour by T. L. Cleave, John Wright, 1974, full text online at the Journey to Forever Small Farms Library.

Nutrition and Health, by Sir Robert McCarrison -- McCarrison's Cantor Lectures, to the Royal Society of Arts in 1936, Faber and Faber, London, 1953. Full text online at the Small Farms Library.

The Wheel of Health: A Study of a Very Healthy People by G.T. Wrench, Daniel, 1938, full text online at the Journey to Forever Small Farms Library.

Ill Fares the Land by Dr. Walter Yellowlees, The James MacKenzie Lecture, 1978; Journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners, 1979, 29, 7-21. Full text online at the Journey to Forever Small Farms Library.