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Weston Price, DDS was a dentist who in the 1930’s studied native populations around the world who were still eating a natural, whole foods-based diet. He found that they were not only healthier than others eating a more refined foods diet, but they had far fewer cavities and straighter teeth. He found that the healthiest of these peoples that he studied had diets rich in fat soluble vitamins like A and D from animal foods such as butter, eggs, animal fats and shellfish. These vitamins, he discovered, were catalysts to mineral absorption and protein utilization. These findings are explained in detail in his book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration.
The Weston A Price Foundation is a nonprofit organization founded in 1999 to disseminate the research of Weston Price. It is dedicated to restoring nutrient-dense foods to the American diet through education, research and activism. They publish a uarterly magazine, Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, and have local chapters that help consumers find healthy foods available in their communities.
Weston Price discovered many common characteristics of traditional diets, including;
- The diets of the healthy natives he found contained NO refined foods, such as white sugar or flour, no corn syrup, no pasteurized, homogenized or low fat dairy products, no refined or hydrogenated vegetable oils, and no artificial vitamins, flavors or colorings.
- All healthy traditional cultures consumed some type of animal food, like meat, eggs, raw dairy products or fish. There were no healthy vegan groups that he found.
- Traditional, nutrient-rich fats have nourished healthy non-industrialized groups of people for thousands of years. These include butter, duck fat, coconut and palm oil, cold pressed olive oil and marine oils such as cod liver oil.
Weston A. Price Foundation Dietary Guidelines include:
- Eat whole, unprocessed foods.
- Eat meats and eggs from pasture-fed animals.
- Eat wild fish (not farmed), and shellfish from unpolluted waters.
- Eat full-fat dairy products from pasture-fed cows, raw if possible.
- Use animal fats, like butter, liberally.
- Use traditional vegetable oils only --extra virgin olive oil, expeller-expressed sesame oil, small amounts of expeller-expressed flax oil, and the tropical oils -- coconut oil, palm oil and palm kernel oil.
- Take cod liver oil on a regular basis.
- Use only whole grains, legumes and nuts that have been prepared by soaking, sprouting or sour leavening to neutralize phytic acid, enzyme inhibitors and other anti-nutrients.
- Use enzyme-enhanced lacto-fermented vegetables, fruits, beverages and condiments in your diet on a regular basis.
- Use filtered water for cooking and drinking.
- Use unrefined salt.
- Use natural sweeteners in moderation, such as raw honey, maple syrup, date sugar and dehydrated cane sugar juice (sold as “Sucanat” & “Rapadura”).
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