ET 4/98: Ancient dietary wisdom for tomorrow's children

Ancient dietary wisdom for tomorrow's children

Research done early in this century suggests that a traditional diet, not a modern over-processed, low-fat regimen, may be the key to healthy growth and development.

by Sally Fallon

ore than sixty years ago, a Cleveland dentist named Weston A. Price decided to embark on a series of unique investigations that would engage his attention and energies for the next ten years. Price was disturbed by what he found when he looked into the mouths of his patients. Rarely did an examination of an adult client reveal anything but rampant decay, often accompanied by serious problems elsewhere in the body such as arthritis, osteoporosis, diabetes, intestinal complaints and chronic fatigue.

But it was the mouths of younger patients that gave him most cause for concern. He observed that crowded, crooked teeth were becoming more and more common, along with what Price called "facial deformities" overbites, narrowed faces, underdevelopment of the nose, lack of well-defined cheekbones and pinched nostrils. Such children invariably suffered from one or more complaints that sound familiar to mothers of the 1990s: frequent infections, allergies, anemia, asthma, poor vision, lack of coordination, fatigue and behavioral problems. Price did not believe that such "physical degeneration" was God's plan for mankind. He was rather inclined to believe that the creator intended physical perfection for all human beings, and that children should grow up free of ailments.

Price decided to travel to various isolated parts of the earth where the inhabitants had no contact with "civilization" to study their health and physical development. His investigations took him to isolated Swiss villages and a windswept island off the coast of Scotland. He studied traditional Eskimos, Indian tribes in Canada and the Florida Everglades, South Sea islanders, Aborigines in Australia, Maoris in New Zealand, Peruvian and Amazonian Indians and tribesmen in Africa. These investigations occurred at a time when there still existed remote pockets of humanity untouched by modern inventions. One modern invention, the camera, allowed Price to make a permanent record of the people he studied. The photographs Price took, the descriptions of what he found and his startling conclusions are preserved in his book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, considered a masterpiece by many nutrition researchers. Yet this compendium of ancestral wisdom is all but unknown to today's medical community and modern parents.

Past perfect

Nutrition and Physical Degeneration is the kind of book that changes the way people view the world. No one can look at the handsome photographs of so-called primitive peoples faces that are broad, well-formed and noble without realizing that there is something very wrong with the development of modern children. In every isolated region he visited, Price found tribes or villages where virtually every individual exhibited genuine physical perfection. In such groups, tooth decay was rare and dental crowding and occlusions were nonexistent. Price took photograph after photograph of beautiful smiles. Such people were characterized by "splendid physical development" and an almost complete absence of disease, even those living in extremely harsh physical environments.

The fact that "primitives" often exhibited this high degree of physical perfection was not unknown to other investigators of the era. The accepted explanation was that these people were "racially pure" and that unfortunate changes in facial structure were due to "race mixing". Price found this theory unacceptable. Frequently, the groups he studied lived close to racially similar groups that had come in contact with traders or missionaries and had abandoned their traditional diet for modern foodstuffs sugar, refined grains, canned foods, pasteurized milk and devitalized fats and oils. In these peoples, he found rampant tooth decay, infectious illness and degenerative conditions. Children born to parents who had adopted the so-called civilized diet had crowded and crooked teeth, narrowed faces, deformities of bone structure and reduced immunity to disease. Price concluded that race had nothing to do with these changes. He noted that physical degeneration occurred in children of native parents who had adopted the white man's diet; while mixed race children whose parents had consumed traditional foods were born with wide handsome faces and straight teeth.

Finding a common thread

The diets of the healthy "primitives" Price studied were all very different. In the Swiss village where Price began his investigations, the inhabitants lived on rich dairy products (unpasteurized milk, butter, cream and cheese), dense rye bread, meat occasionally, bone broth soups and the few vegetables they could cultivate during the short summer months. The children never brushed their teeth in fact, their teeth were covered in green slime but Price found that only about one percent of the teeth had any decay at all. The children went barefoot in frigid streams during extreme weather; nevertheless childhood illnesses were virtually nonexistent and there had never been a single case of TB in the village.

Hearty Gallic fishermen living off the coast of Scotland consumed no dairy products. Fish formed the mainstay of their diet, along with oats made into porridge and oat cakes. Fish heads stuffed with oats and chopped fish liver was a traditional dish, and one considered very important for children.

The Eskimo diet, composed largely of fish, fish roe and marine animals, including seal oil and blubber, allowed Eskimo mothers to produce one sturdy baby after another without suffering any health problems or tooth decay. Well-muscled hunter-gatherers in Canada, the Everglades, the Amazon, Australia and Africa consumed game animals, particularly the parts that civilized folk tend to avoid: organ meats, glands, blood, marrow and particularly the adrenal glands. They also ate a variety of grains, tubers, vegetables and fruits that were available. African cattle-keeping tribes like the Masai consumed no plant foods at all, just meat, blood and milk. South Sea islanders and the Maori of New Zealand ate seafood of every sort fish, shark, octopus, shellfish, sea worms along with pork meat and fat, and a variety of plant foods including coconut, manioc and fruit.

Whenever these isolated peoples could obtain sea foods they did so, even Indian tribes living high in the Andes. These groups put a high value on fish roe which was available in dried form in the most remote Andean villages. Insects were another common food, in all regions except the Arctic. The foods that allow people of every race and every climate to be healthy are whole natural foods: meat with its fat, organ meats, whole milk products, fish, insects, whole grains, tubers, vegetables and fruit not newfangled concoctions made with white sugar, refined flour and rancid and chemically altered vegetable oils.

In the lab

Price took samples of native foods home with him to Cleveland and studied them in his laboratory. He found that these diets contained at least four times the minerals and water soluble vitamins vitamin C and B complex as the American diet of his day. What's more, among traditional populations, grains and tubers were prepared in ways that increased vitamin content and made minerals more available: soaking, fermenting, sprouting and sour leavening.

When Price analyzed the fat-soluble vitamins, he got a real surprise. The diets of healthy native groups contained at least ten times more vitamin A and vitamin D than the American diet of his day! These vitamins are found only in animal fats: butter, lard, egg yolks, fish oils and foods with fat-rich cellular membranes like liver and other organ meats, fish eggs and shell fish.

Price referred to the fat soluble vitamins as "catalysts" or "activators" upon which the assimilation of all the other nutrients depended: protein, minerals and vitamins. In other words, without the dietary factors found in animal fats, all the other nutrients largely go to waste.

X marks the spot

Price also discovered another fat soluble vitamin that was a more powerful catalyst for nutrient absorption than vitamins A and D. He called it "Activator X". All the healthy groups Price studied had the X Factor in their diets. It could be found in certain special foods which these people considered sacred: cod liver oil, fish eggs, organ meats and the deep yellow spring and fall butter from cows eating rapidly growing green grass. When the snows melted and the cows could go up to the rich pastures above their village, the Swiss placed a bowl of such butter on the church altar and lit a wick in it. The Masai set fire to yellow fields so that new grass could grow for their cows. Hunter-gatherers always ate the organ meats of the game they killed, often raw. Liver was held to be sacred by many African tribes.

The therapeutic value of foods rich in the X Factor was recognized during the years before the second World War. Price found that the action of "high vitamin" spring and fall butter was nothing short of magical, especially when small doses of cod liver oil were also part of the diet. He used the combination of high vitamin butter and cod liver oil with great success to treat osteoporosis, tooth decay, arthritis, rickets and failure to thrive in children.

Dietetic heresy

The research of Weston Price is not so much misinterpreted as ignored. In a country where the entire orthodox health establishment condemns saturated fat and cholesterol from animal sources, and where vending machines have become a fixture in our schools, who wants to hear about a peripatetic dentist who warned about the dangers of sugar and white flour, who thought kids should take cod liver oil and who believed that butter was the number one health food?

However, as Price becomes more and more forgotten, more and more research appears in the scientific literature proving he was right. We now know that vitamin A is essential for the prevention of birth defects, for growth and development, for the health of the immune system and the proper functioning of all the glands. Scientists have discovered that the precursors to vitamin A the carotenes found in plant foods cannot be converted to true vitamin A by infants and children. They must get their vital supply of this nutrient from animal fats. Yet orthodox nutritional pundits are now pushing low-fat diets for children. Neither can diabetics and people with thyroid conditions convert carotenes to the fat soluble form of vitamin A, yet diabetics and people with low energy are told to avoid animal fats.

The scientific literature tells us that vitamin D is needed not only for healthy bones, and optimal growth and development, but also to prevent colon cancer, MS and reproductive problems.

Cod liver oil is an excellent source of vitamin D. Cod liver oil also contains special fats called EPA and DHA The body uses EPA to make substances that help prevent blood clots, and that regulate a myriad of biochemical processes. Recent research shows that DHA is essential to the development of the brain and nervous system. Adequate DHA in the mother's diet is necessary for the proper development of the retina in the infant she carries. DHA in mother's milk helps prevent learning disabilities. Cod liver oil and foods like liver and egg yolk supply this essential nutrient to the developing fetus, to nursing infants and to growing children.

Butter contains both vitamin A and D, as well as other beneficial substances. Conjugated linoleic acid in butterfat is a powerful protection against cancer. Certain fats called glycospingolipids aid digestion. Butter is rich in trace minerals, and naturally yellow spring and fall butter contains the X factor.

Saturated fats from animal sources, portrayed as the enemy, form an important part of the cell membrane: they protect the immune system and enhance the utilization of essential fatty acids. They are needed for the proper development of the brain and nervous system. Certain types of saturated fats provide quick energy and protect against pathogenic microorganisms in the intestinal tract; other types provide energy to the heart.

Cholesterol is essential to the development of the brain and nervous system of the infant. Mother's milk is not only extremely rich in the substance, but also contains special enzymes that aid in the absorption of cholesterol from the intestinal tract. Cholesterol is the body's repair substance; when the arteries are damaged because of weakness or irritation, cholesterol steps in to patch things up and prevent aneurysms. Cholesterol is a powerful antioxidant, protecting the body from cancer; it is the precursor to the bile salts, needed for fat digestion; from it the adrenal hormones are formed, those that help us deal with stress and those that regulate sexual function.

Polyunsaturated problems

The scientific literature is equally clear about the dangers of polyunsaturated vegetable oils the kind that are supposed to be good for us. Because polyunsaturates are highly subject to rancidity, they increase the body's need for vitamin E and other antioxidants. (Canola oil, in particular, can create severe vitamin E deficiency.) Excess consumption of vegetable oils is especially damaging to the reproductive organs and the lungs, both of which are sites for huge increases in cancer in the United States. In test animals, diets high in polyunsaturates from vegetable oils inhibit the ability to learn, especially under conditions of stress; they are toxic to the liver; they compromise the integrity of the immune system; they depress the mental and physical growth of infants; they increase levels of uric acid in the blood; they cause abnormal fatty acid profiles in the adipose tissues; they have been linked to mental decline and chromosomal damage; they accelerate aging. Excess consumption of polyunsaturates is associated with increasing rates of cancer, heart disease and weight gain; excess use of commercial vegetable oils interferes with the production of prostaglandins localized tissue hormones leading to an array of complaints such as autoimmune diseases, sterility and PMS.

When polyunsaturated oils are hardened to make margarine and shortening by a process called hydrogenation, they deliver a double whammy of increased cancer, reproductive problems, learning disabilities and growth problems in children.

Market forces

The vital research of Weston Price remains purposefully forgotten because the importance of his findings, if recognized by the general populace, would bring down America's largest industry food processing and its three supporting pillars, refined sweeteners, white flour and vegetable oils. Representatives of this industry have worked behind the scenes to erect the huge edifice of the "lipid hypothesis," the untenable theory that saturated fats and cholesterol cause heart disease and cancer. All one has to do is look at the statistics to know that it isn't true. Butter consumption at the turn of the century was eighteen pounds per person per year, and the use of vegetable oils almost nonexistent, yet cancer and heart disease were rare. Today butter consumption hovers just above four pounds per person per year while vegetable oil consumption has soared and cancer and heart disease are endemic.

What the research really shows is that both refined carbohydrates and vegetable oils cause imbalances in the blood and at the cellular level that lead to an increased tendency to form blood clots, leading to myocardial infarction. This kind of heart disease was virtually unknown in America in 1900. Today, it has reached epidemic levels. Atherosclerosis, or the buildup of hardened plague in the artery walls, cannot be blamed on saturated fats or cholesterol. Very little of the material in this plaque is cholesterol, and a 1994 study appearing in Lancet showed that almost three quarters of the fat in artery clogs is unsaturated. The "artery clogging" fats are not animal fats but vegetable oils.

Built into the whole cloth of the lipid hypothesis is the postulate that the traditional foods of our ancestors the butter, cream, eggs, liver, meat and fish eggs that Price recognized were necessary to produce "splendid physical development" are bad for us. A number of stratagems have served to imbed this notion in the consciousness of the people, not the least of which was the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP), during which your tax dollars paid for a packet of "information" on cholesterol and heart disease to be sent to every physician in America. Physicians received instruction on the "prudent diet," low in saturated fat and cholesterol, for "at risk" Americans, even though studies indicated that such diets did not offer any significant protection against heart disease. They did, however, increase the risk of death from cancer, intestinal diseases, accidents, suicide and stroke. A specific recommendation contained in the NCEP information packet was the replacement of butter with margarine.

Cholesterol confusion

In 1990, two generations after Weston Price conceived of studying isolated nonindustrialized people as a way of learning how to confer good health on our children, the National Cholesterol Education Program recommended the "prudent diet" for all Americans above the age of 2. The advantage of such a diet is supposed to be reduced risk of heart disease in later life even though not a single study has shown the hypothesis to be tenable. What the scientific literature does tell us is that low fat diets for children, or diets in which vegetable oils have been substituted for animal fats, result in failure to thrive failure to grow tall and strong as well as learning disabilities, susceptibility to infection and behavioral problems. Teenage girls who adhere to such a diet risk reproductive problems.

Compared to this folly, the wisdom of the so-called primitive in regards to ensuring the health of his children inspired the awe of Weston Price and all who have read his book. Modern parents, living in times of peace and abundance, must learn to discriminate between hyperbole and truth when it comes to choosing foods for themselves and their family; and to practice cunning in protecting their children from those displacing products of modern commerce that prevent the optimal expression of their genetic heritage: foodstuffs made of sugar, white flour, vegetable oils, and products that imitate the nourishing foods of our ancestors: margarine, shortening, egg replacements, meat extenders, fake broths, ersatz cream, processed cheese, factory farmed meats, industrially farmed plant foods, protein powders, and packets of stuff that never spoils.

For a future of healthy children for any future at all we must turn our backs on the dietary advice of sophisticated medical orthodoxy and return to the food wisdom of our so-called primitive ancestors, choosing traditional whole foods that are organically grown, humanely raised, minimally processed and above all not shorn of their vital lipid component.

Journalistist, chef, nutrition researcher, homemaker and community activist, Sally Fallon is the author of Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and co-author of Diet Dictocrats. Sally is vice president of the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation and editor of the Foundation's quarterly journal. She lives in Washington, DC with her husband and four children.

Dr. Price's masterpiece, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, and many other carefully chosen works on the subject of nutrition for children and adults, is available from the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation, San Diego, California (619) 574-7763. Be sure to visit their booth in the Health Pavilion at EarthFair '98.

Ancient dietary wisdom for tomorrow's children
Research done early in this century suggests that a traditional diet, not a modern over-processed, low-fat regimen, may be the key to healthy growth and development.
by Sally Fallon
	ore than sixty years ago, a Cleveland dentist named Weston A. Price decided to embark on a series of unique investigations that would engage his attention and energies for the next ten years. Price was disturbed by what he found when he looked into the mouths of his patients. Rarely did an examination of an adult client reveal anything but rampant decay, often accompanied by serious problems elsewhere in the body such as arthritis, osteoporosis, diabetes, intestinal complaints and chronic fatigue. But it was the mouths of younger patients that gave him most cause for concern. He observed that crowded, crooked teeth were becoming more and more common, along with what Price called "facial deformities" overbites, narrowed faces, underdevelopment of the nose, lack of well-defined cheekbones and pinched nostrils. Such children invariably suffered from one or more complaints that sound familiar to mothers of the 1990s: frequent infections, allergies, anemia, asthma, poor vision, lack of coordination, fatigue and behavioral problems. Price did not believe that such "physical degeneration" was God's plan for mankind. He was rather inclined to believe that the creator intended physical perfection for all human beings, and that children should grow up free of ailments. Price decided to travel to various isolated parts of the earth where the inhabitants had no contact with "civilization" to study their health and physical development. His investigations took him to isolated Swiss villages and a windswept island off the coast of Scotland. He studied traditional Eskimos, Indian tribes in Canada and the Florida Everglades, South Sea islanders, Aborigines in Australia, Maoris in New Zealand, Peruvian and Amazonian Indians and tribesmen in Africa. These investigations occurred at a time when there still existed remote pockets of humanity untouched by modern inventions. One modern invention, the camera, allowed Price to make a permanent record of the people he studied. The photographs Price took, the descriptions of what he found and his startling conclusions are preserved in his book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, considered a masterpiece by many nutrition researchers. Yet this compendium of ancestral wisdom is all but unknown to today's medical community and modern parents.
Past perfect
	Nutrition and Physical Degeneration is the kind of book that changes the way people view the world. No one can look at the handsome photographs of so-called primitive peoples faces that are broad, well-formed and noble without realizing that there is something very wrong with the development of modern children. In every isolated region he visited, Price found tribes or villages where virtually every individual exhibited genuine physical perfection. In such groups, tooth decay was rare and dental crowding and occlusions were nonexistent. Price took photograph after photograph of beautiful smiles. Such people were characterized by "splendid physical development" and an almost complete absence of disease, even those living in extremely harsh physical environments. The fact that "primitives" often exhibited this high degree of physical perfection was not unknown to other investigators of the era. The accepted explanation was that these people were "racially pure" and that unfortunate changes in facial structure were due to "race mixing". Price found this theory unacceptable. Frequently, the groups he studied lived close to racially similar groups that had come in contact with traders or missionaries and had abandoned their traditional diet for modern foodstuffs sugar, refined grains, canned foods, pasteurized milk and devitalized fats and oils. In these peoples, he found rampant tooth decay, infectious illness and degenerative conditions. Children born to parents who had adopted the so-called civilized diet had crowded and crooked teeth, narrowed faces, deformities of bone structure and reduced immunity to disease. Price concluded that race had nothing to do with these changes. He noted that physical degeneration occurred in children of native parents who had adopted the white man's diet; while mixed race children whose parents had consumed traditional foods were born with wide handsome faces and straight teeth.
Finding a common thread
	The diets of the healthy "primitives" Price studied were all very different. In the Swiss village where Price began his investigations, the inhabitants lived on rich dairy products (unpasteurized milk, butter, cream and cheese), dense rye bread, meat occasionally, bone broth soups and the few vegetables they could cultivate during the short summer months. The children never brushed their teeth in fact, their teeth were covered in green slime but Price found that only about one percent of the teeth had any decay at all. The children went barefoot in frigid streams during extreme weather; nevertheless childhood illnesses were virtually nonexistent and there had never been a single case of TB in the village. Hearty Gallic fishermen living off the coast of Scotland consumed no dairy products. Fish formed the mainstay of their diet, along with oats made into porridge and oat cakes. Fish heads stuffed with oats and chopped fish liver was a traditional dish, and one considered very important for children. The Eskimo diet, composed largely of fish, fish roe and marine animals, including seal oil and blubber, allowed Eskimo mothers to produce one sturdy baby after another without suffering any health problems or tooth decay. Well-muscled hunter-gatherers in Canada, the Everglades, the Amazon, Australia and Africa consumed game animals, particularly the parts that civilized folk tend to avoid: organ meats, glands, blood, marrow and particularly the adrenal glands. They also ate a variety of grains, tubers, vegetables and fruits that were available. African cattle-keeping tribes like the Masai consumed no plant foods at all, just meat, blood and milk. South Sea islanders and the Maori of New Zealand ate seafood of every sort fish, shark, octopus, shellfish, sea worms along with pork meat and fat, and a variety of plant foods including coconut, manioc and fruit. Whenever these isolated peoples could obtain sea foods they did so, even Indian tribes living high in the Andes. These groups put a high value on fish roe which was available in dried form in the most remote Andean villages. Insects were another common food, in all regions except the Arctic. The foods that allow people of every race and every climate to be healthy are whole natural foods: meat with its fat, organ meats, whole milk products, fish, insects, whole grains, tubers, vegetables and fruit not newfangled concoctions made with white sugar, refined flour and rancid and chemically altered vegetable oils.
In the lab
	Price took samples of native foods home with him to Cleveland and studied them in his laboratory. He found that these diets contained at least four times the minerals and water soluble vitamins vitamin C and B complex as the American diet of his day. What's more, among traditional populations, grains and tubers were prepared in ways that increased vitamin content and made minerals more available: soaking, fermenting, sprouting and sour leavening. When Price analyzed the fat-soluble vitamins, he got a real surprise. The diets of healthy native groups contained at least ten times more vitamin A and vitamin D than the American diet of his day! These vitamins are found only in animal fats: butter, lard, egg yolks, fish oils and foods with fat-rich cellular membranes like liver and other organ meats, fish eggs and shell fish. Price referred to the fat soluble vitamins as "catalysts" or "activators" upon which the assimilation of all the other nutrients depended: protein, minerals and vitamins. In other words, without the dietary factors found in animal fats, all the other nutrients largely go to waste.
X marks the spot
	Price also discovered another fat soluble vitamin that was a more powerful catalyst for nutrient absorption than vitamins A and D. He called it "Activator X". All the healthy groups Price studied had the X Factor in their diets. It could be found in certain special foods which these people considered sacred: cod liver oil, fish eggs, organ meats and the deep yellow spring and fall butter from cows eating rapidly growing green grass. When the snows melted and the cows could go up to the rich pastures above their village, the Swiss placed a bowl of such butter on the church altar and lit a wick in it. The Masai set fire to yellow fields so that new grass could grow for their cows. Hunter-gatherers always ate the organ meats of the game they killed, often raw. Liver was held to be sacred by many African tribes. The therapeutic value of foods rich in the X Factor was recognized during the years before the second World War. Price found that the action of "high vitamin" spring and fall butter was nothing short of magical, especially when small doses of cod liver oil were also part of the diet. He used the combination of high vitamin butter and cod liver oil with great success to treat osteoporosis, tooth decay, arthritis, rickets and failure to thrive in children.
Dietetic heresy
	The research of Weston Price is not so much misinterpreted as ignored. In a country where the entire orthodox health establishment condemns saturated fat and cholesterol from animal sources, and where vending machines have become a fixture in our schools, who wants to hear about a peripatetic dentist who warned about the dangers of sugar and white flour, who thought kids should take cod liver oil and who believed that butter was the number one health food? However, as Price becomes more and more forgotten, more and more research appears in the scientific literature proving he was right. We now know that vitamin A is essential for the prevention of birth defects, for growth and development, for the health of the immune system and the proper functioning of all the glands. Scientists have discovered that the precursors to vitamin A the carotenes found in plant foods cannot be converted to true vitamin A by infants and children. They must get their vital supply of this nutrient from animal fats. Yet orthodox nutritional pundits are now pushing low-fat diets for children. Neither can diabetics and people with thyroid conditions convert carotenes to the fat soluble form of vitamin A, yet diabetics and people with low energy are told to avoid animal fats. The scientific literature tells us that vitamin D is needed not only for healthy bones, and optimal growth and development, but also to prevent colon cancer, MS and reproductive problems. Cod liver oil is an excellent source of vitamin D. Cod liver oil also contains special fats called EPA and DHA The body uses EPA to make substances that help prevent blood clots, and that regulate a myriad of biochemical processes. Recent research shows that DHA is essential to the development of the brain and nervous system. Adequate DHA in the mother's diet is necessary for the proper development of the retina in the infant she carries. DHA in mother's milk helps prevent learning disabilities. Cod liver oil and foods like liver and egg yolk supply this essential nutrient to the developing fetus, to nursing infants and to growing children. Butter contains both vitamin A and D, as well as other beneficial substances. Conjugated linoleic acid in butterfat is a powerful protection against cancer. Certain fats called glycospingolipids aid digestion. Butter is rich in trace minerals, and naturally yellow spring and fall butter contains the X factor. Saturated fats from animal sources, portrayed as the enemy, form an important part of the cell membrane: they protect the immune system and enhance the utilization of essential fatty acids. They are needed for the proper development of the brain and nervous system. Certain types of saturated fats provide quick energy and protect against pathogenic microorganisms in the intestinal tract; other types provide energy to the heart. Cholesterol is essential to the development of the brain and nervous system of the infant. Mother's milk is not only extremely rich in the substance, but also contains special enzymes that aid in the absorption of cholesterol from the intestinal tract. Cholesterol is the body's repair substance; when the arteries are damaged because of weakness or irritation, cholesterol steps in to patch things up and prevent aneurysms. Cholesterol is a powerful antioxidant, protecting the body from cancer; it is the precursor to the bile salts, needed for fat digestion; from it the adrenal hormones are formed, those that help us deal with stress and those that regulate sexual function.
Polyunsaturated problems
	The scientific literature is equally clear about the dangers of polyunsaturated vegetable oils the kind that are supposed to be good for us. Because polyunsaturates are highly subject to rancidity, they increase the body's need for vitamin E and other antioxidants. (Canola oil, in particular, can create severe vitamin E deficiency.) Excess consumption of vegetable oils is especially damaging to the reproductive organs and the lungs, both of which are sites for huge increases in cancer in the United States. In test animals, diets high in polyunsaturates from vegetable oils inhibit the ability to learn, especially under conditions of stress; they are toxic to the liver; they compromise the integrity of the immune system; they depress the mental and physical growth of infants; they increase levels of uric acid in the blood; they cause abnormal fatty acid profiles in the adipose tissues; they have been linked to mental decline and chromosomal damage; they accelerate aging. Excess consumption of polyunsaturates is associated with increasing rates of cancer, heart disease and weight gain; excess use of commercial vegetable oils interferes with the production of prostaglandins localized tissue hormones leading to an array of complaints such as autoimmune diseases, sterility and PMS. When polyunsaturated oils are hardened to make margarine and shortening by a process called hydrogenation, they deliver a double whammy of increased cancer, reproductive problems, learning disabilities and growth problems in children.
Market forces
	The vital research of Weston Price remains purposefully forgotten because the importance of his findings, if recognized by the general populace, would bring down America's largest industry food processing and its three supporting pillars, refined sweeteners, white flour and vegetable oils. Representatives of this industry have worked behind the scenes to erect the huge edifice of the "lipid hypothesis," the untenable theory that saturated fats and cholesterol cause heart disease and cancer. All one has to do is look at the statistics to know that it isn't true. Butter consumption at the turn of the century was eighteen pounds per person per year, and the use of vegetable oils almost nonexistent, yet cancer and heart disease were rare. Today butter consumption hovers just above four pounds per person per year while vegetable oil consumption has soared and cancer and heart disease are endemic. What the research really shows is that both refined carbohydrates and vegetable oils cause imbalances in the blood and at the cellular level that lead to an increased tendency to form blood clots, leading to myocardial infarction. This kind of heart disease was virtually unknown in America in 1900. Today, it has reached epidemic levels. Atherosclerosis, or the buildup of hardened plague in the artery walls, cannot be blamed on saturated fats or cholesterol. Very little of the material in this plaque is cholesterol, and a 1994 study appearing in Lancet showed that almost three quarters of the fat in artery clogs is unsaturated. The "artery clogging" fats are not animal fats but vegetable oils. Built into the whole cloth of the lipid hypothesis is the postulate that the traditional foods of our ancestors the butter, cream, eggs, liver, meat and fish eggs that Price recognized were necessary to produce "splendid physical development" are bad for us. A number of stratagems have served to imbed this notion in the consciousness of the people, not the least of which was the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP), during which your tax dollars paid for a packet of "information" on cholesterol and heart disease to be sent to every physician in America. Physicians received instruction on the "prudent diet," low in saturated fat and cholesterol, for "at risk" Americans, even though studies indicated that such diets did not offer any significant protection against heart disease. They did, however, increase the risk of death from cancer, intestinal diseases, accidents, suicide and stroke. A specific recommendation contained in the NCEP information packet was the replacement of butter with margarine.
Cholesterol confusion
	In 1990, two generations after Weston Price conceived of studying isolated nonindustrialized people as a way of learning how to confer good health on our children, the National Cholesterol Education Program recommended the "prudent diet" for all Americans above the age of 2. The advantage of such a diet is supposed to be reduced risk of heart disease in later life even though not a single study has shown the hypothesis to be tenable. What the scientific literature does tell us is that low fat diets for children, or diets in which vegetable oils have been substituted for animal fats, result in failure to thrive failure to grow tall and strong as well as learning disabilities, susceptibility to infection and behavioral problems. Teenage girls who adhere to such a diet risk reproductive problems. Compared to this folly, the wisdom of the so-called primitive in regards to ensuring the health of his children inspired the awe of Weston Price and all who have read his book. Modern parents, living in times of peace and abundance, must learn to discriminate between hyperbole and truth when it comes to choosing foods for themselves and their family; and to practice cunning in protecting their children from those displacing products of modern commerce that prevent the optimal expression of their genetic heritage: foodstuffs made of sugar, white flour, vegetable oils, and products that imitate the nourishing foods of our ancestors: margarine, shortening, egg replacements, meat extenders, fake broths, ersatz cream, processed cheese, factory farmed meats, industrially farmed plant foods, protein powders, and packets of stuff that never spoils. For a future of healthy children for any future at all we must turn our backs on the dietary advice of sophisticated medical orthodoxy and return to the food wisdom of our so-called primitive ancestors, choosing traditional whole foods that are organically grown, humanely raised, minimally processed and above all not shorn of their vital lipid component.
	Journalistist, chef, nutrition researcher, homemaker and community activist, Sally Fallon is the author of Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and co-author of Diet Dictocrats. Sally is vice president of the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation and editor of the Foundation's quarterly journal. She lives in Washington, DC with her husband and four children. Dr. Price's masterpiece, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, and many other carefully chosen works on the subject of nutrition for children and adults, is available from the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation, San Diego, California (619) 574-7763. Be sure to visit their booth in the Health Pavilion at EarthFair '98.