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What Weston Price Got Right (And Wrong)
Plus: why that protruding belly might not be fat, and what you can do
The 10almonds Team
July 18, 2023
Today’s almonds have been activated by:
Tomorrow (n.1): a mystical land where all productivity and willpower is stored
⏰ IN A RUSH?
Today’s 30-Second Summary
If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:
Weston Price’s work continues to have a big influence today, in popular health movements if not in academia
He brought a lot of attention to the virtues of locally-sourced foods, and the dangers of processed foods, especially including sugar and white flour.
He also came to a lot of other conclusions, some of which stood the test of time, and others which didn’t.
For example, he advocated that we should all consume a lot of animal fats and worry less about getting fruit and veg, because people in places with fatty animals (whales, seals, etc) and minimal crops were eating that way, and had healthy teeth and gums.
He also made observations others had missed, such as that grains and seeds can provide more nutritional benefits when fermented/soaked/sprouted.
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Read on to learn about these things and more…
👀 WATCH AND LEARN
Why Your Protruding Belly Might Not Be Fat
A protruding belly might be fat, but it also might not be. This short (3:01) video explains the biomechanics going on, and how to get rid of a protruding belly if you so wish:
🦷 MAIN FEATURE
Weston Price: What Stood The Test of Time?
This is Dr. Weston Price, a dentist. You may guess from the photo, or perhaps already knew, his work is not new in 2023. We usually feature current health experts here, but we’re taking a day to do a blast from the past, because his ideas endure today, and inform a lot of people’s health views. So, he’s a good one to at least know about.
What was his deal?
Dr. Price (1870–1948) wanted to study focal infection theory—the idea that repairing root canals allowed bacterial infections that caused everything from heart disease to arthritis. His solution was that the teeth should be extracted instead.
This theory was popular in the 1920s, was challenged in the 1930s, ignored in the 1940s (the world was a bit busy), and by broad medical consensus anyway, rejected in the 1950s. But, while it was being challenged in the 1930s, Dr. Price decided to find more evidence for its support.
The result was his famous world tour of peoples living traditional lifestyles without the influence of “modern” diet. His findings, and the conclusions he drew from them, extended to far more than just dental health.
What did he find?
Dr. Price found that people living traditional lifestyles, with their traditional diets based on locally-sourced foods, had much better overall health. Of course, he was a dentist and not a general practitioner, so aside from examining their teeth, he largely relied on self-reported diagnoses of illness, or lack thereof.
In short: he found that people in places without modern medical institutions had fewer diagnoses of disease. From this, he concluded that incidence of disease was much lower.
There was also an unexamined element of survivorship bias—an undiagnosed disease is more likely to be fatal, and he questioned only living people, which skewed the stats rather. Nor did he examine infant mortality rate nor adult life expectancy, both of which were not great.
Was it all useless, then?
Actually no! He did hit upon some observations that have stood the test of time:
He correctly concluded that modern diets with sugar and white flour were ruinous to the health.
He correctly concluded that locally-sourced food, and grass-fed in the case of pastoral farming, tended to have much more nutritional value than the mass-produced results of intensive farming.
He correctly concluded that many modern preservation methods robbed foods of their nutrients.
He correctly concluded that many grains and seeds are more nutritions when fermented/soaked/sprouted.
About that “locally-sourced food”: the reason locally-sourced food tends to be more nutritious is that it has required less in the way of preservation for a long trip around the world, and will also tend to be fresher.
On the other hand, this does mean a lot of the foods that Dr. Price recommends are very much subject to availability. It may well be true that the Inuit people do not eat a lot of fruit and veg (which mostly do not grow there), but if you live in Nevada, maybe locally-sourced whale fat is just as difficult to find.
One person’s “this fatty organ meat contains the vitamin C we need” may be another person’s “that’s great; I have an apple tree in my garden though”.
Want to learn more?
Dr. Price’s most influential work is his magnum opus, “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration”. It’s a fascinating book, but do be warned, it was written by a rich white man in 1939 and the writing is as racist as you might expect. Even when making favourable comparisons, the tone is very much “and here is what these savages are doing well”.
If you don’t fancy reading all that, here are two other sources about Weston Price’s work and conclusions, presented for balance:
Enjoy!
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🌍 AROUND THE WEB
What’s happening in the health world…
More to come tomorrow!
📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW
In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto - by Michael Pollan
Eat more like the French. Or the Italians. Or the Japanese. Or...
Somehow, whatever we eat is not good enough, and we should always be doing it differently!
Michael Pollan takes a more down-to-Earth approach.
He kicks off by questioning the wisdom of thinking of our food only in terms of nutritional profiles, and overthinking healthy-eating. He concludes, as many do, that a "common-sense, moderate" approach is needed.
And yet, most people who believe they are taking a "common-sense, moderate" approach to health are in fact over-fed yet under-nourished.
So, how to fix this?
He offers us a reframe: to think of food as a relationship, and health being a product of it:
If we are constantly stressing about a relationship, it's probably not good.
On the other hand, if we are completely thoughtless about it, it's probably not good either.
But if we can outline some good, basic principles and celebrate it with a whole heart? It's probably at the very least decent.
The style is very casual and readable throughout. His conclusions, by the way, can be summed up as "Eat real food, make it mostly plants, and make it not too much".
However, to summarize it thusly undercuts a lot of the actual value of the book, which is the principles for discerning what is "real food" and what is "not too much".
Bottom line: if you're tired of complicated eating plans, this book can help produce something very simple, attainable, and really quite good.
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May your life (and your food!) always give you reasons to smile,
The 10almonds Team