A Life of Weston Price: The Darwin of Nutrition
In the early decades of the last century, Cleveland dentist Dr Weston Price became convinced that a natural diet free from refined modern food had to result in healthy teeth and bodies. Aged over 60, he decided to travel the world—with his capable wife, Florence—to find proof among isolated indigenous peoples eating solely from their natural environment.
Such remote populations were already vanishing from the earth, but Weston was able to locate groups in Peru, Africa, the Southern Pacific, Australasia, and on his own continent of North America. There were even pockets of such people in the remote valleys of Switzerland and on the crofts of the Scottish Outer Hebrides. Weston found the healthy teeth and bodies he was anticipating, but only in places sufficiently isolated from modern civilization for what he called “primitive” people to have no access to refined foods—wherever civilization and modern foods such as white flour and sugar had encroached, there was a measurable reduction in dental and physical health. He also discovered, contrary to his expectations, that the healthiest “primitives” were always those eating a diet that included animal foods.
When his travels were completed Weston wrote Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, published in 1939 and still hugely influential to this day.
This first biography reflects the experiences and thinking of the man ultimately dubbed “The Charles Darwin of Nutrition.“ To follow closely in his footsteps is also to uncover the fascinating history of food traditions around the world—and how they were abandoned.
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