Ep 3 - He Traveled The World to Unlock The Mystery of Perfect Health - Dr. Weston A Price - Part 2

Dr. Weston A. Price Part 2. Let's start with a very important question. Did Dr. Weston A. Price have a recommended diet? Did it work? Right. So for context, he goes to these 12 regions. We've already discussed the limitation of a very spotty timeline. So we don't really know when he's doing these travels. It would have been very interesting to see if some of the things that he's learning from specific regions had a disproportionate impact on his interventional diet. I think that would have been fascinating to understand. But unfortunately, the timeline is a little spotty. Obviously, if I had had the chance to sit down with Dr. Weston A. Price in some hypothetical universe, that would have been one of the most important questions I would have asked him. That being said, what we do get is a clear explanation of what's driving his conclusion. And the most succinct quote that I found to this effect is quote, an essential characteristic of the successful dietary programs of primitive races has been found to relate to a liberal source of the fat-soluble activator group. End quote. Okay. And so for reference, this is vitamin A, vitamin D, and activator X, which we now understand to be vitamin K2. So I think we should just pause and say, this is actually really cool, right? Because Price could have just written a book. He could have said, here are my studies. This is what I found. And he could have just left it at that. And keep in mind, he's a dentist. It seems he had a successful dental practice. He certainly didn't need to do this work. We talked about two, what I believe are primary motivators for this work, which uh, if you haven't listened to part one, I would highly encourage you to do so because this may be a little bit confusing. But I think it's again incredibly noble that Price attempts to put some of his findings to the test. He's not content to just simply make observations, but he attempts to collate his ideas and see if his dietary interventions would change teeth and would change health outcomes. Now, I'll also say that this is an important distinction between starting somebody on, let's just say, a superior diet and seeing that they have superior health outcomes throughout their life, versus taking somebody who's been on a nutrient deficient diet and then having an intervention where they go on a higher nutrient diet and seeing if that gives them better health outcomes overall. To me, that's very interesting. It's not necessarily the same thing. It's logical, maybe, that a better diet at any point in life is going to lead to better health outcomes. But it's not obvious, and it's also not obvious what the impact would be. So that is essentially what Price is doing in this study that we're going to discuss. The study involves three low-income children from Cleveland. I think Price refers to them as poor children, but we get the sense from his writing either way that these are folks that are coming from just a low socioeconomic background. Again, we talked about the context for Dr. Price's work. This is the 1930s. This is after what we now refer to as the Great Depression, from what I understand from my college economics courses. Uh, they didn't refer to it as the Great Depression back then, but we refer to it as the Great Depression right now. So I think it would be fair to assume that some of the poor nutritional choices that were being made at the time were not simply ignorance. They were probably the result of economic factors. So people just couldn't afford the better food. They ate the lower quality food, and some of that lower quality food unfortunately wreaked havoc on their health, which begs the question: what were these children eating? And here we get a description directly from Price where he says, quote, it usually consisted of highly sweetened strong coffee and white bread, vegetable fat, pancakes made of white flour and eaten with syrup and donuts and fried in vegetable fat. End quote. Okay. And for the modern listener in 2025, when you hear the words vegetable fat, you can think seed oils, because that's what this is. So what we are all hearing about today, the incredibly damaging health effects from seed oils, when Dr. Price is saying vegetable fat, that's what he's talking about. So again, this is a diet that would be incredibly poor by our standards, even today. And when you account for the fact that none of these products were enriched with synthetic vitamins, as far as I can tell, that makes this diet even worse, right? It's even more nutrient deficient than it would seem if it was done in our time period today. Uh, I also find it interesting that these are children and they're drinking highly sweetened coffee. It doesn't say that it's decaffeinated coffee, but it would be interesting to explore. I didn't do it for this uh particular episode, but it would be interesting to explore whether this was a common thing, whether parents were giving their children coffee, and or if the coffee had something to do with, I'm just totally speculating here, had something to do that if a child was on such a nutrient-poor diet, they were likely incredibly tired. And so the coffee may have just been a way for the parents to try to come to terms with the fact that these children were likely incredibly tired. That's just me speculating. So, now what was this intervention diet? Price's intervention was one meal per day. So, and by that I don't mean that he had them eating one meal per day and they were intermittent fasting. What I mean by that is that he was giving them, I think it was lunch. They came to his clinic where they were fed a meal that was prepared for them. He had recorded a lot of data about these people, about the children prior to the study. He had taken x-rays of their teeth. He documented any dental cavities, any any observations that he had about dental arches, mouth breathing breathing, nose breathing. And then what he does is he puts them on this one high nutrient meal per day. But the other two or three or however many meals they were eating at home, price doesn't say this explicitly, but we assume that they're eating whatever they were eating before, right? Unless their economic circumstances changed significantly. I think it's fair to assume that they're getting one meal per Dr. Weston A price, and then they're getting their other meals at home, and those other meals are still incredibly nutrient poor. So that's important context because it speaks to the potential power of this single meal. But if somebody were looking to sort of poke holes or nitpick, there is no control. So take that for what it's worth. Still, the study is incredible, and let's go ahead and understand what this one meal was. We'll take it directly from Dr. Price himself, where he says, quote, the nutrition provided these children in this one meal included the following foods. About four ounces of tomato juice or orange juice, and a teaspoonful of a mixture of equal parts of a very high vitamin natural cod liver oil, and an especially high vitamin butter was given at the beginning of each meal. They then received a bowl containing approximately a pint of very rich vegetable and meat stew, made largely from bone marrow and fine cuts of tender meat. The meat was usually broiled separately to retain its juice and then chopped very fine and added to the bone marrow meat soup, which always contained finely chopped vegetables and plenty of very yellow carrots. For the next course they had cooked fruit, very little sweetening, and rolls made from freshly ground wheat, which were spread with the high vitamin butter. The wheat for the rolls was ground fresh every day in a motor-driven coffee mill. Each child was also then given two glasses of fresh whole milk. The menu was varied from day to day by substituting the meat stew, fish chowder, or organs of animals. End quote. Okay, so I think it's fair to say that the meal that Price is providing is significantly better than the meals that they were getting at home previously. Okay, so what were the results of the study, according to Price? And he backs this up with x-rays. All three children had their dental caries completely controlled. And not only that, but Price makes specific note about how their overall disposition, their schoolwork improved, how teachers made note of the fact that these children were incredibly dull before, and how all of a sudden they became among some of the best students. Now, I find that to be very interesting. And we can just write that off and say, eh, it's a function of the time. This is how people spoke back in the day. They had this sort of cartoonish before and after. It's possible, but I don't think so. I think it's likely that when the body is so deficient in certain vitamins and minerals, you're going to be incredibly dull. And I don't mean dull in in the IQ sense. I mean dull in the sense of you're going to be tired, you're going to have low energy, you're just, you're not going to be as sharp. And I think it's likely that what Price is describing, even though he has very little way to prove this to us, and he doesn't really make an attempt. He just asserts it. I think it's likely that what he's saying is true. I mean, that's just my take on it. That's my read. This may reflect some bias on my part, but you know, you can take it with a grain of salt if you want. But he does back things up with the x-rays. So just on the narrow point of teeth, you can take a look at the before's, you can take a look at the afters. And it does appear that the Weston A. Price diet for these three children did improve their teeth. So let's pause and let's drill down on a couple interesting points from what price does. Because oftentimes we hear ideas that are associated with Dr. Weston A. Price. And as I've alluded to, I think it's fair to say that some of these ideas maybe shouldn't be associated with Dr. Weston A. Price. And the first one is on fermentation. And this probably isn't a surprise for people who are familiar with Dr. Price's work. But Dr. Price is not anti-grain. He's not a proponent of a paleo diet or a carnivore diet or a ketogenic diet. These are all terms that obviously came out way after Price's work. But Price likes grains, and he is not afraid of grains. But one thing that is often associated with Dr. Weston A. Price is the idea of fermented grains or properly prepared grains. And I am going to just, well, point out that Price never uses the words fermentation with respect to grains. He doesn't advocate for it. And it's also important to point out that Price did know about fermentation. So this isn't some limitation, like he wasn't aware that fermentation existed. He did know about it. The only area where fermentation is mentioned in the book is, I believe it's the Polynesians, where Price talks about them eating a fermented taro, which is poi, right? Hawaiians eat it. It's this root vegetable. It's turned into a flour, and then the flour is fermented. He talks about it. The words fermentation, as I recall, only come up in the book twice, but they're both in reference to poi. They're not in reference to sourdough. It's not in reference to sprouting of rice. It's not in reference to brouted oats. And oats and flours are definitely things that Price believed were good foods to include in a diet. So specifically from the isolated Swiss, they eat a diet that's heavy in rye bread. According to Price, this is one of the rare moments where we get any indication as to quantity. These isolated Swiss eat a diet that consists for the for the growing boys and girls that consists of rye bread and cheese. And he says that the piece of cheese is essentially the size of the bread and milk six days a week. So six days a week, that's what they're eating. And then one day a week, they get to eat some meat. Okay, so this is a diet where they're eating a lot of grains. Price is impressed by these people. I think I read a quote from Price on just how impressed he was with these sturdy mountaineers. He's talking about the isolated Swiss. And they're on a diet that's six days a week of bread and cheese and one day a week of meat. Okay, so there it's a lot of dairy, but it's also a lot of grain. What Price does think is important is the fact that the grains are freshly ground. And it seems very clear to me that he got this idea from the isolated Swiss. In his intervention diet, he makes it a point, and he repeats this multiple times in the book, that it's important that the grains are whole and that they are freshly ground. Okay, so this is very different than what I understood from many of the people who have advocated Dr. Price's work. It doesn't mean that fermentation is wrong. It just means that this is not something that Dr. Price directly advocated. What he did advocate for was whole grains freshly ground. And he was so impressed by the Swiss and their the importance of doing this that he actually purchased two of their stone ground mills. He convinced like the elders that he was going to need it for research in America, and they sold him two of these mills. And to him, you can tell this is a big deal because they viewed these mills in an incredibly important light. Okay, so the other thing that I find interesting about Price's intervention study here is the emphasis on vitamin A and the emphasis on phosphorus. I just find this interesting. I'm gonna dive more into it as I continue to do episodes. But to me, this is very interesting because this isn't something that we hear much about today. And just out of curiosity, I was wondering, you know, like like phosphorus price talks about as important as calcium or as important as vitamin D, maybe more so than vitamin D. So we casually, when we hear about Dr. Weston A price, oftentimes we hear about vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin K2. Those are things that that many people have pointed to and have credited Dr. Price with highlighting the importance of. But one thing that I hear a lot from Dr. Price is phosphorus. And I find that to be very interesting because Price says at the time that the RDA for phosphorus, or I think RDI, I don't remember what he's using at that point, but that the RDA, RDI for phosphorus is something like two grams a day. And I thought that was like very high. So then I looked up, okay, well, what's the RDA, RDI today? And it's like, I think it's like 700 milligrams. So it's like a third of what the RDA was in Price's day. And not only that, but Price still thinks when he's making his calculations that those following a primitive diet in many cases were eating phosphorus many, many, many more times than the RDA of two grams of the day, which would make it substantially more than what the RDA is of our time period right now. I just find that interesting. We don't hear much about things like B vitamins or omega-3 fatty acids. I'm not 100% sure if B vitamins had been discovered at this point in time, but if they had been, price doesn't discuss them at all. In our modern conversations about plant-based diets versus animal-based diets versus mixed diets, we often hear about things like B vitamins. We often hear about things like omega-3 fatty acids, folate, obviously being a B vitamin. Um, but we don't hear much about phosphorus. And we occasionally hear a little bit about vitamin A. But you can tell that price really places a huge emphasis on vitamin A and phosphorus. And again, at this point in time, I'm not sure what the significance of this is. It's just something that stands out when you're reading price and that I find interesting and requiring some further study. Okay, so another important question is why this diet? We heard about the intervention diet, we heard about what some of the results were. They seem impressive. But you know, when you compare what Price discovered in his travels, what people are eating, and then you look at what his intervention diet is, you can't help but notice that there are some differences. Now, some of the foods that Price includes in his intervention diet are foods that we see from his travels. But some of them aren't. We'll dive into what I think is the most shocking thing that I discovered about Dr. Weston A. Price's work, and it relates to some of that. But you can't help but notice when you're reading Price's work on his travels, that there's a very common theme. And that theme is that people who are eating what he oftentimes refers to as liberal quantities of animals of the sea or something to that effect, they have incredible health outcomes. I I think it's fair to say some of the highest praise that Price has for anybody following these primitive diets is for those that are eating diets that are high in seafood. And I find this very significant. I find it significant because in the intervention diet described by Weston Price is where we hear things like cod liver oil, butter, bone broth. And we hear about those ideas a lot with Dr. Price, including fermented grains. As I mentioned before, Price does not advocate fermented grains. What he advocates for is freshly ground whole grains. And he makes that abundantly clear. Time and time again. He hammers that point home. It's got to be freshly ground whole grains. But it's interesting that Price talks so positively about those that are eating seafood, yet in his intervention diet, he doesn't really include seafood. I mean, he includes it a little bit, right? Fish chowder, he includes some cod liver whale. But I find that to be very interesting. And you don't have to take my word for it. I have a few quotes that illustrate the point, where Price is talking about just gushing about the health outcomes of those following a diet that utilizes significant amounts of seafood. So let's take a look at the first one where Price says, quote, My previous studies have shown that wherever groups of people were utilizing seafoods abundantly in connection with land plants, including roots, greens, and fruits, they enjoyed fine physical development with uniform reproduction of the racial pattern and a very high immunity to dental caries. End quote. Okay, so that's pretty high praise. Uniform physical development, very high immunity to dental cavity, to dental caries, right? Dental cavities. And he says wherever he finds that, that's what he's observed. Okay. So clearly seafood's very important in the quote we just looked at. He doesn't mention grains at all. He doesn't mention butter, he doesn't mention cod liver oil. He's specifically talking about seafood, land plants, greens, and fruits. The second quote: the Maori race developed a knowledge of nature's laws and adopted a system of living in harmony with those laws to so high a degree that they were able to build what was reported by early scientists to be the most physically perfect race living on the face of Earth. They accomplished this largely through diet and a system of social organization designed to provide a high degree of perfection in their offspring. To do this, they utilized foods from the sea very liberally. End quote. Okay, that's as good as it gets. I mean, the the most physically perfect race on the face of the earth. Now, Price himself isn't saying this directly, but the fact that he's bringing it in to his work means that he thinks there's some credibility here, there's some credence here. And again, you can look at many of the areas Price is studying people that are using seafood, and the quotes are very, very similar. This is the last one, because these are a little long. Price is talking about Kenya in this case, where he says, quote, the government of Kenya has for several years sponsored an athletic contest among the various tribes, the test being one of strength for which they use a tug of war. One particular tribe has carried off the trophy repeatedly. This tribe resides on the east coast. Of Lake Victoria and lives very largely on fish. The members are powerful athletes and wonderful swimmers. They are said not to have been conquered in warfare when they could take the warfare to the water. One of their methods is to swim under the water to the enemy's fleet and scuttle their boats. They fight with spears underwater with marvelous skills. And then he says, their physiques are magnificent. End quote. Okay, so these are somewhat lengthy quotes, but again, you get the idea here. Whenever Price has the opportunity to comment on those that are following a diet that consists largely of seafood, he does so, and it's always complimentary, high compliment, right? Even in the context of him giving compliments and speaking very highly of these primitive diets, the highest praise, I think it's fair to say, is reserved for those following a diet that utilizes a lot of seafood. Now, this is odd, right? And it makes you wonder why is this the case, right? Why does Dr. Weston A. Price speak so highly of these diets utilizing a lot of seafood, yet in his own intervention diet, he doesn't make seafood the cornerstone of the diet. And I think there are really two reasons. The first is that it's very clear that Dr. Weston A. Price is agnostic to the diet so long as the factors are sufficient, right? I think at part one, we reviewed one of his quotes. But here we can dive into it with a little bit more detail. Price says, quote, it does not matter what the source of minerals and vitamins may be, so long as the supply is adequate. In our modern life, the location of a group will determine the most efficient and most convenient source for obtaining these essential foods. End quote. Okay, so here we get two ideas. The first idea is that what matters most is that there's adequate supply of vitamins and minerals. And the second consideration is really a practical one, right? He's saying in our modern life, right, when we're adapting for the times of the 1930s, what we really want to consider is what is most efficient and convenient for obtaining these essential foods. And we also do know that while Price has some humility with respect to what's been discovered for vitamins and minerals, he's clearly aware of them. He performs chemical analysis on some of the foods he brings back, makes specific notes about how much calcium, how much phosphorus, how much vitamin A, how much vitamin D, right? So he's clearly aware of these. They clearly are driving some of his thinking. Now, with respect to what Price is doing, and this is just my read, but I think what Price is really attempting to do is come up with a diet that is not an ideal diet. Okay, and that's very important. I don't think what he's trying to say is this is an ideal diet for humans. I think what he's trying to do, and again, keep the context in mind, right after the Great Depression, many people are hard up. I think what he's trying to do is find the greatest bang for your buck, to put it bluntly or more crudely, but then also to find a diet that could be utilized by people in the United States almost regardless of where they lived. So this is a time when refrigeration is spotty. This is a time when global supply chains are not nearly as advanced as the ones we have in 2025. And here we can hear directly from Dr. Price, where he says, quote, since the seafoods are as a group so valuable a source of the fat-soluble activators, they have found to be efficient throughout the world, not only for controlling tooth decay, but for producing human stock of high vitality. Unfortunately, the cost of transportation in the fresh state often constitutes a factor limiting distribution. Many of the primitive races preserved the food value, including vitamins, by very efficiently drying the fish. While our modern system of canning prevents decomposition, it does not efficiently preserve some of the fat-soluble activators, including vitamin A. End quote. Okay, so here we see one more quote. I know these are long, so thank you for bearing with me. But again, I think it's just if you're going to make a claim, and in this case, I am making a claim about the work of Dr. Weston A. Price that is different than how he is often represented in these conversations. And I would put that in the category of an extraordinary claim. So extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. And I want to make sure that I'm not guilty of misrepresenting his work. So the best way to do that is give you his words directly. And here, this is the lead-in to the chapter where he starts talking, if I recall correctly. This is the lead-in to the chapter where he's talking about his work in Africa and why Africa is such an important place to study and its direct applicability for any intervention that ultimately makes it back to the United States. Price says, quote, seafoods are within reach of the inhabitants of islands and coastal regions regardless of latitude. The inhabitants of the interior of a continent, however, have not access to liberal supplies of various forms of animal life at the sea. It was important, therefore, in the interest of the inhabitants of the United States, Canada, Europe, and other large continental interiors, to study primitive people living under conditions similar to theirs. End quote. So again, when you look at many of these quotes and you take them in context and you put them together, the picture that is painted to me is that Dr. Price had incredibly noble ambitions. He had an incredibly noble ideal, which is to help in a very utilitarian sense the greatest good for the greatest numbers. In order to do so, he wasn't focused on an ideal diet. That's not what he presented in his intervention studies. What he presented was a diet that he believed could undo much of the damage that he was seeing, specifically in the United States. And in order to do that, he borrowed from the life and the experiences of people following a primitive diet. But he did come up with his own original diet based on those lessons. He didn't advocate this as a universal diet. He explained the diet and why he thought it would be beneficial, and then he showed us the results. I think in an ideal world, Dr. Weston A. Price, if you asked him, what is the ideal diet, irrespective of cost, irrespective of availability, irrespective of any of these practical factors that you have to account for, what would it look like? I would hazard a guess that it would include a lot of seafood, and it likely wouldn't include cod liver oil, and it may not even include butter. These are ideas that are strongly associated with Dr. Weston A. Price, but I think if you actually read his work, you may come to a very different conclusion than what is often portrayed in discussions on Dr. Weston A. Price's work. That's just my take on it. You take it or leave it, but that's my read. Now let's get to the most mind-blowing thing about Dr. Weston A. Price's work. I've alluded to this, you've probably picked up on this. We often associate Dr. Weston A. Price with cod liver oil and grass-fed butter, but of all the primitive diets studied in the first part of the book, right, where he does his travels, he goes to twelve different regions, how many utilize cod liver oil? The answer is zero, not one. It's not to say that some of them haven't used cod liver oil, but Price doesn't mention it. I find this very significant. And again, it backs the claim that I made previously. That this was a diet that was very practical. This was a diet that was adapted specifically for places like the United States, Canada, and Europe. Okay, so that's cod liver whale. Now, what about butter? Grass-fed butter. As far as I can tell, only one region uses grass-fed butter, and that's the isolated Swiss. Price specifically has a section where he talks about grass-fed butter and how the people of Switzerland understand that the specific butter that comes during a time period of June is of increased nutrient value. It's very special. I think they even have a prayer about this June grass-fed butter. Price does perform some chemical analysis. It's later determines that it's important because it's rich in, I believe it's vitamin A and maybe some beta-carotens. Okay, so this is where I get very curious about what the time frame is between some of Price's travels and his intervention study. If memory serves, it's clear that the intervention study happens after his visit to the isolated Swiss. But it's also not clear whether if some of the areas that Price goes to study later had happened earlier, if maybe the intervention diet would look much different. And maybe it would make use of much more seafood, maybe dried seafood, maybe canned seafood, maybe smoked. I'm not exactly sure. Or it's entirely possible that Price may have made mention of, hey, if you do live by the sea, or if you do live and you have access to fish, that should be way up high on your list. So just a thought. Okay, so then the logical question is where do cod liver oil and butter come from? What's Price's justification for including these in his dietary intervention? And let's hear it directly from Price himself. Quote: Since the organs, particularly the livers of animals, are storage depots of the vitamin, an important source of some of the fat-soluble activators can be provided by extracting the fat of the livers and shipping it as liver oils. Modern methods of processing have greatly improved the quality of these oils. There are some factors, however, which can be provided to great advantage for humans from dairy products of high efficiency. End quote. Okay, so that's what Price is saying, is essentially what I've been making the point this whole time. Price included these because he thought they were of significant benefit, that they could address this question very efficiently, right, both from a cost and ease of transportation perspective, right? They could provide for some of these fat-soluble activators. It's also important to note that cod liver oil had a fairly recent success, recent from the perspective of the 1930s, in treating rickets, right? A known vitamin D deficiency. This was something that many people were already familiar with. And I'm sure that it was one of the areas that he looked at very early and said, hey, if we're trying to address for things like vitamin A and vitamin D, cod liver oil is a pretty good source. Now, again, what I think is very interesting is what's the significance for our time? What's the significance in 2025? And what does that mean for us reading his work and thinking about our own diets? Would Dr. Weston A. Price today have the same dietary intervention? I think it's pretty unlikely. I think it's more likely that given access to the global food chain, given access to seafoods that could be shipped refrigerated, flash-frozen from anywhere around the world, I think it's likely that we would see much more seafood in any intervention diet from Dr. West Snake Price. That's to say nothing about other things like omega-3 fatty acids, iodine, high mineral contents that Price likely didn't know about back in the 1930s, but would have discovered subsequently. So again, I find this very significant. When you're reading about the various groups, come to your own conclusions. But to me, it seems very clear, it's a very common theme. Price liked seafood and he liked the look and the physical robustness of people that were eating it. Okay, so what about protein? We've heard about Price's intervention diet. We get a little bit more information about macros here, but it's not like Price came right out and said, hey, start feeding these kids tons and tons of animal products. He doesn't even mention protein. And it's interesting to think, what did Price think about protein? Was he aware of it? Yeah, obviously he's aware of it, but what were his thoughts? And interestingly, it's not really clear. Um, he says things that I think we would take to be conflicting. There's a term that Price uses a lot in the book, and it's bodybuilding. Two words. Not bodybuilding like getting all yoked up, but bodybuilding like builds the body. So he says bodybuilding factors. He uses this term a lot. But when he's talking about bodybuilding factors, he's mostly talking about these fat-soluble vitamins. And it's interesting that on the one hand, he has great admiration for two groups that we could describe as following likely a high protein diet. Again, I have to say likely because price gives us very little, if not nothing, regarding the quantities here. And those two groups are the Maasai and the Eskimos. And I think it's fair to say they are the closest thing to a high protein diet. So the Eskimos at one point in time of the year essentially are eating, according to Price, all salmon, right? Just salted and smoked salmon, or smoked salmon. So it's just dried. And that's essentially what they're eating through for months out of the year. And Price, as we, as I mentioned earlier, we read one of his quotes about the Eskimos. He has profound admiration for the sturdiness and robustness of the Eskimos. And then the Maasai, right? I mean, it's one thing that I find very uh hilarious throughout the book is Price seems very impressed by how tall people are. So when he goes to places in Africa, he comes across certain tribes, the Maasai being one of them, where the people are significantly taller, then you can tell what Price is used to. Like he makes comments specifically about one queen that's like six foot seven as a woman. He doesn't have a picture of the queen. Um, but he says there's a tribe in Africa as an example that the average man is something like six, six, and the king is like seven foot two or something, right? Just incredibly tall by price's standards, even by our standards today. And the Maasai are tall, they're very lean, um, they have great teeth. And you can tell Price is super impressed uh by these people. So these are two people. Oh, let me just say what they're eating. Although they do raise cattle, they're not eating a lot of meat. What they're mostly doing is drinking milk that's mixed with blood. So they bloodlet the cows. They, they're, they view these cows as like incredibly prized possessions. So they're not really eating them. If they are eating meat, they're eating goat meat, but it's not a lot, according to price. Mostly what they're doing is drinking milk, raw milk, we assume, well, we know, and mixing it with blood. So that's that's the majority of their protein. And that's the majority of their calories are coming from that. Some root vegetables, but price really emphasizes the milk and blood mixture. Interestingly, this diet, if anybody's a fan of uh hardcore history or Dan Carlin's work, he's got a really great multi-hour series on the Mongols. And one of the things that sustained this Mongol empire, right? This Mongol horde that was able to raise these massive standing armies, mobilize them, feed them before any logistics, but before supply chains. They could go on these massive campaigns and for a long period of time. The thing that allowed them to do that is they all rode horses. So they were horse archers, and they all had mares. So they had female horses, and they kept the mares lactating. So these Mongol horse archers would live off of mare's milk mixed with blood. So they would bloodlet the horses, and that was essentially what they could they could eat, and they could campaign endlessly. They'd just sleep in the field, drink blood and milk from their horses, and each man was sort of like his own autonomous unit that could just endlessly campaign. I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but I find it interesting that the Maasai are another warlike group in a very different part of the world, and they essentially had a similar, if not the same, diet. Okay, we're getting a little offhand here, but um just exciting stuff either way. Now we talked about two groups, the Eskimos and the Maasai, two examples of groups that are eating a high protein diet, at least it would seem that they are, and Price has a lot of admiration for them. On the other hand, Price also has a lot of admiration for the isolated Swiss. And as I mentioned, they're living on a diet that consists of rye bread. And by now you know that this rye bread was whole kernels, whole berries, I guess, ground, freshly ground, and a hunk of cheese. And the chunk of cheese is the size of the piece of bread. So most of the calories we assume, I guess, are coming from the cheese, but they're eating bread and cheese six days a week for the growing boys and girls, some milk, and then one day a week they're eating meat. Okay, so this is a fairly, it's not the lowest protein diet in the world, but it's it's also not a super high protein diet. Then interestingly, we get this note, we get this letter that's all the way in the back of the book. I don't know if it's in the appendix or if it's just like part of the final chapter. I don't remember off the top of my head. But it's interesting, we get this letter, and this letter is a bit confusing. This letter is in 1934. We know it's in 1934 because this is one of the ones that's dated. And it's a somewhat lengthy quote. But here we get a lot of Price's ideas about diet and like unfiltered, not intervention. We're getting advice that we can, I think, assume is what he honestly believed, because he's trying to help out his own nieces and nephews. And here Price says, quote, the basic foods should be the entire grains, again, entire grains, such as whole wheat, rye, or oats, whole wheat and rye breads, wheat and oat cereals, oat cake, dairy products, including milk and cheese, which should be used liberally in marine foods. All marine or seafoods, both fresh and salt water, are high in minerals and constitute one of the very best foods you can eat. Canned fish such as sardines, tuna or salmon are all excellent. Also, the fresh fish such as oysters, halibut, haddock, etc. All right, now here's where it matters. The protein requirement can be provided each day in one egg or a piece of meat equivalent to the bulk of one egg a day. End quote. Alright. What is that? So like I said, it gets a little confusing as to what Price's views on protein are. When you hear the first part of this set of this quote, where Price talks about eating milks and cheeses, and then he talks about eating fish. But then what's interesting is he says the bulk of your protein can be met through eating a single egg or a piece of meat equivalent to the size of a single egg. The only thing I can conclude at this point is that Price had a different understanding of protein than we do today. Seafood is high in protein. The seafoods that price ticks off, sardines, tuna, salmon, these are all incredibly high in protein. But then Price says, eat that stuff, eat a lot of it. But you can just eat like an egg or a piece of meat. So to me, this is just a conflict. I don't have an answer for it. It's just a question. And the only rationalization that I can come to is that Price must have had a different understanding of protein than we have today. I will hazard a guess that if Price were alive today, he would have favored a diet that was much higher in protein than would be indicated by this quote. I think that's fairly obvious if you look at the foods that he says to eat a lot of, right, which is seafood, super high in protein. So that's the only way I can square that circle. But I also think it's fair to assume that he would have favored a diet that emphasizes organs, specifically organs from land animals, over or maybe placed at a higher premium than muscle meat. And this may be an issue of timing. I don't know, again, because we don't have very good dates on when Price is doing these studies of these various regions, but he does make mention of the fact that there are many groups that he admires greatly that make use of eating organs. Here's one example on the Indians of Northern Canada, where Price says, quote, I found the Indians putting great emphasis on eating the organs of the animals, including the wall of parts of the digestive tract. Much of the muscle meat of the animals was fed to the dogs. End quote. Okay, so that to me is very significant. Price is noticing time and time again that for these specific ailments, the primitive people, those following a primitive diet, resort to specific organs, right? Whether it's the adrenals for scurvy, whether it's the retina for vitamin A deficiencies of the eye, fish eggs in the case of fertility and overall women's reproductive health. They go to specific areas of the animal. And Price seems to know that they have much more knowledge than he can capture in this book, but they place a high emphasis on organ meats. So I think it's likely that Price, if he were writing today, would have favored a fairly high protein diet, but it would have been a diet that included organ meats. So Price does deal with the issue of plant-based diets directly. I've seen a few videos that have debunked plant-based diets. Some of them invoke the words of Dr. Weston A. Price because he does have very clear statements about plant-based diets and whether he thinks those are essentially a good idea or not. Unlike other ideas that are associated with him, right? Raw versus pasteurized milk, fermented grains, et cetera, which we're not really sure because he doesn't make those thoughts clear. We do know his thoughts on plant-based diets. And there are two quotes from the book in total, there are only two, that deal with this issue, and they deal with the issue head on. They're not too long, so I'm going to read them both directly. The first is quote, it is significant that I, as of yet, have found no group that was building and maintaining good bodies exclusively on plant foods. A number of groups are endeavoring to do so with marked evidence of failure. The variety of animal foods available has varied widely in some groups and has been limited among others. End quote. Okay, so that's the first one. The second quote touches on some of the same points, but let's read it in totality so we have a full idea of what price is saying. Quote, as yet I have found not a single group of primitive racial stock which was building and maintaining excellent bodies by living entirely on plant foods. I have found many parts of the world, most devout representatives of modern ethical systems advocating the restrictions of foods to the vegetable products. In every instance where groups involved had long been under this teaching, I found evidence of degeneration in the form of dental caries, and in the new generation in the form of abnormal dental arches, to an extent very much higher than in the primitive groups who were not under this influence. End quote. Okay, so we have it in Price's words directly. Seems like a slam dunk. Price says, I looked, I find no evidence of those following a plant-based diet that are building and maintaining good bodies, that have good teeth, that have wide dental arches. We don't hear specifically about mouth versus nose breathing, but I think we can assume. So the question is, is this the slam dunk that it appears to be? Okay, so in my reading of this, there are some problems with these statements. And we're gonna go through them one by one. I think it really boils down to three issues. So first, uh Price provides no evidence for these claims, right? He mentions groups, but he doesn't mention those groups specifically. So we have no idea what Price says he studied, he says he looked for it. Does he say who he looked at? No. Does he provide any data on what their rate of dental carries was? No. To me, that's significant, right? This is a pretty big and bold claim. And he doesn't back it up of anything. That's the full extent of the quote. It's not even really in the context of discussing plant-based diets in general. These are just like block quotes inserted in various points of the book. So I find that to be interesting. Second, price provides no information about the diets of those, quote, living exclusively on plant foods. Okay, so we saw the quote modern diets of Price's day. And even by our standards today, these diets would be incredibly poor. Now, if we take the knowledge of people advocating plant-based diets back in the 1930s, and we assume, and Price even says this in his second quote, that these are largely modern types that are advocating these diets, I think it's probably fair to assume that they're likely leveraging modern foods, right? They're not going out and finding traditional or primitive people to follow or study, but that they're coming at it from the modern perspective, the same modern perspective that has created negative health outcomes and terrible teeth on people following a mixed diet or even following a diet that includes maybe significant amounts of animal foods. We don't know that because price doesn't really go into it. But I do think it's fair to say in order to make this claim stronger, we would really need to have a full discussion of what these plant-based diets were. And we don't get any of that. Third, price doesn't explain his process for selecting regions to study of these plant-based people. There's two ways to interpret what he's saying. Let me go back to the quote so I have it. So as of yet, I have not found a single group of primitive racial stock which was building and maintaining excellent bodies by living entirely on plant foods. Okay, so is he saying that he hasn't found a group that's living on plant foods, or that he has found groups living on plant foods and they have terrible teeth and bad health outcomes? It's not super clear. It's also not clear, again, which regions he's looking for. He doesn't study anybody in, say, China. He doesn't study anybody, as I can recall, in India. And I think you could probably assume that places like India would have a higher prevalence of people following a plant-based diet than, I don't know, say northern Alaska. So is it that he hasn't found these people, or he did find them and their health outcomes were terrible? I just want to be clear about this. It doesn't necessarily mean price is wrong, but it's just that there's really no evidence for this claim. So this claim that seems like a slam dunk that I've often seen used in quote, debunking vegan diets. When you read the book, there really just isn't anything backing it. Now, it is clear to somebody to say, somebody might say, no, what's backing it is these 12 regions he studied. You can see that none of them are using plant-based diets. And yeah, that would be fair. That that is absolutely correct. According to Price, none of them are utilizing plant-based diets. But what would have made this argument strong, or even just an argument, would be that he would provide the areas that he's talking about and show something to back this claim, other than just an assertion, because that's what I see it at this point. This is an assertion. I'm not taking sides on this, but I am just calling it like I see it. This is a very powerful statement, but it's a very weak argument. We talked about high protein diets. We talked about Price's conversation and comments on plant-based diets. I also want to drill into a couple things that I just found odd about the book. Again, this doesn't take away from the book. This is an incredible book. Dr. Price did incredible work. And I don't want a Monday morning quarterback from almost 100 years later and say, why can't we hold you to the same standard we would hold somebody to today? These comments, I think, are what would have been fair comments and are puzzling based on the time period. So I want to be clear about that. There are critiques that people have of Dr. Weston A. Price's work. I've even hit on them a little bit, like the lack of data, the lack of quantities. Those have been a little bit odd and I think do weaken the work. But there are some things that I'm just dumbstruck as to why they're not included in the book, why it's not a conversation from Dr. Weston A. Price. The first one, all this talk about teeth. Now, what about dental hygiene? This is honestly puzzling. From what I can tell, dental hygiene is discussed one time in the book. Price goes around the world. He is essentially trying to rule out two main things. The first is race mixing, that isn't it. And the second is a lack of dental hygiene, that isn't it. Okay, so we do get a good sense on race mixing. But what we don't get is a good sense about dental hygiene. This is puzzling. As I said, as far as I can tell, Dr. Price only discusses dental hygiene once in the book. And here's what he says on it. Quote, another difficulty is the fact that many primitive races have their teeth smeared with starchy foods almost constantly and make no effort whatsoever to clean their teeth. In spite of this, they have no tooth decay. In many of the primitive groups I've studied, the process of modernization includes teaching oral, hygiene, and prophylaxis. Yet even with the addition of this important adjunct to health, they have in most cases lost their immunity to tooth decay, and dental caries has become active. Of course, everyone should clean his teeth, even the primitive, in the interest and out of consideration for others. End quote. He doesn't go area by area. He offers no data to back this up. But in general, eh, the primitives don't clean their teeth. I don't know. To me, that's just weak. It's just weak. And I think it probably would have been perceived as weak as the at the time, especially given the fact that Price is a dentist. Seems like it would have been the simplest thing in the world to take a few photos of if there were primitive instruments, or even just when he's talking about the modern groups having some even sentence, even a subjective area by area about what they were doing from a dental hygiene perspective. Again, this doesn't disprove anything Price says. It doesn't mean that he's wrong. It just weakens his argument. I think that's a missed opportunity. Another thing that's odd, I hit on this earlier, but again, let's go back to it. And that's on alcohol. Again, I can't wrap my head around this. 1919 to 1933, I believe, is prohibition. Price is right in and around that time period. The health effects, the societal ills that came from alcohol were known at this time. Price is talking about many of the same issues that the temperance movement would have been concerned about: juvenile delinquency, the rise of gangs, criminal activity. He talks about these things in the book. Not a ton, but he does talk about them. But the conversation of alcohol is completely lacking. I truly can't wrap my head around this. Maybe there's somebody who knows why Price doesn't include this in his book. But again, this is a missed opportunity as far as I'm concerned, because it would have been one of those things that he could have he could have dug into in more detail. And the fact that it's not in there is just odd. I guess it's just odd. That's why I have it in this category. Okay. Another one, raw versus pasteurized dairy. We don't see the word pasteurization anywhere in this book. We don't see the word pasteurized anywhere in this book. In fact, Price never makes that distinction at all. He does discuss milk, he does discuss butter, and he discusses other dairy products. And I think from the region of the world in the time period, we can assume that certain people are almost certainly drinking raw dairy or eating raw dairy, like the Maasai. But it's not clear that when he's comparing that, say, to what modern people are eating in the United States, Europe, and Canada, whether those people are eating pasteurized or raw, or even in his intervention diet, whether those on the intervention diet are drinking raw milk or whether they're drinking pasteurized milk. And this isn't an indictment of price, but what I find interesting is that the debate, the introduction of pasteurized milk, was going on right at the same time period. So if Price found it to be incredibly significant that the milk was raw, given what was going on in the United States regarding pasteurization at that time, you would think that he would comment on it. That's just my take. Do I think Dr. Price would favor raw milk if he were writing today? I do, based on what he's described. But I find it odd that an idea that we commonly associate with Dr. Weston A. Price, which is raw dairy, he doesn't discuss in this book. Lastly, there is little to no discussion on lifespan or cause of death for the primitive diet. Now, here I may be coming at this from more of a modern perspective. And if you're going to read about various dietary interventions, or if you're going to read about comparing and contrasting different diets, whether it's the Mediterranean diet, carnivore diet, keto, any of these diets, and somebody is making the kind of claims that Dr. Weston A. Price would be making, we would want to know all right, what does this do for health span? What does this do for lifespan? Now, maybe these are concepts that were just not discussed at the time. So again, I put this in the odd category. I don't view this as an out and out hard limitation on his work. But it seems to me that the way Price presents it, those following the primitive diet have essentially perfect teeth, and they essentially have incredibly high vitality and powerful health outcomes. So it would be interesting to know well, if they're not dying from tuberculosis, they're not dying from typhoid fever, what are they dying from? Is there any conversation about it? No, there's none. Price doesn't seem to indicate that he asks the question. There may be good reasons for this. So we got to take my critique with a grain of salt, too. Maybe this was considered incredibly impolite. I could see that for sure. Price does mention that sometimes it's difficult for him to get people to agree to allow him to take a photograph because of cultural reasons or suspicion. So it's not impossible to imagine that societies may be a little reluctant to tell the white man what they are dying from when they do die. I could totally see that. So it's not an out-and-out indictment of Price's work. Obviously, this doesn't mean anything that he said was wrong. It just means that to me, this would have been a very, very interesting thing and a very logical thing to have discussed, even speculated on, and we just we don't get anything from it. We just get this picture of those on the modern diet, stuff's real bad. Those that are on the primitive diet, stuff is real good. That's an oversimplification, but it's directionally correct. Now we've said a lot in this conversation on the work of Dr. Weston A. Price. If you're still with me at this point, thank you. Um, this has been a lot of fun for me, so hopefully you've gotten some value out of it. So this is not a perfect work, but it is an amazing work. I would strongly encourage you, as I've done all along, to go out, buy, and read this book. To me, it doesn't matter if you're vegan, paleo, carnivore, or on a standard American diet. This is a book that contains powerful insights on the role of diet and human health. And to me, you don't have to accept every aspect of the book in order to derive value from it. You don't have to agree with every single one of Dr. Weston A. Price's conclusions, which I don't, in order to get value from his work and to see improvements in your own personal health. Not to mention the pictures. The pictures are truly worth a thousand words. Dr. Price is doing this work at an incredibly unique time. It's a book that I'm confident to say will never be replicated. I mean, this is just such a unique time from the forces of globalization, the technology that Dr. Price is able to bring to bear really for the first time in all of human history to create this phenomenal work. This book has been around for 90 plus years. I think it's likely that this book will continue for another 90 plus years. I think it's just that good. Something that is often missing from the conversations around Dr. Price is the proper context required for understanding his intervention diet. Right? This is a diet that is not designed to be ideal. This is a diet that's designed to efficiently and effectively get fat-soluble activators to the maximum number of people in the United States, Europe, and Canada. That's it. I think it's incredibly likely, and again, this is something that we don't see in many of the conversations about Dr. Weston A. Price, that if he were going to create an ideal diet, I think it's safe to say it would include a lot of seafood. Lastly, many ideas, foods that are associated with Dr. Weston A. Price are either not discussed in the book or were likely not considered noteworthy by Dr. Weston A. Price. So we talked about fermented grains. We talked about raw dairy versus pasteurized dairy. And these are just ideas that really aren't discussed in the book. It's not to say that Price wouldn't agree with these ideas today, but it is to say that if we're going to give a balanced coverage to his work, we should be upfront about what he does discuss and what he doesn't. Okay, that's all I got today. So this is going to end my conversation on Dr. West and A. Price. If you have received value from this discussion, please share, like, and subscribe. And most importantly, go out and buy a copy of Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. If you do read it and you see that I've made an error, feel free to comment. Send me a note directly. It's all good. I'd also like to personally thank the Weston A. Price Foundation for their work in keeping the ideas and work of Dr. Weston A. Price alive. If you're not familiar with the Dr. West and A. Price Foundation, check them out. They do a lot of really good work. This is an incredible book that was written nearly 100 years ago, and it is as relevant now as it was when it was published. Thank you.