Nutritional and Physical Degeneration is one of the most ground-breaking books ever written on the link between nutrition and health. Dr. Weston A. Price, a dentist from Cleveland, became very disturbed by what he saw in his patients. He started to see a link between the decay he found in the mouths of his patients and pathologies found elsewhere in the body like diabetes, arthritis, osteoporosis, gastrointestinal complaints, and more. Dr. Price also found that crowded, crooked teeth were becoming more and more common, along with facial deformities like overbites, narrow faces, lack of well defined cheek bones, and underdevelopment of the nose. Dr. Price did not believe these problems to be in any way normal; He believed they were the result of poor nutrition. The worse a person?s diet was the more decay he found in their mouth. The more decay a person had in their mouth, the higher the rate of pathologies in other areas of the body.

More than 70 years ago Dr. Price decided to search the world for primitive people who lived entirely on indigenous foods. His travels took him from islands in the South Seas to Alaska to Africa and many places in between. He visited Australian Aborigines, Swiss villages, Eskimos, traditional American Indians, Amoazonian Indians, African tribes, and more. Dr. Price and his wife Florence traveled for ten years during the 1920’s and 30’s when groups of people completely isolated from civilization could be found.

Throughout his travels, Dr. Price kept a record of his findings with pictures and detailed assessments. What he found, to be called astounding, is an understatement. Dr, Price discovered that primitive people untouched by civilization, who subsided on a diet of indigenous food, had outstanding physical development with little to no dental problems, heart disease, diabetes, or any other diseases we know believe to be a normal consequence of life.

Dr. Price?s findings were not surprising to other investigators and explorers. However, the excepted explanation at the time was that primitive people were ?racially pure? and that the maladies we see in civilization were due to ?race mixing?. This theory was untenable to Dr. Price who found that the individuals in groups he studied who abandoned their traditional diets for foods provided by traders or missionaries, or who moved to a more civilized area were found to develop tooth decay and degenerative conditions.

The diets of these primitive groups of people were vastly different. Some were mostly cooked food while in others most of the food was consumed raw including animal sources. Some diets were based on sea food, others on domestic animals and others on wild game. Some diets were based on dairy while others consumed a variety of fruits and vegetables and grains.

The common thread between all the groups Dr. Price investigated was none of them contained any refined devitalized foods like white sugar, flour, pasteurized or skim milk, and refined or hydrogenated vegetable oils. All the diets contained animal foods of some type and some salt. Dr. Price analyzed the primitive diets and found they all contained four times the amount of water soluble vitamins and minerals, and ten times the amount of fat soluble vitamins compared to the modern American diet.

Unfortunately, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, the permanent record of his travels, is nonexistent to today?s modern medical community. This book is more important to our health and welfare today than it was 60 years ago. Our food supply, if it could be classified as food, is devoid of almost all nutritive value. We need to incorporate the fundamentals of primitive nutrition and return to nutrient dense whole food. We need to get back to local farming and turn away from manmade supermarket garbage that is destroying our health.

Anyone interested in becoming truly healthy needs to read Nutrition and physical degeneration

Ron Schmid, the author, is a naturopathic physician and farmer. A graduate of MIT, he has served as Clinical Director and Chief Medical Officer at the University Of Bridgeport College Of Naturopathic Medicine. This book is a must for anyone who is interested in whole natural foods. Milk, raw milk that is, has been referred to as nature’s most perfect food because of it numerous health benefits.

The debate of raw versus pasteurized milk is overwhelmingly over safety. We’ve been told over and over again for decades in order for milk to be safe to consume, it needs to be pasteurized. Could it be that people extolling its benefits for thousands of years had no idea how dangerous it was? According to Ron Schmid, we should have the same right to whole raw dairy products in order to reap the benefits our ancestors had.

How much disease attributed to raw milk was actually caused by raw milk? In the early 1900’s when both types, raw and pasteurized coexisted, there was significant controversy within the public health establishment. Official numbers concluded that raw milk was responsible for 10 – 40 percent of all typhoid fever. One paper concluded .221 of one percent of typhoid fever, scarlet fever and diphtheria in the entire U.S. was attributable to milk. Looks to me like more unbiased research should have been done.

One thing we do know is that chronic diseases attributed to cattle have been effectively eradicated, which obviously makes the milk produced by these cattle more safe. Another is that many other contaminants such as Salmonella and Campylobacter originate in feces. These organisms cause over 2 million cases per year in the U.S. In an 8 year period, only 700 cases were attributed to raw milk consumption. The total number of food-borne illness from all causes is now 73 million per year. Schimid points out the obvious, that milk is not uniquely hazardous and should not be treated as such. He makes a strong case for treating raw milk production and like another food. Why can we eat raw fish but not raw milk?

So how much of a problem was raw milk? No matter what the answer was, raw milk became a problem. A large push by commercial interests to influence politicians and market the virtues of pasteurized milk occurred in the early 1900’s. Unfortunately, the public’s perception of raw milk went sour and so did sales. Never mind the fact that the dairy industry was more interested in mass production and shelf life than health.

It has become very clear as with many other products in our food supply money, not health is the deciding factor. If you are at all interested in learning about the benefits of raw milk, its history and how you can get involved in making raw milk available to all, read this book, and visit www.westonaprice.com.