weston price & the reclamation of Traditional Diets

The Eleven Characteristics of Traditional Diets         

-created by Sally Fallon Morell, based on the research of Dr. Weston A. Price

1. Nutrient density: Traditional diets contain at least four times the calcium and other minerals and TEN times the fat soluble vitamins from animal fats (vitamin A, D and K) as the average American diet.

2. No refined or denatured foods such as refined sugar or corn syrup; white flour; overly processed canned foods; pasteurized, homogenized, skim or low-fat milk; refined or hydrogenated vegetable oils; protein powders; artificial vitamins or toxic additives and colorings.

3. Not low fat! Total fat content of traditional diets varies from 30% to 80% but only about 4% of calories come from polyunsaturated oils naturally occurring in grains, pulses, nuts, fish, animal fats and vegetables. The balance of fat calories is in the form of saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids.

4. Some sort of animal protein and fat: from fish and other seafood; water and land fowl; land animals; eggs; milk and dairy products; reptiles; and insects.

5. Seeds, grains and nuts are soaked, sprouted, fermented or naturally leavened in order to neutralize naturally occuring antinutrients in these foods, such as phytic acid, enzyme inhibitors, tannins and complex carbohydrates.

6. High food-enzyme content from raw dairy products; raw meat and fish; raw honey; tropical fruits; cold-pressed oils; wine and unpasteurized beer; and naturally preserved, lacto-fermented vegetables, fruits, beverages, meats and condiments.

7. Nearly equal amounts of omega-6 and omega-3 essential fatty acids.

8. Consumption of animal bones, usually in the form of gelatin-rich bone broths.

9. Some salt.

10. Some animal products are eaten raw.

11. Make provisions for the health of future generations by providing special nutrient-rich foods for parents-to-be, pregnant women and growing children; by proper spacing of children; and by teaching the principles of right diet to the young.

The Weston Price Story 

Dr. Weston A. Price (1870-1948), a dentist from Cleveland, Ohio, has been called the “Isaac Newton of Nutrition.”

Seeking to understand the causes of dental decay and physical degeneration he observed in his practice, particularly in the children and grandchildren of his original patients, he turned from laboratory research to the unrecognized, under-appreciated -- and rapidly disappearing -- evidence still to be found among living human populations. In his search for the causes of ill health in the world around him, he discovered the source of vital health among the people who still possessed it -- traditional societies uncorrupted by modern agriculture and food processing. 

Before World War II, there were still many of these small thriving groups around the world. Price traveled extensively in the 1920s and '30s, gathering evidence wherever he went. His findings led him to the belief that dental decay and deformed dental arches, which he witnessed throughout the industrialized world, were signs of broader degeneration caused by nutritional deficiencies. While dental health was his gateway, his research led to fundamental insights about nutrition and health in the modern world. What he found were communities all over the world where what he called "the diseases of civilization" were all but non-existent.

Dr. Price traveled to snow-bound villages in the Swiss Alps, Polynesian South Sea islands, Gaelic communities in the Outer Hebrides, to the Inuit of North America, East African tribal groups, Australian Aboriginals, the Maori of New Zealand and the indigenous people of North and South America. Wherever he went, Price found that beautiful straight teeth, freedom from decay, resistance to disease, ease of childbirth and even admirable personal characters were typical of indigenous peoples who were still subsisting on their traditional diets, making the most of whatever their particular environment had to offer. These stalwart people stood in sharp contrast to those subsisting on the impoverished, convenient and superficially satisfying foods of "civilization" -- white flour, pasteurized milk, cheap vegetable oils, sugars and increasingly processed and "ultra-processed" foods (or "food products"), filled with extenders, additives and lab-grown simulacra.

Price presented his discoveries and conclusions in the classic volume, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. The book contains striking photos of healthy indigenous people, and illustrates in an unforgettable way the degeneration that occurs -- and often occurs quite quickly -- when prople abandon nourishing traditional diets in favor of modern convenience foods. One of his classic revelations is a comparison of two brothers, one who stayed in his village and ate the same foods his people had for generations, and the other who went off to the city in search of opportunity. Guess which one remained healthy and vibrant, and which appeared weakened and damaged...

Nutrition and Physical Degeneration is a compendium of traditional dietary practices from societies that were disappearing in the rush of colonialism, modernity, industrial agriculture, and food processing. Existing in wildly different environments -- from desert to tundra, from rainforests to the great plains -- these societies learned over centuries and millennia to sustain themselselves, thrive and heal by making the most of the particular (and sometimes very limited) resources locally at hand. This dietary wisdom often went against the (mono-cropped, synthetically fertilized, denatured and Roundup-ready) grain of the modern food industrial complex of the 20th Century.

the seeds of Revival take root and bloom!

In 1999, however, Price's neglected work was revived in the landmark book, Nourishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon Morell and Mary Enig, which launched a movement and galvanized the community that gave birth to Three Stone Hearth. The five co-founders of TSH came together in connection with the Weston A. Price Foundation, founded in San Francisco by Sally and medical doctor and author Thomas Cowan. Three Stone Hearth co-founder Jessica Prentice began a series of monthly "Full Moon Feasts" centered around the seasonal associations of the New Moon throughout the year with certain foods in traditional cultures -- also the theme of her wonderful book by the same name, published by Chelsea Green the same year TSH first opened. In 2014, Sally Fallon Morell published Nourishing Broth, focussing on one of the most fundamental healing foods Price discovered in traditional cultures around the world -- slow-cooked bone broths from pasture-raised animals. She has also published Nourishing Diets: How Paleo, Ancestral and Traditional People Really Ate; The Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby and Child Care; The Nourishing Traditions Cookbook for Children, and Nourishing Fats, among others. 

In the years since Three Stone Hearth was founded, many writers, chefs, food activists and entrepreneurs have turned to discover, reclaim and celebrate real, whole foods and indigenous food traditions as a basis for health, sustainability, community and social justice -- and culinary delight and innovation -- from the global Slow Food phenomenon to the Paleo Diet, from the call to Decolonize Your Diet to local indigenous-based restaurants like Wahpepah's Kitchen in Oakland, and Cafe Ohlone on the UC Berkeley Campus. 

A leading voice in this movement has been Berkeley author Michael Pollan. His journey began with an open question about humanity's desire to both control and surrender to the power of plants in The Botany of Desire, and progressed to a manifesto extolling the unique virtues of Traditional Diets, In Defense of Food. That manifesto extolls the virtues of only one specific dietary approach -- and at some length -- and that is the Weston Price/Nourishing Traditions approach. Whatever value can be found in other dietary approaches, Pollan says, they all, at least in part, succumb to what he calls out as "nutritionism" -- breaking foods down to individual components, isolating them (literally) and removing them from the larger, holistic contexts and complex living relationships of whole foods, environments, human beings and communities. Traditional Diets, by their nature, precede that scientific reductionism, that separation of nutrition from food, of food and the body from the natural environment and the social vibrancy that sustains individuals and societies -- whether they live on blood and blubber, fish and fruit, fermented soy and tea, minestrone and red wine, or rye bread and butter.

A recent addition to this growing appreciation for Traditional Diets (and lifestyles) is the "Blue Zone" phenomenon -- a handful of surviving communities that have not succumbed to the fast pace, fast food and social fracturing of our time. How many other "blue zones," how much other wisdom, has been all but lost in this rush? Weston Price's work leads us to understand that in traditional societies, this wisdom was much more than a rare exception.

Click here for information on the Weston A. Price Foundation, including many resources for further exploration of these topics.