[Image] Indigenous American Peoples [Image]
The skull of an early indigenous Cross-sectional views of
American adult. In this typical skull bone: A is from a
example note the superb dental modern "Indian" from set of
arch, absence of tooth decay and Thousands of Florida, B and C
are
full teeth. such skulls have been from pre-Columbian "Indians".
found all over the USA.
Tooth decay and facial deformity was virtually unknown to these
people who ate only wholefood diets. The so called "Red Indians"
would never have needed a dentist, because healthy teeth and
skeletal formation was a rule, not an exception. This is despite
the absence of both the tooth brush and dental creams and even
in the presence of plaque and other oral bacteria prevents this.
The effects of both are devastating!
[Image] Indigenous Great Barrier Reef People
These are the faces of three generations of men whos parents ate
native wholefoods. They have superb teeth, full dental arches,
broad nostrils and no tooth decay. Their facial bones are broad
and fully formed.
[Image] These children from the Great Barrier Reef were born
to parents who ate a diet including modern processed foods. They
demonstrate a range of facial deformities such as narrowing of
the skull and dental arches with pinched nostrils and crowding
of the teeth. Even their magnificent heredity could not protect
them from the damage effects of commercial "foods".
[Image] New Zealand Peoples
These Maori women have parents who ate the traditional native
wholefood diet. The Maori people have the reputation of having
the finest teeth and bodies of any race in the world. These
beautiful faces are typical of their race. Only about one tooth
in one thousand had been attacked by tooth decay prior to the
influence of the white man.
With the advent of the white man in New Zealand tooth decay has
[Image] become rampant. The suffering from tooth decay and
abscessed teeth is very great in the most modernised Maori. The
girl on the left has lost many teeth due to tooth decay, the
girl on the right also has serious tooth decay. In contrast to
the early "primitive" Maori, those born since the adoption of
deficient foods are grossly deformed with marked
underdevelopment of the facial bones, one of the results is
narrowing of the dental arches with crowding of the teeth and
underdeveloped air passages. This outcome is not linked to
racial mixing, but diet.
[Image]
These are typical white New Zealand boys. Apart from having the
highest per capita consumption of meat in the world*, white New
Zealanders are reputed to have the worst teeth in the world.
These boys show the degenerative effects of chronic malnutrition
common to white peoples who eat commercial foods; narrowed
skulls and dental arches, pinched nose, over crowding of teeth,
tooth decay, insufficient growth of the mid face and pointed
lower jaw. Diets rich in farmed meats and animal products do not
protect against malnutritional deformities.
* NOTES New Zealanders eat about 320 grams of meat per day, and
have the highest incidence of colo-rectal cancer in the world.
(Colo-Rectal Cancer In Women In 23 Countries, Ehrlich,
Economics, 1977)
The following table was adapted from data by Weston Price (op.
cit.) and shows the dramatic effect that the introduction of
western processed foods had on peoples who used to eat
traditional wholefood diets. I have kept the table entries as
originally presented, only reordering them into ascending order.
Percentages Of Teeth Attacked By Caries
In Primitive And Modernized Groups
Race Primitive Modern
Amazon Jungle Indians 0.00 40.0+
High Andes Indians 0.00 40.0+
New Zealand Maori 0.00 55.3
Australian Aborigines 0.00 70.9
Coastal Peruvians 0.04 40.0+
Eskimos 0.09 13.0
Malays 0.09 20.6
Northern Indians 0.16 21.5
Africans 0.20 6.8
Polynesians 0.32 21.9
Melanesians 0.38 29.0
Gaelics 1.20 30.0
Seminole Indians 4.00 40.0
Swiss 4.60 29.8
Modern Western Citizens - 95-100
Primitive Wisdom
Weston Price, and other nutritional authors, have tried to
suggest that these traditional peoples were eating according to
some "primitive wisdom". This is definitely the case because
their ability to survive is incredible and their knowledge of
the health giving properties of various traditional foods is
demonstrable. These peoples certainly had extensive knowledge of
how to survive with maximum health on local food items but it is
self evident that this wisdom does not represent extensive
nutritional knowledge since most of these peoples usually
accepted western foods readily in order to save labour, or as a
barter. If they had true nutritional wisdom, they would have
refrained from eating white mans food. The indigenous North
Americans did sometimes refrain from modern foods, but perhaps
many, deprived of land, were eventually forced to comply or face
starvation. Perhaps the indigenous peoples were also keen to try
the white mans food? Western foods, heavy with sugar and salt
seem to be strongly habit forming. Even the traditional Gaelic's
studied had superior physiques than the average westerners, but
none the less took to modern foods. Traditional peoples had
knowledge of survival and not nutritional knowledge, which
requires scientific understanding of food, metabolism and
effects.
Perhaps the traditional peoples were just ignorant or naive,
much as the modern consumer today is.
Death Dealing Diets
In animal experiments Prof. Forster of Munchen found that
feeding with devitalised foods caused death even faster than
total starvation. It seems that foods that have their mineral or
vitamin constituents removed become dangerous. A basic
understanding of metabolism is all you need to understand the
dangerous effects of processed foods. In Herbert M. Shelton's
'The Science and Fine Art of Fasting', 1934, he explains Prof.
Forsters work, in which animals were fasted or fed mineral-free
diets. Shelton said: "Animals fed on demineralised foods are
compelled to expend their reserves in two directions- (1) in the
regular processes of life; and (2) in balancing up the
mineral-poor foods they are consuming- while animals deprived of
all foods (fasting) are forced to expend their reserves only on
carrying on the ordinary (though somewhat reduced) processes of
life."
Food may be considered as having three useful factors of
biochemical function:
1. energy provided by carbohydrates (and also by fat or protein
if excess is available)
2. structure provided by protein, essential fatty acids and most
importantly, minerals
3. catalysts provided by vitamins
With this very simple model of nutrition we can demonstrate that
if food energy is provided without all its essential structural
and catalytic factors then metabolism cannot work properly. A
couple of examples can be made to demonstrate how this works.
The building and maintenance of bone requires the minerals
magnesium and zinc. If the minerals essential to bone metabolism
are absent or reduced, then bone tissue will be lost in
proportion to the absence of the minerals. If vitamin C is too
low in the diet then the protein collagen cannot be built
properly, scurvy eventually results. In order to metabolise any
ingested food energy structural and catalytic factors are always
required, and if absent in the diet, they will be taken, if
possible, from existing stores.
Starving organisms go through a period of fasting in which
metabolism is kept at a lowered rate and balanced reserves of
food in the tissues are carefully used up until starvation
begins. Malnourished animals metabolise faster but take from
their own stores of essential nutrients, so they reach the point
of starvation much earlier. In a diet that only provides
slightly less minerals than that required, the starvation may
take decades to cause death and may be passed on by inheritance.
Dr. Price noticed that even in perfectly healthy primitive
peoples, as soon as processed foods where used, the first
generation of children were deformed. He also noticed that
mothers experienced increasing problems during childbirth as the
malnutrition was passed on down the line of inheritance. In
order to survive, a child developing in the womb will take its
nutrients from the mothers body if she is malnourished, leaving
the mothers bones and organs robbed of their vital essences. In
primitive peoples on wholefood diets, there are plenty of
nutrients for both mother and developing child. The mothers have
easy childbirth's and do not develop osteoporosis or exhibit
other alleged menopausal problems. Dr. Price also found that
mothers who were well formed and kept to traditional diets but
had children with deficient western fathers inherited
nutritional deformities from the father. He found that
malnutrition produces poorer sperm.
Even though Dr. Price had demonstrated the degenerative effects
of modern foods in humans some thirty years earlier, we find
more modern researchers ignored negative outcomes in animal
research. In a twelve week experiment on weanling rats Roger J
Williams et al. recorded fatalities and growth rates. Against
all scientific logic they ignored fatalities and drew the
conclusions that faster growth rate equated to superior food
supply. Some of their observations are given in the table below.
The most processed and devitalised foods bring speedy death to
the unfortunate rats.
No. Av. Av.net
of life weight
Food Product Tested deaths span gain
-------------------------------------------------------
Ripe bananas 0 84 71
Enriched macaroni 0 84 124
Polished rice 0 84 131
Whole milk (homogenized vit. D) 0 84 220
Roasted peanuts 1 83 210
"Pork and beans" 1 78 286
Brown rice 1 76 144
Canned tuna (waterpack) 1 75 188
Potato chips 2 80 151
Whole milk (homogenized vit. D) 2 75 257
Creamed cottage cheese 2 71 277
Enriched white bread 2 70 235
Battery eggs, cooked whole 2 69 315
Wheat grain (cooked) 2 66 199
Glucose 3 70 29
Fortified skim milk 3 70 43
Instant mashed potatoes 3 58 239
Frankfurters (all meat) 4 71 114
Cooked hamburger 4 66 216
Corn starch 5 60 8
Canned carrots 5 34 69
Sucrose 8 49 9
Gelatin dessert 8 37 2
---
Eight male weanling (about 60 g) rats per group, fed
diets containing 10% of the calories from eggs and 90%
of the calories from the food product tested.
Sucrose or refined sugar, is perhaps one of the most dangerous
foods around for rats. Yielding pure calories, all the minerals
and vitamins are removed during processing. Gelatin, an animal
protein, seems even worse. Many of the foods popular to growing
modern children seem deadly when given to growing rats. Why was
this research ignored?
Canning loses 80% of vitamin E content of vegetables, boiling
about 30%. Even during deep freezing 68% vitamin E can be lost
in as little as 2 weeks. White flour loses 92% of its vitamin E
during processing, and cooking foods in fats at high temperature
destroys 70-90% of the vitamin E content. The losses of minerals
in refining of goods is dramatic. To get white sugar from raw
cane sugar 96% of calcium, 99% of chloride, 98% of potassium,
99% of sodium, 99% of phosphorus and 99% of sulphur are lost.
The figures for losses of trace elements are similar. (figures
from 'Thorsons Complete Guide To Vitamins and Minerals', Leonard
Mervyn, B.Sc. Ph.D. C.Chem F.R.S.C.)
Lessons Learned
The question which arises after learning about traditional diets
is always "should we return to them?". It must be clear that it
is necessary to remove processed "foods" from the food chain.
However, returning to traditional feeding habits without
question is a naive approach. The modern citizen, has lost the
natural strength that the human body can offer, and should
therefore be considered a weaker frame in need of careful
rebuilding. A return to eating large quantities of animal foods
such as our stone age ancestors ate would be asking too much of
our damaged bodies and is unhealthy. Eaton and Konner (S. Boyd
Eaton and Melvin Konner, 'Paleolithic Nutrition: A Consideration
of its Nature and Current Implications', New England Journal of
Medicine, January 1985, Vol. 312 No. 5, 283-9) suggest that a
Paleolithic hunter might have eaten about 790 grams of meat per
day, or about 240 grams of protein. We now know that true
biological requirement for protein is around six times lower
than such a diet provides, the excess protein being processed
into toxic ammonia and then into urea for excretion. It has also
been suggested that stone age man had poor longevity due to
genetic factors. The stone age diet is higher in calories,
protein and fat than modern diets, these factors are known to
accelerate growth, bringing about earlier menarchee, organ
damage and death. Traditional dietary practice is not a
substitute for modern scientific knowledge in nutrition.
In News of the Cornell-China Project the eminent nutritional
researcher and biochemist T. Colin Campbell Ph. D. writes:
"... low-fat, plant-rich diets retard the onset of
menstruation and decrease circulating hormone levels. Fat
and animal protein have each been shown to increase female
hormone levels, while dietary fiber decreases these
levels."
The evidence suggesting genetic factors in the short lifespans
of prehistoric man is theoretical. The biochemical and
epidemiological studies offer scientifically rigorous evidence
as to what may cause early development of maturity, and thence
onset of the degeneration called "old age". An adage in
biochemistry is that "you can't teach an old gene new tricks".
How then does modern man outlive his stone age ancestors by a
factor of two, or much more, given that his diet is so poor in
comparison? The answer? Less meat!
Sources
* Peter Kropotkin, Fields, Factories And Workshops Tomorrow, ed.
Colin Ward, Freedom Press, London, 1989
* Weston A. Price, Nutrition And Physical Degeneration, 50th
Anniversary Ed., Keats Publishing Inc., New Canaan,
Connecticut, 1989
* Leon Chaitow, Stone Age Diet, Macdonald & Co. Ltd, 1987
* Lynne McTaggart and Bryan Hubbard, The Better Diet Book, What
Doctors Don't Tell You, The Wallace Press, 1995
* Martin J Walker, Dirty Medicine, 1994, Slingshot Publications,
BM Box 8314, London, WC1N 3XX
* Roger J Williams, James D Heffley, Man-Li Yew, And Charles W
Bode, 'The "Trophic" Value of Foods', Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci.
USA, Vol. 70, 3, pp.710-713, March 1973
klaus
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