Nutrition and Physical Degeneration [Paperback]

Weston Andrew Price (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

First published in 1939, this seminal book startled the worlds of science and nutrition with its documented evidence of primitive populations encountering civilisation, adopting modern diets, and finding that their health worsened. It remains the basic book in this area and is essential reading for those concerned with food and health.

About the Author

Dr. Price was a Cleveland dentist, who has been called the Charles Darwin of Nutrition. Searching for the causes of dental decay and physical degeneration he observed daily in his dental practice, he turned from test tubes and microscopes to study people with fine teeth the isolated primitives. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 524 pages
• Publisher: Keats Pub; 6th edition (June 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879838167
• ISBN-13: 978-0879838164
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (79 customer reviews)
• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #442,322 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

536 of 544 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars rare and important research, January 20, 2004

By	Jon Norris (Oregon, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Nutrition and Physical Degeneration (Paperback)

This book distills the research of Weston A. Price, a dentist and independent nutrition researcher. In a decade of travel around the world, Price and his wife studied the health, dietary habits, and chemical composition of food of dozens of traditional peoples of various racial backgrounds. His research was done at a time when many such groups still lived free of the influence of Western civilization and what he called "foods of commerce," i.e. heavily refined and denatured foods.

One could question whether 60 plus year old research is relevant today, but I found his work powerful and persuasive for a very simple reason.

Health problems sent me on a quest to find the best dietary information, but I soon found myself mired in contradictory claims, opposing research and special interest groups, as well as outright deceit. First I would read about how one vitamin or mineral was good for this. Then I would read that the very same item was bad for that. You shouldn't combine X with Y, or needed to add tons of Z or W, except on Sundays when the moon was almost 3/4 full. I became very disillusioned with the incredible complexity of nutrition. As I read more and more deeply, I also became annoyed at all the disinformation and profiteering behind much of the so-called research.

I reached this bottom line: While we understand proteins, carbs, and fats reasonably well, and have a pretty good handle on most vitamins and about a dozen minerals, there is simply an immense amount we just don't know. We are researching minerals at about 5 per decade (around 50 to go - a hundred more years at our current rate). There are around 5000 enzymes in bee pollen alone, and few of them have been researched. There are an unknown number of phytochemicals and other things we have yet to discover that have been constituents of our food for perhaps millions of years. Science moves very slowly, and it could easily be several hundred or 1000 years before we get it all sorted out. And that doesn't take into consideration the power groups who insist on muddying the waters for profit's sake. Modern science is quite obviously incapable of giving us complete answers to our nutritional questions. It just plain doesn't have them to give, nor will it for a long, long time.

Then I found Price's work. Basically, he was the Tony Robbins of diet - he sought out the healthiest people on Earth and studied what they had done for hundreds and thousands of years to stay healthy. He looked at their Traditional diets as well as what happened when they adopted Western diets. The results are in this book, and it is well worth your taking the time to read. While others have followed his work, the changing nature of the world now make it impossible to duplicate his research today. His work stands as a pivotal piece in science and health as well as in history. This represents the cumulative knowledge of millions of people over thousands of years in a laboratory that includes the entire world. Definitely non-trivial.

There are also books by Ronald Schmid and Sally Fallon that introduce and give overviews of Price's work. I recommend them also. Today, when we must all become advocates for our own health, arming yourself with the best information is vital.

update December 2008

A recent article published by the Weston A. Price Organization not only validates Price's X-Factor research, it also clearly illustrates the point I make above about modern scientific method and nutritional research failing to provide adequate information.

Vitamin K2 has been identified as the X-Factor, and recent research into K2 shows that it is an extremely essential nutrient, not the throw-away that it has long been considered. It is a vital factor in bone and tooth health, heart health, nerve health, and so on. It turns out to be a critical part of so many body processes that physiology texts will have to be rewritten in major ways.

Here is a vitamin discovered nearly 100 years ago, and yet science is just beginning to understand how terribly important it is. The main reasons for this serious error are; a lack of understanding of the chemical tests involved, lack of reading research in other countries, and a lack of interest on the part of researchers. (No money in vitamin research, you can't patent vitamins.)

The article is available from the Weston A. Price Organization and is a very interesting read.


UPDATE August 2009:

The figure of 5000 enzymes has been bothering me, as the source of that info was not well cited. I have been looking around for a hard figure on the number of enzymes, and guess what? There is no such hard number. All the sources I have found vary widely (1,000 to 80,000), and do not cite references. Some sources say that there are 5,000 named enzymes, and up to 20,000 possible.

This is yet another reason why current nutritional research is such a poor source of decision making data - they just don't have enough hard data to trust.

284 of 289 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ten Stars for This One, August 26, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Nutrition and Physical Degeneration (Paperback)

Dr. Price hoped to influence the world to change their dietary habits. With just his wife and whatever bearers, guides, and drivers he could find, he single-handedly proved the diet-health link and backed it up with meticulous records and photographic evidence. He traveled to the far corners of the world to find the most primitive cultures on each continent, and compared their traditional diets to the standard Western diet. Photo after photo in his book points up the glaring difference between the health and APPEARANCE of the natives of whatever culture nourished on their traditional diet and those whose diets had been disrupted and "displaced" by the "white diet"...a diet high in refined foods like white sugar, bleached white flour, polished rice, and synthetic fats. He also carefully laid out the guidelines for a natural unrefined diet that would be suitable for modern Americans. Too bad all that careful research and excellent advice has been ignored. Today's SAD (standard American diet) is a god-awful, unbalanced grain-heavy (65% "complex carbohydrates") piece of tomfoolery that bears no resemblance to the diet that nourished and nurtured our ancestors. If you never buy another book about nutrition, you owe it to your children and your grandchildren to buy THIS book, READ AND REREAD IT, and pass it down to your posterity.

182 of 185 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars plain unvarnished truth, September 14, 2000

By	Kirk McLoren (Raynesford, Montana) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nutrition and Physical Degeneration (Paperback)

The primary criteria of the modern food distribution system is how cheaply can the wholesaler get it for and does it have good shelf life. Weston Price documents repeatedly that modern denatured food is THE major cause of the degenerative diseases and the overall poor health of our society. While pundits claim how good the modern diet is by showing how much taller we are than our ancestors the author points out that elongation of the skeletal "long bones" is a symptom of malnutrition. The acute deficiencyof trace elements in plants grown on worn out fields was documented by Price 60 years ago. You would do better to get your needed nutrients from your food rather than high priced supplements. But what farmer is putting more than NPK on his fields? Price's book is even more true than when he wrote it. If you care about immune dysfunction, fatigue, heart disease, cancer, or slowing the aging of your body Price's book is a MUST READ!! I have started to incorporate the teachings of this work into my life and in only 6 months notice I am not sick when the flu and other diseases pass through the community. I can't say enough good things about this book. A truly rare find in this world of hype and promotion of nostrums.