TRIBUTE
I was saddened to learn recently that Mary Enig passed away. The world has lost one of the earliest pioneers for fat.
I liked Mary’s no-nonsense handling of questions about fat. She had a way of making the question seem absurd—which of course it was! Fortunately we now have many more pro-fat campaigners but we have lost a great forerunner..j
Zoe Harcombe
Gwent, UK
HUGE IMPACT
I was sorry to hear about the loss of Dr. Mary Enig. Her book, Know Your Fats, started me on my journey to learning more about how nutritional sciences had become corrupted by industry and health lobby groups.
I never met her, but her work has had a huge impact on my life. Her courage of conviction is an example to us all. She taught us that science should be about truth. Her work taught us not to fear food, and to question the authoritative science that we were indoctrinated into. Her legacy will no doubt outlive us all.
Gordon Rouse Yinnar
South, Victoria, Australia
SCHIZOPHRENIA
Earlier this year, “60 Minutes” aired a segment on schizophrenia in which they interviewed several boys who were diagnosed with it. The message of the story was, of course, that mental illness needs “treatment” with drugs. I could not help but notice that the boys had very narrow faces, one with ears that stuck out. The characteristics were similar to those seen in the photos Weston Price took of malnourished children. I noticed the same features in Adam Lanza’s picture (of the Sandy Hook school shooting). He appeared to have a very narrow face and swollen eyeballs, sometimes indicative of thyroid problems.
As expected, there was no discussion in the television segment of the relationship between a healthy body and a healthy mind or any efforts to treat mental illness with good nutrition. This is sad because at our 2013 conference on “Curing the Incurable” we heard of so many children being helped in this way.
Janice Curtin,
chapter leader Alexandria, Virginia
FOOD FORWARD DOCUMENTARY
I was on a panel last evening after the debut and screening of the PBS “Food Forward” documentary in Los Angeles. It was very emotional to all of us. Three hundred people were invited including the Who’s Who of Food in Los Angeles. There are thirteen episodes and raw milk is the subject of one of them. Charlotte Smith, Dr. Bruce German and I are featured.
The producer, Greg Roden, had to fight to keep the episode in the series and had to edit with an ax to keep it alive. He told me that PBS in Washington, DC was brutal and would not allow any sort of medical claim or even a mention of medical benefit whatsoever and demanded the CDC have statements in the documentary to alarm the public.
However, even with the horrendous editing, the truth shone through. The crowd in attendance was in tears at the end of it.
Bruce German proclaimed that raw milk had powerful anti-allergy properties— that statement survived the edits. The photography was incredible with helicopter work and even has me flying over the pastures talking about green and clean. There were lots of family shots including some of my grand kids! I think that this PBS story of raw milk will shake the U.S. deeply, especially when pasteurized milk sales are falling like a rock.
At the reception, I was greeted like a celebrity. Many had an Organic Pastures raw milk story and were our customers. I even spent thirty minutes with the Whole Foods dairy buyer who attended, talking about our Raw Milk Institute safety systems.
We need to expose the massive editorial machete job that PBS did to this story and how the CDC added disclaimers to the documentary but never mentioned the seventy-seven deaths from pasteurized milk since 1972 or the fact that pasteurized milk is the most allergenic food in America. There have been no deaths from raw fluid milk in America recorded in the CDC databases. No other PBS subject in the series has a CDC disclaimer!
The CDC really showed their bias and politics on this one! This is a message in its own right: one of real people pioneering to nourish consumers safely and thriving under extreme conditions.
The producer, Greg Roden, gave me plenty of time during the panel discussion to talk about why the establishment fears raw milk. He took this personally because of his fight with management and the FDA during edits. Remember that Monsanto, Cargill and ADM are huge PBS supporters. It’s a miracle that the PBS raw milk section is coming through at all. You can see it at www.pbs.org/food/features/food-forward-season-1-modern-milk/.
Mark McAfee,
CEO/founder Organic Pastures Dairy Company Fresno, California
OFF INSULIN WITH RAW MILK
Thank you, Weston A. Price Foundation! Thanks to your efforts, my friends and I are drinking raw milk, and one of my new friends told me today that after many years as a diabetic, her doctor took her off insulin. It’s due to her drinking raw milk and starting to adhere to your diet recommendations!
I learned about WAPF four years ago, and your organization has continued to educate and inspire me to follow the WAPF nutritional principles.
Cheryl Fischetto
Reading, Pennsylvania
RAW MILK IN SWITZERLAND
The subject of raw milk in Switzerland has been in both major farmer newspapers this October and also in a major animal lovers’ magazine that many Swiss read. I was interviewed for that magazine in late August. The two newspapers shared a new study that just came out about babies having less inflammation when given raw milk! Unfortunately the article claims that raw milk is dangerous. Apparently scientists want to find out what is in raw milk that prevents inflammation, asthma and allergies and then use those isolated compounds.
Interestingly, it was Dr. Ernst Jakob, one of the researchers in the dairy department in Bern, who personally notified me by email a few days ago about the study. He states: “This new study must make you very happy.”
Yes, but I’m even more happy that he even thought of me—I’ve known him for about nine years now—as only two years ago, Prof. Dr. Ton Baars, Dr. E. Jakob and I each presented a one-hour Powerpoint on milk at another organic research center (FiBL) in Switzerland. Jakob talked about how dangerous raw milk is, while Ton explained the health properties of raw milk, and I shared all about raw milk in the U.S. and why consumption is growing so much.
It was almost funny: at break time we all had a lovely time talking to one another and tasting several different types of milk as a contest for which tasted best, pasteurized and homogenized milk from the supermarket and raw milk produced right at that research center from their own grazing research cows. The latter is also sold daily directly at the research center to customers who come with their own pail! I guess as long as they do their “dangerous” spiel in presentations, they can keep their jobs.
Judith Mudrak,
chapter leader Southampton, New Jersey & Bern, Switzerland
LET THERE BE LIGHT
In the article by John Moody, “Let There Be Light,” (Fall 2013), the author says, in regard to LED lightbulbs, “They are significantly superior in terms of light quality, longevity, safety and environmental impact. . .”
Mr. Moody should have done more homework in regard to the health effects of these bulbs. Studies have shown suppression of melatonin levels when people are exposed to them. This important hormone is what we need to signal the body that the day is finished and it is time for bed.
A vision research study from Compultense University in Madrid reports that exposure to LEDs can cause irreparable damage to the retina of the eye.
People who suffer from electrical hypersensitivity syndrome (EHS) are very affected by these bulbs. People with EHS are the canaries in the coal mine.
LEDs are a relatively new invention and have not withstood the test of time. The bottom line is that we must be very careful about adopting new types of lighting in our homes and work places. Once the damage is done to our bodies it may be very difficult to reverse the situation and regain our health.
Julia Hattori
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
ANTIBIOTICS AND ALLERGIES
Antibiotics are everywhere—apparently even the three main artificial sweeteners act as antibiotics—so it’s no wonder allergies have gone crazy in our population. Glyphosate (Roundup), originally patented as an antibiotic and chelator, is systemic and permeates the entire plant. It seems like it’s used on practically everything, even to dessicate wheat and sugarcane.
I see they want to introduce an herbicide product that is a combination of 2,4-D and glyphosate. Apparently 2,4-D is already a big source of the dichlorophenol in the water supply. It’s been associated with food allergies when it accumulates in the body. Then there’s chloramine in the water supply. The water treatment people say they like it because they can count on the water to still have germ-killing power even if there’s a break in a water line.
I suspect the biggest problem with vaccinations is the mercury, because don’t heavy metals accumulate in your body? Since mercury is a germ-killer, won’t it kill the good bugs in your body? I say it does. A messed up gut is associated with a messed up brain, right?
After a bit more digging, I found that Roundup enhances fungal growth. I have wondered why candida overgrowth symptoms sound so much like gluten intolerance symptoms. I figured there must be a connection somehow. Maybe that’s it. Maybe the wheat protein has so much residual antibiotic in it that it continues to kill our “good bugs” and thereby enhance the growth of fungus, long after it’s been processed and turned into food.
Laura Davis
Stillwater, Oklahoma
HERBAL ANTIBIOTICS
A recent Wise Traditions journal (Fall 2014) contained a serious debate about antibiotics, but I was surprised to hear no mention of herbal antibiotics. In the past four years I have used herbal antibiotics in place of pharmaceuticals, all three with successful outcomes. The most brutal one was a severe skin infection that was undiagnosed for two months, before I decided to put myself on herbal antibiotics. Miracle workers! It cleared the infection 100 percent! It did probably take longer than if I had used pharmaceuticals, but my healthy gut bacteria tell me it took just the right amount of time.
Please buy yourself Stephen Harrod Buhner’s books, Herbal Antibiotics, Herbal Antivirals, Healing Lyme Disease, and Healing Lyme Disease and its Coinfections Bartonella and Mycoplasma. This man is amazing! His work on the home pharmacy is one of a kind. Herbal antibiotics are often weeds that grow all over the world, and are easy to grow at home, if not impossible to get rid of. If you want to cut out the cost of going to the doctor, start growing your own medicinal garden, especially with Buhner’s recommendations on the most useful plants. Herbal antibiotics are renewable and biodegradable. Plants don’t pollute our soils or water when we excrete them through our wastes, unlike pharmaceutical antibiotics. Herbal antibiotics also will not destroy your intestinal flora, and often can be used to rid yourself of bacterial overgrowth, but don’t forget that herbal antibiotics work better when you are already eating nourishing foods.
Superbugs are a huge problem today, but not for herbal antibiotics. Plant constituents are too complex for bacteria to become resistant to. Buhner is not completely against the use of antibiotics, but he is against the overuse of them. They used to be miracle drugs, but now they have lost their potency and can’t keep up with our overuse. We might be able to keep antibiotics as a backup plan if we start using herbal antibiotics first. Now is the time to start familiarizing ourselves with these plants, because in the future they will be the only ones complex, gentle and safe enough to save you. I have spent the first twenty-five years of my life poisoned by lies and drugs which made me very sick, and now I am suffering the consequences. We shouldn’t have to get worse to get better. You have the right to be healthy. Don’t let pharmaceutical corporations scare you into needing their drugs. Take back your life and your health: grow your own pharmacy, and eat a WAPF-structured diet.
Thank you again to Stephen Harrod Buhner for saving my life and to my plant allies who are always ready to give and never ask for anything in return.
Erika Leifson
Barnard, Vermont
BACTERIAL ORNs
I was intrigued by William Marshall’s article on bacterial ORNs (Fall 2014). It’s fascinating that when we consume something produced by lactobacilli (the ORNs), they can affect our immune system’s reaction to a toxin, causing an immediate and appropriate response to dispose of the toxin, rather than the delayed hyperimmune response that can lead to a cytokine storm that causes deadly septic shock (sounds like Ebola). It makes raw milk, kefir and sauerkraut sound pretty powerful for avoiding deadly infections!
Kris Johnson,
chapter leader Toledo, Ohio
WARM IN WINTER
Earlier this year I learnt how to make my own dripping. My local butcher was kind enough to put about one kilo of beef fat through the mincer so that it was easy to render. I then started to add some dripping whenever I made a beef stew for dinner.
I noticed three benefits: improved taste, a greater sense of fullness and— most surprisingly—I have felt warmer throughout winter. This is in stark contrast to my former vegetarian days when I would always be freezing during winter and always wanting to move to a warmer climate.
The difference has been remarkable. People often comment that I have such warm hands whenever we shake hands. I’m curious to know why adding dripping to the diet has made such a huge difference.
Many thanks to the WAPF for all your great work.
Michael Seymour
Melbourne, Australia
THE WIC MILK PROGRAM
On August 7, 2014 I went with a friend to her WIC (Women, Infants and Children) appointment in Pellston, Michigan. At that appointment my friend found out that the WIC program is cutting out whole milk and 2 percent milk to two-year-olds and older. Only skim milk or 1 percent milk will be available for children as young as two years and up!
The WIC program was started in the late 1960s to provide fresh milk and other dairy products to pregnant women, infant babies and children under five years. The program is overseen by the USDA, which sends mandates such as this one. The states run the program through state and local health departments.
On August 11, 2014, I called several state agencies and voiced my concerns about the WIC program cutting children off of whole milk. I explained that children need fat in their milk to absorb vitamin D and calcium and all the other good nutrients in milk. And children need fat in their milk to help them not get fat. “All this lowfat diet food is wrong and bad for you,” I said. “We need fat, good real fat, to keep us slim and healthy.”
I then called the Northwest Michigan Health Department. Susan Daly from the Charlevoix Health Department called me back and asked what my concerns were. I told her babies and children (not to mention adults) need good fat, like the wholesome fat in milk, to keep them from getting fat, and that the children on WIC need fat to absorb vitamin D and calcium. I told Ms. Daly I was horrified the WIC program was cutting out fat and only allowing two-year-olds to drink skim milk and 1 percent, which taste gross and nasty compared to creamy, good whole milk.
Ms. Daly said the USDA sets the guidelines for WIC, and they took the fat away from WIC children—no exceptions! This mandate from the USDA commenced on September 15, 2014.
I told Ms. Daly about studies showing that children, especially two- to four-year-olds, need whole fat milk. She asked me to send her a link to the latest study I found. The study comes from the Archives of Disease in Childhood. The title is “Longitudinal Evaluation of Milk Type Consumed and Weight Status in Preschoolers.”
The study followed 10,700 preschoolers and concluded that kids who drink whole milk and even 2 percent milk were slimmer, while the kids who drank skim and 1 percent milk were fatter. And that is just one study out of many. Kids who drink whole milk end up slimmer than kids who drink skim milk. Whole milk is good not only for kids but for adults too. When a person drinks whole milk, the fat in the milk turns to brown fat and that brown fat keeps us warm and helps minimize the white fat, which is why whole milk drinkers weigh less than skim milk
drinkers.
Why would our federal government take away healthy whole milk from poor and minority kids? All of us need good brown fat to get rid of the nasty white fat in our bodies created by poisons such as high fructose corn syrup. Why are food companies allowed to put filth like caramel color, which is an established cancer causer, in all our food? Why isn’t the FDA, which is supposed to protect us, actually protecting us? Are the drug companies behind this? They want all of us sick and fat and on their dirty drugs, which cause side effects that make you sicker until you die. Two-year-olds will get fat and sick if the USDA is allowed to take good wholesome milk away from our toddlers. Butterfat does not make us fat—sugar, high fructose corn syrup, artificial sweeteners, doctor drugs, fake hydrogenated oils, these are what make us fat, not good whole fresh milk.
I sent Ms. Daly the link to the study proving that whole milk keeps kids slim, and she graciously sent it to Michigan WIC in Lansing.
The government also took whole and 2 percent milk out of our schools. Did you know that? That is why school kids drink pop. I can hardly blame the kids; skim milk tastes gross, whole milk tastes like ice cream. They are producing a generation of milk haters! Then the drug companies can jump in and “treat” our children with drugs that make and keep them sick. What a scam on our children. If this persists we will start to see a lot of kids with brittle bones and who are just plain sick. I am sure the drug companies are standing by to jump in with drugs to give to the children.
I am outraged and you should be too. The USDA should halt their actions and keep real whole milk in the WIC programs, in our schools, and the FDA should be ashamed to let all the dirty nasty filth into our food and drink. And the drug companies should not be allowed to make a profit off of sickness and death.
Of over seven thousand comments posted to the USDA site, more than six thousand came from parents in the WIC program expressing their concerns about the skim and lowfat milk. Only seven commenters recommended skim or 1 percent milk yet that is what the USDA went for.
By the way, I just found out they plan to extend the skim and 1 percent milk restriction down to one-year-olds. Twelve-month-old babies will no longer receive whole or 2 percent milk. I fear for their brain development, as we all should. What a terrible injustice this is to the poor.
Please defend the right of our babies and children to drink real whole milk. Help us keep whole milk in WIC and our schools.
Aleigh Cambin
Harbor Springs, Michigan
PERFECT TEETH IN KENYA
I lived in Kenya for two years (1991-1993), long before I had an interest in nutrition and health. I noticed the perfectly straight teeth of everyone in dirt-poor villages, though I didn’t ask myself why that was the case. When I returned home and found the Weston A. Price Foundation, it resounded with me immediately because of my Kenyan experience.
I mostly lived in Nairobi, working as a linguist for a non-profit organization. The first three months I spent in an orientation program in several places throughout Kenya and for six of those weeks camped in a Maasai area. At that time, I could barely speak Swahili, but I became friends with one Maasai man who spoke English. He was the only one of his father’s seventeen children who was sent to school, which is why he spoke English.
We’ve now reconnected through Facebook! He still lives in the village, but has a laptop and a mobile phone. Sadly I found out that he now has diabetes, his wife has asthma, and he told me that “everyone is sick here.” When I was in Kenya, they valued fat and used lots of it. Unfortunately, they were mostly using “Kimbo” as their main source of fat (and still do), which is canned partially hydrogenated vegetable oil.
I recently sent to Kenya three copies of Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, three copies of the Nourishing Traditional Diets DVD and some WAPF pamphlets. One set was for my Maasai friend, one for the pastor of Nairobi Chapel, the church I attended while living there, and one to a Kenyan translation organization. (Nairobi Chapel is a large church and many of the young University of Nairobi students attend this church.)
I have not been able to confirm whether the pastor of Nairobi Chapel received what I sent. However, my Maasai friend received his set and has been reading and watching the materials. He spoke at his church and at a local school briefly about Price and the importance of traditional diets. He said people are interested to know more, especially the mothers. He called me yesterday to ask whether anyone from the Weston A. Price Foundation would come to Kenya to give talks in his community about traditional diets and I told him I would ask. Is there any chance that someone from WAPF would take a trip to Kenya to lecture on Price’s research?
The village where my friend lives is a two- or three-hour drive from Nairobi. Roads in Kenya aren’t good, but when I was there, this was a straightforward trip—not curvy and dangerous—with a fine road. If I could get in touch with the pastor at Nairobi Chapel I imagine a WAPF speaker would be well-received there, as well. Even the nearby University of Nairobi (maybe through an anthropology or African studies department) might be interested in hosting a WAPF speaker. Wouldn’t it be fantastic for WAPF resources and information to be made available in Kenya before the Western diet does much more damage? Please let me know if you think this could happen.
Lisa Schnoor
Silver Spring, Maryland
If someone would volunteer to go to Kenya for this project, WAPF could pay all the expenses.
PHYSIOLOGY OF TASTE
I have been reading the Physiology of Taste by Jean Anthelme Brillat- Savarin (1755-1826). Brillat-Savarin claimed he could look at a person’s face and discern whether the person had the ability to appreciate exceptional foods. The person needed a wide palate, he said, to have a well-rounded experience with food. People with narrow, elongated faces had “dull eyes,” and it would be a waste of time exposing them to the finer qualities of taste. People with large, round or square faces would have the ability to appreciate fine food, and their eyes would be bright. He said facial shape was related to the diet from early childhood!
He presented the outline of the Atkins diet; to lose weight he recommended no grains and starches, but lots of proteins and fats.
He has many stories about broth and health, and many ways to make it, including crushing bones.
To prepare a pheasant, he instructed chefs to ferment the bird with the feathers on and only when the bird begins to “smell” do you take the feathers off and prepare the bird. Without this fermentation, he insisted, the experience or quality of the meal would be ordinary at best.
David Wetzel
McNeal, Nebraska
A SOUP BUSINESS?
I am visualizing an alternative to the existing Meals on Wheels and congregate meals. I am seeing an ethnic trend in the San Francisco Bay area that features East Indian and Chinese cuisine. It makes me think that the conformity and uniformity is starting to crack—something I learned from a Joel Salatin lecture.
For nearly a year now I have been the self-designated soup maker for my parents, who are in their eighties. Once a week I deliver a big full kettle of soup and we fill up jars and pitchers for the fridge or the freezer. They tell all of their friends and know I could make a business out of it. I am a former accountant and am recording what I make each week and compiling the quantity and cost from the receipts as a way to create a business model.
Karen Boyer
San Carlos, California
If you are interested in investing in Karen’s business, please contact her at klboyer56@comcast.net.
A DIET SAGA
We were both raised on the Standard American Diet. I (Marie) first started to have a preoccupation with food at the age of thirteen. I wanted to look like the girls my big brother (whom I loved dearly) showed me on the TV music channel so he would love me. I thought a perfect appearance was the key to being loved and admired. Too bad it really started to wreak havoc on me at such a young age.
At that time, the magazines were telling me to go off fat. So I went for it in bouts. Typically I would try a lowfat diet for ten days to two weeks, then I would fall off the wagon. Little did I know that I was literally starving myself of the fats my body desperately needed at this time of intense growth.
The bulimia cycle set in quite rapidly. I despised myself for having such a weak will. Eventually depression started showing its head along with the bulimia. The worst part of this story is that I really wasn’t overweight, and other girls could have looked at me with envy.
At age sixteen, my first love died in a car accident. The downward spiral of an eating disorder amplified. I was talented and successful but being unable to control my eating made me think I was hopeless. Isn’t it terribly absurd!? Yet that is what millions of young girls are experiencing.
Things got better when at age twenty I married my husband. Nevertheless, I was still greatly bulimic. I tried all sorts of fad diets in the hope of shedding a few pounds, pretending that I did it for health reasons. Some time later, I really did start to be concerned about my health—digestive health at first and then degeneration of all systems in my body. I searched for answers in the nutritional department.
Here’s a short list of the diets I tried: Susan Powter’s lowfat paradigm; raw foodist (I would juice till I turned blue in the face!); fasting, monodiet cleanse; vegetarianism with lots of soy milk (I even made my own); and veganism. Whenever I had a bout of bulimia, I would stuff myself with whatever they said was good for me. I was experiencing a great amount of abdominal distention and bloating. What a mess!
At the time I was pregnant with my daughter we were vegetarians, almost vegans. My daughter had to have surgery at the age of one year to remove her four front teeth, which were rotten and crumbling. She was breastfed but we didn’t start on Weston Price principles until she was seven months old.
A turning point (finally!) came when we undertook a road trip to Western Canada with our daughter. Still vegans, or almost vegans, I remember terrible cravings while I was breastfeeding exclusively. I would eat spoonfuls of butter whenever no one was looking. Of course we wouldn’t keep such an evil fare in our own cupboard, so I did it when we were invited to people’s houses for a meal! Something was certainly wrong with the way I ate!
During the trip, the bloating (and gas) got to a point where it could no longer be ignored. It was shameful and I was desperate! Wasn’t I doing everything right? My bowels were irritated with too much fiber and my body was craving fats and proteins and who knows what else! My husband was also experiencing digestive problems due to my faulty advice!
One night I prayed really hard, “I need help here!” I was sitting in front of a computer and vaguely researching about soy products, when I came across a comment by the Weston A. Price Foundation. I kept reading and reading and felt an enlightenment concerning nutrition like I had never felt before. Suddenly all the puzzle pieces I had collected through the years (and didn’t know what to make of) came together! I had a hard time believing what I read—I was amazed.
That is how I weaned myself from all my fads and started on the path to long-term health and healing from my eating disorders too! (Complete healing from eating disorders is rare!) Our digestive systems eventually healed and we were so thankful for the work of WAPF.
Three years after we switched to WAPF principles I became pregnant with my son. And guess what? At age three, he has perfectly healthy teeth. Isn’t that amazing? It ain’t fun to have your baby taken into surgery at age one. My daughter still has no front teeth— she is almost seven years old now—but we hope her adult teeth will come in normally.
I write this with the intention of encouraging everyone but especially to give hope to young women entangled in the misery of eating disorders, and also to young mothers looking for advice on how best to feed their growing families. Thanks and keep up the good work!
Eric and Marie Perreault
Port-Menier, Québec, Canada
CHILDREN IN CRISIS
Yesterday I got a call from a mom in our community whose twelve-year-old daughter has a tic-like barking cough. It had persisted for two hours the night before. In talking with her, I learned the daughter had the DTaP booster nine months earlier. The daughter had no history of strep, which is often the instigator with tic behaviors. The neurologist at Children’s Hospital concluded that the problem is psychosomatic, which of course it is not.
Then our youngest came home from school and told me that a former teammate had gone AWOL for a few days. We found out he went on a rampage at home with an ax. Yes, an ax! His parents fled the house while he proceeded to hack up furniture and cars. Then he took off for an elementary school and fortunately was arrested before doing harm. This same kid had seizures last spring after drinking seven Red Bulls or Monster drinks. The coaches then allowed me to come and talk to the young men about proper hydration and preparation for games, including the regular inclusion of high animal fat diets. I emailed the mom last night to make sure he wasn’t on certain medications. He’s not on any meds to her knowledge.
All this is to say that our children are in crisis. The commercial interests in this country and the lack of properly educated and informed parents are the biggest threat to their well-being.
Kim Schuette, CN
San Diego, California
DIET, NOT GENETICS
I just wanted to write and say thank you for your website and all the work that has been put into educating the public. I found your foundation eleven years ago, right before I started having children. Thankfully I grew up on a nourishing diet, but I had played around with veganism and vegetarianism for a while. I immediately changed my diet. I have four children now and I recently brought the oldest two (at nine years and six years) to the orthodontist for a check up to see how things looked. She told me that she never sees palates as wide and well-developed as in my girls´. She said it must be good genetics and I said it was a good diet. She looked at me strangely. We left with no procedures recommended, which is a rarity for sure.
We are Irish so I often worry that my kids have a bit of a narrow face, but their palates are wide and beautiful. I am often concerned about the mere two and one-half years between a few of them but I was careful about my diet, and it shows now.
Also, none of my kids has ever needed an antibiotic or over-the-counter drug. They’ve never had a broken bone or injury yet they climb trees and race all over the Nova Scotia country side. They are not vaccinated but apparently have had whooping cough without me knowing because they have been exposed on numerous occasions and have never had obvious symptoms.
I converted my husband a long time ago and our whole family’s health has been preserved due to your generous information sharing. I homeschool and I can’t wait to get heavy into nutrition and health with them so they can continue on the good health they’ve been given as children. Here is a photo of my WAPF babies. Thank you!
Gina Anderson
San Jose, California
CHARACTER ASSASSINATION
The October 6, 2014 Time Magazine article “Who’s Afraid of a Little Vaccine?” by Jeffrey Kluger is a propaganda opinion piece masquerading as journalistic fact. In the article he shifts the perception of non-vaxers as religious fanatics or negligent parents to wealthy, arrogant, nothing-bad-can-touch-me parents.
One thing I know is that to go completely against what everyone in mainstream society is doing is not a decision one takes lightly. Most non-vax parents are college-educated. That means they are capable of doing research. The information about vaccines is not unknowable outside of medical school. Further, I was told by my medical doctor not to vaccinate.
If vaccines are “completely safe” as the author states (without any references) why was the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program set up as part of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims with a special section just for autism?
To use legislation to remove the philosophical exemption “loopholes” to force people to vaccinate is a way to force medical procedures. Not only is this an archaic mindset, it is anti-American and harkens to Big Brother.
Lastly, I think it is very interesting that the author zeroed in on the state of Ohio, a presidential swing state. You can’t start too early, right? If there had been any unbiased scientific reality in this piece I would have been much more interested. Instead, it was the same old shut-your-mouth-and-do-what-the-doctor/government-says fear-mongering rhetoric.
Leah E. McCullough
Author of Freedom from Fibromyalgia: 7 Steps to Complete Recovery
All but two states (West Virginia and Mississippi) allow for religious exemptions. You do not need to belong to any particular church to claim a religious exemption—you simply state in writing that you have a religious objection to vaccinations.
MECHANISTIC TERMINOLOGY
I have noticed, over the course of years of reading Wise Traditions, a disturbing pattern in this otherwise excellent publication. Sitting down today to conduct an informal survey, I was able to locate numerous examples of organic processes being discussed—even by your best writers—in mechanistic terminology, such as “underlying mechanisms,” photosynthetic “machinery” and “mitochondrial engines.”
Of course we’ve (almost) all been taught to view things in this way, but to put it bluntly, there are no mechanisms in organisms unless they have been purposely designed and placed there by human beings. As Rudolf Steiner pointed out, “That which needs to be organized is no organism.” Mechanisms have their organizing principle imposed on them from without by human agency, while organisms are born with an intrinsic organizing principle provided by nature. This may seem like an academic distinction strictly of interest to specialists, but with all due respect to the animists among us I’m convinced that it has an awful lot to do with the perpetration of modern human follies such as genetic engineering, climate disruption, environmental destruction, etc. There is a direct link between this type of mindset and the mistaken view of the world as a collection of inanimate furniture that we can rearrange as we please with no negative consequences.
I see no harm in employing mechanistic comparisons as long as we use them consciously, with an awareness of their limitations. Unfortunately this is seldom what happens. Whether we call it reification or hypostatization, or use Whitehead’s wording “misplaced concreteness,” we’re talking about the same thing: reading our own abstractions and mental models into the phenomena themselves.
Imagine that you were born wearing red-tinted glasses. The world would look pretty red, wouldn’t it? We need to take off our mechanism-colored glasses if we’re ever going to see the world as it is and work constructively within its processes rather than tinkering with it as if it were some gigantic machine that belongs to us. As far as I can tell, none of the problems that confront us is insoluble, but if we’re ever going to tackle them successfully we need to start by working more wakefully with our own consciousness.
Andy Shaw
Alexander, North Carolina
Weston Price provides a fine example of a scientist who did not impose a mechanistic model on nature; instead he marveled at the accumulated wisdom of primitive peoples. “Life in all its fullness is Mother Nature obeyed,” he said—not Mother Nature tinkered with as though she were some kind of machine.
MERCURY RETENTION AND HAIR TESTS
In response to a letter on autism, vaccines, and mercury (Fall 2014), the author mentions hearing a doctor describe susceptible kids as “non-excretors.” (They retain rather than excrete toxic metals.) Indeed, according to my reading of the toxicology literature, a susceptible subset of the population will show low excretion of mercury in hair, urine, feces and nails, while showing high mercury toxicity on a porphyrins panel (which measures damage to certain enzymes).
A porphyrins panel is available for less than three hundred dollars from DirectLabs.com. A less expensive alternative is a hair test. Low excretors will show low mercury in hair; however, mercury seems to affect the levels of essential hair minerals, making some abnormally high and others abnormally low, thus revealing possible mercury toxicity.
The toxicology literature clearly states that mercury alters many sulfur-containing biomolecules including mineral transport proteins. Thus, abnormal levels of essential minerals in hair would be a logical result of mercury toxicity. In addition, mercury’s effect on certain essential minerals, including calcium and zinc, is well-documented. But the specific effects of mercury on essential hair minerals remains largely undocumented in the peer-reviewed literature. As a result, many physicians are uninterested in hair test results. Nonetheless, a hair test can be a useful, inexpensive indicator of toxicity for the self-directed patient. This issue is further described in the book, Hair Test Interpretation: Finding Hidden Toxicities by Andrew Cutler.
Kristin G. Homme PE(ret.), MPP, MPH
Berkeley, California
PROTEIN AND WEIGHT GAIN
Does too much protein contribute to weight gain? I ask this question because according to Nora Gedgaudas, too much protein is processed by the body just like sugar.
Many midwives tell pregnant women to eat a lot of protein, even to add protein powders to their diets. I am finding that the babies of women who overdo on protein have a tendency to obesity, even if they are breastfed and receiving a WAPF-type diet. Maybe it’s because protein depletes vitamin A, which can lead to thyroid problems, hence a tendency to gain weight.
Of course, adequate protein is necessary during pregnancy, but expectant mothers need to be careful not to overdo by consuming protein powders, lean meat, egg whites without the yolks, etc.
Betsy Granger
Tulsa, Oklahoma
UNREALISTIC FASHION FIGURES
Are unrealistic fashion figures driving eating disorders in young girls? Although eating disorders affect 0.1 percent of children aged 8 to 11 years, their prevalence is growing among preteens. For children so young, it makes you ask why they would contemplate extreme diets and excessive exercise. The media contribute to their desire to be slim owing to the images they present them with. However, even if pre-teens never get the chance to see extremely thin women in magazines or on TV, there is another potential influence lurking in their playroom: Barbie. Although she may seem like a harmless fashion toy, beneath her outfits is an unrealistic figure.
In a report by Steps to Recovery, the authors discuss just how different Barbie’s measurements are from the average woman in the U.S. today. Although on average we weigh more than we did in the 1960s when Barbie first came on sale, even back then her figure was worlds apart from what would be considered “normal” measurements. To demonstrate this with just two of Barbie’s vital statistics, she comes in at five feet nine inches for height while the average woman today is just short of five feet four inches, and her waist is a dainty eighteen inches compared to the average waist circumference of thirty-eight inches today. However, young girls aren’t aware of this fact and believe that Barbie is what real women are meant to look like, which can trigger unhealthy behaviors to achieve weight loss. While fashion models and actresses have been able to achieve slender figures, they are little better than Barbie, as they are not an accurate representation of the bodies most of us have. Even supposedly realistic models wear clothes in size four rather than the size fourteen typical of many American women, and there is nothing natural about a body weight 15 percent below expected that most models show off. Airbrushing slims models down even more, but can also remove areas such as protruding ribs to hide the fact that many are undernourished. Despite some models speaking out about over-modification of their body, teens are still trying to attain the same figures they see in magazines, which even with extreme dieting might be impossible. The fact that so many TV characters are slimmer than average adds to the problem, particularly when you consider the negative way in which larger characters are often treated on screen.
Only by highlighting how different the body of Barbie and those shown by the media are from women today can we help young girls to feel better about their appearance, with good self-esteem, which is known to protect against eating disorders. By preventing their onset, it is potentially possible to protect youngsters from substance abuse, as the two disorders are highly connected. To read more about this topic visit the following link: http://www.stepstorecovery.com/starving-yourself-to-achieve-the-impossible-figure-of-barbie/.
Anne Kline
Santa Rosa, California
TRANS FAT LABELING
Back in 2011 I contacted you concerning the proposed nutrition labeling of trans fat in restaurant food. This was in regard to proposed FDA regulations for nutrition labeling of standardized menu items at chain restaurants.
Mainly at my request, WAPF submitted a recommendation to the FDA that the trans fat labeling not include the trans fat that is naturally occurring in food, primarily in dairy and beef.
I wish you to know that the final rule for this labeling was released recently. Unfortunately it does not exempt the trans fat naturally occurring in food.
In summary, the FDA decided it is better to use the same basis for assessing trans fat content in restaurant food as for packaged food. This assessment is based on the chemical structure and not on the source.
I was very pleased when WAPF submitted its recommendation to the FDA, and am sorry that the agency was not persuaded to change its stance on this matter.
Richard Perlmutter
Elizabeth, New Jersey
ARE BLENDERS BAD?
I have read that blenders (and food processors) may be bad for our food. The trauma they cause to the food may alter the nutrient value. Do you know whether there are any studies on this? It may be one reason not to do juicing and also not to prepare certain foods in a blender or food processor.
The people Weston Price studied had excellent health without blenders and food processors. Are we going to conclude in twenty or thirty years that using blenders and food processors was a bad idea? We are unhappy about GMOs, but might we be doing something analogous when we unwittingly use blenders and food processors?
William B. Schneider
Los Angeles, California
This would be an interesting subject to investigate. Certainly primitive peoples did a lot of pounding and grinding of their food, but whether blenders and food processors cause damage to nutrients is a subject that remains to be explored.
AWESOME ENERGY LEVELS
I’m writing to thank the Weston A. Price Foundation for their valuable information. In the past I have read hundreds of books on nutrition and despite keeping religiously to conventional guidelines, I suffered very low energy levels, struggled with weight gain, had bad gum disease and always felt hungry. The dentist said I would lose my teeth before long.
Knowing these problems had to be diet-related, I started to research diet again with a more open mind and Googled “the benefits of saturated fats.” This finally led me to the Weston A. Price Foundation website and it all made sense to me. Eat like traditional people eat! Funnily enough, I had been doing that with my dog and cats for the previous five years, feeding them a raw meat and bone diet, and their health was fabulous. It hadn’t occurred to me to do the same for myself.
My energy levels now are awesome, I’m feeling physically satisfied so I don’t want to eat quite so much, and my gum disease is a thing of the past. Even my dentist is impressed as I no longer have inflamed, sore and swollen gums. I know my teeth will last me for the next forty years or more. I feel better than I have in years. And the food tastes better too!
I try to speak to people about my diet and WAPF but people look at me like I’m a nutter. They can’t get over the whole “saturated fats are bad” thing. People are so well indoctrinated they won’t even be open-minded about it. I’m a bit careful now how I share and just explain that I don’t eat processed food. Telling them that saturated fats are fine and healthy seems to be too much for them to handle. They think I´m heading for heart disease because of the nice wad of butter on my eggs at lunch. Little do they know!
Whenever I want information on health I look it up on the WAPF website. This is my heath bible now. It provides all the information that I need to be healthy. I will remain a member forever! Thanks again to all of you who run the Foundation. The information you provide is priceless.
Michelle Cox
Patumahoe, New Zealand
WAPF SUCCESS
I was at a small meet-up in New York City recently and made a brief presentation about the WAPF. Besides showing the covers of Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, I did a comparison of a 2000 issue and a 2014 issue of Wise Traditions. I turned to the back of the 2000 issue and showed the single page of the WAPF Local Chapters and then the six pages of “The Shop Heard Around the World.” Then I turned to the back of a 2014 issue and slowly turned the fifteen pages of small, dense type, of the current list of Local Chapters ending with the three pages of International Chapter! Then I turned to the “Shop Heard Around the World” and the twenty-two ad pages. There were several gasps from the small audience and I easily made my point about the growth of the organization and of how small business and entrepreneurship were alive and well. Of course, I mentioned the “Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund” as well as the “Campaign for Real Milk”
Congratulations on your continual success!
Lee Clifford
New York, New York
SIDEBAR
THE PIONEERING SPIRIT OF DR. MARY G. ENIG (1931-2014)
My mentor and friend Dr. Mary G. Enig, PhD, recently died at the age of eighty-three. I want to honor her life by talking about her pioneering research, and the profound impact it has had on the fields of nutrition and health.
Early in her career, Mary challenged the widely held assumption that saturated fats and cholesterol cause heart disease and cancer. She established the connection between margarine and other partially hydrogenated fats and the development of heart disease, cancer and other ills. Furthermore, she found cogent evidence that trans fatty acids contribute to such diseases by foiling the liver’s oxidase enzyme system so that it cannot properly metabolize drugs and pollutants. By researching and publishing data on the trans fatty acid composition of more than five hundred commonly eaten foods, Mary gave nutritionists and their clients a useful tool for knowing which foods to eliminate from their diets. This is vital information for anyone who desires optimum health and longevity. All of us who are eating butter today instead of margarine should be grateful for the research—and bravery— of Dr. Mary G. Enig.
Mary furthermore pioneered research on coconut oil, a much maligned and misunderstood saturated fat that
was vilified for years by establishment “health experts.” Thanks to Mary, it’s now widely known that coconut oil promotes optimum health. Coconut oil is rich in lauric acid, a health-promoting fatty acid with anti-microbial properties that has been proving its mettle in trials with AIDS patients and others suffering from compromised immune systems. Mary’s theories about “conditionally essential” saturated fats are already proving to be one of the missing links to the development of effective anti-aging therapies.
Mary inspired me every day with her courage and integrity. Over the years, she was consistently ahead of mainstream scientists and nutritionists, pushing their envelopes, thinking outside the box, and threatening the status quo. Not surprisingly, she was subjected to a great deal of criticism, not to mention bullying from powerful food industry interests. Mary not only refused to kowtow to these pressures but boldly moved on to new and equally controversial causes, even as the world of health science caught up with, and belatedly recognized, her earlier findings.
Mary’s commitment to education led her to teach classes and workshops for college students and professionals. Even more importantly, she became active with the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation of San Diego, California, and then served as a founding board member and vice president of the Weston A. Price Foundation in Washington, DC. I was deeply honored to succeed Mary as vice president of WAPF when she retired to emeritus status in 2011. Our 15th annual Wise Traditions Conference was dedicated to her memory.
By teaming up with Sally Fallon Morell, founding president of WAPF, Mary found a highly effective way to fight
the diet dictocrats and ensure that her work would reach the public far sooner than the narrow and often entrenched world of academia would ever allow. Their book, Nourishing Traditions, first published in 1996, plus dozens of articles and letters to the editor written for Wise Traditions, Nexus, the Townsend Letter and other magazines and newspapers had an impact on tens of thousands of men, women and children. The work of the “brazen duo”—as they were often called—invariably incited controversy, but helped people think for themselves regarding such issues as fat in the diet, the deficiencies of vegetarian diets, the dangers of commercial infant formulas and other important diet and health topics.
Finally, Sally and Mary helped blow the whistle on the food industry-sponsored myth of soy being the miracle food for the millennium. Their articles pulled no punches and drove me to begin research on the dangers of soy, a project that led, in turn, to my enrolling in a PhD program in nutritional sciences at the Union Institute and University in Cincinnati. My 2004 Union dissertation became the 2005 book The Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side of America’s Favorite Health Food.
Mary graciously served on my doctoral committee at Union, and generously shared her expertise on fats and oils and their myriad roles in health and longevity. She held me to high standards of academic excellence, took genuine pleasure in my successes and encouraged me to thank her by paying it forward. I am deeply blessed to have known this remarkable woman and role model.
Kaayla T. Daniel, PhD, CCN
Vice President
The Weston A. Price Foundation
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