Weston A. Price Foundation - Madison Chapter

Weston A. Price

About Weston A. Price

In the early 1930s, a Cleveland dentist named Weston A. Price (1870-1948) began a series of unique investigations. Over the next ten years, he traveled to isolated parts of the globe to study the health of populations untouched by western civilization. His goal was to discover the factors responsible for good dental health. His studies revealed that dental caries and deformed dental arches resulting in crowded, crooked teeth are the result of nutritional deficiencies and not inherited genetic defects.

The groups Price studied included sequestered villages in Switzerland, Gaelic communities in the Outer Hebrides, indigenous peoples of North and South America, Melanesian and Polynesian South Sea Islanders, African tribes, Australian Aborigines and New Zealand Maori. Wherever he went, Dr. Price found that beautiful straight teeth, freedom from tooth decay, fine physiques, resistance to disease and fine characters were typical of native groups on their traditional diets, rich in essential food factors.

When Dr. Price analyzed the foods used by isolated peoples he found that, in comparison to the American diet of his day, they provided at least four times the water soluble vitamins, calcium and other minerals, and at least TEN times the fat-soluble vitamins from animal foods such as butter, fish eggs, shellfish, organ meats, eggs and animal fats--the very cholesterol-rich foods now shunned by the American public as unhealthful.

Dr. Price found that these fat-soluble vitamins--vitamins A and D--were catalysts to mineral absorption and protein utilization. Without them, we cannot absorb minerals, no matter how abundant they may be in our food. He also discovered a fat soluble nutrient which he labeled Activator X, present in fish and shellfish, organ meats and butter from cows eating rapidly growing green grass in the Spring and Fall. All primitive groups had a source of Activator X in their diets.