Weston Price's Observations of Facial Deformities

[Nico1e]

When I first read that some socionists use visual identification to help them decide on a person's type, I immediately thought of Weston Price.

I don't know the real history of VI, but I guess it developed because people noticed 'twins' or 'lookalikes,' people who had the same personality type and who also looked amazingly similar to each other. I myself use some kind of informal, intuitive VI that I cannot put into words. When I look at strangers, I decide whether someone is 'my kind of person' or not. I quickly judge them as 'friend or foe' somehow just by glancing at their faces. It's easiest for me to do this with other Caucasians, as they are mostly the people I've interacted with my whole life, and I haven't spent much time with large numbers of people of other races.

So I believe that there might be some truth to VI, but I think it probably shouldn't be used all by itself as the ONLY method of identifying someone. I think VI would work best if you identified them using several different methods at once, and then, after identifying large numbers of people, you would start to recognize particular patterns among the faces. There could be a connection between the genes that command the brain to form a particular personality pattern, and the genes that control the development of the face and body.

About Weston Price:

Weston A. Price was a dentist. He traveled to many different countries to observe the primitive tribes that had been untouched by the modern lifestyle. People had observed that the bodies and the teeth of the primitive people were much healthier than the bodies and teeth of the modern people living in the cities.

I'm making a long story really short - Weston Price wrote a whole book about his research, called 'Nutrition and Physical Degeneration.' I'd love to show pictures from the book - it's full of photos - but I don't have an easy way to get them onto the computer right now.

He observed that not only were the teeth of modern people decaying and falling out, but also, the people had narrow faces, weak jaws and receding chins, and other bone structure deformities that people in the primitive tribes did not have. The primitive people had large, broad faces. Their teeth did not need orthodontic braces, as the teeth were all in the correct positions in the mouth and the mouth had plenty of room for them. But the modern people's teeth often appeared in front of each other and in the wrong positions. Primitive people's wisdom teeth grew straight into their line of teeth the way they were supposed to, while modern people's wisdom teeth grew at strange angles and did not form properly and were usually removed.

Some people believed that these deformities were genetic. They believed that you were just unlucky and doomed to endure your bad genes. However, Weston Price observed that if the families of the primitive tribes adopted a modern diet, if they started eating canned food and white flour (which, at the time, wasn't supplemented with any synthetic vitamins at all, if I recall correctly), then they would have children whose deformed faces and maloccluded teeth looked exactly like those of the modern people. Nothing in their genes had changed - only the diet of the parents had changed.

He connected this to the deformities of calves born to cattle that were eating grass on poor soil. If healthy cattle were brought to areas that had mineral deficient soil, then they would start giving birth to calves that were severely deformed.

He analyzed the primitive diets and found that they had much higher levels of all the vitamins and minerals than the modern diets had. The modern diets were especially poor in the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K, while the primitive diets were rich in those vitamins.

He used all of his research to prescribe diets to modern people who were losing their teeth or people who wanted to have children. They would notice that the children born before the healthy diet had the deformed faces and also had various health problems and behavior problems. The children born after the parents adopted the healthy diet had fully formed faces, perfectly lined up teeth, and better behavior and health overall. (Note: Some recent observers have also connected deformities with pesticide use, as they saw deformed faces and teeth in the whitetail deer living in areas where pesticides had been sprayed. So it's not just a deficient diet that causes the problems, it can also be exposure to chemicals.)

There is no such thing as '*THE* Weston Price Diet.' Weston Price himself didn't go around telling everyone to use 'The Weston Price Diet.' So it isn't just one set of rules that you can follow. There were many different primitive diets that he observed in the tribes. They had some things in common. I could tell all about that but it's easier to read it on their websites.

The diet needs a LOT of troubleshooting! Some of the things that people talk about eating are very dangerous and can make you extremely sick. For instance, Sally Fallon wrote a cookbook called 'Nourishing Traditions,' which attempted to give instructions about how to cook foods that met the nutrition criteria, but I have tried a couple of those things, and they DID make me sick.

I got sick from trying to eat lacto-fermented vegetables, in particular, a jar of kimchi from the grocery store. I got sick from eating fish eggs - caviar - and I got EXTREMELY sick from eating bone marrow, as in, I ate only a tiny, tiny crumb of it, a couple millimeters long, and I got so sick I thought I was going to have to go to the hospital. I won't go into detail about all the things that happened, but I thought I might die from eating the bone marrow. And people on the internet talk about eating bone marrow like it's a delicacy and like nothing bad happens. So either 1. large numbers of people are sociopathic liars (but I asked one of my neighbors - a nice lady who I trust - if she had ever eaten bone marrow, and she said she had, and it didn't make her sick), 2. there's a special way to prepare the bone marrow that prevents it from making you sick, or 3. some other explanation. Anyway, don't just run out and try to eat all the things that the people in the books and on the websites talk about eating! If you try anything at all, please, PLEASE, eat only a teeny, tiny piece of it, and then wait a while to see if it makes you sick. I was recently looking at a list of 'Murphy's Laws,' and one of them was 'If nobody's doing it, there's a reason why.' There's a reason why a lot of these foods are not commonly eaten.

So yes, the diet requires a lot more research and troubleshooting.

Well, this all relates to VI. If you look at the Weston Price photographs, you will learn to see the face and jaw deformities in modern people. Some of the facial shapes that people are trying to associate with personality types might be affected by the deformities. Almost everyone would have slightly broader faces, no matter what their personality types were.

The deformed heads and faces were also associated with brain deformities in severe cases. Weston Price speculated that moral decay in society might be caused by the deformities, as the brain could not grow and develop properly, and so people could not become the best people they could be.

The pictures of the healthy primitive people were much more beautiful than the pictures of the deformed faces, so beauty is not entirely genetic, and to some extent, you can prevent your children from being ugly. (Not entirely, but somewhat.)

I figured this would be of interest to anybody who is trying to use, or study, visual identification.

[FDG]

Uh? Teeth in our societies are more easily damaged because we eat much more sugar. It has been happening since the inception of agriculture. It's a widely known phenomenon.

Besides, some populations tend to have broader faces (i.e. asians) due to random variations and sexual selection. It has nothing to do with diet.

[Jinxi]

Uh? Teeth in our societies are more easily damaged because we eat much more sugar. It has been happening since the inception of agriculture. It's a widely known phenomenon.

Besides, some populations tend to have broader faces (i.e. asians) due to random variations and sexual selection. It has nothing to do with diet.

Do I have a broad face?

[FDG]

Do I have a broad face?

I'd say you kinda do, yeah, compared to many europeans.

[Jinxi]

I'd say you kinda do, yeah, compared to many europeans.

Show me pics of them Europeans.

Also them Asians.

[Nico1e]

Uh? Teeth in our societies are more easily damaged because we eat much more sugar. It has been happening since the inception of agriculture. It's a widely known phenomenon.

Besides, some populations tend to have broader faces (i.e. asians) due to random variations and sexual selection. It has nothing to do with diet.

I just realized today that this thread probably doesn't belong in this folder, but oh well.

About some populations having broader faces anyway: Yes, Asians, and also the Eskimos, and some other groups, do have broader faces overall, and if I recall they also tend to have shorter, stockier bodies than, for instance, Africans, who are taller and skinnier. Some of the facial shape is racial.

However, this was Weston Price's observation:

1. Take two 'pureblood' parents from any race. (He visited a bunch of different countries and ethnic groups.) These two parents have broad faces, and their teeth are all perfectly positioned, just like all the other members of their tribe whose parents ate the primitive diet.

2. Have these two pureblood parents start eating a modern diet including sugar, white flour (which, at the time of Weston Price, did not have synthetic vitamins added to it), fruit jams and jellies, canned food, and different cuts of meat than the primitives use. (The primitives ate a lot more of the internal organs such as liver, which is much higher in vitamins than the muscle meat.)

3. They have children.

4. Unlike their parents, and unlike all the other members of the tribe, the new (pureblood) children born from parents who eat this diet will have strangely deformed faces. Their jaws will be much smaller and narrower. Their teeth will be all crooked and out of place, unlike the rest of the tribe's teeth. Their bodies will be smaller and less healthy overall and will not develop to the full size that the other adults in the tribe have reached. They will develop deformities of the feet, such as club feet.

On average, yes, a particular race of people might have broader faces overall. But you can see a major change, even within one single pure race, if the parents eat this deficient diet and then have children. The children will have a wide variety of health problems their parents never had. (If you bottle feed them instead of breastfeeding them, then they are very likely to also develop lifelong obesity or diabetes.)

Some of these things are not genetic. He observed them happening spontaneously, when the entire tribe was healthy and had fully formed faces with perfectly positioned teeth - and when I say 'the rest of the tribe,' I mean that he examined large numbers of people and found that only a tiny percent of them had mild deformities. The deformities happened immediately if healthy parents ate the modern diet and then gave birth to children while eating that diet.

About cavities: Cavities have several causes. Sugar is not the only cause. A malnourishing diet (even if it doesn't contain sugar) causes the body to lose minerals in all the bones, not just the teeth. A diet can be malnourishing if it doesn't have enough of the nutrients you need, but also, it can be malnourishing if it contains anti-nutrients, chemicals that interfere with your body's ability to absorb or use nutrients. I have also read that eating too much protein can cause your body to lose minerals, but I don't know much about this.

Grains, nuts, beans, and seeds contain phytic acid - unless you prepare them properly - which can interfere with absorbing minerals from the foods you eat, causing osteoporosis and demineralization of the teeth. So, yes, grains and agriculture are associated with cavities and osteoporosis.

[krieger]

Their bodies will be smaller and less healthy overall and will not develop to the full size that the other adults in the tribe have reached.

slight incongruity: people in developed Western nations are comparatively tall on average.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height

[golden]

slight incongruity: people in developed Western nations are comparatively tall on average.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height

Yeah, this is my day to link to the New Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/200.../040405fa_fact

[golden]

I'm not sure how much stock to put in Weston Price's theories, but here is something I thought of. Native Americans have a major dietary problem--rampant diabetes, something fairly recent for them. I watched a documentary once on what happened when one tribe revived their traditional diet, and the effect were extreme in terms of their return to health. Googling for videos on "Native Americans diabetes" brings up a few links like this one:



Many of these populations absolutely cannot handle the mainstream American diet. They seem even less physically equipped to handle it than other groups.

So I wondered offhand if Native Americans have orthodontic problems and found this:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1941776

So apparently, they have more malocclusions and poorer dental aesthetics than the general population in the U.S. I wonder if this problem has developed along with the dietary changes.

[Nowisthetime]

I think Weston Price is ENTj

[FDG]

Well, then I'm ashamed to be of the same type as his.

1. Take two 'pureblood' parents from any race. (He visited a bunch of different countries and ethnic groups.) These two parents have broad faces, and their teeth are all perfectly positioned, just like all the other members of their tribe whose parents ate the primitive diet.

2. Have these two pureblood parents start eating a modern diet including sugar, white flour (which, at the time of Weston Price, did not have synthetic vitamins added to it), fruit jams and jellies, canned food, and different cuts of meat than the primitives use. (The primitives ate a lot more of the internal organs such as liver, which is much higher in vitamins than the muscle meat.)

Most of our today's "western" populations have adapted since millennia to...agriculture and cattle raising. During its inception, agriculture did cause many of the problems you mention (you might refer to Jared Diamond's "The third chimpanzee"). It's likely that the reproduction rate of those who could deal best with agriculture eventually led to large population where most people will not end up with crooked teeth even if they don't eat a primitive diet.
Now, OTOH, take a population which has lived in isolation since the dawn of humanity. They won't be adapted to the same type of diet we are.

A very easy example: Asians vs Europeans and lactose tolerance - the former populations (Azns) have a much lower level of lactose tolerance -> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...tool=pmcentrez

[golden]

Well, then I'm ashamed to be of the same type as his.



Most of our today's "western" populations have adapted since millennia to...agriculture and cattle raising. During its inception, agriculture did cause many of the problems you mention (you might refer to Jared Diamond's "The third chimpanzee"). It's likely that the reproduction rate of those who could deal best with agriculture eventually led to large population where most people will not end up with crooked teeth even if they don't eat a primitive diet.
Now, OTOH, take a population which has lived in isolation since the dawn of humanity. They won't be adapted to the same type of diet we are.

A very easy example: Asians vs Europeans and lactose tolerance - the former populations (Azns) have a much lower level of lactose tolerance -> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...tool=pmcentrez

English teeth--did the Brits ever adapt?

[FDG]

lol. well, I don't have great teeth either, but my body is sufficiently large and my face wide, ahah. I guess I need to wait the next adaptation, to ice-cream and cakes...

[Nico1e]

slight incongruity: people in developed Western nations are comparatively tall on average.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height

Yeah, this is my day to link to the New Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/200.../040405fa_fact

Assumption: Tall is always good.
People in developed countries are tall.
The modern lifestyle must be good for them.

Another assumption: People in less developed countries are living the same type of 'primitive lifestyle' that WP was studying. That assumption probably happened because I used the phrase 'the modern lifestyle' or something like that, and the word 'modern' seems similar to the word 'developed.'

I'm probably going to regret trying to make this argument because it feels awkward and hard to explain. I'm sure it will end up misleading everyone and I'll have to go back and fix it all later on.

First, WP commented about height differences among the African tribes he studied. He noticed that some of them were extremely tall, and other ones were slightly less tall, but more 'well proportioned' or 'balanced.' This was his personal opinion about what type of body is good or bad. He made it sound like the extremely tall people might actually be 'too tall.' Again, this was just an opinion that he briefly expressed. It wasn't a central theme in the book. They were eating two different diets, but both groups (the 'too tall' tribe, and the 'well proportioned' tribe) were relatively healthy compared to the worst case scenarios in the towns and cities. The idea was that people might be healthy, and have height differences, and there's nothing wrong with some groups being a little bit shorter, because they were still healthy overall. Getting taller and taller and taller isn't necessarily a 'goal' that we should try to achieve. It's not the only measure of health.

In another part of the book, he wrote about how a lot of people in the modern society were growing much taller, but they had problems with their bodies in spite of being tall, such as women who were tall, but who had narrow deformed pelvises that made it difficult to have children, or tall people who had very narrow shoulders. The proportions of other parts of their bodies changed.

I apologize, this is hard to explain. The idea was 'Tall isn't necessarily always good.' It can be sometimes, but not always. You can be shorter, and also be healthy. Or you can be tall and healthy. Tall is neither absolutely good nor absolutely bad.

I actually agree with both of those articles in the links.

On the idea that 'Tallness REALLY IS a sign of good health,' I would say that yes, people living in some less-developed countries are short, and they are unhealthy - but those people are not living the 'primitive lifestyle' that Weston Price was talking about. Just because they live in less-developed countries does not mean that they always hunt and forage for their food, nor do they eat 'whole foods' that they themselves grew and processed locally. Some of them do. Some others do not.

In less developed countries, a lot of people are living in the worst-case scenario that WP was writing about: living in poverty, in a town, buying the cheapest, least nutritious food that comes from the grocery store.

Another factor that affects the heights of people in various countries: Deficiencies of soil minerals. For instance, the soil in some parts of Mexico contains very little calcium. When people eat foods that come only from that soil, they grow up with calcium deficiencies, and they are usually short. Even if they used the 'best case scenario' diet, they would be short, because all of their foods came from soil that didn't have enough minerals in it. They would need to import some of their foods from other places, or add minerals to the soil (and I'm not fond of chemical fertilizers, which is a whole separate issue).

Some people's conditions have improved, and some have gotten worse, in modern times, and it varies from group to group. There isn't just one single 'modern lifestyle' that is uniformly the same everywhere. Each person, family, town, country, etc is doing something slightly different from everyone else.

So instead of calling it 'the modern lifestyle,' which is too vague, I should say: A lifestyle where one eats nothing but processed foods that have had a lot of the nutrients removed, for instance, white flour, sugar, and canned foods. People can eat that type of diet no matter which country they're in, whether it's a more developed or less developed country. He found some people who were eating the worst diet imaginable, like, for breakfast, they would have pancakes made from white flour (that, back then, didn't have any vitamins added to it), and white bread with jelly on it, and tea or coffee with sugar. And then for lunch they would eat something similar to that - white bread again, and so on. They were eating hardly any meat, milk, vegetables or fruits.

[Nico1e]

I think Weston Price is ENTj

YouTube - Dr. Weston A. Price speaking

I'll have to watch that when I'm using a computer with a broadband connection. I didn't know they had recordings of him.

On that note, I'm curious to know what type this person is:

http://www.curetoothdecay.com/about_us.htm

[krieger]

Assumption: Tall is always good.
People in developed countries are tall.
The modern lifestyle must be good for them.

uhm no. look back at the part of your post i quoted. your own explanation listed diminished body size as one of the things these deformities encompass:

However, this was Weston Price's observation:

1. Take two 'pureblood' parents from any race. (He visited a bunch of different countries and ethnic groups.) These two parents have broad faces, and their teeth are all perfectly positioned, just like all the other members of their tribe whose parents ate the primitive diet.

2. Have these two pureblood parents start eating a modern diet including sugar, white flour (which, at the time of Weston Price, did not have synthetic vitamins added to it), fruit jams and jellies, canned food, and different cuts of meat than the primitives use. (The primitives ate a lot more of the internal organs such as liver, which is much higher in vitamins than the muscle meat.)

3. They have children.

4. Unlike their parents, and unlike all the other members of the tribe, the new (pureblood) children born from parents who eat this diet will have strangely deformed faces. Their jaws will be much smaller and narrower. Their teeth will be all crooked and out of place, unlike the rest of the tribe's teeth. Their bodies will be smaller and less healthy overall and will not develop to the full size that the other adults in the tribe have reached. They will develop deformities of the feet, such as club feet.

this being said, i'm not attacking your story as a whole. i think this theory is worth looking into, though it can not be stressed enough that critical thinking needs to be applied. subjectivity and confirmation bias seep into these kinds of subjects very quickly.

[FDG]

Yeah. I'm sure the modern diet in its worst version can lead to body deformations (hell, look at obesity). OTOH most people in western countries do eat a relatively large amount of proteins and vegetables. I gather those who had it worst were the first agricultural civilizations.

Some people's conditions have improved, and some have gotten worse, in modern times, and it varies from group to group. There isn't just one single 'modern lifestyle' that is uniformly the same everywhere. Each person, family, town, country, etc is doing something slightly different from everyone else.

Please read that Jared Diamond's book I advised. Other than being really interesting, it explains how agriculture might have led to the phenomenon you describe in the above passage.

[golden]

Perhaps the New Yorker article I linked to tacitly assumes that tall is good. However, it is widely asserted that for men, perhaps the most important determinant of physical attractiveness across cultures is height. This seems to have been studied--greater height in men often means that women consider them more attractive. (Apparently if the height is truly extreme, that stops applying at some point.)

So height confers a mating advantage.

The New Yorker article just tells us that reaching the maximum potential height latent in one's genes depends on nutrition. And the Dutch are offered as an extreme example of that, as they went from being short to very, very tall overall.

[Nico1e]

Please read that Jared Diamond's book I advised. Other than being really interesting, it explains how agriculture might have led to the phenomenon you describe in the above passage.

I might see if the library has the book. Totally off-topic pet peeve: the woman on the front cover has no body hair at all. I should start another thread about that one of these days.

[Hitta]

In comparison with the human body and brain's current evolutionary component of storing calories along with today's modern diet, it is impossible to not become obese unless you neglect your primal urges. The majority of skinny people typically are skinny because they neglect their bodily urges and typically have learned to accept hunger. This leads to aggression and jealousy and all kinds of other social issues which is probably the prime reason that everyone is so concerned how skinny everyone else is. Also most dietitians recommend exercise allotments that non of our previous evolutionary ancestors even came close to.

[Nico1e]

I should probably wait until one of my days off before attempting to do this. But, I'm going to do a big multi-quote and answer everything.

uhm no. look back at the part of your post i quoted. your own explanation listed diminished body size as one of the things these deformities encompass:

this being said, i'm not attacking your story as a whole. i think this theory is worth looking into, though it can not be stressed enough that critical thinking needs to be applied. subjectivity and confirmation bias seep into these kinds of subjects very quickly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

"Confirmation biases contribute to overconfidence in personal beliefs and can maintain or strengthen beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. Hence they can lead to disastrous decisions, especially in organizational, military, political and social contexts."

What are the potentially disastrous consequences of making a mistake here? A lot of the 'rules' of the 'Weston Price Diet' go against what most people are saying nowadays. So the consequences of eating this diet are that it might be harmful to your health, or you could get sick with severe food poisoning, as I myself have when I tried to eat particular things. That's why I say that the diet still needs a lot more research and troubleshooting.

Yeah. I'm sure the modern diet in its worst version can lead to body deformations (hell, look at obesity). OTOH most people in western countries do eat a relatively large amount of proteins and vegetables. I gather those who had it worst were the first agricultural civilizations.

Please read that Jared Diamond's book I advised. Other than being really interesting, it explains how agriculture might have led to the phenomenon you describe in the above passage.

Actually, I need to talk about obesity one of these days. It has very little connection with 'gluttony and sloth.' I'm not up for writing about that tonight, as I'm too tired, but I will eventually.

I'm not quite sure what you mean when you say that those who had it worst were the first agricultural societies. But I will look for the book next time I'm at the library for real.

Perhaps the New Yorker article I linked to tacitly assumes that tall is good. However, it is widely asserted that for men, perhaps the most important determinant of physical attractiveness across cultures is height. This seems to have been studied--greater height in men often means that women consider them more attractive. (Apparently if the height is truly extreme, that stops applying at some point.)

So height confers a mating advantage.

The New Yorker article just tells us that reaching the maximum potential height latent in one's genes depends on nutrition. And the Dutch are offered as an extreme example of that, as they went from being short to very, very tall overall.

And I don't know what the Dutch were eating before, and after, they quickly became taller. I'd be curious to know.

I always feel somewhat frustrated and left out when there are scientific studies that go directly against how I myself feel. I recently had an intense crush on a small, short, skinny guy who was only a couple inches taller than I am (I'm 5'2"), and I think he weighed less than I do (I'm usually around 130 pounds). This guy was mysteriously popular with girls, and there were several other people interested in him besides me, and he never went very long without dating anybody - if he broke up with someone, he'd be with someone else only a few weeks later.

Oh well.

In comparison with the human body and brain's current evolutionary component of storing calories along with today's modern diet, it is impossible to not become obese unless you neglect your primal urges. The majority of skinny people typically are skinny because they neglect their bodily urges and typically have learned to accept hunger. This leads to aggression and jealousy and all kinds of other social issues which is probably the prime reason that everyone is so concerned how skinny everyone else is. Also most dietitians recommend exercise allotments that non of our previous evolutionary ancestors even came close to.

I'm not ready to talk about obesity yet, but I have to do it sooner or later. It will make this topic even more complicated to argue about. ... But I can't... I'm too tired... I just got home from work. Okay, I'll blurt it out quickly even though this is going to cause a lot of arguments. Obesity is most often caused by infants being bottle-fed with formula instead of breast milk. Formula feeding permanently damages your body in a lot of ways, making you more vulnerable to illnesses and more likely to become obese. Obesity is also caused by prescription drugs. It is also the result of disorders of particular glands, such as the thyroid, and I personally suspect that the thyroid gland is one of the body parts that can be deformed, just like the jaws and the face. If your glands are malformed, then they will permanently command your body to become fat, no matter how little you eat. I know a lady who I was talking to the other day - she is very heavy, but she was telling me she eats less than I do. I've seen this happen many times. Obesity has almost no connection at all to merely 'eating too much.' I also suspect that obesity may be one of the side effects of vaccines, as the vaccine viruses permanently infect the adipose tissue, causing it to malfunction. There are other causes as well. The fatter you are, the LESS your fault it is. Obesity is a disease.

This is a complicated subject. Later....

[jughead]

In comparison with the human body and brain's current evolutionary component of storing calories along with today's modern diet, it is impossible to not become obese unless you neglect your primal urges. The majority of skinny people typically are skinny because they neglect their bodily urges and typically have learned to accept hunger. This leads to aggression and jealousy and all kinds of other social issues which is probably the prime reason that everyone is so concerned how skinny everyone else is. Also most dietitians recommend exercise allotments that non of our previous evolutionary ancestors even came close to.

I think this is fucking bullshit. Neglect is one thing. Control is another. Don't universalize your own tendencies hitta. You don't wantonly go around killing and fucking everything either. The majority of people are overweight, but not obese, and around 37% are a healthy weight. Plus we have a lot of old people. The quality of food has decreased such that it is hard to not get fat, particularly if you are poor, but people are quickly learning. Hence the resurgence of health food, organic, biodynamic, local etc. As for Weston Price some of his observations are probably true, but when you think about it people are very much removed from their ancient ecosystems and have adapted. I wouldn't touch organ meat from a factory farm, and even organic grassfed etc are probably contaminated because of soil contamination. However small amounts of organ meat are probably acceptable and healthy from good sources. You should see my thread about "eating your vegetables". Particular organs build up large quantities of certain vitamins/carotenoids and other various substances from the foodweb that we need. Basically, yes, the food web is fucked up and the ocean, one the last accessible natural food webs is being trashed. We still dump trash into the ocean. WHAT THE FUCK.

[golden]

.

[Aiss]

Obesity is most often caused by infants being bottle-fed with formula instead of breast milk. Formula feeding permanently damages your body in a lot of ways, making you more vulnerable to illnesses and more likely to become obese. Obesity is also caused by prescription drugs. It is also the result of disorders of particular glands, such as the thyroid, and I personally suspect that the thyroid gland is one of the body parts that can be deformed, just like the jaws and the face. If your glands are malformed, then they will permanently command your body to become fat, no matter how little you eat. I know a lady who I was talking to the other day - she is very heavy, but she was telling me she eats less than I do. I've seen this happen many times. Obesity has almost no connection at all to merely 'eating too much.' I also suspect that obesity may be one of the side effects of vaccines, as the vaccine viruses permanently infect the adipose tissue, causing it to malfunction. There are other causes as well. The fatter you are, the LESS your fault it is. Obesity is a disease.

This is a complicated subject. Later....

If you live in Eastern Europe and have cancer, chances are you'll blame Chernobyl. If you live in US and have cancer, you're more likely to indulge in theories about cell phones or electric transmission lines. Just like people whose kid has celebral pansy tend to blame doctors and nurses present at birth. Or some parents of autistic children create hype about vaccines.

It's always easier to find something to blame. But statistically, none of this works as an explanation. The evils of formulas for babies are being similarly exploited. Sure, if you can breastfeed, go for the real thing. But don't go blaming formulas for what they fail to explain, like obesity - just look at people immigrating to US and having the same dietary issues as local populations, despite being previously a healthy representative of another one. The correlation might be there for one population, but correlation alone doesn't imply causation, and I find it hard to believe that how infant is fed isn't bound to what they eat as they grow up. Try looking at what happens when people move - and there's a large sample to be had these days.

By the way, do you know what's the main reason WHO warns against using formula milk for babies? Hygiene. In less developed world countries, using unsterilized bottles is common and seriously increases risk of diseases and food poisoning, which can be fatal for infants.

In *some* cases, it is an illness. In most, it's diet. Thyroid malfunction can be one possible cause, although it happens to be one that's often possible to solve... unless you believe "prescribed drugs" cause obesity since they're prescribed or whatever and therefore don't take them, choosing to remain fat. In which case I suppose nothing would help.

[Hitta]

I think this is fucking bullshit. Neglect is one thing. Control is another. Don't universalize your own tendencies hitta. You don't wantonly go around killing and fucking everything either. The majority of people are overweight, but not obese, and around 37% are a healthy weight. Plus we have a lot of old people. The quality of food has decreased such that it is hard to not get fat, particularly if you are poor, but people are quickly learning. Hence the resurgence of health food, organic, biodynamic, local etc. As for Weston Price some of his observations are probably true, but when you think about it people are very much removed from their ancient ecosystems and have adapted. I wouldn't touch organ meat from a factory farm, and even organic grassfed etc are probably contaminated because of soil contamination. However small amounts of organ meat are probably acceptable and healthy from good sources. You should see my thread about "eating your vegetables". Particular organs build up large quantities of certain vitamins/carotenoids and other various substances from the foodweb that we need. Basically, yes, the food web is fucked up and the ocean, one the last accessible natural food webs is being trashed. We still dump trash into the ocean. WHAT THE FUCK.

Actually it's not my tendency, it's been well documented by scientists. Most of the foods eaten today have more calories than their counter parts did 40 years ago. A steak has almost 30% more calories it did due to changes in the way that cattle are fed. Even the higher quality food has higher caloric value than it used to. The human body has a evolutionary component to store mass. It doesn't take much of a leap to realize that if we start putting more calories into the same foods at a almost equal mass that their is going to be dietary repercussions. Of course it is about control, but control has it's consequences as everything has. People today struggle to keep off the lbs contrary to just being able to eat the food at a consistent rate without having to worry about the dietary consequences. This naturally creates an attitude of jealousy, contempt, remorse. This is why we tend to worship celebrities. They are fit, in shape, and they look good(which is not typical).

Of course they are learning, I'm not denying they are. I'm just saying there is a lot of conflict in society(repressed anger, anxiety, depression) because of our dietary habits.

[Nico1e]

I'm not sure how much stock to put in Weston Price's theories, but here is something I thought of. Native Americans have a major dietary problem--rampant diabetes, something fairly recent for them. I watched a documentary once on what happened when one tribe revived their traditional diet, and the effect were extreme in terms of their return to health. Googling for videos on "Native Americans diabetes" brings up a few links like this one:

YouTube - Dietary & Lifestyle Health Dangers to Native Americans Video

Many of these populations absolutely cannot handle the mainstream American diet. They seem even less physically equipped to handle it than other groups.

So I wondered offhand if Native Americans have orthodontic problems and found this:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1941776

So apparently, they have more malocclusions and poorer dental aesthetics than the general population in the U.S. I wonder if this problem has developed along with the dietary changes.

I accidentally skipped this one when I was quoting. Yeah, this is exactly the type of thing that WP was finding. Thank you for looking that up. Something similar happened with Australian Aborigines who were living on reservations. Their health, and their children's health, deteriorated, until they had a sort of 'back to the land' movement, and they started going back to their native diet, and had a lot of improvements very quickly.

And it does seem like some groups react very badly to the mainstream American diet. But also, even the Americans themselves (and the Brits, and the English bulldogs) are still having problems with it, perhaps less severely.

[Nico1e]

I kept thinking I wanted to add this to my old thread.

I got the book 'Cure Tooth Decay' by Ramiel Nagel, and he says that some of the opinion has changed about whole wheat. I myself was saying, earlier in this thread, that 'white flour' was bad, and 'whole wheat' was good, or at least, I was saying things that could give people that impression.

After reading this book, I want to clarify a couple things.

White flour might actually be less harmful to the teeth than whole wheat flour. This is because the bran and germ of the wheat contain phytic acid, while the endosperm part of the wheat doesn't contain as much of it. It is the phytic acid that binds with minerals and prevents your body from absorbing them. So it is actually safer to just eat the endosperm by itself and get rid of the bran and germ.

Weston Price observed that primitive people were removing the bran and germ of the grains that they used.

He also observed that tribes who did not eat any grains *at all* had the fewest cavities of all the groups studied.

So I wanted to mention this because people might get the impression that I was saying 'whole grains are good,' or 'whole grains are better than white flour.' After reading more about it, I've come to believe that a diet without any grains at all is best. It's complicated - white rice, for instance, isn't all that bad.

(Note: I am not eating any kind of healthy diet at all right now! In fact I am eating just about the worst possible diet imaginable. So don't take this as me criticizing everyone else's diet. This knowledge is all for future reference, for a time when I am able to get the type of diet that I really want to eat.)