Diets

How do you begin to seek the wisdom of the body? You do it one step at a time - eating experience by eating experience. Every mealtime is another chance to feed yourself in a natural way, to take care of yourself as you have never done before, to love and trust yourself to answer your own call. This way of self-care moves out into all other areas of your life, but it starts with the precious act of feeding yourself meal by meal, day by day.- Carol Normandi and Laurelee Roark from Stephen Harrod Buhner's The Fasting Path

Artificial Sweeteners

Cholesterol

Detox

Traditional Diets Part I

How do we digest our food? How does the stomach, pancreas, and gall bladder know when to send out its chemicals that digest our food? Did you know that the thought or smell of food initiates a whole set of hormonal and physiologic responses that get the body ready for food? Remember Pavlov's dog experiment, where he trained dogs to salivate by associating the ringing of a bell with the presentation of food. By doing this repeatedly, he eventually trained the dogs to salivate in anticipation of food simply by ringing the bell -- without any food at all: no smells, no sight, no taste. Imagine what happens when you add those senses!

But ringing the bells in your body with artificial sweeteners confuses the body because it doesn't provide any sugar. Your brain prepares your body for the arrival of nutrients in your intestinal tract so they can be absorbed efficiently even before the food touches your tongue or teeth. Your body is already preparing to regulate your energy balance, metabolism, weight, calorie burning, and many other things -- just by thinking about food. Any sweet taste will signal your body that calories are on the way and trigger a whole set of hormonal and metabolic responses to get ready for those calories.

When you trick your body and feed it non-nutritive or non-caloric sweeteners, like aspartame, acesulfame, saccharin, sucralose, or even natural sweeteners like stevia, it gets confused. A study in the Journal of Behavioral Neuroscience has shown conclusively that using artificial sweeteners not only does not prevent weight gain, but induces a whole set of physiological and hormonal responses that actually make you gain weight. (Swithers SE, Davidson TL. A role for sweet taste: Calorie predictive relations in energy regulation by rats. Behav Neurosci. 2008 Feb;122(1):161-73.)

The researchers proved this by giving two different groups of rats some yogurt. One batch of yogurt was sweetened with sugar. The other was sweetened with saccharin. They found that three major things happened over a very short period of time in the rats that were fed artificially sweetened yogurt.

First, the researchers found that the total food eaten over 14 days dramatically increased in the artificial sweetener group -- meaning that the artificial sweetener stimulated their appetite and made them eat more.

Second, these rats gained a lot more weight and their body fat increased significantly.

And third was the change in core body temperature of the rats fed the artificial sweeteners. Their core body temperature decreased, meaning their metabolism slowed down. (Aside: in the 1950's our average core body temperature was 98.6 F. It is now fluctuating between 98.2 and 97.9 F).

Not only did the rats eat more, gain more weight, and have more body fat, but they actually lowered their core body temperature and slowed their metabolism. Even though the rats that ate the saccharin-sweetened yogurt consumed fewer calories overall than the rats that ate the sugar-sweetened yogurt, they gained more weight and body fat.

The number of Americans who consume products that contain sugar-free sweeteners grew from 70 million in 1987 to 160 million in 2000. During this same time period, the incidence of obesity in the United States has doubled from 15 percent to 30 percent across all age groups, ethnic groups, and social strata. And the number of overweight Americans has increased from about 30 percent to over 65 percent of the population. The fastest growing obese population is children.

Stop confusing your body. If you have a desire for something sweet, have a little sugar, but stay away from "fake" foods. Eating a whole-foods diet that has a low glycemic load and is rich in phytonutrients and indulging in a few real sweet treats once in a while is a better alternative than tricking your body with artificial sweeteners -- which leads to wide scale metabolic rebellion and obesity.

CHOLESTEROL

What is cholesterol? It's a fatty substance produced by the liver that is used to help perform thousands of bodily functions. The body uses it to help build your cell membranes, the covering of your nerve sheaths, and much of your brain. It's a key building block for our hormone production, and without it you would not be able to maintain adequate levels of testosterone, estrogen, progesterone and cortisol.

Cholesterol Myths

One of the biggest cholesterol myths is that a high-fat diet causes high cholesterol levels. Traditional saturated fats that come from nuts, seeds and grass fed animal fats actually improve the type and quantity of the cholesterol your body produces. It is the ubiquitous trans fats or hydrogenated fats that promote abnormal cholesterol.

Trans fats contribute to inflammation, depress the immune system, interfere with hormone production, and set up pathological conditions leading to cancer and heart disease, whereas saturated fats fight inflammation, support the immune system, support hormone production and protect against cancer and heart disease.

And the biggest source of abnormal cholesterol is not fat at all -- it's sugar, and worse, high fructose corn syrup. Sugar converts to fat in your body and high fructose corn syrup, which is present in sodas, many juices, and most processed foods, is the primary nutritional cause of most of the cholesterol issues. So the real concern isn't the amount of cholesterol you have, but the type of fats and sugar and refined carbohydrates in your diet that lead to abnormal cholesterol production.

Another concern is whether or not your cholesterol is rancid. Rancid or oxidized cholesterol (old and/or highly heated oils) trigger inflammation in the body which wear down the arteries and the poorly formed oxidated cholesterol from rancid oils that are sent sent to repair the vessels and cells start the build up of plaque in your arteries and reduce the function of every cell in the body. .

The second biggest cholesterol myth is that cholesterol causes heart attacks. But inflammation from rancid oils and trans-fats, blood sugar imbalances and insulin resistance that causes blood to thicken and clot are the key factors to heart disease.

DIETARY LIFESTYLE: excerpt from "Original Fast Foods - A Groundbreaking New Dietary Lifestyle Guide" by James & Colleen Simmons

ARTICLE: Overcoming Food Seductions

Through the use of concentrated sugars, fats, proteins, and artificial colors and flavorings, food scientists have perfected the art of keeping us coming back for unhealthful foods of all kinds. We become stimulated and enamored by the very foods known to most successfully promote heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and so forth.

The many refined and processed foods of today each stimulate the pleasure center of the brain. Nutrition is stripped during the processing and refining, and then harmful and disease promoting substances are added to foods which were once healthy in their nature and constitution.

A full 51% of the foods eaten in America today are processed and refined. As such, they are denatured foods lacking in real nutrition. Choices are made for the quickest source of pleasure rather than for nourishment. By including in foods substances such as sugar, fat, and animal-based products - that stimulate the pleasure center of the brain - food scientists can guarantee that we become addicted and that we are driven to consume more and more of what they produce. We choose a physical response in the brain, a release of dopamine, followed by pleasure rather than choosing true health and vitality. This cycle has led our nation to the highest rates of degenerative diseases in the world.

There are a few important steps that individuals must follow in their daily regimen in order to permanently overcome damaging food seductions.

1. Start each day with a good breakfast [Dr. Christopher recommended starting the day with fruit or soaked grains]. Stabilizing blood sugars is the first step to controlling and eliminating cravings.

2. Throughout the day include foods that steady your blood sugars. Fruits, green vegetables, and legumes (beans) help prevent blood sugar dips that can lead to cravings.

3. Eat at least 10 calories per pound of your ideal body weight. If you eat too little food, your body stops making leptin, a natural appetite-controlling hormone. Under normal circumstances, don't eat fewer than 1500 calories per day and never under 1200 calories per day, except when fasting.

4. Eliminating the intake of animal proteins and fats helps significantly to reduce hormone swings, which lead to cravings.****DUE TO HORMONES IN MEATS. HOWEVER, ORGANIC, GRASS FED ANIMALS HAVE GOOD QUALITY FATS. BONE BROTH IS ESPECIALLY GOOD.

5. Exercise moderately six days a week to build physical resilience. Include strength-building exercise such as lifting weights; include aerobic exercise such as bicycling, jogging, walking, and swimming; and include flexibility exercises to remain limber.

6. Go to bed early and obtain an adequate quantity of restful, undisturbed sleep each night.

7. Turn off the television and develop worthwhile hobbies and activities that take your mind away from food. Television is known to be a powerful trigger for one's appetite. The American Academy of Pediatrics has specifically associated childhood obesity with television viewing.

8. Plan ahead if you will be travelling or eating out. Most restaurants today accommodate a plant-based diet upon request.

9. Fast periodically, up to 24 hours once each week or month, if possible. Fasting from food helps to reset the body's natural preference for healthier foods.

10. Ask for the help and support of friends and family and find motivations to succeed (love, children, to live life fully, and to fulfill your important purposes on earth). Make it very powerful.

These suggestions may appear to be an over-simplification of the sensitive nature of food addictions, but they are not. They are powerful recommendations that are reliable and effective. Food seductions and pleasure releases are real. Recognizing the pleasure triggers in your life and intelligently working with them are required if you wish to achieve and maintain ideal health.

Detox

A good program begins with opening the bowels and the kidneys, includes a parasite cleanse, and strengthens the liver before flushing it. A good total length of a detox program is 4 - 6 weeks. Find 28 - 42 days from when you wish to begin, where you know you will be home for the final flush. Stay away from black and green tea, coffee, soda, chocolate and other sources of caffeine for the duration of the program.

You can purchase entire kits with herbs in covenient packages from www.chieneitsang.com or from http://www.drchristophersherbshop.com/index.html or you can create your own via teas (I always suggest teas over supplements; if you find a kit with supplements, you can make teas from them! Your body wants to taste and smell what it ingests so it knows how to respond appropriately.)

Detox begins with a bowel and kidney cleanse which continues throughout the four weeks. It is very important for the bowels and the kidneys to be clean of residues and in good working condition in order to be able to eliminate toxins and waste efficiently.

Kidney Cleanse Tea (weeks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), consisting of 1 part Hydrangea root, 1 part Gravel root, 1 part Marshmallow root. Or you can take your favorite kidney detox tea. Drink daily throughout the entire 4 week program.

Prepare tea before going to bed, putting one bag of the mix into 2 quarts cold water inside a non-metal container (such as an enamel pot or oven top pyrex glass pot) with lid. Heat to boiling point (but do not boil) and simmer for 20 minutes. Turn off heat, cover, and let sit for 6 hours or overnight. Bring to boiling point once again. Strain. Sip warm. You can sip the cup gradually throught the day.

Ginger is a root that has an affinity for the kidney. You can add it to your tea or your other foods.

Lower Bowel Formula (weeks 1,2,3,4, 5, 6): These herbs are included in Dr. Christopher's formula: Cascara Sagrada Bark, Barberry Bark, Cayenne Pepper, Ginger Root, Lobelia Herb, Red Raspberry Leaves, Turkey Rhubarb Root, Fennel Seeds & Goldenseal Root. Prepare the tea as you did the kidney cleanse tea, allowing these or other combination of herbs infuse overnight and drink the next day.

Seven-Vegetable Soup and/or Parsley Broth (weeks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) : Eat daily throughout the entire 4 week program. It is particularly recommended for weakened kidneys and an over-burdened liver. It is excellent for anytime you are sick or recovering from illness.

Seven-Vegetable Soup for 1 person for 1 week:

2 of each of the following: leek, turnip, carrot, small potato; 3 stalks of celery, leafy greens of turnip, lettuce, collard greens, mustard greens, etc. (but not cabbage or cabbage family, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, spinach or sorrel), 1 full bunch of parsley (replace with dandelion greens if pregnant or trying to become pregnant) chopped up and added at end.

Dice, rinse, cover with 2 quarts of water, salt to taste and cook until carrots are done. Turn off the heat and add the parsley. Puree and eat 1 cup as a side dish for supper, and refrigerate the remaining for the rest of the week.

Parsley Broth for 1 person: Put a cup of water in a small pot with enough fresh parsley (about 1/4 of a bunch) to saturate the water, just covering the parsley. Bring to a boil, reduce the flame, and let it simmer covered with a lid for 3 minutes. Throw away the parsley or puree and drink the soup.

Parasite Cleanse (5 days during week 1 and then once a week for weeks 2, 3, 4): It takes only 5 days consuming the parasite cleanse supplements to kill the intestinal fluke adults, eggs, miracidia, redia, cercaria and metacercaria, but continue to take a weekly maintenance program to kill any new parasites that may arise. You may feel after effects due to parasite die-off. Ammonia is a by-product of parasite die-off, and it is easily eliminated from the tissues through urea and is eventually excreted as urine. But the brain is unable to do this and some find that taking ornithine supplement (500 mg capsules) helps to "mop it up."

Black walnut tincture (2 tsp daily with water during the first week), wormwood (take dosage on label every day the first week with supper) and clove capsules (take dosage on label 3 times a day before meals every day with water), or your favorite parasite cleanse. For weeks 2, 3, & 4, take 2 teaspoons of black walnut hull tincture once a week, wormwood with dosage on label once a week, and cloves with dosage on label once a week.

Remember, parasites arise to eat congested material in the bowel, so continue to do self care during this cleanse to help your waste to flow.

Liver Strengthening Tea (weeks 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6): 6 parts comfrey root, 6 parts oak bark, 3 parts gravel root, 3 parts mullein, 3 parts marshmallow root, 3 parts walnut bark, 2 parts milk thistle, 2 parts licorice root, 2 parts wild yam root, 1 part lobelia. Mix together a large batch of the dried herbs and roots. If each part above is equal to 1 cup of dried herbs, you should have enough for the 4-6 weeks. Every 3 days, take 12 tablespoons of the mixture and prepare tea before going to bed by putting one into 6 cups cold water inside a non-metal container (such as an enamel pot or oven top Pyrex glass pot) with lid. Heat to boiling point (but do not boil) and simmer for 20 minutes. Turn off heat, cover, and let sit for 6 hours or overnight. Bring to boiling point once again. Strain. Drink 2 cups a day, refrigerating what remains and drink 2 cups each day.

Liver/Gallbladder Flush: The final phase. Choose a day for the cleanse when you will be able to rest that day and the next. On the second day you need to be near the toilet from breakfast to about supper time to eliminate. Don't take any herbs, vitamins or pills the day before and the next 2 days of the flush.

On day 1, eat a no-fat breakfast lunch such as cooked cereal with fruit, fruit juice, preserves or hone (no butter or milk, a baked potato or other vegetables with salt only. This allows the bile to build up and developo pressure in the liver to push out more stones.

Don't eat or drink after 2 pm. Make 4 services of 3/4 cup each by mixing 4 tbsps of Epsom salts in 3 cups water, and put in the refrigerator to get cold for taste.

At 6 pm, drink 3/4 cup of the Epsom salts water. You may drink a few mouthfuls of plain water afterwards or rinse your mouth out.

At 8 pm, drink another 3/4 cup of Epsom salts water. Get ready for bed because you will need to go to bed immediately after your 10 o'clock drink.

At 9:45 pm, squeeze a grapefruit by hand and remove any pulp. Try to make 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup. If not enough grapefruit juice, top off with lemon juice. Add to 1/2 cup olive oil and shake it until it turns watery (will only work with fresh grapefruit juice).

At 10:00 pm (TIMING IS CRITICAL - don't miss by more than 10 minutes), drink your grapefruit/olive oil mixture. Some like to drink through a large plastic straw to help it go down easier. Drink standing up and get it down within 5 minute (15 minutes if sick or ailing) and LIE DOWN IMMEDIATELY.

As soon as the drink is down and you lie down flat with your head up high on the pillow, keep perfectly still for at least 20 minutes. Put your hand over your liver/gallbladder area You may feel a trail of stones traveling along the bile ducts like marbles. You feel no pain because the bile duct valves are open due to Epsom Salts. Go to sleep.

Upon awakening, but not before 6 am, take your 3rd dose of Epsom salts water. If you have indigestion or nausea, wait until it is gone (suck on freshly cut ginger root or ginger candy) before drinking the Epsom salts water. You may go back to bed, because you need to wait another 2 hours to drink your 4th and final dose of Epsom salts water.

Wait another 2 hours and drink some fruit juice. Half an hour later, eat fruit. 1 hour later you may eat regular food but keep it light. Expect diarrhea in the morning, less in the afternoon and you should be done by dinnertime. By supper you should feel recovered.

When examining your stool, look for green gallstones. Bile from the liver is pea green and they will float because of the cholesterol inside.

A milder form of the flush is to drink 1 quart of organic pear juice a day for 3 days. It softens the bile and relaxes the duct and loosens it enough for the bile to pass.

The Five Tastes

Foods are classified by the five tastes: sweet, sour, bitter, salty and pungent. Each taste acts on or has direct influence on a specific vital organ. When each taste is consumed in moderation, it benefits the corresponding organ. Overindulgence in any taste harms the organ and creates imbalance among the five vital organ systems.

I	Taste	I	Sweet	Sour	Bitter	Salty	Pungent
	Acts on Organ		Spleen	Liver	Heart	Kidney	Lungs
	System
			Stomach	Gall	Small	Bladder	Large
				bladder	Intestine		Intestine

In the diet of a healthy person, the flavors should be balanced, with the sweet flavor of grains, vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds and fruit predominating and accompanied by small amounts of bitter, salty, pungent and sour foods.

Too much sweet food during breakfast can negatively affect your digestion. Don't eat anything sweet on an empty stomach including naturally "sweet" foods like bread and fruit. Eat a more complex food first. If you have an ongoing craving for sweets, eat more protein (Remember, proteins can be found in most all foods, including greens!) Complex foods help the pancreas back into balance, and ward off the sugar highs and lows.

Sweet cravings are an indication that your digestive system needs help. Sweet acts on the spleen and stomach helping digestion and neutralizing the toxic effects of other foods. It energizes as well as relaxes the body, nerves, and brain, and includes fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. Apples, grapes, figs, dates, strawberries, tomatoes, beets, cabbage, carrots, celery, cucumber, potato, lettuce, squash, sweet potato, yam, almonds, coconut, sesame seed, sunflower seed, walnut, rice syrup, barley malt, and honey.
Sour cravings indicate help is needed for liver/gall bladder. It functions as a solvent to breakdown fats and proteins, helps in digestion to dissolve minerals for better assimilation, and strengthens weakened lungs. Sour foods include lemons, limes, rose hips, sauerkraut, sour apple, sour plum, and some sour foods include a combination of tastes: vinegar (also bitter), leek (also pungent), aduki bean, apple, blackberry, mango, olive, raspberry, tomato, yogurt (also sweet).
Bitter acts on the heart and small intestine and reduces body heat and excessive fluids and induces diarrhea. Bitter foods include alfalfa, romaine lettuce, and rye. Some bitter foods include a combination of tastes: radish leaf, scallion, (also pungent), asparagus, amaranth, celery, lettuce, papaya, quinoa (also sweet), and vinegar (also sour).
Salty foods act on the kidneys and bladder, softening hardened lumps and stiffness and detoxifies the body. Salty foods include seaweeds and miso.
Pungent cravings indicate mucus build up in the lungs and large intestine. Pungent foods induce perspiration, disperse mucus, and promote energy circulation. Warming pungents include spearmint, rosemary, scallion, garlic, onions, ginger root, peppers, fennel, anise, dill, mustard greens, horseradish, basil and nutmeg. Cooling pungents include peppermint, marjoram, elder flowers, white pepper, radish and leaves.

Foods to Avoid

High-fructose corn syrup. This is a manufactured byproduct of corn which is a marker of poor-quality food, and may have more harmful effects on your health than regular sugar. Some high-fructose corn syrup contains mercury as a byproduct of the manufacturing process.
Trans Fats. These are vegetable oils converted through a chemical process into margarine or shortening. It is good for keeping cookies on the shelf for long periods of time without going stale, but these fats have been proven to cause heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. New York City has banned trans fats, and you should too.
Processed food, food additives, preservatives, and artificial sweeteners. The average person consumes pounds of these compounds every year. Aside from being harmful themselves, they bring with them many other poor quality ingredients. Stay away from the following:

Artificial Sweeteners - Aspartame (NutraSweet, Equal), saccharin (Sweet n'Low), sucralose (Splenda), acesulfame-K (Sunette, Sweet-n-Safe, Sweet One)
Sugar Alcohols- Poly-ols such as mannitol, sorbitol, lactitol, malitol, etc. These can cause significant gas and bloating.
Fat substitutes (Olean & Salatrim/Benefat)
Any food in a box, can, or package-in other words, if it has a label don't eat it. (There are a few exceptions like whole beans and sardines.)
Artificial colorings
Any food additives - Potassium bromate, propyl gallate, sodium nitrite, sodium nitrate, monosodium glutamate, etc.

DID YOU KNOW THAT: THE FAST-FOOD HAMBURGER come from a company called Beef Products that specializes in taking slaughterhouse trimmings—heads and hooves and the like—that are traditionally used only in pet food and cooking oil, and turning them into patties. The challenge is getting this byproduct meat clean enough for human consumption, as both E. coli and salmonella like to concentrate themselves in the fatty deposits.

The company has developed a process for killing beef-based pathogens by forcing the ground meat through pipes and exposing it to ammonia gas—the same chemical you might use to clean your bathroom. Not only has the USDA approved the process, but it's also allowed those who sell the beef to keep it hidden from their customers. At Beef Products’ behest, ammonia gas has been deemed a “processing agent” that need not be identified on nutrition labels. A single beef patty can consist of cobbled-together pieces from different cows from all over the world—a practice that only increases the odds of contamination.

THE IMPORTANCE OF READING LABELS: BETTY CROCKER'S BAC-O BITS
Bac-Os are mostly soybeans. The bulk of each Bac-O is formed by tiny clumps of soy flour bound with trans-fatty, partially hydrogenated soybean oil and laced with artificial coloring, salt, and sugar. The result is a product that’s actually less healthy for your heart than the real thing!

PREMADE GUACAMOLE: Most guacamoles with the word “dip” attached to the label suffer from a lack of real avocado. Dean’s Guacamole, for example, is composed of less than 2 percent avocado; the rest is a cluster of fillers and chemicals, including modified food starch, soybean oils, locust bean gum, and food coloring. Dean’s is not alone in this offense.

FRUIT ON THE BOTTOM YOGURT
IThe fruit is swimming in thick syrup—so much of it, in fact, that high-fructose corn syrup (and other such sweeteners) often shows up on the ingredients list well before the fruit itself. And these low-quality refined carbohydrates are the last thing you want for breakfast—Australian researchers found that people whose diets were high in carbohydrates had lower metabolisms than those who ate proportionally more protein. Not to mention, spikes in your blood sugar can wreck your short-term memory, according to a study in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Plain Greek-style yogurt, mixed with real blueberries. We like Oikos and Fage brands—they’re jacked with about 15 to 22 grams of belly-filling protein, so they’ll help you feel satisfied for longer. And blueberries are another great morning add—scientists in New Zealand found that when they fed blueberries to mice, the rodents ate 9 percent less at their next meal.

TURKEY BACON
The difference between “healthy” turkey bacon calories and “fatty” pig calories is negligible—and depending on the slice, turkey might sometimes tip the scales a touch more. Additionally, while turkey is indeed a leaner meat, turkey bacon isn’t made from 100 percent bird: One look at the ingredients list will show a long line of suspicious additives and extras that can’t possibly add anything of nutritional value. And finally, the sodium content of the turkey bacon is actually higher than what you’ll find in the kind that oinks—so if you’re worried about your blood pressure, opting for the original version is usually the smarter move.

REDUCED-FAT PEANUT BUTTER
A tub of reduced-fat peanut butter indeed comes with a fraction less fat than the full-fat variety—they’re not lying about that. But what the food companies don’t tell you is that peanut oil—the fat in peanut butter—is a heart-healthy monounsaturated fat that can actually help fight weight gain, heart disease and diabetes! Instead, they’ve tried to cash in on the “low-fat” craze by replacing that healthy fat with maltodextrin, a carbohydrate used as a filler in many processed foods. This means you’re trading the healthy fat from peanuts for empty carbs, double the sugar, and a savings of a meager 10 calories.

Mucusless Diet

An essential step to healing the body is to eliminate the mucus-forming foods from the diet, so as not to put mucus into the body faster than it can be taken out or eliminated. With this preventative procedure, not only are the sinuses, the bronchi, and the lungs cleared, but also the constipating mucus (catarrh) in the tissues of the body from the heart to the bottom of the feet.

Items to Eliminate:
The following food (secondary, denaturized, or inorganic) substances are to be eliminated from the individual's diet:

Salt:
For those who are accustomed to large amounts of salt, this may sound difficult, but if you will substitute coarsely ground pepper and savory herbs, adding powdered kelp, you will find that the craving for salt will immediately begin to disappear. Black pepper is a good nutritional herb and helps rebuild the body when used in its natural state. But when pepper is cooked in food, the molecular structure changes, so that it becomes an inorganic irritant (as high heat changes cayenne, black pepper, and spices from organic to inorganic), and this is the only time when damage results. The use of salts that are of a vegetable or potassium base (such as Dr. Jensen's, Dr. Browner's, and other various ones, which in some cases contain some sea salt) is all right, providing it is not overdone.

Eggs:
No eggs should be eaten in any form. (mucus forming)

Sugar and all sugar products:
You may use honey, sorghum molasses or blackstrap molasses, but no sugar of any type.

Meat:
Eliminate all meats from the diet. A little white fish once a week, or a bit of young chicken that has not been fed commercial food or inoculated with formaldehyde and other antispoilage serums, would be all right (as these are the higher forms of edible flesh), but do not use them too often. (mucus forming)

Milk:
Eliminate all dairy products: butter, cheese, cottage cheese, milk, yogurt, etc. These are all mucus-forming substances and in most cases, are extremely high in cholesterol (especially butter). As a substitute for butter or margarine (hardened vegetable oils, etc.), you can train your taste buds to enjoy a good, fresh, bland olive oil on vegetables, salads, and basic meals.

Flour and Flour Products:
Flour is eliminated because, when heated and baked at high temperatures, it changes to a mucus-forming substance. It has no more life. All wholesome food is organic, where unwholesome food is dead and inorganic.

These are our "don't," and now for the "do's."

Supplements: Revitalizing and healing aids.
Our supplemental recommendations will build up strength in the body and start cutting the mucus out of the tissues and remove the catarrh (mucus) from the system.

Cayenne:
Take 1 teaspoonful (or 2 capsules) of cayenne 3 times a day. Start gradually with 1/4 teaspoonful in a little cold water; drink this and follow with a glass of cold water. Add 1/4 teaspoonful to this dosage every 3 days, until you are taking 1 teaspoonful 3 times a day (the graduated dosages will accustom your system to the pungency of the herb).

Honey and Apple-Cider Vinegar:
Place 1 tablespoonful of honey and 1 tablespoonful of vinegar in warm water, so that the honey will liquefy. Sip this amount 3 times a day so that at the end of the day a total quantity of 3 tablespoonfuls are consumed. This must be apple cider vinegar; do not use malts or other types of vinegars, as these are damaging to the body. The apple cider vinegar is medicinal and very beneficial.

Kelp:
Each patient should use between 10 to 15 kelp capsules daily, if there is any indication of a thyroid problem; otherwise, 2 or more will keep the body in good condition as preventative nutrition. This can take the place of salt and helps build a new thyroid gland. Kelp powder can be used on salads and in other ways.

Molasses:
Take 1 tablespoonful 3 times a day of either sorghum or blackstrap molasses.

Wheat Germ Oil:
Take 1 tablespoonful of a good, fresh wheat germ oil three times a day

Mono Diet

Whenever there are strong digestive symptoms such as a swollen abdomen, digestive cramps or pain, hiatus hernia, weight gain or extreme gas, and it is not possible to do a water or juice fast, the mono diet gives great results within one month. This diet provides the digestive system with a rest from having to digest complicated combinations of food, enabling the body to focus on healing.

Choose one food at a time for each meal – a fruit, vegetable or a grain. Choose a variety of foods and eat as much of that food as you like. Take a meal as often as required, several times a day if desired, as long as they are at least one hour apart, to allow time to completely digest each food.

Use only cold pressed oils, lemon, apple cider vinegar, or Cayenne pepper to improve the flavor and assist digestion. Foods can be taken raw, steamed or baked depending on the season, individual energy requirements, what digests most easily and individual preferences.

It is important to take regular snacks during the day to provide the required nourishment, but don’t eat continuously, as this will not allow proper digestion of each meal or snack. Snack ideas include dried fruit, seed and nut mixes, raisins, currants, and dates. Soaking seeds and nuts until they sprout washes off the natural enzyme inhibitors and provides the enzymes needed to digest them.

Foods which cause any discomfort should be eliminated from the diet for at least 3 months. After taking each food, note the results: do you feel light or heavy, alert or sleepy, satisfied or still hungry. As the month progresses it becomes clear which foods digest well and which foods cause reactions.

To alkalinize the body, drink apple cider vinegar. Apple cider vinegar doesn’t actually alkalinize the body, but provides the essential alkaline reserves such as phosphorous, potassium, magnesium, calcium, iron and trace elements that can be drawn on to alkalinize the blood. It also provides acetic acid, ion-futynic lactic acid and propionic acid, which boosts the immune system and has an antiseptic and antibiotic action that neutralizes toxic substances that enter the body. It also has vitamins and is a rich source of amino acids. Apple cider vinegar detoxifies and purifies the body by breaking down fatty, mucous and phlegm deposits in the body. It also oxidizes and thins the blood, keeps the urine from being too alkaline, and promotes digestion, assimilation and elimination.

Apple cider vinegar is rich in potassium which has been found to be helpful in easing the effects of common colds and allergies, including mucous formation, watery eyes, sinus and catarrhal problem. Symptoms of potassium deficiency are tooth decay, splitting of the fingernails, hair loss, and callous formations on the souls of the feet.

Acidity comes about from eating too many acidic foods, such as animal products (meat, dairy, eggs), salt, cereal, coffee, sodas, and alcohol. Smoking is very acid producing.

Physical exercise acidifies the blood with lactic acid. Deep breathing exercises alkalize the blood.

FREQUENT SIGNS & SYMPTOMS of an over acid body

1. Frequent sighing

2. Insomnia.

3. Water retention.

4. Recessed eyes.

5. Rheumatoid arthritis.

6. Migraine headaches.

7. Abnormally low blood pressure (hypotension).

8. Dry hard stools.

9. Foul-smelling stools accompanied by burning sensation in the anus.

10. Alternating constipation and diarrhea.

11. Difficulty in swallowing.

12. Burning in the mouth and/or under the tongue.

13. Sensitivity of the teeth to vinegar and acidic fruits.

14. Bumps on the tongue or the roof of the mouth.

The Page Fundamental Diet Plan

This diet plan is designed to assist your body in its ability to create and maintain “balanced body chemistry ”. Dr. Melvin Page’s Phase 1 and Phase 2 diet is essential to control blood sugar imbalances as well as all other types of imbalanced body chemistry. At the Page Clinic, blood chemistry panels were done every three to four days on all patients and the diet plan was proven true when blood chemistry panels of thousands of his patients normalized without any other intervention. Dr. Page based his diet plan on the research of Drs. Price and Pottenger, who showed the relationship of diet to health, both physical and emotional. Many of today’s popular diets are based on Dr. Page’s work.

Dr. Page emphasized removing refined carbohydrates (such as sugar and processed flour) and cow’s milk from the diet. Dr. Page felt that it was not only important to eat quality proteins and fats, but quality carbohydrates as well. The longer you are on this diet and the more closely you follow it, the easier it will be to stick to it. This will result in your feeling and looking so much better than you did on your old way of eating. As you become healthier, your cravings for those foods which are not the best choices for you will actually diminish. Old habits are hard to break though, so take your time in changing your diet habits so that you don’t slip back into your old way of eating. However, if this happens, let me know as soon as possible so I can assist you in determining what is upsetting your body chemistry. Nutritional supplements may be needed to assist you to get back on track by reducing cravings.

Foods to Eat and Not Eat

1. Proteins: Eat small amounts of proteins frequently. It is best if you have some protein at each meal. It need not be a large amount at any one time, in fact it is best if you stick to smaller amounts (2 – 4 ounces of meat, nuts, fish, foul, or eggs at a time). Both animal and vegetarian sources of protein are beneficial. All vegetables contain protein, and while Dr. Page did not concentrate on this, please feel free to adapt and not be tied to eating animal sources of protein as he suggests. Plant foods contain the same eight amino acids as animal foods do, only in differing amounts. As long as you are getting enough calories from a healthy diet, plant foods give you all the amino acids you need, by themselves or in combination with one another.

Foods listed below are considered complete proteins, meaning they contain all of the essential amino acids: (from http://www.naturodoc.com/library/nutrition/protein.htm)

Nuts
Sprouted seeds -- each type of sprout has differing proportions of nutrients, so it's best to eat a variety of them
Grains, especially amaranth and quinoa, are highest in protein and are high-quality proteins
Beans and legumes, especially when eaten raw
Spirulina and chorella (blue-green algae), which are over 60 percent protein

Common Sources of Essential Amino Acids

Histidine: Apple, pomogranates, alfalfa, beets, carrots, celery, cucumber, dandelion, endive, garlic, radish, spinach, turnip greens.

Arginine: Alfalfa, beets, carrots, celery, cucumbers, green vegetables, leeks, lettuce, potatoes, radishes, parsnips, nutritional yeast.

Valine: Apples, almonds, pomegranates, beets, carrots, celery, dandelion greens, lettuce, okra, parsley, parsnips, squash, tomatoes, turnips, nutritional yeast.

Tryptophan: Alfalfa, brussel sprouts, carrots, celery, chives, dandelion greens, endive, fennel, snap beans, spinach, turnips, nutritional yeast.

Threnoine: Papayas, alfalfa sprouts, carrots, green leafy vegetables such as celery, collards, kale, and lettuce (especially iceberg), lima beans, laver (Nori -- a sea vegetable).

Phenylalanine: Apples, pineapples, beets, carrots, parsley, spinach, tomatoes, nutritional yeast.

Methionine: Apples, pineapples, Brazil nuts, filberts, brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, chives, dock (sorrel), garlic, horseradish, kale, watercress.

Lysine: Apples, apricots, grapes, papayas, pears, alfalfa, beets, carrots, celery, cucumber, dandelion greens, parsley, spinach, turnip greens.

Leucine: Avocados, papayas, olives, coconut, sunflower seeds.

Isoleucine: Avocados, papayas, olives, coconut, sunflower seeds.

If choosing meat, choose a variety of meat products and try to find the healthiest options available, i.e. free range, antibiotic free and/or organic, whenever possible.Eat the whole egg, the lecithin in the yolk is essential to lower blood fat and improve liver and brain function. With any protein, the way in which you prepare it is critical. The closer to raw or rare the better. Remember, any time meats and vegetables are heated over 110° Fahrenheit, crucial enzymes are damaged and lost. Avoid frying. Grilled, boiled, steamed, soft boiled, or poached is best. I have also read that marinating meat in beer or wine 3-6 hours before cooking helps to reduce the cancer causing compounds on grilled, pan-fried or broiled meat. . Chemicals called heterocyclic amines (HAs), thought to increase cancer risk, are created when meats are grilled, broiled or pan-fried at high temperature or to "well done." Researchers marinated beef samples in beer or red wine for up to six hours before pan-frying, then compared HA levels to un-marinated control samples. Levels of potential carcinogens were reduced 88% in the beer-marinated beef and 40% in the wine batch. A tasting panel found the beer-marinated steaks as good as regular beef, while the wine-soaked steaks scored lower; marinating for longer than two hours had negative effects on odor, color and overall quality.—Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry

2. Vegetables: Eat more, more, more!!! This is the one area where most everyone can improve their diet, and it is an especially important area for you. Always look for a variety, although make the green leafy type your preference. This includes spinach, chard, beet greens, kale, broccoli, mustard greens, etc.. As stated above for proteins, the quality of your produce (fresh and organic preferred) and the method of preparation is critical. Raw is preferred with lightly steamed or sautéed as your second choice for all vegetables. Use only butter or olive oil to sauté. When eating salads, try not to eat iceberg lettuce, rather use lettuces with a rich green color, sprouts and raw nuts. Don’t make salads your only choice for veggies.

3. Fruits: Most people wrongly try to drink their fruits. Fruit juice is loaded with the simple sugar fructose, which is shunted into forming triglycerides and ultimately stored as fat. Without the fiber in the fruit, juice sends a rapid burst of fructose into the blood stream. When you do eat fruit, only eat one type of fruit at a time on an empty stomach; second, avoid the sweetest fruits/tropical fruits, except papaya which is very rich in digestive enzymes (fruits from colder climates are preferred); and third, eat only the highest quality, fresh and organic when possible.

4. Carbohydrates: This is a very tricky area. Most people have one classification for carbohydrates when in reality there are really 3 different types – complex, simple, and processed. Unfortunately, for most people suffering with imbalance problems, almost any carbohydrate is a no-no. Craving carbohydrates is a symptom of an imbalance, so you can use this craving to monitor your progress. Overall, eat vegetables as your carbohydrate choice and limit grains (even the whole grains can be trouble). When you do eat whole grains, only have them in moderation, and only at dinner. If you start the day with carbohydrates, you are more likely to crave them throughout the day, and then you'll eat more and it's down hill from there. Absolutely stay away from white breads (100% rye bread is the least of the evils), muffins, cookies, candies, crackers, pastas, white rice and most baked goods.
There's another dark side to processed carbohydrates that isn't talked about much – the connection to weight gain, elevated cholesterol and triglycerides, heart disease, and cancer.

5.Wheat and Grains: There has been a tremendous amount of debate regarding grains. Whole unprocessed grains can be rich sources of vitamins and minerals, but with soil depletion and the special strains of grain that modern agriculture had developed, it isn't clear what nutrients remain. The two predominantly used grains in this country are genetically engineered and have 5 times the gluten content and only 1/3 of the protein content
of the original wheat from which they were derived. This high gluten content is to blame for many people's allergic reactions. When scholars have studied disease patterns and the decline of various civilizations, many of the degenerative diseases developed when cultivation of grains became a major part of their diet. Chemicals naturally found in certain grains, lack of the appropriate enzymes, and the carbohydrate content of grains make them a source of trouble for many individuals. Our opinion at this time is to minimize grains such as wheat and
barley. Unprocessed rye, rolled oats, and brown rice can be considered on occasion to give you more variety, as well as some of the Danish and German brown breads like pumpernickel.

Sweeteners: Use only a small amount of raw Tupelo honey or Stevia as sweetener. Absolutely NO Nutra- Sweet®, corn syrup, or table sugar. Although Dr. Page did not allow raw cane sugar, it does provide the nutrients to aid in its metabolism. If you cheat, be smart and use only small amounts with a meal.

6. Fats: The bad news is you probably do not get enough of the right fats in your diet. So, please use olive oil (cold pressed, extra virgin), walnut oil, flax seed and grapeseed oils. These are all actually beneficial, as long as they are cold-pressed. When cooking use only raw butter, and olive oil - they are the only two oils safe to cook with. Avoid all hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated fats! They are poisons to your system! Never eat margarine again! Also, avoid peanut butter. Eat all the avocados and raw nuts you desire.
If you think eating fat will make you fat, think again. When you eat fat, a chemical signal is sent to your brain to slow down the movement of food out of your stomach. As a result, you feel full. It is not surprising that recent research is showing that those who eat “fat-free” products tend to actually consume more calories than those who eat foods that have not had their fat content reduced (low fat usually means high sugar/high calories).
In addition, fats are used not only for energy, but also for building the membrane around every single cell in your body. Fats also play a role in the formation of hormones, which of course make you feel and function well. It is far worse to be hormone depleted from a low fat diet than it is to over eat fat. The sickest people we see are the ones who have been on a fat-free diet for a long period of time. Like carbohydrates, choose your fats wisely – this program is not suggesting fried or processed foods.

7. Milk Products: Forget pasteurized cow milk products (milk, certain cheeses, sour cream, half & half, ice cream, cottage cheese and yogurt). Dr. Page found out that milk was actually more detrimental than sugar for many people (man is the only mammal that continues to drink milk after weaning). Avoiding dairy will make it much easier for you to attain your optimal level of health and hormonal balance. Raw butter and Kefir (liquid yogurt), however, are excellent sources of essential nutrients and vitamins. Raw goat and sheep cheeses and milk
products are great alternatives because their genetic code and fat content is apparently more like humans. Still be cautious with these, however.
There has been a lot of hype about using soy milk and rice milk to replace dairy. While they sound like healthy alternatives, what they really are is highly processed foods that are primarily simple carbohydrates. You're better off doing without these as well. Of course Vitamite®, Mocha Mix®, and the other dairy substitutes are highly-processed nutrient-depleted products that honestly should not be considered a food.

8. Liquids: Water is best, minimum one gallon a day, and herbal tea. Avoid all soda. No coffee until you are fully recovered, if then. Fruit juices are forbidden because of their high fructose content and dumping of sugar into the blood stream. An occasional small glass of vegetable juice with a meal is probably okay, BUT water really is best.

If you enjoy wine or beer drink only with meals, use occasional rather than regularly. Alcohol is a toxin that taxes the liver, so be kind. Because coffee and alcohol force you to lose water, you’ll have to drink more water to compensate.

The most important life-giving substance in the body is water. The concentration of water in your brain has been estimated to be 85% and the water content of your tissues like your liver, kidney, muscle, heart, intestines, etc. are 75% water. The concentration of water outside of the cells is about 94%. That means that water wants to move from the outside of the cell (dilute) into the cell (more concentrated) to balance out things. The urge water has to move is called hydroelectric power. The energy made in your body is in part hydroelectric. The daily routine of the body depends on a turnover of about 40,000 glasses of water per day. In the process, your body loses a minimum of 6 glasses per day, even if you don’t do anything. With movement, exercise, and sugar intake, etc., you can require up to over 15 glasses of water per day.

Eat Smaller Amounts More Frequently

Eating a smaller amount reduces the stress of digestion on your energy supply by conserving energy. Give your energy generator a chance to keep up with digestion by not overwhelming it with a large meal (the average meal time in the United States is 15 minutes. In Europe the average meal time is 1 to1 ½ hours.). When digestion is impaired, yeast overgrowth, gas, inflammation, food reactions, etc. are the result.

Another reason for eating smaller meals is to prevent the ups and downs of your blood sugar level, so you end up craving less sugar. Since the body will not (or should not) allow the blood sugar level to get too high, insulin and other hormones are secreted to lower the blood sugar. Often times, the insulin response is too strong and within a short period of time insulin has driven the blood sugar level down. As a result of low blood sugar, you get a powerful craving for sugar or other carbohydrates. You then usually overeat, and the cycle of ups and downs, yo-yo blood sugar results (depression and the lack of energy are all part of this cycle). Eating a small meal again will virtually stop this cycle.

Eating smaller meals also has advantages for your immune response to ingested food. A small amount of food you eat may enter the blood without first going through the normal digestive pathway through the liver. As a result, this food is seen by the body not as nourishment but as a threat and you will stimulate an immune reaction. Normally, a small immune reaction is not even noticed, but if a large amount of food is eaten (or if a food is eaten over and over again), the immune system is activated and could cause many symptoms of an activated immune system including fatigue, joint aches, flu-like symptoms, headaches, etc.. Over time, disease develops. This reaction was called the Metabolic Rejectivity Syndrome by the late nutritional pioneer Arthur L. Kaslow, M.D. Through thousands of his patient’s food diaries, he compiled a list of high risk foods which is much the same as Dr. Page’s.

Important Note: When in doubt, don’t eat it. If it isn't on the list, wait and ask on your next visit, or email me. The Page diet plan is designed to help you to optimal health. It is not intended to make you suffer or sacrifice, in fact quite the opposite, as you will be delighted with the physical and emotional improvements you experience from the food your body was designed to run optimally on. And what you eat or drink at the occasional party or evening out is not going to be significantly harmful to your nutritional balance in the long run, so you can enjoy it.

Lastly, as with all things that are beneficial to your health, it’s hard to start, but the longer you use this diet, the greater the benefits you will realize from it. Relax, and enjoy the benefits!!!
Each of your meals must include some protein. An easy way to calculate the amount of protein you need is to divide your ideal body weight by 15 to get the number of ounces of protein to be consumed per day. This is not a "high protein diet". Like many people, you already eat this much protein during a day, but you eat it mostly in1 or 2 meals instead of spreading
it out evenly over 3-5 meals. If you are more physically active, eat more protein.

90 lb. IBW = 6 ounces a day or 1 ¾ - 2 ounces of protein per serving.
105 lb. IBW = 7 ounces a day or 1 ¾ - 2 1/3 ounces of protein per serving.
120 lb. IBW = 8 ounces a day or 2 – 2 ¾ ounces of protein per serving.
135 lb. IBW = 9 ounces a day or 2 ½ - 3 ounces of protein per serving.
150 lb. IBW = 10 ounces a day or 3 – 3 1/3 ounces of protein per serving.
165 lb. IBW = 11 ounces a day or 3 1/3 – 3 ¾ ounces of protein per serving.
180 lb. IBW = 12 ounces a day or 3 ¾ - 4 ounces of protein per serving.
195 lb. IBW = 13 ounces a day or 4 – 4 1/3 ounces of protein per serving.
For more information regarding the Page Food Plan and other books by Dr. Page, including Health vs. Disease, and other works by such nutritional pioneers as Dr. Weston Price, Dr. Francis Pottenger, and Dr. Royal Lee, please contact:
International Foundation for Nutrition and Health
3963 Mission Blvd.
San Diego, CA 92109
Ph (858) 488-8932 Fax (858) 488-2566

FOODS EATEN CLOSEST TO THEIR RAW STATE HAVE THE BEST DIGESTIVE
ENZYME ABILITY.

TAKE FLUIDS MORE THAN ONE HOUR BEFORE OR MORE THAN TWO HOURS
AFTER MEALS.

LIMIT FLUID INTAKE WITH MEALS TO NO MORE THAN 4 OZ.

NO PROCESSED GRAINS, WHITE FLOUR, SUGAR, SUGAR SUBSTITUTES.

http://www.ifnh.org/Page%20Food%20Plan.PDF

NOURISHING TRADITIONS SYNOPSIS PART I

One study that I was quite impressed with was a study done by Dr. Westin Price, a dentist in the 1930’s who was concerned about the degenerative changes he noticed in his patients and their children over a period of 10 – 20 years. His patients began to have a large amount of dental caries and their children’s jaws did not provide sufficient space for their teeth. He also saw that besides crooked and crowded teeth, the deformed bone structure in the head and body compromised the master endocrine glands in the head, as well as the posture, eyesight, hearing, and organ function. The same narrowing of the skull was mirrored in the pelvis, and the round pelvic opening narrowed to an oval, hindering childbirth.

This was in 1932! He didn’t try to study what his patients were eating, but decided to go in search of cultures that didn’t have these problems and investigate their diets. He already knew what unhealthy people ate, so he traveled to remote areas of the world that did not have access to food other that what they had grown themselves. He took photographs, counted cavities, noted dental deformities and published his findings in various dental and medical journals, as well as published a book entitled Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. The Westin Price Foundation has put together an informative presentation that reveals the information of this book along with current research. The following information is gleaned from it (and mostly directly copied). You can visit their website www.westinapricefoundation.org for the complete presentation and much powerful information.

The first place he investigated was the Loetschental Valley, a very remote valley in Switzerland that could only be accessed on foot (the paths were too narrow even for a wheeled cart) and the only food imported was salt. He found that these villagers had less than 1% tooth decay and every child and adult in the village had broad faces, straight teeth and all the adults had their wisdom teeth. They had never seen a tooth brush and their teeth were covered with green slime but they had virtually no cavities. He also found that there had never been a case of tuberculosis in this village even though this was a time when tuberculosis was raging throughout the rest of Switzerland.

The number one food in the diet was the very food that was blamed for causing the epidemic of tuberculosis throughout the rest of Switzerland and the world: raw milk. They kept cattle and goats that grazed on pastures and their diet consisted of raw milk, raw cheese, raw cream and raw butter. They grew their own rye and made a very dense sour dough rye bread that was cured (fermented) for 2 weeks, ate meat (they ate the whole animal including the organ meats and used the bones to make soup) about once a week, and ate some vegetables during the short summer months.

Dr. Price observed that every isolated culture had one or more sacred foods considered important for pregnant women and growing children. The sacred food in the Swiss village was the butter that came from the cows when they first went out to pasture in the spring. The butter was a deep orange color and they had a ceremony in which they lit a wick in a bowl of butter on their alters to honor butter’s life-giving force.

Dr. Price also visited nearby villages that had stores that sold sugar, white flour, jams and jellies, canned condensed milk, canned foods and vegetable oils. The people no longer drank raw milk because the farmers sold their milk to the chocolate factories. If the store had been there for a few years, he found 1 in every 3 teeth was decayed. In villages that had a store between 10-20 years, the children of parents who ate the store bought foods had overlapping, crowded and crooked teeth, their faces were narrower, and tuberculosis was a huge problem.

Off the coast of Scotland on a remote island that was windy and foggy most of the year, Dr. Price found a community that had no animals, fruits, or vegetables. Their diet consisted of seafood, seaweed and oats that they grew and made into porridge and oak cakes. There was virtually no tooth decay and he noted that these people were especially cheerful and spiritual. Their sacred food was cod’s head stuffed with oats and chopped cod liver. They lived in cottages that had no chimneys and the thatch that was blackened from smoke during the winter was used on the fields in spring to get a good crop of oats.

Health officials had convinced people on nearby islands to put chimneys in because they believed that the smoke filled environments were making them susceptible to tuberculosis. Because they no longer had nutrient dense thatch to put on their fields, they couldn’t grow oats and they bought their food from the stores. These populations had both tooth decay and tuberculosis.

In the remote villages of Alaska, Dr. Price observed beautiful teeth and babies who rarely cried unless they were hurt. Many of the Eskimos had worn down or even missing teeth because they chewed on leather to make their clothes but even the worn down teeth had no cavities and none had dental deformities. Dr. Romeg, who had lived for 30 years among the Eskimos, told Dr. Price that he had never seen a case of cancer, heart disease or any condition requiring an operation. He also said that Eskimos who had left and contacted TB or other serious diseases recovered when they returned to their ancestral village and their way of life and eating. The primitive Eskimo women gave birth with ease but the ones living in town and eating modern food had great difficulty in child birth.

In the ancestral villages of the Eskimo, 80% of the total calories came from the fat of seals. The Eskimos used it to cook, store, and preserve their foods – as well as for dipping at meal time. They ate fish that was allowed to ferment until it became soft and slightly rancid, as well as lots of game animals. They never ate lean muscle meat unless they spread it with the fat from the animal, and ate mostly the nutrient dense organ meats, particularly the stomach and intestines of the animal. There were very few plant foods in their diet. Their sacred food was salmon roe which they dried so they could have year round “so we can have healthy babies.”

Dr. Price was only able to find Native Americans who weren’t living on reservations and eating processed foods in northern Canada. Still living as their ancestors had lived, they consumed the foods of the land, mostly game, and especially the organ meats. They considered lean meat dangerous and did not eat it without animal fat. When hunting was good, they threw the muscle meat away and ate only the brain, tongue, marrow (the fattiest organs) and fat. These people had wide faces and beautiful teeth.

Indians are thought to be mostly lactose-intolerant but he found Mohawks located on a reservation in Canada who kept a dairy herd and drank raw milk. They had no problems from these grass-fed cows. Milk from grass fed cows has many of the factors that are in organ meats and fats. Their consumption of sugar and white flour were limited and these Indians remained healthy.

Dr. Price found that South Sea islanders ate a lot of plant food—fruits, tubers, vegetables and coconuts, but the basis of their diet was octopus, shell fish and fish. They had pigs and ate the whole pig including the organ meats, the fat and the skin. Heavy people were considered beautiful so they ate a lot of carbohydrates (tubers). Their sacred foods were the sex organs of the fish and shark. The men ate the male organs and the women ate the female organs. These people who ate traditionally were healthy but on the islands where there were trading posts or missions, and the people ate foods from stores, Dr. Price found toothy decay, TB and cancer.

The aboriginal diet had a lot of variety, including fruits, vegetables, grains and legumes. The grains and legumes were placed in leaching baskets in a running stream for 2 weeks and then prepared them by roasting, pounding and cooking. But their diet was still based on animal foods. They hunted animals when they would be most fat. They also ate insects that contained a lot of fat.

In Africa, Dr. Price visited 7 tribes, with 100 or more in each tribe, and didn’t find a single cavity or dental deformity, even in the tribes that had a custom of filing their teeth. He got to compare 3 different diets practiced by the same racial group. The diet of the cattle-herding people consisted of milk, meat and blood. Scientists also studied these people and found that they had very low levels of cholesterol and no heart disease. Those that did not raise cattle hunted game and fished and included a lot of plant foods in their diet: vegetables, fruit and grain. Their sacred food was liver, both raw and cooked. The third group’s diet was largely based on plant foods they grew, such as corn, beans, and squash, and about 10% of their diet consisted of insects.

Comparing all three groups he found that the hunters with the mixed diet were the healthiest and had a more proportioned and stronger body. Both of the first two groups had no cavities, but the agriculturists, who were shorter and heavier than the first two, suffered from 6% tooth decay and some of the elderly were toothless. He found also that once these tribes started on the modern diet, there was a severe narrowing of the face, and tooth decay and dental deformities showed up in just one generation.

Everywhere that Dr. Price went he found the same pattern. The people who ate traditional nutrient dense diets were healthy, content and had wide faces with uncrowded and beautiful teeth. Those that ate modern foods had within one generation a narrowing of the face and dental deformities.

The biggest argument that I hear out there is we are all living much longer. But are we really? And what is the quality of that long life? There were no records of the average life span of these people that Dr. Price met with but many claimed to be 90-100 years and older. They lived useful lives and played important roles as sages and teachers. The children rarely cried and the population was content and happy. The real sadness is that people have forgotten that a healthy body can give us contentedness and happiness – it’s not more money and things that we need.

We are in our third and fourth generation in this country on a deficient diet. In the animal studies of Francis Pottenger and others, animals fed deficient diets get the narrowing of the palate and a softening of the bones by the next generation. They get modern disease, parasites, and behavior problems, with the females becoming more aggressive and the males more docile. By the third or fourth generation reproduction ceases because the young do not reach adulthood or the adults do not breed.

Right now we are seeing about 25% infertility among couples and an incredible amount of chronic disease and behavioral problems in our country. When the facial bones don’t develop as they should, this causes the various openings that allow nerve cells and blood vessels to go to and from the head to be crowded so the brain is not as well oxygenated as it could be. The pelvic bones also narrow and increase the difficulty of childbirth.

All the diets were so varied – what were the common characteristics of these healthy traditional diets?

#1 No refined or denatured foods! Compared to the time when Dr. Price was seeing the changes in facial structure and tooth decay, we have much more refined and denatured products. In the 1930’s there was only refined sugar, white flour, vegetable oils, canned foods, and condensed milk. Today we have all these PLUS high fructose corn syrup, pasteurized milk, skim and low fat milk, hydrogenated fats, isolated protein powders, and a slew of additives.

When grains are processed into white flour, most of the vitamins and minerals are removed.

Pasteurized and reduced-fat milks are not whole: vital nutrients have been damaged or removed.

Refined vegetable oils and hydrogenated fats are new to our bodies and are not easily digestible .

Isolated protein powders are separated from the components our bodies need to assimilate them and are denatured by high temperature processing.

There are over 2000 additives in use in our food today and the effects of additives are additive – they build up in the body. When you feed many different additives in the “safe” range to rats they die.

#2 Every diet contained animal products. Dr. Price had hoped to find a healthy population living entirely on plant foods but he didn’t find one. Primitive people expended a great deal of energy and considerable risk to obtain animal foods. He found that the population that had access to fish and shellfish from the sea had the thickest skulls and best bone structure, but diets that included the fat, organ meats, milk and eggs were also very healthy.

#3 Primitive diets contained 4 times the calcium and other minerals and 10 times the fat-soluble vitamins as the modern (1930) American diet. These nutrients are necessary for health:

a) Vitamins A & D: These fat-soluble vitamins (A&D) are obtained directly from animals and animal products, such as insects, fish, fish eggs, fish liver and fish liver oils, shellfish, liver, organ meats, butter and cream, the fat of birds such as ducks and geese and the fat of mono-gastric (one stomach) animals such as bear, pig or Guinea pig, and the organ meats of poly-gastric cows, sheep and goats (mono-gastric animals store vitamins A & D in their fat and poly-gastric animals store them in their organs and milk). But these animals need to be on pasture in the sunlight and eating green grass. Once these animals are confined, given hay and dry feed, the vitamins are greatly reduced.

You can get vitamin D from the sun, but it requires UV-B light, which in most parts of the country only occurs in mid-day during the summer.   The dairy industry adds vitamin D to their milk products because the confined cows are no longer exposed to the sun so they lack vitamin D. They used to add synthetic Vitamin D2 from vegetarian sources, but found that this caused the opposite effect of the animal D3: it caused the softening of bones and the hardening of organs and arteries. Be aware that D2 is still added to soy, oat, rice and almond milks. Sources of Vitamin D include: oils exposed to the sun (palm, lard, duck, and coconut oils), liver, and eggs from chickens allowed out in the sun.

Plant foods don’t contain vitamin A but they do contain precursors to vitamin A called carotenes. The carotenes (6-24 of these carotenes make one molecule of Vitamin A) are converted into vitamin A once they reach the intestines of animals, including humans.   The conversion requires nutrients such as fats (the conversion takes place in the presence of bile), enzymes, thyroid hormones, and vitamin E.   When eating plants that have carotenes, adding fats such as butter or cream to your meal is necessary for vitamin A conversion in the intestines.Babies and children up to the age of 18 are not able to make this conversion at all and need the “step-up” conversion that animals provide.Diabetics can’t make this conversion either because the pancreas is unable to produce a lot of important enzymes. Individuals with poor thyroid function don’t make this conversion either.

Vitamin A is stored in the liver. It is needed for:

PROTEIN ASSIMILATION: When you consume a protein powder, lean meat, egg whites or skim milk, the body must go to the liver for Vitamin A. Without adding fat-soluble activators, the liver is soon depleted and diseases such as auto-immune and chronic fatigue begin to crop up.

Vitamin A stores are depleted by:

STRESS: When we have good nutrition and adequate Vitamin A, we thrive on stress and become bored without it. But without a good diet, the smallest thing negatively affects us.

EXCESS DIETARY PROTEIN: High demand on Vitamin A because it is needed for assimilation.

COLD WEATHER, FEVER and ILLNESS: Increase vitamin A intake at this time.

PHYSICAL EXERTION: Athletes need extra amounts of Vitamin A in their diets.

TOXINS: Interfere with vitamin A pathways.When supplementing vitamins A & D, take a brand of cod liver oil that has a ratio of 10(A)/1(D). Without D, vitamin A can be toxic and vice versa. A good maintenance dose is 10000 IU of Vitamin A to 1000 IU of Vitamin D. Pregnant women can double the dose and those who have illness or are recovering from surger can take up to 90000/9000 for a short period. Babies (after weaning from breast milk because mother's milk provides what is needed) and children can take 5000/500. Cod liver oil works best when combined with saturated fat, especially butter from grass fed cows.

MINERAL METABOLISM: Calcium from bones and raw dairy products from grass fed animals have easily absorbable calcium because minerals depend directly on the presence of fat-soluble vitamins (A&D) for absorption. When calcium isn’t absorbed effectively the body ends up putting it in the arteries, kidneys, or joints. (Primitive people consumed at least 1500 mg calcium per day and often much more. The US Gov’t recommendation is 800-1200 mg day).   Zinc, iron, magnesium and copper are other important minerals that require the presence of fat. (The next time you are anemic, increase your consumption of fat.)

ENDOCRINE FUNCTION: The thyroid needs more vitamin A than any other organ except the eyes. Stress and sex hormones cannot be made without vitamin A. Cholesterol is the precursor to all stress and sex hormones and it requires Vitamin A at every conversion.   Contrary to what we have been led to believe, cholesterol is a vital nutrient, especially for growing children who cannot make enough cholesterol to ensure the optimal development of the nervous system and the gut. Mother’s milk is very rich in cholesterol and contains an enzyme that helps the baby absorb all of the cholesterol. Dietary cholesterol is important for the health of the intestinal tract in all humans. Vitamin D is needed to make insulin.

SKIN, BONES, EYES

b) ACTIVATOR X (K2): Found in sea foods, goose liver, cheeses, fatty meats, fermented soy, sauerkraut, egg yolks, and the butter of cows eating very rapidly growing grass in spring and fall. It is suspected to be found in goose, duck and chicken fat, crustacean “butter”, bone marrow, organ meats, fish eggs, and fermented cod liver oil. K2 plays an important role in facial development, the deposition of phosphorus and calcium in bones and teeth, prevents calcification and inflammation of the arteries, and is vital for normal reproduction. Vitamin K activates the needed proteins that the cells have been directed to make by Vitaminss A & D.

c) Usable Vitamin B12. The body can store B12 from 1-10 years. Some use it very efficiently while others use it up quite quickly. It requires an “intrinsic factor” secreted by the stomach, so deficiencies can be found in the elderly, those who are deficient in hydrochloric acid or pancreatic enzymes and cannot produce the intrinsic factor, and in vegetarians. It is important that vegans have raw milk and raw cheese from pastured animals (B12 is destroyed in pasteurized products). Soy and blue green algae contains a substance that looks like B12 but actually blocks absorption of B12.

Eggs from pastured animals contain the same vitamins and special fatty acids that occur in insects. Early signs of B12 deficiency tend to be psychological or nervous disorders, fatigue, tingling of hands and feet, sleep disorders and the tendency to irritability and anger. Long term signs of B12 deficiency are associated with multiple sclerosis, cancer heart disease and anemia.

d) Long-chain, very unsaturated fatty acids used to make proteins.

#4 All cultures cooked some or most of their food but they always ate some of their animal foods raw (raw milk, butter and cream, cheeses, fish, shellfish, steak tartare, kibbeh, etc). Plant foods were usually eaten cooked to neutralize the toxins naturally found in plants. Cooking destroys many nutrients in food, but it makes the proteins in meat more available. Especially susceptible to destruction is vitamin B6, so it is important to eat animal products both raw and cooked. Raw cheeses are legal everywhere. Raw milk from grass fed cows contain every nutrient we need, including all the water-soluble vitamins!

#5 Foods had high levels of enzymes and beneficial bacteria. Enzymes have been divided into 3 categories: metabolic enzymes that are catalysts for all the processes of the body from moving an arm, thinking, digesting, detoxifying or repairing; digestive enzymes produced in the pancreas and salivary glands that work to digest our foods; and food enzymes that are found in raw and fermented foods (food enzymes are destroyed by heat: 118 F wet heat or 150 F dry heat such as an oven). Food enzymes spare our digestive enzymes. When the body does not have to produce digestive enzymes we have more energy. Animals put on diets of only cooked food have to produce more digestive enzymes and their pancreas and salivary glands enlarge while their other organs shrink (the first organ to shrink is the brain and the second are the reproductive organs.)

Enzyme rich foods include raw dairy products, raw meat and fish, raw honey (rich in amylase for digesting carbohydrates), tropical fruits (bananas papaya, pineapple; fruits from temperate regions, apples, pears, peaches berries, etc. don’t contain a lot of enzymes), cold pressed oils, wine and unpasteurized beer, lacto-fermented vegetables, meats, dairy products, fruits, fish and beverages (kombucha, kvass made from stale rye bread). Lacto-fermented beverages give the body a lift by providing readily available minerals and without stimulating the adrenal glands as caffeine does.

The healthy human carries 6 pounds of healthy bacteria in our digestive tract. They help to digest our food, assist in assimilation, create nutrients, protects us against toxins and help us to feel good.