We help individuals and families nourish themselves with real traditional foods and traditional foods preparation. We don’t follow the latest trends or fashionable diet plans; instead, our food philosophy is guided by the age-old nutritional wisdom of traditional cultures from around the world and the pioneering work of Dr. Weston A. Price and his study of healthy traditional communities. Dr. Price did not make up a theory of what a healthy diet should be: rather he sought out healthy peoples who had produced healthy children generation after generation, and documented the underlying factors that conferred fertility, beauty, strength, and freedom from disease.

Dr. Weston A. Price was a dentist who practiced in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s in Cleveland, Ohio. Dr. Price was well known and well respected in his day, and widely published in peer-reviewed journals. He was the author of a textbook on dentistry used by the U.S. Navy and served as head of research for the National Dental Association. Over time, Dr. Price became concerned about the increasing number of dental deformities (i.e., crooked teeth), dental caries, and poor health that he was seeing in his patients, especially children. He also became intrigued by the reports he was hearing about isolated non-industrialized peoples with beautiful teeth and seemingly stellar health.  

In the early 1930s, Dr. Price began traveling the world studying traditional peoples and their diets. In the course of more than ten years, his research took him to isolated Swiss villages, Gaelic communities in the Outer Hebrides, indigenous peoples of North and South America, Melanesian and Polynesian South Sea Islanders, African tribes, Australian Aborigines and New Zealand Maori. In all the places that he visited, Dr. Price found beautiful straight teeth, freedom from tooth decay, good physiques, and resistance to disease among the peoples who only ate their traditional diet of real, unprocessed, and unrefined foods. This was in stark contrast to peoples of the same ethnic background who had started turning away from their traditional diets, instead eating processed and refined foods such as white flour, white rice, jam, canned foods, condensed milk, and sugar. Those who had started eating a modern "civilized" diet had tooth decay and crooked teeth, and suffered from degenerative modern diseases previously unseen in these communities.  

New Zealand Maori, traditional diet

In his book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, Dr. Price wrote about the nutrient-dense diets of traditional peoples. His research showed that these diets contained vastly more concentrated amounts of vitamins and minerals compared to the American diet of his day. Traditional diets provided at least FOUR times the water-soluble vitamins, calcium, and other minerals, and at least TEN times the fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, and K), from animal foods such as butter, fish eggs, shellfish, organ meats, eggs and animal fats – the very foods that are now demonized as unhealthy. Modern science proves what these traditional peoples instinctively knew: the foods which are rich in the fat soluble vitamins A, D, and K are vital to our health because they act as catalysts to mineral absorption and protein utilization. Dr. Price referred to them as "activators" in his writing.

In every traditional culture that he visited, Dr. Price found that provisions were made to ensure healthy future generations. Every culture had special or “sacred” foods that were reserved for parents-to-be, pregnant women, nursing mothers, and growing children. The foods often included butter, liver, egg yolks, and seafood, especially fish liver and eggs. These “sacred” foods are rich in minerals and fat-soluble vitamins that provide essential nutrients to support conception and a healthy baby.

The work of Dr. Price offers important lessons for our modern lives. In order to be healthy, it's crucial to stop eating processed and refined foods such as sugar, candy, chips, white flour, and other processed foods, and start eating a diet based on real traditional foods, including pasture-raised and grass-fed meat and poultry, wild seafood, healthy fats, eggs from pastured hens, properly prepared whole grains and legumes, and organic vegetables and fruits. Traditional foods made from scratch using time-honored preparations are the clearest path to good health, well-nourished families and children, and strong local sustainable communities.  

Summary of Price’s findings: three characteristics of traditional diets

No processed foods -- when even small amounts of white flour, sugar, jams, or canned foods were introduced, physical degeneration and cavities were the result. In one generation the face would become narrower and there would be dental crowding and cavities. In two generations the entire structure of the face and body (bones and teeth) would become deformed to some extent; illness and disease would develop, as well as difficulty with childbirth due to narrowing of the pelvis.

There were animal foods in every diet -- this was Dr. Price’s greatest disappointment. He had hoped and expected to find a population living entirely on plant foods. There were people living primarily on plant foods, but about 10% of their diet was made up on insects, and they did not have the physical strength and bone structure displayed by those cultures which ate more animal foods.

Traditional diets were incredibly nutrient-dense -- even though many people did not have great quantities of food, the foods consumed were of incredible nutritional value and provided everything the body needed for excellent health, fertility, longevity, and freedom from disease. Through lab research and testing, Dr. Price discovered that traditional diets contained FOUR times the vitamins and minerals (such as calcium), and TEN times the fat-soluble vitamins A and D as American diets of his time; in addition, animal-derived vitamin K2 was plentiful. Such high levels of the fat-soluble vitamins ensured that the minerals in the diet could be properly utilized for developing strong bones and teeth, for proper gland function, for healthy fertility and babies, and for overall health and vitality. Our modern American diet is even more depleted since most us of eat primarily processed foods and do not consume foods grown or grazed on organic soil or pasture.

More on the fat-soluble activators:

Vitamin A: protein assimilation, calcium assimilation, proper growth, prevention of birth defects, proper function of the glands, thyroid function, immune system function, production of stress and sex hormones, and the health and functioning of the eyes, skin, and bones. Vitamin A is depleted by low-fat high-protein diets (think protein powders, low-fat dairy, and lean meats), illness, and exposure to toxins.

Vitamin D: healthy bones, proper growth, mineral absorption, muscle tone, insulin production, reproduction, immune system function, a healthy nervous system, and cell function.

Vitamin K2: healthy bones and teeth, brain/heart/kidney/testes function, blood sugar regulation, activation of digestive enzymes, cancer prevention, and development of an excellent facial structure (wide cheekbones, and fully-developed jaw and palate that allow space for all the teeth, including wisdom teeth).