Weston Price

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Weston Andrew Valleau Price, DDS (* 1870 in Newburgh (Ontario) , † January 23, 1948 in Santa Monica ) was an American dentist and nutritionist . He was chairman of the research division of the American Dental Association from 1914 to 1923 . He was best known for his studies on the eating habits of isolated peoples (" Charles Darwin of nutrition").

Studies

Amazed by the increasing incidence of tooth decay and general deterioration in physical strength of his patients since the late 19th century , Price, who was not convinced by the prevailing theory of acid-producing bacteria in the mouth, tried to find another reason for these symptoms. His search for an answer led him to the most diverse peoples scattered across the globe who lived in isolation from modern civilization.

Price searched for the factors that make good health lacking in the modern world - he found them mainly in food. When he examined the aboriginal diets, he found that they contained at least four times as much calcium and other minerals, and at least ten times as many fat-soluble vitamins of animal origin from butter, roe, shellfish and organs as the average American diet.

Less well known is his involvement in research into the cause of "speckled teeth" ( dental fluorosis ; English: "mottled teeth"). On the one hand, as a member of the research advisory board of the American Dental Association, he granted the dentist Frederick Sumner McKay financial support for his relevant work. He was also a member of an official commission to research the cause of the stained teeth. When the working group headed by the Moroccan veterinarian Henri Velu observed tooth damage in animals after feeding fluoride-containing feed and suspected a connection with the occurrence of "spotted teeth" in humans, it was Price who had the fluoride content of the water samples supplied analyzed in his laboratory.

reception

The book and illustrated work Nutrition and Physical Degeneration published in 1939 contains various ethnographic nutritional studies from various cultures, such as those in Lötschental , among Indians , Polynesians , Pygmies , Aborigines and others. According to Price 'hypothesis, these cultures suffer less from diseases such as tooth decay or tuberculosis than comparatively western cultures. This is because important vitamins and minerals needed to prevent these diseases are lost through industrially manufactured and stored food.

Various reviews were published in 1940. The Canadian Medical Association Journal praised the book as a masterpiece of research and believed that the effects on nutrition from Price's studies were the same as the insights gained on the digestive tract from the work of Ivan Petrovich Pavlov . In contrast, the Journal of the American Medical Association criticized Price and the studies he described. His way of working was classified as observational and biased, and more evangelistic than scientific.

In the early 1980s, further criticism of Price's work was published by William T. Jarvis. Price's work was seen as an example of the myth of the healthy "savage". According to this myth, an individual in a more technologically backward society is supposedly healthier than an individual in a more modern society. Jarvis criticized the lack of quantitative analysis, stating that Price had failed to consider alternative explanations for his observations: For example, excessive consumption of food causes health problems, but not necessarily the (manufactured) food itself. He also saw a bias in Price, so that this passed over the existing health problems with more primitive societies such as periodontal disease .

Stephen Barrett of Quackwatch believes that Price had generally drawn to simple conclusions. For example, he ignored the fact that the life expectancy of backward cultures is lower and that child mortality, endemic diseases and malnutrition are more pronounced.

Trivia

In 1952, the non-profit organization Santa Barbara Medical Research Foundation was founded, renamed the Weston A. Price Memorial Foundation in 1965 and the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation (PPNF) in 1972. The current namesake of this NGO, in addition to Price, is Francis M. Pottenger Jr. , who carried out numerous nutritional studies on animals (cats). According to its own presentation, the PPNF sees itself as an organization that wants to educate people about the advantages of a natural diet and a diet based on the consumption of meat.

Another NGO, the Weston A. Price Foundation (WAPF), founded in 1999 , has nothing to do with the PPNF and sees itself as nutritional advice. Qackwatch criticizes their questionable nutritional strategies . Science-Based Medicine blog ranks the foundation as one of the worst sites in this regard because of its false and misleading recommendations regarding nutrition and health.

Works

His experiences and experiences wrote Dr. Price in his book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration . Albert von Haller has published the knowledge from this book in German in the book Endangered Humanity . Price also authored Dental Infections and the Degenerative Diseases .

Web links

swell

  1. ↑ Ambler, Henry Lovejoy; History of dentistry in Cleveland, Ohio ; Page 44, Publishing House of the Evangelical Association, 1911 (accessed from books.google.de/Buchabfrage ... on February 27, 2012)
  2. ^ News of Dentistry . In: The Journal of the American Dental Association . tape 36 , no. 4 , April 1948, p. 407-416 , doi : 10.14219 / jada.archive.1948.0070 .
  3. ^ Weston Price: Nutrition and Physical Degeneration; Table of Contents. Retrieved June 27, 2018 .
  4. ^ Warren T. Vaughan: Effects of Dietary Deficiencies . In: The Scientific Monthly . tape 50 , no. 5 , 1940, p. 463-464 .
  5. ^ Nutrition and Physical Degeneration: A Comparison of Primitive and Modern Diets and Their Effects . In: Journal of the American Medical Association . tape 114 , no. 26 , June 29, 1940, pp. 2589 , doi : 10.1001 / jama.1940.02810260075024 .
  6. ^ William T. Jarvis: The Myth of the Healthy Savage . In: Nutrition Today . tape 16 , no. 2 , March 1981, p. 14 .
  7. ^ A b My Concerns about "Holistic" and "Biological" Dentistry. Retrieved June 21, 2018 .
  8. ^ History . In: Price Pottenger . October 16, 2015 ( price-pottenger.org [accessed June 21, 2018]).
  9. ↑ About Us . In: Price Pottenger . October 13, 2015 ( price-pottenger.org [accessed June 21, 2018]).
  10. ^ Home - The Weston A. Price Foundation. Retrieved June 21, 2018 (American English).
  11. ↑ Weston Price's Appalling legacy . In: Science-Based Medicine . October 13, 2015 ( sciencebasedmedicine.org [accessed June 21, 2018]).
personal data
SURNAME Price, Weston
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Price, Weston Andrew
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American dentist and nutritionist
DATE OF BIRTH 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH Newburgh, Ontario
DATE OF DEATH January 23, 1948
Place of death Santa Monica