Price's Natives: Innate Wisdom or Pragmatism? (was Examining Ayurveda)

[Guest guest]

I'd like to preface the following by saying I am dropping much of the

former discussion, as 1) I feel it is potentially charged to those who

seriously practice Ayurvedic methods, and 2) I was reading and writing

from the NN website as I switched office rooms, which is less than

optimal for me. Thus, I will paste in this new massage, the crux of the

matter from Mr. Masterjohn that I wish to address.

> [Chris] The accumulated dietary wisdom of the populations Price studied

> weren't " science-based " either, but we don't consider that fact to

> detract from their merit. Price applied science to the study of that

> wisdom, but before Price that wisdom was just as useful and important.

I like the use of the terms " accumulated dietary wisdom " for the

implications of pragmatism. I agree that the natives were probably not

conducting controlled experiments concerning nutrition, but we don't

know for sure. However - and I think Price's work bears this out

independently of the group studied - several populations were following

the same dietary guidelines, which demonstrates that there was some

trial and error involved in attaining superior health with the available

food choices (or some major coincidence). Thus, even though they might

not have attributed the proper reason behind the fact that, say,

fermented vegetables allow preservation of the foodstuff and the eater's

health, they knew, through oral tradition and trial and error over time,

that certain practices were necessary for health. They were doing their

own primitive research.

The whole idea of " life force " for instance, which is known as prana,

chi and ki, among other names, and is prevalent in practices like

Ayurveda, Yoga and others, has been scrutinized by science subsequently

in the recent past. It is this kind of matter which I am interested in

in determining the validity of ancient practices in the context of

modern day knowledge. Especially since things like nutritional

components are becoming so well established now with the technology we

have at our disposal to discern them; that I think any program -

regardless of whatever else is contained within besides nutrition -

should be examined against the standards of true science that people

like Dr. Price found consistent in native peoples.

http://biology.clc.uc.edu/courses/bio114/spontgen.htm

" In 1745 - 1748, Needham, a ish clergyman and naturalist

showed that microorganisms flourished in various soups that had been

exposed to the air. He claimed that there was a " life force " present in

the molecules of all inorganic matter, including air and the oxygen in

it, that could cause spontaneous generation to occur, thus accounting

for the presence of bacteria in his soups. He even briefly boiled some

of his soup and poured it into " clean " flasks with cork lids, and

microorganisms still grew there.

" A few years later (1765 - 1767), Lazzaro Spallanzani, an Italian abbot

and biologist, tried several variations on Needham's soup experiments.

First, he boiled soup for one hour, then sealed the glass flasks that

contained it by melting the mouths of the flasks shut. Soup in those

flasks stayed sterile. He then boiled another batch of soup for only a

few minutes before sealing the flasks, and found that microorganisms

grew in that soup. In a third batch, soup was boiled for an hour, but

the flasks were sealed with real-cork corks (which, thus, were

loose-fitting enough to let some air in), and microorganisms grew in

that soup. Spallanzani concluded that while one hour of boiling would

sterilize the soup, only a few minutes of boiling was not enough to kill

any bacteria initially present, and the microorganisms in the flasks of

spoiled soup had entered from the air.

" This initiated a heated argument between Needham and Spallanzani over

sterilization (boiled broth in closed vs. open containers) as a way of

refuting spontaneous generation. Needham claimed that Spallanzani's

" over-extensive " boiling used to sterilize the containers had killed the

" life force. " He felt that bacteria could not develop (by spontaneous

generation) in the sealed containers because the life force could not

get in, but in the open container, the broth rotted because it had

access to fresh air, hence the life force inherent in its molecules,

which contained and replenished the life force needed to trigger

spontaneous generation. In the minimally-boiled flasks, he felt the

boiling was not severe enough to destroy the life force, so bacteria

were still able to develop.

" By 1860, the debate had become so heated that the Paris Academy of

Sciences offered a prize for any experiments that would help resolve

this conflict. The prize was claimed in 1864 by Louis Pasteur, as he

published the results of an experiment he did to disproved spontaneous

generation in these microscopic organisms. "

And now we have cooked milk. Thanks Louis!

So perhaps we could " detract from merit " what these natives thought, if

we knew what it was, in light of what we know now. Perhaps they ate

fish eyes because the stuff had magic powers, rather than the rich

retinol stash. The " why " might be off, but the " what " was right on.

Finally, I truly agree with this section of the forward to the fifth

edition of _Nutrition And Physical Degeneration_, by Weston A. Price,

DDS, where it states:

---------------------

Dr. Price believed in the innate wisdom of primitive people. I believe

in this he was wrong. I do not think there is any inborn wisdom when it

comes to nutrition. The best evidence for this is that primitive people

who come in contact with high-tech foods soon give up their own diets

and adopt the high-tech foods. They appear to be even more susceptible

to the sugar, alcohol, white flour and other junk foods present. Perhaps

this is because there has been too little time to allow nature to

eliminate the worst examples of people damaged by high-tech food.

There is no innate wisdom because, until chemistry was discovered and

applied to food technology, there was no need for it. Early peoples had

little choice but to eat foods that they had adapted to, for no other

food was available. The local animals, fish, whole grains, vegetables,

some fruits and nuts provided a limited choice. They could not browse in

supermar­kets containing 15,000 items of which 90 percent, or perhaps

more, are junk. If primitive peoples had obtained their food from a

supermarket, they would have consumed as much junk as do high-tech peoples.

Since there is no inherent wisdom, we must use our intelligence and

reason. If we do not, we are all heading for the most serious problem of

all time, rivaling the damage to our atmosphere by pollution, which is

causing world climatic changes, and a massive deterioration of our

gen­eral health.

Recent intergenerational research in animals and people has shown that,

on a uniformly poor diet, the offspring of each generation deteriorates

more and more, and in rats this continues up to eight generations. We do

not know what the final stage will be in human deterioration. I suspect

that many of the people with psychiatric disorders today, the addicts,

the high degree of violence, the tremendous number of depressions and

ten­sion states, and the great number of physical degenerations such as

diabe­tes, arthritis, etc., are the modern manifestations of this

continuing degeneration. I have seen no experiments, however, which show

what happens when the diet continues to get worse with time. I shudder

to think of the final outcome.

Even if we eventually become much more intelligent and our society

begins to provide the kind of food we have adapted to, it will take many

generations before we can regain the earlier health which our genes have

programmed us to have, provided we had given them the right tools to

work with. I wish we did have some innate intelligence when it comes to

nutrition, but I am afraid this is a myth.

In my own practice I am now seeing children who are the second

generation of junk-consuming peoples. The results are obvious and

depressing.

I cannot emphasize too much the importance of this book. It should be

made compulsory reading for every person who has anything to do with the

people's health, especially when it involves their nutrition. Unless we

begin to take the message seriously, which was so well described by Dr.

Price, I think we are in for some major health catastrophes.

ABRAM HOFFER, M.D., PH.D.

, B.C., Canada March, 1989

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In the spirit of using intelligence and reason above perception,

Deanna