The VBI's Most Wanted Necrotarians

[Bowwowmeow]

The Vegan Bureau of Investigation has begun to compile its list of necrotarians most wanted for spreading lies and false information about the vegan way of life.

[Bowwowmeow]

http://www.price-pottenger.org/images/dr_price.jpg
(1870 - 1948)



Dr. Weston A. Price DDS

Dr. Price was a Cleveland dentist, who has been called the “Charles Darwin” of Nutrition. Searching for the causes of dental decay and physical degeneration he observed daily in his dental practice, he turned from test tubes and microscopes to study “people with fine teeth” – the isolated “primitives”.
Traveling worldwide, Dr. Price found that beautiful, straight teeth, freedom from decay, stalwart bodies, resistance to disease, and fine characters were typical of primitives on their traditional diets.
These primitives stand forth in sharp contrast to those subsisting on the “impoverished foods of civilization” – sugar, white flour, pasteurized milk, and convenience foods filled with extenders and additives.
His worldwide findings clearly showed that dental caries and deformed dental arches, resulting in crowded, crooked teeth and unattractive appearance, were merely a sign of physical degeneration, resulting from what he had suspected – nutritional deficiencies.
Dr. Price’s classic volume, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, is available from the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation at www.ppnf.org (http://www.ppnf.org). Its photographs illustrate in an unforgettable way the physical degeneration that occurs when human groups abandon nourishing traditional diets in favor of modern convenience foods.

Initially there is nothing wrong with this man's ideas, that following a more "primitive" way of eating is healthier than what is commonly practiced today. What is fascinating is that the meat and dairy lobby has made this guy their nutritional guru, in spite of the fact that the above article quotes pasteurized milk as one of the items that leads to physical degeneration.

Price himself would most likely not agree with his modern day disciples that a plant based diet is destructive to human health. Unfortunately his name is being used posthumously by people who have some sort of agenda that involves equating the vegan diet with the processed, chemically-treated diet that really leads to poor health. Yes, vegans can eat a nutritionally poor diet, but the options that exist for an animal-based, processed, chemically-laden diet are what is responsible for the poor health enjoyed by the average Westerner today.

Lets not forget that this guy was a dentist, folks! We all know that sugar is what leads to poor dental health, and sugar, though initially a plant extract, is not advocated by any recognized vegan health expert. Sugar is not a food, it is a chemical, and just because it can be obtained from plants, and its bad for you, doesn't automatically mean that the dead, rotted flesh, and lactation, of animals, is better for people than plant foods. Cocaine, opium, heroin, etc. also come from plants. I don't see anyone arguing that because these harmful drugs can also be obtained from plants, that a plant-based diet is dangerous.

However, salmonella, e. coli, BSE, trichinella, melamine, antibiotics, etc., etc., etc., are dangerous substances found in the flesh and lactation of animals, and cannot be easily removed. Some bacteria may be killed by cooking, but you can't get rid of the drugs and hormones by heating. Its interesting, because the primitive people investigated by Price were highly unlikely to have consumed the bulk of their diets in a cooked form, and yet Price has been turned into an icon by the very industries whose "foods" are amongst the least healthy, and most dangerous, because they need to be treated with heat prior to consumption.

In fact, at the Price - Pottenger website, you will find Weston A. Price affiliated posthumously with Francis M. Pottenger, who conducted that famous study of feeding cats cooked versus raw meats. The cats fed the raw meat diet were found to experience excellent health, while the cats fed an exclusively cooked meat diet became ill, and after three generations, were unable to reproduce another generation of kittens. This can hardly be taken as a recommendation for a diet filled with heat-treated flesh for humans.
From Price - Pottenger:
The Relevance of the Price-Pottenger Research for the 21st Century
Today, as always, the human body requires whole, nutrient-rich foods in order to achieve optimum health; and the public, more than ever, needs access to accurate information on healthy diet and life-style. Two current trends underscore the importance of the PPNF message. One is the notion that animal fats are dangerous to human health, a misconception promulgated by certain commercial interests--notably the vegetable oil and fabricated food industries. The public has been told to avoid animal fats in the mistaken belief that this vital component of our food causes heart disease and cancer. Weston Price, however, discovered that the diets of healthy primitive peoples contained ten times more of the nutrients found in animal fats than the American diet of his day. These fat-soluble factors are vital for reproduction, normal growth and freedom from disease. With the recent huge increase in the use of processed vegetable oils, civilized peoples are experiencing even greater deficiencies in fat-soluble nutrients. The second trend is the continued practice of intensive soil cultivation through the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, of factory farming animals for meat and milk products, and of the devitalizing food processing methods. These practices decrease nutrients and increase harmful substances in the food supply. All of the researchers archived in the PPNF collection recognized that soil improvement and nontoxic farming are fundamental requisites for a healthy populace. PPNF is dedicated to encouraging a return to traditional, biological farming methods. The demonstration center now being planned will further this work with a living laboratory to demonstrate the principles of soil enrichment with compost through the use of earthworms and animal manure; of humane animal husbandry, particularly to increase levels of the Price "X Factor" in dairy fats; of proper choice of whole natural foods derived from fertile soil; and of preparation techniques that enhance rather than diminish nutrient content in our food.

Notice the clever phrasing in the following statement:
Weston Price, however, discovered that the diets of healthy primitive peoples contained ten times more of the nutrients found in animal fats than the American diet of his day. All of the nutrients found in animal fats may also be found in plant fats, with the exception of cholesterol, which, being produced by the body, is not needed in the diet. These primitive people may very well have had ten times the fat nutrients that civilised people do, but claiming that they are "found in" animal fats does not mean that those primitive people obtained them from animal fats. That's like saying vegans have ten times the Omega 3 levels of necrotarians, and since Omega 3 fats can be found in fish oil, vegans therefore get their Omega 3 fats from fish. Bogus!

From Quack Watch:

Historical Perspective

Much of "holistic dentistry" is rooted in the activities of Weston A. Price, D.D.S. (1870-1948), a dentist who maintained that sugar causes not only tooth decay but physical, mental, moral, and social decay as well. Price made a whirlwind tour of primitive areas, examined the natives superficially, and jumped to simplistic conclusions. While extolling their health, he ignored their short life expectancy and high rates of infant mortality, endemic diseases, and malnutrition. While praising their diets for not producing cavities, he ignored the fact that malnourished people don't usually get many cavities.
Price knew that when primitive people were exposed to "modern" civilization they developed dental trouble and higher rates of various diseases, but he failed to realize why. Most were used to "feast or famine" eating. When large amounts of sweets were suddenly made available, they overindulged. Ignorant of the value of balancing their diets, they also ingested too much fatty and salty food. Their problems were not caused by eating "civilized" food but by abusing it. In addition to dietary excesses, the increased disease rates were due to: (a) exposure to unfamiliar germs, to which they were not resistant; (b) the drastic change in their way of life as they gave up strenuous physical activities such as hunting; and (c) alcohol abuse.
Price also performed poorly designed studies that led him to conclude that teeth treated with root canal therapy leaked bacteria or bacterial toxins into the body, causing arthritis and many other diseases. This "focal infection" theory led to needless extraction of millions of endodontically treated teeth until well-designed studies, conducted during the 1930s, demonstrated that the theory was not valid.
Melvin Page, D.D.S., one of Price's disciples, coined the phrase "balancing body chemistry" and considered tooth decay an "outstanding example of systemic chemical imbalances." Page ran afoul of the Federal Trade Commission by marketing a mineral supplement with false claims that widespread mineral deficiencies were an underlying cause of goiter, heart trouble, tuberculosis, diabetes, anemia, high and low blood pressure, hardening of the arteries, rheumatism, neuritis, arthritis, kidney and bladder trouble, frequent colds, nervousness, constipation, acidosis, pyorrhea, overweight, underweight, cataracts, and cancer. Page also claimed that milk was "unnatural" and was the underlying cause of colds, sinus infections, colitis, and cancer.
The human body contains many chemicals, ranging from water and simple charged particles (ions) to complex organic molecules. The amounts vary within limits. Some are in solution and others are not. Legitimate medical practitioners may refer to a specific chemical or a balance between a few chemicals that can be measured.
But the idea that "body chemistry" goes in and out of balance is a quack concept.
The Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation (http://www.price-pottenger.org/) of La Mesa, California, is the repository for many of Price's manuscripts and photographs. It was founded in 1965 as the Weston Price Memorial Foundation and adopted its current name in 1972. Its newsletter, book catalog, and information service promote food faddism, megavitamin therapy, homeopathy, chelation therapy, and many other dubious practices.

Considering the fact that Price died in 1948, and his Foundation was formed in 1965, its probably unfair that he personally should appear on our Most Wanted list, since its the activities of his disciples that are so damaging to the vegan movement. But his name is now recognized as being synonymous with the meat and dairy lobby, and every vegan and aspiring vegan needs to know this.

I think it is very interesting that the pro-meat lobbyists of the Weston A. Price Foundation can't find any research more current than that conducted by a dentist born in 1870 to prove how good animal flesh is for humans, and how dangerously deprived a strictly plant based diet can be.

[thevegantwins]

:devil4: Atkins, anyone?

[Soynut]

Dr. Mercola, the anti-soy guy.:devilangel:

[thevegantwins]

Is naming the state of Texas going overboard (they have the libel law, making it illegal to disparage the meat/dairy industry)?

[Oracl]

Harvey Diamond and Leslie Kenton: backsliding bastards. :grumble: :mad:

[1vegan]

Harvey Diamond : backsliding bastards. :grumble: :mad:

What's wrong with him, "Fit for life" didn't seem such a bad cookbook to me?

[Oracl]

What's wrong with him, "Fit for life" didn't seem such a bad cookbook to me?
I agree but since then he has written another book Fit For Life, Not Fat For Life in which he says that now he eats meat, as this reviewer of the book states:

He stands by the vegetarian lifestyle but admits that some meat is good for the body. He was a veggie-head for 25 years but confesses to finally giving in to a medium-rare t-bone steak one day with the intention of vomiting it out afterwards... But he liked it! So now he includes meat in his diet once or twice a week.

Also I found this product on his website (and this is the guy who declared that the production of milk was cruel and that he felt sorry for the calves):

Colostrum Caps (fitforlifetime.com/product_info.php/cPath/25/products_id/75)

:hbang:

[1vegan]

Also I found this product on his website (and this is the guy who declared that the production of milk was cruel and that he felt sorry for the calves):

Colostrum Caps (http://www.fitforlifetime.com/product_info.php/cPath/25/products_id/75)

:hbang:

I don't know if he ever claimed to be vegan, to me it was more like he was on a quest for health.

And "health dieters" will often fall back to their old habbits. (imho)

I think fake veg*ns, scolding other (wannabe)veg*ns on the net, are more of a danger to "the movement" (if there is one)

[Bowwowmeow]

I think fake veg*ns, scolding other (wannabe)veg*ns on the net, are more of a danger to "the movement" (if there is one)
Even if we do not recognize a vegan movement amongst ourselves, people with pro-meat and dairy financial interests are creating one for us, and painting us as having an agenda to deceive people into thinking that a vegan diet is healthy, when they claim that it is dangerous. We know (or at least I do, after nearly thirty years of being dead-animal flesh free) that this is not true, and my interest here is in exposing the false logic and outdated "research" conducted by people who are politically and financially motivated to make false claims about how dangerous a 100% plant-based diet is. I don't think this thread is going to be about "fake" vegans; I do not believe that any of these people ever were vegan, because being vegan is about more than just your diet. But if they persist in claiming that they used to be vegan, and aren't any more, it needs to be shown that they are incorrect about how unhealthy it is.

My next subject for research will be Sally Fallon, who runs the Weston Price Foundation, and it is almost impossible to find any criticism of her in a web search, which is frightening to me, and very disappointing, because she is not a nutrition expert, but an English major, and yet people take her words of anti-soy and pro-dead animal fat as gospel. As long as there are people like this making an effort to tell as many people as they can reach that plant foods are dangerous and unhealthy, and people should eat plenty of lard and tallow and fish oil, as Sally Fallon does, someone needs to show people how wrong this is. It would be nice if an unbiased person would step up, but it doesn't look like anyone is, so its up to us instead, even though we may be seen to be biased as well, by our compassion for animals.

Though I don't see how anyone interested in the motivations of both groups could consider the profit-driven bias of meat and dairy lobbyists as more worthy than our bias towards compassion. We may be guilty of not separating our logic from our emotion, but its much worse, in my view, to be unable to separate one's logic from mindless greed.

[veggiesosage]

A small success story against some lying g*ts

[url.msnbc.msn.com/id/18610894/[/url]

[Gliondrach]

Good news. If these milksops are so sure that their claims are true why are they stopping the campaign? The answer is obvious.

[Bowwowmeow]

Still, she said, the board plans to phase out the milk ads and focus the campaign instead on how dairy can help promote a healthy diet.
There's no doubt that milk can help promote a healthy diet if you are an infant suckling from your mother's breast. That's not much help to the cow milk industry, though. :rolleyes:

Good work PCRM! I wish PETA had been successful in sueing the California Milk Advisory to stop their "good cheese comes from happy cows" ad campaign. I hate those effing commercials. :mad: :hbang:

[my3labs]

I just read this thread. Good for PCRM!
where in the world do you guys get all of this information? I feel like I'm pretty informed but you all have me beat.

[Bowwowmeow]

I come across lots of links from other forums, and from web searches too. Though years ago I actually read a book about Weston Price's studies of the teeth of "primitive" peoples, and it seemed very reasonable to me. I was shocked when I entered the online vegan community and found he was one of the bad guys.

I read lots of books on health and nutrition, and although almost none of them are vegan, I tend to ignore whatever the author says about animal products, and absorb only what makes sense to me as a vegan.

[Fauxmage]

Reflections on the Weston A. Price Foundation
by John Robbins


Weston Price was an American dentist who traveled around the world, camera and film in hand, in the late 1920s and early 1930s. An entire chapter in my latest book, Healthy At 100, is devoted to his work. Price specifically sought out native peoples who were still eating their native foods. He asked about their dietary habits, then examined and took photographs of their teeth. At the same time, he undertook similar studies and took similar photos of people from the same cultures who had become exposed to Western foods, and who had begun to substitute foods like white flour, white sugar, marmalade and canned goods for their native diets.

The differences, as shown in Price’s 1939 book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, were startling. Time and again, Price found that those people who were still eating their native diets had very few if any dental caries (decay or crumbling of teeth), and appeared to be in radiant health, while their counterparts who were now eating refined and processed foods from the West were exhibiting massive tooth decay and malformation of their dental arches, and were suffering from a growing cascade of illness and dysfunction. Price came to believe that dental decay was caused primarily by nutritional deficiencies, and that the same conditions that promote tooth decay also promote disease elsewhere in the body.

Price photographed the teeth and dental arches of the people he encountered. He found that as long as these people consumed their native diet, their mouths and jaws developed so that they never experienced crowded teeth, overbites, underbites, or tooth decay. When their wisdom teeth came in, they always had plenty of room. But as his photographs poignantly showed, once they left the wisdom of their native foods for “civilized” foods the results were ruinous. Now all kinds of dental problems that had been previously unknown became rampant.

And it wasn’t just dental problems Price found that as people shifted to refined foods, birth defects increased, and people became more susceptible both to infection and to chronic disease. As people ate ever more refined and devitalized foods, he said, they and their offspring became increasingly weaker and more prone to all kinds of illnesses.

Today, Price’s work has attracted a loyal and devoted following among those who rebel against processed foods and who seek a way of life more in tune with nature’s laws. Some of his more ardent followers say his accomplishments are more important than those of Charles Darwin, Linus Pauling, or Jonas Salk, and that he was a greater genius than Albert Einstein. Others say his was the most important health research of all time.

Some of the most zealous of his followers now run an organization called the Weston A. Price Foundation. A book by the foundation’s president, Sally Fallon, with the appealing title of Nourishing Traditions, has been a best-seller.
No doubt the foundation is doing good in awakening some people to the dangers of processed foods, but speaking as someone who has great respect for the work of Weston A. Price, I am sorry to say that to my eyes, the foundation that carries Price’s name today is unfortunately exaggerating what was unbalanced in his work, and abandoning much of what was good.

For one thing, the foundation exudes an attitude of “you’re either with us or you’re against us” that is reminiscent of the dark side of cults. Those authors and researchers who the foundation disagrees with are caustically mocked. If these authors happen to subscribe to the findings of modern nutritional science, they are mocked and condemned for being “politically correct.” Reputable scientists who dare suggest that saturated fat contributes to heart disease are denounced for being “as pc as pc can be—and totally ignorant.”

Regrettably, those currently running the Weston A. Price Foundation seem to be oblivious to the spirit of compassion which motivated the work of the man under whose name they act. Sadly, they are not just intolerant of people who eat or think differently than the way they advocate; they frequently demean and condemn those with whom they disagree. There is a nastiness, a mean-spiritedness, to their activities that is not worthy of the man in whose footsteps they presume to follow.

In fact, the more I’ve gotten to know the Weston A. Price Foundation, the less I’ve felt that it is actually carrying on the spirit or the work of the man in whose name it purports to function. For one example, Price never once mentioned the words “soy,” “soybean,” “tofu,” or “soy milk” in his 500 page opus, and spoke quite positively about lentils and other legumes, yet the foundation has taken it upon itself to be vehemently and aggressively anti-soy, calling soy foods “more insidious than hemlock.” (My thorough response to their specific accusations against soy foods can be seen at http://healthyat100.org/display.asp?catid=3&pageid=12

For another example, Price discovered many native cultures that were extremely healthy while eating lacto-vegetarian or pisco-vegan diets. Describing one lacto-vegetarian people, for example, he called them, “The most physically perfect people in northern India… the people are very tall and are free of tooth decay.” Yet the foundation that operates under his name is strikingly hostile to vegetarians. Sally Fallon, the foundation’s president, denounces vegetarianism as “a kind of spiritual pride that seeks …to shirk the earthly duties for which the physical body is created.” She further insults vegetarians by saying they frequently suffer from zinc deficiency, but think it is spiritual enlightenment.

In 1934, Price wrote a moving letter to his nieces and nephews, instructing them in the diet he hoped they would eat. “The basic foods should be the entire grains such as whole wheat, rye or oats, whole wheat and rye breads, wheat and oat cereals, oat-cake, dairy products, including milk and cheese, which should be used liberally, and marine foods.” Yet the Weston A. Price Foundation aggressively promotes the consumption of beef, pork and other high-fat meats, while condemning people who base their diets on whole grains.

One last example of the discrepancy between Price’s actual work and those who today purport to represent it: Price never once mentioned the word “cholesterol,” yet the foundation presuming to forward his work has declared war on the idea that high cholesterol levels are associated with higher rates of heart disease. “The truth is that cholesterol is your best friend,” they write. “There is no greater risk of heart disease at cholesterol levels of 300 than 180.” They might as well say there is no greater risk of lung cancer for heavy smokers, or that the Earth is flat.

I regret to say that those running the Weston A. Price Foundation today seem to have their own agenda. They are proponents of the philosophy that in order to be healthy, people must eat large amounts of saturated fat from animal products. They insist that only with the regular consumption of lard, butter and other full-fat dairy products, and beef, can people derive the nutrients they need to be healthy.

Toward that end, the Foundation has widely publicized an article written by a former member of the Foundation’s Board of Directors, Stephen Byrnes, titled “The Myths of Vegetarianism. (http://www.oradix.com/health-library/idx/0/037/article/The_Myths_of_Vegetarianism.html)”

The article is harshly critical of vegetarian diets, and concludes with an “About the Author” section which states: “Stephen Byrnes… enjoys robust health on a diet that includes butter, cream, eggs, meat, whole milk, dairy products and offal.” In fact, Stephen Byrnes suffered a fatal stroke in June, 2004. According to reports of his death, he had yet to reach his 40th birthday.

John Robbins is the author of Healthy At 100, The Food Revolution, Diet For A New America, and many other bestsellers. He can be reached through the website healthyat100.org (http://www.healthyat100.org/)

[Soynut]

Thank you for posting this. Interesting, so apparently Price himself was more open to vegetarian diets, and could see the health benefits, but the followers are not. What's up with the tireless anti-soy stuff, anti-vegetarian stuff they've been pushing for the last few years?...

[Fauxmage]

I guess they are being funded by meat industry stockholders now.

[Gliondrach]

That's an excellent site. I've only glanced at the soya one so far but have read 'What About Grass-Fed Beef?'. That is very good.

There's no doubt that the weston-price foundation is in the pockets of the meat and dairy industries.

[Fauxmage]

Isn't that a wonderful diet Stephen Byrnes was on? That's just what I want to eat with my offal. Butter, cream, and eggs. Yum yum yum. :blecch:

[Gliondrach]

The link to the Stephen Byrnes thing no longer works. Not for me.

[Bowwowmeow]

Oh you are right. They have probably retracted it out of embarrassment after the guy died of a stroke at the age of 41.

[Gliondrach]

It's a shame the ignorant bloke died but he dug his own grave with his knife and fork, as they say. Let's hope others learn from it.