Nutrition and Physical Regeneration

The name of this site, Nutrition and Physical Regeneration, is a takeoff from the title of Dr. Weston Price's book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. Dr. Price, in my opinion, was the greatest nutritional field clinician of the last century. Anyone who writes in the area of health and nutrition and has yet to read this book might as well be considered a blind man trying to tell what you the sun looks like because he happens to have his head pointed toward the sky.

Anyone who is interested in their own health and doesn't avail themselves of this resource is severely hampering their progress, needlessly subjecting themselves to the whims and fancies of every modern who comes along and thinks they have discovered the nutritional way.

In the clip below Dr. Price describes himself as a missionary from the tribes he studied to the modern people of the world, bringing with him the accumulated wisdom of the various places his travels led him. Featured in the clip are the Swiss of the Loetschental Valley, the Inuit, several African tribes, the South Sea Islanders, the Maori of the Outer Hebrides (Scotland) and the Australian Aborigines.

Notice that the diets of all these groups varied greatly: from high carb to low carb; from high fat to low fat; from seafood and grains; to dairy, beef, and fish. Price's message was never about specific foods or macro-nutrients or paleo versus neolithic, or any other current categorical controversy. It was about getting rid of the displacing foods of modern commerce and returning to the life-giving foods of our ancestors. In short, real food, in all its macro-nutrient variety, as the means to restore our health.

Now for the first time many of you can see and hear Dr. Price in his own voice.

Enjoy!

[update: It goes without saying for those of you familiar with Dr. Price's work, but for those who are not Dr. Price never found a healthy vegan population or a thriving genuinely vegetarian population. The ratio varied, as noted above, but all the healthy groups he studied included seafood and/or meat in their diet. No exceptions.]

"If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace." – Thomas Paine

That quote echoed through my mind during my nine-month deployment in Iraq with the United States Marines back in 2004. I came home, thinking I had done some good not only for my country but for my family. At the time I thought my baby boy was going to grow up without the threat of terrorism and the Iraqi people were now free to choose their own destiny. However, those nine months had taken a heavy toll. I stared daily in the mirror, looking into the eyes of a cold and tired soul with more gray hair than any twenty-three year old deserved. Adjusting to civilian life was hard, and my family was suffering. I was in need of healing, and I found it back on the farm I grew up on.

There was something deeply satisfying about the cool Ozark air blowing across the fields of waist-high fescue grass. The cows stood chewing contentedly while their young calves frolicked about seeing who could kick their back legs the highest. My father had spent his entire adult life working, saving and accumulating over one thousand acres of productive grassland in northwestern Arkansas. Besides the peace it brought me, the thought of being self-sufficient and self-employed in a profession as noble and humble as farming drew me in further. Would I continue his path of the conventional beef market? Would I certify organic, or find overseas markets? No, my path was a more local one.

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“Eating foods that contain any cholesterol above 0 mg is unhealthy.”

— T. Colin Campbell, PhD, author of The China Study.

In the winter of 2005, Chris Masterjohn, the editor of the website, Cholesterol and Health.com, and a regular contributor to Wise Traditions, the journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation, sent my then girlfriend an advance copy of a critique he had written of The China Study, by T. Colin Campbell. Advising me of the admonition from Chris that we were not to circulate his pre-publication article, she let me read it and asked me for any thoughts or suggestions I might have on improving it.

I took notes that have since been lost, but I do remember thinking what a masterful job he had done, although in my opinion, especially towards the end, when he could have put the fatally wounded yet still twitching corpse that was The China Study out of its misery by swinging the cudgel fast and furious, he was being too much of a gentleman. But eh, that was mostly a difference of style, and having been an award winning debater while in college, I was trained to go for the jugular when readily exposed, so that your opponent could not get up, and if he/she did they would only look foolish in the process.

Sometimes that is not a good strategy, especially in print. You can win the battle and lose the war by losing the ear of the very audience you are trying to reach, and who might otherwise be open to your message if not offended by your enthusiastic style and tone which suggests you love going for the kill. It really takes a special talent to do that with a smile and panache while keeping your audience. That was my style in the halcyonic days of college, where I wanted to be thought of not as some curmudgeonly young male termagant, but rather as the happy warrior, joyfully skewering people while smiling and laughing the whole way.

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Yes that is what it is – a time for celebrating and remembering how our forefathers told the British to stick it up their arse. Oh wait, you aren't celebrating that today? Oh, that must mean you are celebrating US Nationalism day. You know, where every deed of the American State is wrapped in the red, white, and blue and proclaimed sacred because…well…because we are Americans after all!

Surely our government is right and wouldn't lie to us or do immoral things at home and abroad unless of course the other party is in office. Then and only then, all bets are off. Otherwise, we are the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Yeah, right.

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As I've mentioned before, regular readers of this blog know I love all things coconut, and while the popularity of coconut oil has grown by leaps and bounds over the last decade or so, my favorite products of what is known in many parts of the world as the tree of life remain the meat of both the young and mature coconuts, the milk and cream made from the meat, and coconut water.

I have done an 8 day fast drinking only coconut water. Several times a year when I am eating Kitavan style or vegan style for more than just a day or two, coconut and all its various products become front and center in my diet. In fact I couldn't do a vegan or Kitavan style diet without coconut, nor would I want to do such a thing. The specific saturated fat content of the coconut greatly enhances (for me) the nutritional impact of the above style(s) of eating, and the coconut itself lends much to the enjoyable taste of the foods.

With my recent (public) concentration on the Milk Cure, a powerful short team healing approach which is, in my opinion, the ultimate nutrient "overfeeding" regenerative protocol for many folks, I think part of the problem with many real food "low-fat" folks is their lack of calories and too much of the wrong kind of fats (which can be a problem for low-carbers as well). [You will notice that I put "low-fat" in quotes, largely because the Kitavan diet, while low in overall fat by western standards (21%) is higher in saturated fat (by about 10%) than western diets. Almost all fat in the Kitavan diet is saturated, so the "low-fat" approach appears to be rather nuanced, and problems with it may be attributable to something other than being "low-fat" as I mentioned above].

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The regional planning commission in my area recently released “the region’s first Regional Food Assessment and Plan.” The executive summary is 20 pages worth of the joys of central planning.

The regional planning commission believes that more food must be grown and eaten locally. Now local is not defined as the US. Nor is it defined as the Midwest. It’s not even defined as the 88 counties that make up the state of Ohio. No, local is defined as the 12 counties within — you guessed it — the region of the regional planning commission. Talk about micro-mercantilism.

The recommended solutions include such nonsense as encouraging indoor fish farms and longer growing seasons (global warming, anyone?). Oh, and lots of government support and force — such as efforts to “persuade retailers and restaurateurs … to ensure shelf space for local produce.”

The local media is all over this. They are excited beyond belief. I imagine them locking hands with the folks over at the commission while dancing and singing, “We’re going to central plan, We’re going to central plan.”

As Bastiat wrote in his Sophisms, “By means of this duty, they say, the conditions of production will be equalized; and the Chamber, giving effect, as it always does, to such reasoning, inserts in the tariff a duty of elevenpence upon every foreign orange.”

If this nonsense goes forward, Ohio will do just what Bastiat argued against some 150 years ago. Of course, central Ohio will not impose a tariff, just a tax. Regardless, taxpayers will be supporting centrally-planned waste.

Who ever said we get smarter by the generation?
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Jim Fedako

Corn, wheat, sugar and a dozen other crops all got increased subsidies in the recent Farm Bill, signed with terrifying agreement. Is there an end in sight?

One overlooked clue while those crops are fetching sky-high prices in that other system known as the free market is data showing farms took acreage from pastureland, which livestock need to graze. So, ranchers have been liquidating herds and giving up in the battle against soaring feed costs.

Food manufacturers have eaten many of these rising crop prices and many grocery shoppers can still dance between the raindrops of inflation's storm at the store if they really try. But there is no place to hide between beef and the butcher paper, so by this time next summer, with supply disappearing, get ready to pay more for that burger.

After all, don't most of us still believe that it is better to teach a man to fish than to give him a fish? Your Congress overwhelmingly objects. The Farm Bill pays fisherman not to fish.

We do pay Kentucky horse owners to race though. We help "geographically disadvantaged farmers" in … Hawaii! If they are avoiding those intolerable conditions by staying inside and watching TV, they might see a "Got Milk" ad — which the Farm Bill also pays for.

Meanwhile sugar farmers are glad corn is taking all the heat because they have an even sweeter deal. The world-market sugar price is currently 12 cents a pound (editor's note: its slightly higher at the moment), but Americans pay 23 cents guaranteed to our farmers. Not done yet, we then turn around and sell that same sugar for an 80% loss to ethanol plants. A trade desk like that would lose all its investors in a day, unless their contributions are mandatory, as this one's are.

So, what if a farmer wants to opt out of his subsidy not to plant more than 34 million acres? What if he'd rather sell much needed supply to meet swelling demand? There are harsh penalties for not fulfilling a 10–15 year contract to do nothing! Talk about the American dream turning into a nightmare.

I want to disclose my severe bias right here. I owe everything to a farmer. My father grew up on a farm that his father worked his entire life on, dirt poor in the middle of Texas. He believed in hard work. He taught me how to hunt, to drive a tractor, to split open a watermelon by hand, to roast marshmallows, to play baseball — all on that farm. But before any of that, he showed me how to work from morning darkness till after sundown. I mean work hard, relentlessly, into the punishing summers down here. A fresh apricot cobbler from my grandma was the only subsidy he ever wanted — from his own tree in the front yard. I never recall him asking for help, not once; he was too busy working.

Enjoy a good BBQ on July 4th, because next year's meat will be marinated in a distasteful concoction.
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Ryan Krueger is a money manager in Houston, TX at the firm he founded, Krueger & Catalano Capital Partners, LLC.

There I was at the store buying just two products: lard and salt. They sat on the black conveyor belt awaiting checkout at the store. The guy behind me — something like this happens every time I buy lard — asked incredulously: “what are you going to make with that?”

So my routine lecture began. I use lard for making biscuits. Sometimes I fry those lard biscuits in lard, and these I call “hot puffs” and eat them with honey. Lard is essential for pie crusts. It makes great chocolate chip cookies. I can’t imagine frying potatoes in anything else. It is excellent for chicken. Pancakes and waffles are never better than when made with lard. Popcorn not fried in lard (air pop? please!) is noticeably inferior. Cakes are wonderful with lard. The refried beans you eat are not authentic if they do not include lard. All that amounts to nearly a bucket per week of lard use. I admit it.

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Sometimes we all need to be reminded of the obvious: none of us is physically immortal. For all the bickering, posturing, and debating that goes on in nutrition circles over various issues, no one walking this earth is getting out of here alive. As Robin Williams pointed out to his students in Dead Poets Society, while they were looking at a picture of some alumni, "all those boys were once like you, and all those boys are now fertilizing daffodils" (grossly paraphrased).

Some of us think this is all there is and then we go into the great nothingness. Many more of us think or at least hope that there are better things to come, and that passing from this life simply marks the transition from time to eternity. Of course this blog isn't the place to cover such a debate, though many of my readers who have followed me for years on various yahoo groups know exactly where I stand, since such debates did go on, and rather intensely at times, in groups ostensibly devoted to nutrition.

I like to tell my atheist friends that if I'm mistaken they should genuinely pity me, as St. Paul once noted in his letter to a group of first century Christians residing at Corinth, "If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied."

And my attitude to my atheist friends is summed up in these words penned also by St. Paul to the same group of folks at Corinth, "If from human motives I fought with wild beasts at Ephesus, what does it profit me? If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die." (Thankfully they are woefully inconsistent on this point)

The philosophical (and epistemological) implication and application of both of the above statements is quite profound, and far beyond the scope of this article, but they, like the celebrities mentioned below, some old and some not so old, remind us that wherever we land on such issues, not one of us is getting out of this life alive.

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See also: Why I Quit HIV and Why I Quit HIV: The Aftermath

You want the truth? You can't handle the truth! - Jack Nicholson from the movie, A Few Good Men

1. We're All At Risk:

In 1987, the fear-and-death hyperbole machine that is the engine of 'public health' pandemania was in such ferocious motion, that Oprah Winfrey issued this warning:

"Research studies now project that one in five – listen to me, hard to believe – one in five heterosexuals could be dead from AIDS at the end of the next three years. That’s by 1990. One in five." Although Americans have grown larger, not thinner, Oprah has never apologized for her wild-eyed hyperbole. But the mainstream has, issuing warnings in the press that "the threat of a global heterosexual pandemic has disappeared," and that worldwide AIDS numbers are over-inflated, needing to be halved or more, because the AIDS public relations machine has created a "House of Numbers."

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