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| food. Some nutritionists believe that the human digestive tract is still adapting to this cultural change, which took place only 10,000 years ago. |
| Even after humans began baking bread and roasting a more stable supply of meat, they consumed most of their food raw or only partly cooked and they still consumed a variety of foodswhatever could be collected from the sea, rivers, lakes or land. Grains were ground whole, never stripped of their bran to make white rice or flour. Vegetables were eaten raw or lightly cooked; they weren't deep-fried, cooked in a pressure cooker, canned, irradiated or microwaved. Salting (in whole, unprocessed sea or mined salt), fermentation (yogurt, sauerkraut, cheese, wine, beer and pickles) and drying were the only means of preserving perishable foods beyond their harvest. Sugar as we know it didn't exist, sweets like raw honey were rare treats and salt was never refined to separate its trace minerals for sale to industry. No one used pesticides, herbicides, preservatives, chemical additives, artificial flavors, flavor enhancers, chemical sweeteners or artificial fats. No one drank pasteurized milk, pasteurized juice or carbonated colas. Even cave men, who in our popular imagination lived on fresh-killed meat, didn't eat it every day. It is only in the last 150 years in the industrial West, especially the last 50 years in North America, that traditional foods have been replaced by substances human digestive organs were never before exposed to. Fifty years of technology in 4 million years of digestive evolution is like 1 second in a 24-hour day. We've been eating modern fare for the blink of an eye. |
| In the 1920s and '30s, Dr. Weston Price, a California dentist, and his wife traveled the world in search of cultures that had little or no contact with the industrial West. In every case, adherence to a traditional diet of unrefined food meant freedom from disease while exposure to ''civilization'' (refined flour, sugar and canned foods) brought with it dental cavities, jaw deformities, crooked teeth and all the illnesses we think of as "normal," including digestive complaints. |
| Nutrition and Physical Degeneration the book that chronicles Price's findings, has become a classic. |
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