The Flux Retrospective on Food

Way back in the day....about 8 years ago, I was introduced to the work of Rob Wolf, one of the original gurus and proponents of the paleo diet. Around that same time, I came to read Dr. Weston A. Price's seminal book Physical and Nutritional Information (1946).  Rob Wolf was and still is all about the evils of gluten. Weston A. Price, on the other hand, taking a more anthropological perspective in his studies of cultures all around the world, did not so much as vilify gluten as he did compare our contemporary industrialized diet with the diet of so called primitive cultures. I have since blended the two perspectives. In my opinion, nothing compares to Dr. Price's emphasis and qualification of NUTRITIONALLY DENSE FOOD. In his travels, Dr. Price came across a wide array of cultures and diets around the globe. But what he found these diets had in common was that they were ten times higher in the fat-soluble vitamins found in animal fats, the most important being Vitamin A, D and Vitamin K (at the time, this was an unknown vitamin and he referred to it as Activator X).  Dr Price referred to these three vitamins, A, D and K as both "activators" and "catalysts" in that they made possible the actual assimilation of all other nutrients in our food - proteins, minerals, and water-soluble vitamins. And here I quote Dr. Price at length:

   It is possible to starve for minerals that are abundant in the foods eaten because they cannot be utilized without an adequate quantity of the fat-soluble activators. The amounts [of nutrients] utilized depend directly on the presence of other substances, particularly the fat-soluble vitamins. It is at this point probably that the greatest breakdown in our modern diet takes place, namely in the ingestion and utilization of adequate amounts of the special activating substances including the vitamins needed for rendering the minerals in the food available to the human system

What foods supply these vital fat-soluble activators?
pastured butterfat
pastured organ meat
marine oils
fish and shellfish
eggs
animal tallow (rendered beef and pork fat)
He also noted that the nutritional density of such foods was increased through fermentation practices that were passed down from generation to generation.

I highly recommend this book, if only because it is a remarkable account of just how diverse diets around the world truly are (or at least were).

Regardless of the multitude of dietary recommendations out there, we do know that there are modern day diseases that were not present 10 000 years ago (diabetes, neurological diseases, autism, obesity, metabolic syndrome, and a whole host of other auto-immune diseases, to name just a few). We also know that these illnesses have increased with the introduction of devitalized foods such as sugar, skimmed milk, canned foods, hydrogenated vegetable oil and wheat).

Since Dr. Price's work, much attention has been given to the links between the gut and the brain. Notable mention goes to the GAPS diet, or Gut and Psychology Syndrome, as advocated by Dr. Natasha McBride (a Weston Price proponent) as well as the work of Dr. Wahls Protocol, an MD who has REVERSED some of the ravaging effects of MS through paleo principles. Please, I urge you to take a look at this book, and recommend it to anyone you know with this awful disease.










http://chriskresser.com/the-3-step-process-to-determining-your-ideal-carbohydrate-intake