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Weston A. Price’s work and its relevance to today
My own introduction to the work of Weston A. Price likely bears a similarity to the way in which many reading this have initially come across him: through his many amazing photographs. They certainly tell an undeniable story that transcends both time and language, and simply looking at them leaves a compelling and indelible impression of undeniable importance and truth.
It often seems we are unconsciously conditioned to look upon old black-and-white photos and assume one is seeing something purely of some distant past and not meaningfully relevant to modern times. But the passionate work of Weston Price transcends the superficial patina of aged, often colorless photographic medium and demands a thoughtful consideration of what these (in truth, timeless) images on film automatically imply.
Whoever said that a picture is worth a thousand words truly must have been talking about Price’s photographs.
Humanity has arrived at a precipice, driven to that edge by decades of shepherding us all toward the dubious conveniences of industrialized foods and chemicals, sedentary lifestyles, corporate manipulations and a stalwart complacency driven by our cozy, climate controlled environments and our artificial separation from one another and from the more tangibly perilous and challenging natural world within which we evolved.
As biological organisms having once upon a time emerged from the wild we are automatically wired to pay attention to immediately tangible threats that may surround us. Yet nowadays we might be living in Minnesota in February when it is 40° below zero outside, and yet winter isn’t coming for us anymore. We sit on soft couches in front of large television screens, next to comfortably programmed thermostats, entertained for hours by mostly irrelevant, mind numbing or contrived nonsense. And at any given time while at home we are typically not more than a few short steps from our refrigerators and cupboards where any number of foods and food-like substances await our cravings and whims. –No intensive hunting or gathering needed. We effortlessly buy our meat shrink wrapped, never knowing the gaze of the animals that supplied it or what forces, artificial foods and environments might have shaped that animal’s life and health (and ultimately, ours). We no longer face the threat of harsh, challenging environments, wild animals or inclement weather affecting our comforts, safety or food supply.
Yet it can be readily argued that we as a species have never lived in more perilous times than now. –Only today the threats we face are largely invisible to us. thereby silently brushing past our deeper survival instincts unnoticed. They come in the form of pollutants and other toxic materials throughout our air, water and food supply. They also come in the form of the strategic and technologically facilitated manipulations of our individual/collective minds, digital tools that separate and isolate us as much as they claim to bring us together (while harvesting our data), the quiet consequences of corporate avarice, and the ambitions of predatory, would-be controlling forces quietly eroding our freedoms, health and better futures.
The haunting images captured by Price (and his scientifically exhaustive, meticulous analysis of what he discovered and recorded for all time from his travels) arguably supply a more relevant message to our species today—in 2023– than literally ever before. Paying attention to Price’s work provides us with both an understanding of what is possible for humanity (i.e., radiant health and happiness) through reclaiming our understanding of our rightful place within Nature—but also implies the threat of what might happen if we take that next stumble over the imposed precipice we face, reaping the darker consequences of our blind and willful ignorance of that rightful place within/among ourselves and within Nature.
Price showed us that throughout the world, wherever indigenous and traditional people groups were consuming unadulterated, whole foods, their health was markedly better than those that of modernized Westerners consuming an increasingly industrialized diet (what he called “the foods of modern commerce”). Nowadays, in an effort to counter the health problems associated with processed foods, far too much lip service is given to “fruits and vegetables” as being of centralized importance. Price showed unequivocally that the healthiest people groups in the world invariably consumed the greatest variety of quality animal source foods and fats. And in some of these cultures showing undeniably radiant heath plant foods were at times not even available or consumed. Try as he might, he was entirely unable to find a vegetarian/vegan culture anywhere in the world (much to his own personal disappointment). Animal source foods and fats were very much pivotal to what he discovered as the foods most central to human health.
In an era where the drumbeat of totalitarian globalism is sounding an unprecedented war against animal source foods in our diet (and upon animals and humans, in general), Weston Price’s message has never been more critical to the future of humanity.
Price’s work not only shows us the critical importance of our rightful relationship with Nature and animals/animal source foods…but also also of living within true human community, working together in healthy interdependent and aligned collaboration through age-old cooperative divisions of labor naturally offering mutual comfort, connection, security and nourishment. His message is a call toward reclaiming our ancestral roots and our natural ancestral birthright of health, human community, our rightful role within nature and an invigorated and nourished Human Spirit.
It’s unlikely Price ever realized it, but his work is a body of unique wisdom ultimately meant to speak to us in THIS VERY TIME in human history, more than any other that has come before us.
His message for today and for ALL of us is urgent, poignant, beautiful and undeniably relevant.
— Nora Gedgaudas, Board Member, Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation