One of the most active voices of the prewar period was Weston A. Price, a dentist of Canadian origin who leaned on one of those questions of common sense, which today can not even ask us. Now, like heart disease, chronic dental problems are a part of our lives.

But if you think about it, it is strange that everyone needs a dentist and that so many people need braces, channel interference, the wisdom tooth extraction and other routine procedures necessary to maintain modern oral hygiene. The need of many remedial interventions for just one body part that is involved in the feeding activity, activity that is essential for our survival, reflects a defect in our design, a kind of omission of the natural selection? It is unlikely.

But what did Price found out? First, he found out that populations that eat traditionally have no need for a dentist.(Well, almost: the teeth of the “strong highlanders” in Switzerland, which have never seen a toothbrush, were covered with a greenish-filing but Price found that, below this layer, the teeth were well formed and had no cavity). Whenever he discovered a primitive population that hasn’t yet contact with “alimentary substitutes of modern trade” – as refined flour, sugar, vegetable oil, canned or preserved food trough chemical ways- revealed very few or none signs of modern degeneration – like chronic diseases, dental caries and dental arches with malformations. These problems were caused either by a certain element of Western diet either a certain deficiency.

Wherever Price went, he took pictures of the teeth of the populations that he met and took samples from their food and sends these to Cleveland for analysis so that he could determine the content of macro-nutrients and vitamins. He found out that the indigenous diets were much richer in vitamins A and D than the modern U.S. – in average about ten times higher. This was due in a large part to the fact that, as is it was noted in 1930, that by processing food, it loses nutrients, especially vitamins. Trade food are thought to be stored and transported over long distances and the only way that they can become more resilient and less vulnerable to pests is to remove some of the containing nutrients. In general, the calories are much easier to transport- in form of refined cereals or sugar-only nutrients that can alter or attract bacteria, insects and rodents, all extremely interested in these nutrients. (Even more than us, apparently.)

Price concluded that the modern civilization did sacrifice mostly the quality of the food in favor of the quantity and the length of the shelf-life.