* Dr. Price used the word “primitive” in a complimentary sense; he had great admiration for the nonindustrialized peoples he studied and their wisdom in food choices. Most anthropologists and explorers of his day referred to the people they encountered as “savages.” Price studiously avoided the use of this derogatory term.

* Unfortunately, even today governments everywhere are turning primitive tribes into “conservation refugees” by evicting them from their land in the name of environmental preservation. Globalist government policy follows John Muir, the grandfather of the American conservation movement, who argued that “wilderness” should be cleared of all inhabitants and set aside to satisfy the modern human’s “need for recreation and spiritual renewal.” This sentiment became national policy with the passage of the 1964 Wilderness Act, which defined wilderness as a place “where man himself is a visitor and does not remain.” Expulsions from “nature preserves” continue to this day, especially in India and Africa.

† In his book, Dr. Price quotes the 1937 work Safe Childbirth, by Kathleen Olga Vaughan. Vaughan, a midwife, noted that wide pelvic structure was a requirement for easy birth; Dr. Price theorized that the same nutritious diet that resulted in wide facial structure also gave women wide pelvic structure.

* Cordain and Wolf have a “20-percent rule,” which allows paleo dieters to eat anything they want as 20 percent of their diet—presumably foods that would supply them with the salt, fat, and carbohydrates their bodies need.

* This is a man describing the activities of men; the women spent much more time engaged in food gathering and processing.

* The key difference between wild and domesticated grains is that domesticated varieties are “shatterproof.” The grains are attached to a central axis known as the rachis. As wild grains ripen, the rachis becomes brittle, so that when touched or blown by the wind it shatters, scattering the grains as seeds, ensuring that the grains are only dispersed once they have ripened. In a small number of plants, however, a single genetic mutation ensures the rachis does not become brittle, even when the seeds ripen. This “tough rachis” mutation is helpful for humans gathering wild grains, who are likely to gather a disproportionate number of tough-rachis mutants as a result. If some of the grains are then planted to produce a crop the following year, the tough-rachis mutation will be propagated, and every year the proportion of tough-rachis mutants will increase.

† A wooden carrier called a pitji or coolamon is a valuable piece of equipment, especially for Aboriginal women. In addition to its use in construction, it served as a food carrier, water container and receptacle for carrying infants.

* Technically ferns do not produce seeds. The nardoo “seeds” are hard, nut-like objects up to [one-third] inch long called sporocarps, which grow from the plant’s rhizome (underground stem or root). The sporocarp is a hard capsule full of spores in starchy packing.

* A billabong is an oxbow lake, an isolated pond left behind after a river changes course. Billabongs are usually formed when the path of a creek or river changes, leaving the former branch with a dead end. Billabongs, reflecting the arid Australian climate in which these “dead rivers” are found, fill with water seasonally and are dry for a greater part of the year.

* The explorers foolishly shot at the one native they saw, chasing away the only person who could have advised them on how to prepare the poisonous seeds.

* So skilled were the Aboriginal people in detecting movement in the brush that the Australian police frequently used them as trackers.

† The earliest known Australian Aboriginal boomerangs are ten thousand years old, but older hunting sticks have been discovered in Europe, where they seem to have formed part of the Stone Age weapon arsenal. One boomerang, discovered in Jaskinia Obłazowa in the Carpathian Mountains in Poland, made of mammoth’s tusk, has been dated at about thirty thousand years old. King Tutankhamun of Egypt owned a collection of boomerangs of both the straight-flying (hunting) and returning variety.

* Even Bruce Pascoe, author of the wonderful book Dark Emu, praises kangaroo flesh because it has a “low fat content.” Elsewhere in this fascinating work, he describes feasts on fat-laden moths and other insects.

† Hollow trees served as smokehouses for eel. Analysis of the soil at their bases revealed eel fat, which may have been eight thousand years old.

* Insects also had medicinal uses. The bush cockroach provided a local anesthetic, and the green tree ant could be used to treat headaches and colds. The silk bag of the pine processionary caterpillar made a protective dressing for wounds and the honey from sugarbag bees helped “clear the guts out.” Termites provided compounds that served as antibacterial agents.

† Unlike fish from cold regions, tropical fish have very little fat in their flesh.

* Such were Kirby’s preconceptions of the Aboriginal people that he described those who set up this ingenious machine, and the relaxed way in which they removed each fish from the loop, as “lazy.”

* Aboriginal women would often develop abnormal bone growth or “surfer’s ear,” in which irritation from cold wind and water exposure causes the bone surrounding the ear canal to develop lumps of new bony growth, which constrict the ear canal.

† This relationship between the lead killer whale and the humans on the shore continued for many years after the Europeans arrived, until a disgruntled whaler shot the lead killer whale. That was the last time the cetaceans cooperated with men.

* Within the animist belief system of the indigenous Australians, a songline is one of the paths across the land that mark the route followed by localized “creator-beings” during the “Dreamtime” of long ago. The paths of the songlines are recorded in traditional songs, stories, dances and paintings. A knowledgeable person is able to navigate across the land, often for hundreds of miles, by repeating the words of the song, which describe the locations of landmarks, water holes and other natural phenomena.

† Surprisingly—or not surprisingly—Gammage’s book delineating his findings about Aboriginal land management has not met with acceptance in the scientific community: critics claim there is no evidence for Aboriginal fires. According to one professor, “In this racial fantasy it is white men, not black, who are barbarous and ignorant… While this romantic cant highlighted Aboriginal moral superiority, it bore no resemblance to the manner in which human beings actually live on the planet.” According to Gammage, “I have not found a single scientist who takes into consideration the fundamental Aboriginal conviction that people risk their souls if they do not manage every inch of ground they are responsible for.” Others have insisted that it is impossible that people widely dispersed over a huge continent could all have the same idea about land management; and they dismiss the Aboriginal beliefs about the Dreaming as ignorant superstition. They take offense at the notion that our main purpose in life is to care for the earth and not to pillage and poison the planet and its inhabitants. To the modern scientist, the idea that the “primitive” Aboriginal people could collectively receive such wisdom from the supersensible world is nonsense. In fact, everything about the Aborigines presents a challenge to the mind-set of the materialistic scientist.

* After the Europeans dispossessed the Aboriginals from their land, many parts of the country became overrun with kangaroos. Caterpillars, locusts and mosquitos increased to plague conditions after the Aborigines were no longer allowed to burn.

* The fire resulted in 173 fatalities and the destruction of more than two thousand houses. Laws forbidding homeowners from cutting away brush around their homes had gone into place several years earlier. Authorities blamed the fires on “record-high temperatures and strong winds after a season of intense drought” and warned that “drier, warmer conditions and more people living in high-risk areas suggest a future with more disastrous fire events.” The Aboriginals understood that disastrous fires only occurred when they did not take care of the landscape through fire management; any destructive fire was a fault of their own, not of the weather.

* In South Australia, tradition forbade young men from eating twenty types of easy-to-obtain foods and boys from eating thirteen types, in order to reserve these for the elders.

* The Aboriginal initiation rites for boys appear to have been mild, involving neither circumcision or subincision. Some tribes celebrated manhood by knocking out one front tooth, and indicated marriage in women by cutting off the two lower [end] sections of the little finger on the left hand. Dr. Price noted that a series of initiations for the boys helped instill both fearlessness and respect for the welfare of the entire tribe.

* Dark chocolate gets Cordain’s blessing, even though a typical dark chocolate bar can contain almost one tablespoon of sugar per ounce. Cordain recommended diet sodas in his first book, but now reckons they are not good for you.

* Cabeza de Vaca spent eight years traveling across the American Southwest as part of the Narváez expedition. He was one of only four of the original company to return after the journey, during which he occasionally submitted to slavery by the local tribes in order to survive. Later he became a trader and a reluctant faith healer to the more welcoming tribes along the Rio Grande. After returning to Spain in 1537, he wrote an account of his travels and the peoples he encountered. Cabeza de Vaca qualifies as a notable “protoanthropologist” for his detailed accounts of American Indian customs.

* It took Hearne three years to find the mine, after which he reported that it was too remote and inaccessible to be of use to the colonists.

* According to Lawrence J. Barkwell, in an article entitled “Pemmican,” a bag of buffalo pemmican weighing about ninety pounds was called a taureau (French for “bull”) by the Métis people of Canada. Bags of taureau mixed with fat from the udder were known as taureaux fins; when mixed with bone marrow, they were known as taureaux grands; and when mixed with berries, taureaux à grains. It generally took the meat of one buffalo to fill a taureau.

* Tripe is the muscle wall (the interior mucosal lining is removed) of the first three chambers of a cow’s stomach.

* In the context of a healthy traditional diet, some Native Americans, usually men, practiced ritual fasting to obtain spiritual or mysterious powers. Young warriors, especially, would separate themselves from the tribe and fast until their totem animal appeared to them; shamans also fasted or used consciousness-altering plants like peyote to gain access to the spirit world. But the daily diet contained animal foods of all types.

† Preliminary analysis indicates that bear fat is extremely high in vitamin K₂.

‡ Bear grease was a popular treatment for men with hair loss from at least as early as the seventeenth century until the First World War. Nicholas Culpeper, the English botanist and herbalist, wrote in 1652, in his book The English Physician, “Bears Grease staies [stops] the falling off of the hair.”

* The state of Oregon gets its name from the ooligan fish.

† An exception to the Native American diet high in animal foods seems to be the diet of the Tarahumara, known as the “running” Indians of the Southwest, described as the “finest natural distance runners in the world.” A 1971 article by Dale Groom, MD, published at the height of the low-fat diet craze in the American Heart Journal, described the diet as based on corn, with “relatively little meat… seldom is livestock slaughtered for food except on occasions of fiestas.” It turns out that these fiestas occur very frequently. In the next paragraph, Groom notes that the Tarahumara run after game such as deer and wild turkey. A 1989 book, The Running Indians, claims without reference that the Tarahumara diet is 10 percent protein, 10 percent fat, and 80 percent complex carbohydrates; yet the author acknowledges that the people live by keeping sheep and goats, and consume fish and also insects; a dish of ground corn with a slimy, yellow appearance contained caterpillars. They refrain from certain foods, including fat, before races—with the implication that they eat fat at other times. The Tarahumara use several narcotic plants before racing, have a short life span, and often suffer from malnutrition and disease.

* Indeed, corn cannot grow without the action of man planting it in the ground.

† Medical researchers debated two theories for the origin of pellagra: the deficiency theory said that pellagra was due to a deficiency of some nutrient, while the germ theorists argued that pellagra was caused by a germ transmitted by stable flies. (A third theory, promoted by the eugenicist Charles Davenport, held that people only contracted pellagra if they were susceptible to it due to certain “constitutional, inheritable” traits of the affected individual.)

* Not to be confused with pozole, a kind of Aztec stew made with fermented corn dough and meat—originally the meat of human sacrifices, and later of pork, said to taste very similar to human flesh.

* Pulque is the milk-colored, slightly viscous, slightly foamy fermented sap of the agave plant; its production dates at least from the Aztec period. The characterization of pulque as an alcoholic beverage ignores the complex character of the drink. The traditional brew has a sour, vomitlike smell, the definite mark of bacterial fermentation (which produces lactic acid) in addition to yeasted fermentation (which produces alcohol). The beverage is rich in B vitamins, vitamin C and many other nutrients.

† According to their diaries, Lewis and Clark consumed mainly elk and wapato while they explored the Columbia River region, now in present-day Oregon.

* No added salt is allowed on Loren Cordain’s version of the paleo diet, although adherents may consume modern foods for 20 percent of their meals and can presumably get the salt they need during binges on potato chips and salted nuts.

* Dr. William Todd, physician for the Hudson’s Bay Company Swan River district in 1837, described two American Indians who were able to recover from smallpox by floating in a salty lake for almost twenty-four hours. Christened Little Manitou Lake, or Lake of the Healing Waters, the body of water was later found to contain high concentrations of minerals, in addition to salt, and became an important spa center during the 1920s and ’30s.

† The rapid demise of the well-nourished, well-formed American Indian to smallpox and other diseases is a mystery still seeking solution. The effects of the white man’s diseases were catastrophic—carrying off up to 95 percent of the population in some areas—whereas plagues of the same diseases among more poorly nourished Europeans killed no more than one-third of the population.

* The demise of the American chestnut tree, which grew everywhere in profusion in the eastern United States, is blamed on an Asian bark fungus accidentally introduced into North America on imported Asiatic chestnut trees in the early 1900s. Perhaps the trees were more susceptible to the blight because they had not received periodic burning for many years.

* The term conservationists use to describe this process is “rewilding.”

* Eskimos and Inuit are racially distinct from American Indians, and the Eskimo-Aleut languages are unrelated to any American Indian language groups. “Eskimo” is a blanket term used to refer to indigenous people living in the polar regions of the world. However, the generic word “Eskimos”—meaning “eaters of raw flesh”—is considered a negative term in Canada and Greenland. In fact, the Canadian government passed an act in 1982 giving recognition to the word “Inuit” over Eskimo to refer to the indigenous people of Canada. Thus, the term “Inuit” applies to the indigenous people of Canada and Greenland but not to all the indigenous people living in and around Siberia and Alaska.

† Vilhjalmur Stefansson, on the other hand, describes the Eskimos as tall, with many at six feet or taller, although he notes that the women are shorter than the average European woman.

* Very little of killed animals goes to waste. According to Hugh Brody in The Living Arctic (1978), typically only the lungs, genitals and small amounts of entrails are left on the ice. Brains rubbed into hides serve as a skin softener and preservative; spinal and leg tendons make sturdy thread; seal windpipes and intestines make igloo windows; fish skins can be fashioned into needle and fishhook cases; ptarmigan bladders make children’s balloons; fish eyes and boiled duck feet make delicious snacks; the bones of a seal flipper provide all the pieces for an elaborate Inuit game; and a goose or ptarmigan wing serves as an excellent feather duster.

* Stefansson compared the enjoyment of rotten fish to the fondness “among nobility and gentry to like game and pheasant so high that the average Midwestern American or even Englishman of a lower class, would call them rotten.” He reckoned that a taste for mild cheese was “somewhat plebian,” whereas a liking for odiferous fermented foods was a characteristic of the upper classes.

* Vilhjalmur Stefansson reported that the Eskimo sod house was as warm as any house heated by modern methods. In fact, when meals were being cooked, the indoor temperature could reach 95º or even 100ºF. Even in winter, the inhabitants slept naked under cotton blankets.

* The first food item that Eskimos adopted when they had contact with Europeans was flour to make “bannock bread,” a habit so widespread that some observers have claimed that bannock bread is a traditional Eskimo food. This practice would of course raise the carbohydrate level of the diet considerably.

† For reference, until recently, the U.S. Dietary Guidelines recommended no more than 300 milligrams cholesterol per day, the amount found in two eggs.

* According to Stefansson, before road-building came to the frozen north, Eskimos, especially those living in the interior, had to endure the warm months from May to September almost as prisoners. Rushing rivers were difficult to cross and lakes required detours. The ground was marshy, making walking difficult; wet clay stuck to the feet. Clouds of mosquitos brought misery to everyone and the weather was often sweltering. When the fall frosts arrive, all changes. The insects die; the lakes and rivers freeze over and become passable. Snow covering the land allows sledding. And the Eskimos’ clothes and houses ensure that they are always comfortable and warm.

* For comparison, oranges contain about 53 mg per 100 grams.

* The need for salt is greater in herbivores than in carnivorous animals.

* The Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for vitamin A in Americans is a mere 3,000 IU (just 6 percent of the average Eskimo intake), with an upper limit of 10,000 IU (only 20 percent of average Eskimo intake).

* The Eskimo avoids several foods that are toxic, including the flesh of the Greenland shark and the liver of the bearded seal. Vilhjalmur Stefansson found that about one polar bear liver in five or six made people ill but noted that there is no record of a man nor a dog dying from eating polar bear liver. H. R. Thornton, a missionary in Wales, Alaska, in 1890–1893, reported that the Eskimos “say that if the lining membrane of the [polar bear] liver be taken off, it loses its poisonous properties and may be eaten with impunity.” Yet university nutrition courses invariably tell students that vitamin A can be toxic because Arctic explorers got sick when they ate vitamin A-rich polar bear liver.

* Unfortunately, interfering public health organizations today are urging the Eskimos not to eat organ meats in order to avoid pollutants; but the vitamin A and other compounds in organ meats are exactly the nutrients needed to protect the body from toxins.

* For example, during his second voyage to Tahiti, Captain James Cook and his men witnessed a war fleet of 160 double canoe vessels crowded with rowers and fighting men armed with clubs, pikes and stones, and wearing turbans, breastplates and helmets. Flags streamed in the wind. One hundred seventy smaller double canoes served for transport and supplies. Cook estimated that the fleet could have held almost eight thousand men.

* Kava or kava-kava is a beverage produced from the roots of Piper methysticum (from Latin for “pepper” and Latinized Greek for “intoxicating”) and consumed throughout the South Pacific. The tea, which tastes “like muddy water with a hint of bitterness,” has sedative anesthetic, and euphoriant properties. Its active ingredients are called kavalactones. A Cochrane systematic review concluded that kava was likely to be more effective than a placebo at treating short-term anxiety. Early visitors to the islands took a dimmer view, noting that it led to “befuddlement” and immobilized the limbs; some islanders drank kava in excess and went into convulsions, or lost their appetites, stopped eating, and developed a skin condition resembling leprosy. The ability to pull oneself out of a kava-induced stupor was regarded as an attribute of heroes.

* The coconut crab (Birgus latro), a species of terrestrial hermit crab, is the largest land-living arthropod in the world and can weigh up to nine pounds and grow to more than three feet long from leg to leg. Its distribution across the South Seas mirrors the distribution of the coconut palm. The indigenous people considered it a delicacy and an aphrodisiac. The only predator of the coconut crab is mankind; intensive hunting has threatened the species’ survival on many of the islands.

* Three towns in Papua New Guinea still engage in the practice of shark calling, which involves luring sharks from the deep and catching them using hand snares. To trap a shark, the caller submerges a noose made of braided cane attached to a wooden propeller float. When the shark swims through the noose up to its pectoral fins, the fisherman jerks up on the propeller’s handle, which in turn tightens the noose around the shark. At this point, the shark struggles to break free, and the shark caller must resist the animal’s force to keep it from escaping. Once the shark is exhausted, the fisherman can let the float bring it to the surface. At this point the caller stabs the shark in the eyes, clubs it to death, and brings it aboard his canoe.

† The lack of mammal predators allowed large birds like the moa and the kiwi to thrive. Hunting by the Maoris soon brought the moa to extinction. The kiwi is currently protected in nature preservation areas. As land animals were lacking, the Maoris especially prized bird fat, particularly that of the fatty mutton bird, which they preserved in special baskets, encased in its fat. Fat eels were also greatly prized.

‡ The South Sea Island pigs were small and docile enough to be kept as pets, although they mostly roamed freely in the brush where the islanders hunted them for sport. From the 1770s on, these native pigs were crossed with several larger European and Asian varieties. By the missionary period, the pigs had become aggressive and were uprooting gardens, which the Tahitians sought to prevent by fitting them with collars, or breaking their strongest teeth to stop them from gnawing their way in or out of enclosures.

* I have been unable to find any description of organ meat consumption in the South Seas, which probably reflects the fact that early observers did not ask the right questions, not considering organ meats important. However, in the Philippines, consumption of pig organ meat in stews and soups is commonplace.

* Dog bones dating back to about 2000 BC have been found on Pukapuka.

* The breadfruit tree has many other uses. The trunk and larger branches provided timbers used in house construction, and was also used for canoe hulls. The inner bark provided the material for bark cloth, and the highly viscous resin was useful for closing canoe seams and trapping small birds. The broad leaves served to wrap foods and to cover ovens.

* Ugandans eagerly await the annual grasshopper feast, which occurs in December. When the rains are heavy, tens of thousands of grasshoppers swarm into cities, where they are stripped of their legs and wings, then fried and eaten. In Kenya, locusts fried in butter make a delicious snack.

† For an interesting insect dish, and also a look at how thick mosquitos in Africa can be, try searching YouTube for “mosquito hamburger.”

* Price reported that the Dinka consumed mostly fish and grains; however, the Dinka are a cattle-keeping people whose diet lacks milk and meat products only during the “lean” times preceding the rains and new growth of pasture.

* Grindstones and scrapers, indicating the processing of grains into porridges and bread, dating to 16,000 BC have been found along the Nile, thus putting the cultivation and use of grains well back into the “Paleolithic” era, which supposedly ended about 10,000 BC.

† The U.K.’s Department for International Development and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will spend more than four billion dollars over five years from 2016 onward in an effort to end deaths caused by malaria. Current eradication efforts include toxic spraying for mosquitos and expensive medications that can have serious side effects. But what if an effective preventive measure for malaria has existed all along—before highly educated scientists tried to solve the problem without considering native wisdom? In Djibouti, the natives brew a partially lacto-fermented, partially alcoholic beverage from palm sap. “It is very nutritious, even for children,” explains camel guide Houssain Mohamed Houssain. “You can put it in their sorghum cereal. It’s full of vitamins. That way, they don’t get malaria. The mosquitos bite them, but they don’t get the disease.”

* This dichotomy is similar to that found in the South Seas, where “food” refers to the staple carbohydrate dish of yam, taro, sweet potato or breadfruit, always eaten with a “sauce” of meat, fish, coconut, plant foods or some combination thereof.

† To see the preparation of the typical Sudanese sorghum flatbread, visit http://globaltableadventure.com/recipe/recipe-sudanese-kisra-sorghum-crepes.

‡ Potash is a mined and manufactured salt that contains potassium in water-soluble form. The name derives from “pot ash,” which refers to plant ashes soaked in water in a pot, the primary means of manufacturing the product before the industrial era. The word “potassium” is derived from “potash.” In Africa, potash or combu is used in a number of fermented food preparations.

* Porridge of sorghum and other grains helps African beauty pageant contestants achieve the ideal shape, with “a rounded, full-fleshed bottom, well-developed and in movement when the woman moves.” Africans will tell you that skinny, bony models in America remind them of famine. In preparation for pageant day, African women aim to surpass two hundred pounds by eating bowls of porridge and other high-carbohydrate foods like plantains.

† One can only speculate whether the African word bouza and the English word “booze” have the same root.

* The purpose of adding the dough to boiling butter is to clarify the butter and produce ghee.

† Many African groups enjoy their freshly slaughtered meat raw. Eating raw meat was—and still is—especially common in Ethiopia, where early explorers noted the consumption of raw meat cut from the flank or dewlap of living cattle; they also described a dish of raw tripe and liver cut into small pieces, seasoned with the contents of the gallbladder, and the “half-digested green matter found in the intestines of the animal.”

* One story describes a Peace Corps worker in sub-Saharan Africa who convinced the tribesmen to cook their food outside their huts, rather than inside as was their practice. An increase in malaria soon followed, as the smoke kept malaria-carrying mosquitos out of the huts. The tribesmen soon returned to the wise cooking practices of their ancestors. High levels of vitamin A in traditional diets provide powerful protection for lungs constantly exposed to smoke.

* Another widespread African practice is pica or geophagy—the consumption of clay, dirt or even soft stones for the minerals they contain—especially among pregnant women and growing children. Edible clay and even dirt cakes made with clay, butter or margarine, and salt and pepper can be purchased from street vendors and outdoor markets throughout Africa. Fat-soluble vitamins ensure the assimilation of minerals in dirt and clay.

* More recently, Dr. Timothy Johns of McGill University determined that 66 percent of calories in the traditional Maasai diet come from fat, primarily saturated fat, with a cholesterol intake of more than 2,000 milligrams per day. He attributed low cholesterol levels in the Maasai to their high fitness level, consumption of various plants rich in antioxidants, high calcium intake, relatively low caloric intake, and “unknown” genetic factors. No researcher seems willing to accept the premise that the low cholesterol levels among the Maasai are due to their high consumption of stable saturated fat, rich in fat-soluble vitamins.

† Although one study showed that people who eat very low levels of fiber—less than 10 grams per day—had an 18 percent higher risk of colorectal cancer, the more general idea that colon cancer is a fiber-deficiency disease is now considered incorrect by some cancer researchers.

‡ Oat bran, which is high in phytic acid, can cause numerous problems with digestion and assimilation, leading to mineral deficiencies, irritable bowel syndrome, and autoimmune disorders such as Crohn’s disease. Case control studies indicate that consumption of cereal fiber can be linked with detrimental effects on colon cancer formation.

* This is especially important for millet, the bran of which contains potent antithyroid compounds.

* For an example of extreme duck herding, watch the video at www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cI5Kp4CWpc.

† “Weird” Asian foods that show up on Internet sites include tarantula; “drunken” shrimp (live shrimp in a pool of strong liquor, consumed decapitated and still wiggling); fertilized eggs containing developed chicks; white ant eggs; tuna eyes; fish sperm; raw horse meat; bee larvae; bird’s nest soup (the swiftlet bird makes its nest almost entirely out of its own saliva); century eggs (preserved in alkaline clay or alkaline solution); sheep penis on a stick; dried seahorses; chicken soup containing rooster penises; snake meat; shark fin soup; turtle jelly; “three squeaks” (newly born mice wrapped in seaweed); monkey brain; jellied duck blood; rat kebabs; and snake wine (wine with a snake in the bottle, presumably consumed when the imbiber has finished the bottle of wine and is sufficiently drunk). Food sold at the 2008 Olympic Games in China included starfish fried in shark oil, sea urchins, grilled snake, dog liver, goat lungs, mixed cow and horse stew, cicadas, dung beetles, silkworms, scorpions, lizard legs, dog brain soup, iguana tails and seahorses.

* Rice consumption is declining throughout Asia. In 1965 in Korea, rice constituted 47 percent of total caloric intake, but had decreased to 35 percent by 1995. Likewise, in Japan in 1965, rice constituted 43 percent of total caloric intake, but had decreased to 23 percent by 1995.

* Similarly, in the Japanese diet, 65 percent of calories come from fish. A 1975 book on nutrition published by the California Department of Health, Nutrition During Pregnancy and Lactation, lists soy foods as minor sources of protein in Japanese and Chinese diets. Major sources of protein listed were meat including organ meats, poultry, fish and eggs.

† Industrial methods for the production of soy milk leave out the all-important squeezing and skimming steps. The presoaking is shortened by using an alkaline solution. This process helps deactivate some of the enzyme inhibitors, but not the other antinutrients. The high pH value of the soaking solution results in a decrease in cystine content when the beverage is heated, thus lowering total protein availability and soy milk’s usefulness as a protein source. Various refined sweeteners, preservatives and stabilizers go into the brew.

* A 2007 television program called A Tale of Tofu, produced by National Geographic, reports that soy milk must be boiled for at least six hours to get rid of enzyme inhibitors and other “poisons” contained in the bean.

† The modern bioreactor method produces a product by rapid hydrolysis, rather than by complete fermentation, in the space of two days, and uses the enzyme glutamase as a reactor, so that the final product contains large amounts of the kind of unnatural free glutamic acid that is found in MSG.

* Production of rice wine in Asia goes back many centuries. The Chinese and Japanese do not use malt to transform starches into alcohol, but mold that has grown on wet cooked rice.

† One theory blames these internal cancers on the ubiquitous use of talc in rice.

* For excellent analyses debunking Campbell’s claims about his China Study, see articles by Chris Masterjohn, PhD, at www.westonaprice.org/book-reviews/the-china-study-by-t-colin-campbell, www.westonaprice.org/book-reviews/the-china-study-by-t-colin-campbell, and www.westonaprice.org/our-blogs/denise-mingers-refutation-of-campbells-china-study-generates-continued-debate.

† In this computer age, it is surprising—even shocking—that the original data of Cornell’s China Study is not available on the Internet. The original report is a large book found only in university libraries—too large to copy the pages easily, although in the late 1990s, I was able to copy sections of relevant pages and tape them together. The report contains pages and pages of data that Campbell said “awaits interpretation” by others. The problem is that it is very hard for others to access the original data.

* Writing in 1994, Mark Messina, author of The Simple Soybean and Your Health, recommended one cup of soy products per day in his “optimal” diet as a way to prevent cancer, heart disease and osteoporosis.

† Starch extracted by bacterial fermentation from yams, potatoes, cassava and sweet potatoes can also be used to make cellophane noodles.

‡ The Cornell researchers also concluded that vitamin A content was low, but that may be because they did not ask questions about consumption of animal fats, organ meats, insects and other “weird” foods.

* Researchers found an intriguing indication that hand-rolled cigarettes protected against cancer while manufactured cigarettes were associated with increased rates of cancer, albeit very weakly.

* Immature soybeans cooked in salt water, called edamame, are a popular snack in Japan. The antinutrients, including isoflavones, are lower in the immature beans, but not entirely absent.

* My late colleague Mary Enig knew a Japanese woman whose husband was killed during World War II. She had an infant son, and throughout the years following the war, she gradually sold off all her furniture to provide her boy with one egg per day “so that he could go to college.” The boy grew up to be an intelligent child and, in fact, did go to college in the postwar years.

* Surprisingly, this fermented milk drink is sold in Japanese vending machines right next to Coke or Pepsi. Unfortunately, the first ingredient listed is sugar.

* Glutamic acid is an essential amino acid that comes as part of animal proteins and is also present in certain plant foods, such as wheat, soy and seaweed. In this form, glutamic acid is not generally harmful, but essential to health. However, in MSG and related products, the glutamic acid is in “free” unbound form, and it is this form that causes problems such as insomnia, headaches, neurological disease and achy muscles and joints in many people.

† Other plum varieties are also used for salted pickled plums.

* Schisandra chinensis (also known as magnolia vine, Chinese magnolia vine, or chinensis) provides the “five-flavor-fruit,” berries that taste salty, sweet, sour, pungent (spicy), and bitter.

† A different kind of side dish is anju, which might be described as macho hors d’oeuvres to go with alcohol. These include steamed squid, peanuts, shellfish, octopus, pork belly, and chicken feet marinated in fermented shrimp sauce.

* A small variety of M. charantia grows wild in the southern United States, where some rural African Americans used it as a potent medicine, calling it cerasee.

* Interestingly, all seven recipes call for parboiling the birds first, before simmering in fresh water. This preliminary step ensures that you get a clean broth, free of scum particles and unpleasant smells.

* A medieval document, The Four Seasons of the House of Cerruti, recommends pork fat and lard for young boys, women and “anyone else who has soft flesh; by contrast, beef fat suits laborers, hoers, harvesters, and all those whose flesh is hard constitutionally or because rough living has conditioned it.”

† The Roman writers Cato (in his De Agri Cultura) and Columella (in his De Re Rustica) mentioned preserving cabbages and turnips with salt.

‡ Avicenna observed that milk should come only from “animals that have been fed from the most nutritious plants in a wide area” and also noted that “boiling the milk will make it rancid for the temperament of human beings.”

* Salmon was so abundant in England in the Middle Ages that apprentice boys sometimes rioted in protest at the amount of salmon their employers fed them; subsequent legislation prevented employers from feeding salmon to their servants more than three times a week.

† “The Social Influence of Salt,” published July 1963 in Scientific American, notes that in Europe, most salt was obtained from low-lying flatlands at the ocean’s edge, where seawater flowed into natural or diked pans and then was evaporated by the action of the sun. Tracing old shorelines shows the level of the sea during various time periods. At the height of the ancient Greek and Phoenician civilizations, the sea level was more than three feet lower than it is today. For about a thousand years, salt-making in solar pans and peat marshes flourished in the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and the North Sea. But the seawater was rising. By AD 500, the ocean was more than six feet higher (three feet higher than it is today), a change that wiped out the salt pans. The covering of the salt pans corresponded with the Dark Age of Europe—it eliminated an important source of wealth and commerce and resulted in reduced health and intelligence of the population; only as the sea level became lower again and salt more available did Europe recover, about AD 1000. In the British Isles, salt was available from inland salt springs, so the effects of rising seas were mitigated.

* Dr. Price planted oats in several samples of soil from the Isle of Lewis, adding various types of fertilizer. Only the soil to which the black thatch had been added supported the growth of mature oats.

† The small shark called skate is very tough, but Lewis Islanders hung them up in the air, unsalted, until they became gamey. Visitors described the fermented skate as an acquired taste but “a most excellent breakfast.”

* Typically, venison hung in the lord’s larder for six weeks before the cooks considered it ready for consumption.

† Homer’s Odyssey mentions grilled goat stomach stuffed with blood and fat.

‡ Germany boasts almost fifteen hundred varieties of sausage.

* Further north, the Icelanders preserved shark by burying it in the ground for several months. Restaurants in Iceland still serve rotten shark, known as hákarl.

* One physician from the Shetlands, writing in the 1930s, attributed the good health of older inhabitants to the hand-milling of oats: “Children’s teeth seem to decay early, quite a contrast from former times. While it is rare to find a child of school age with a good set of teeth, it is quite the rule to see old men and women with almost perfect sets. In connection with this, it will be noted that the old folk were brought up first on their mothers’ milk and later on the produce of their land, home-grown oats ground into meal in the hand-mills, plenty of milk, and fresh fish. Now there is far too much fine, clean oatmeal and wheat flour used, too much tea.” Not mentioned is all the sugar put into the tea.

* The Whig political party gets its name from the old Scots word quhig, “the acetous liquid that subsides from sour cream.” The term was first applied by Scottish Episcopalians (who were almost invariably Tories) to Presbyterians, and by Presbyterians of the Established Church to those of the dissenting bodies, presumably because they drank more whey than alcohol.

* Scots immigrants brought their fondness for buttermilk to the southern United States; New Englanders, like the British who colonized the region, found buttermilk disgusting.

† Before the potato, cooked and mashed eggplant often served as a carbohydrate food at meals; taro root also provided carbohydrates, and was consumed by the early Romans in much the same way the potato is today. The Roman cookbook writer Apicius mentions several methods for preparing taro, including boiling, preparing with sauces, and cooking with meat or fowl. The inhabitants of Ikaria, Greece, credit taro for saving them from famine during World War II. They boil it until tender and serve it as a salad.

* While sugar has featured in the British diet for over one thousand years, the stimulants coffee, tea, and chocolate did not arrive until the 1600s.

* In many European countries during World War II, meat was rationed but organ meats were not, resulting in an improvement in nutrition in spite of the privations of the war. As reported in Starvation in Europe by Geoffrey H. Bourne, in German-occupied countries, people got a double ration for pigs’ heads, pigs’ feet, oxtail, brawn, lungs, hearts and goose liver sausage, and a quadruple ration for pigs’ bones, sheep’s or calf’s heads, pigs’ tails, marrow bones, tripe and bacon rind. One British journalist remembers getting stew made with brains for school lunch as late as the 1960s.

* Borshch originated in Ukraine and is popular throughout the Slavic world.

† In the seventeenth century, the Russian Orthodox church forbade the consumption of horse flesh and drinking of mare’s milk as unclean, and kumis disappeared from the Russian diet. In recent years, however, it is enjoying a comeback.

* The Mongols brought the art of fermentation to Russia from China.

† Weighing a ton or two, the Russian oven was the centerpiece of the peasant hut as well as the parlor of the city dweller. Made of clay, stone or brick, and sometimes covered with colorful tiles, it had an internal channel system that directed hot smoke through a series of chambers before it exited the dwelling. The structure burned fuel very efficiently, and a single firing was enough to prepare the oven for cooking all meals and heat the house for the entire day.

* The statistician Russell H. Smith had this to say about the Seven Countries Study: “The word ‘landmark’ has often been used… to describe Ancel Keys’ Seven Countries study, commonly cited as proof that the American diet is atherogenic… the dietary assessment methodology was highly inconsistent across cohorts and thoroughly suspect. In addition, careful examination of the death rates and associations between diet and death rates reveal a massive set of inconsistencies and contradictions… It is almost inconceivable that the Seven Countries study was performed with such scientific abandon. It is also dumbfounding how the NHLBI/AHA alliance ignored such sloppiness in their many ‘rave reviews’ of the study… In summary, the diet-CHD relationship reported for the Seven Countries study cannot be taken seriously by the objective and critical scientist.”

* Actually, Keys recommended the practice of renunciation for the general population but not for himself or those of his inner circle. The esteemed researcher Fred Kummerow, PhD, defender of eggs and butter in the human diet, once spied Keys and a colleague eating eggs and bacon at a conference for cardiologists. When Kummerow inquired whether Keys had changed his mind about dietary fats and cholesterol, Keys replied that such a restricted diet was “for others,” not for himself.

* A high school textbook, History of Italian Literature, notes that Artusi’s book was responsible for the spread of “a common language” in the new Italian middle class. It remained the bible of Italian food until the 1980s, when the low-fat craze kicked in and Italians began eating large quantities of pasta and bread.

* From a brief Internet search, we learn that mastic oil comes from a tree that is a relative of the pistachio, which actually produces a resin called mastic, not an edible oil. Mastic has medicinal and industrial uses as an additive to perfumes, cosmetics, soap, body oils and body lotion. In ancient Egypt, mastic was used in embalming. But according to Buettner, in some parts of Sardinia, mastic oil squeezed from the nut serves as a substitute for olive oil.

* Another typical Sardinian sheep-milk cheese is casu marzu, notable for containing maggots.

* Maybe the most important thing is to live in a place that ends with the letter A. Just kidding.

* They do, however, live in a place that ends with the letter A.

* What is a healthy weight? The answer is, not too thin, especially as you age. “Excess” body fat, especially in women, prevents frailty and helps compensate for a decline in energy supply as we age. Also, during periods of illness, excess body fat seems to be beneficial. For example, patients suffering from heart disease have better chances of survival if they are obese rather than slim. For more information, visit www.smartbmicalculator.com.

* Some people need to avoid commercial products containing gluten-containing grains, but the gluten-free movement is also a fad embraced by industrial food processors.

* Today’s processed oils come mostly from soy and canola, which contain high levels of omega-3 fatty acids; these break down into highly toxic fragments during high-temperature processing or cooking.

† All commercial ice cream contains “food-grade” antifreeze in the form of propylene glycol, said to be nontoxic in small amounts.

‡ Some will object that the Jains in India do not eat animal foods, having adopted a policy of “do no harm” to the extent that they wear masks over their mouths so as not to inadvertently kill any flying insects. However, the Jains consume milk products—traditionally whole, raw milk products, which supply vitamins B₁₂, A, D, and K, along with calcium and other nutrients less available from plant foods. In addition, they ingest large amounts of microscopic insect parts and insect feces in rice, pulses and other foods when these foods are not fumigated as they are in the Western world. The Sikhs of northern India, living on meat products as well as milk and grains, tend to be taller and more robust compared to their vegetarian neighbors in the south of India.

* Archeologists have found evidence of dairy farming throughout the Mediterranean region in the form of milk fat residue on pottery shards dating back nine thousand years.

† Otzi, the five-thousand-year-old skeleton that emerged from a melting glacier, had a good meal shortly before he died. It consisted of ibex meat; einkorn wheat, possibly in the form of bread; some sort of fat, which might have been from bacon or cheese; and bracken, a common fern. Otzi ate a balanced diet!

‡ A 1988 paper published in the Journal of Archaeological Science warns against “the debilitating and potentially serious consequences of excess protein consumption when reconstructing palaeodiets and subsistence strategies.” The authors note that coastal hunter-gatherers needed added fat or carbohydrates in their diet to avoid an excessive protein intake.

§ Carotenes in plant foods are the precursors of vitamin A, but they are not good sources of vitamin A for humans. Human beings convert carotenes to vitamin A with difficulty, and some people’s bodies do not make this conversion at all.

* One zinc-containing enzyme is alcohol dehydrogenase, needed to process alcohol.

† Dr. Price referred to vitamin K₂ as Activator X or the Price Factor, because he did not know exactly what it was; subsequent research reveals this fat-soluble vitamin to be vitamin K₂, the animal form of vitamin K₁.

* In Russia and European countries, various types of sausage serve as vehicles for organ meats—sausage is a way of making offal taste good! But in the United States, federal law prevents the addition of “meat by-products” to sausage. Those by-products go into pet food instead.

* In lacto-fermentation, bacteria convert the sugars in foods and beverages to lactic acid; in alcoholic fermentation, yeasts convert the sugars in foods and beverages into alcohol. Both lactic acid and alcohol are preservatives—but lactic acid doesn’t make you drunk! While it’s not good to have lactic acid buildup in the muscles, lactic acid in the digestive tract supports healthy bacteria and good digestion.

* There are more beneficial bacteria in a spoonful of raw sauerkraut than there are in a whole bottle of probiotic pills.

† The high-temperature, high-pressure process of extrusion, used to make breakfast cereals shaped like O’s, flakes and strands, does to the delicate proteins in grains what pasteurization does to the delicate proteins in milk—warps and distorts them so that they become highly allergenic and even toxic. Evidence indicates that extruded breakfast cereals are especially toxic to the nervous system—yet millions of schoolchildren in the United States begin their day with these grain products. Extruded grains also disrupt gut flora.

* Throughout history, governments have fought wars to obtain access to salt and controlled people by restricting salt. One great advantage of living in the modern age is the worldwide availability of inexpensive salt.

* Twenty-seven percent of the body’s salt is in the bones. Osteoporosis results when the body does not get enough salt, among other factors.

* Price reported that in cultures throughout Africa and the South Seas, the native people considered it shameful to have a child more than once every three years. The practice of spacing children—either with natural birth control methods, through a system of multiple wives, or even through abstinence in marriage—accords very well with modern science. A 2006 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that the ideal interval between babies was at least eighteen months but not more than five years.