Letters, Summer 2002

Healthy and Enjoyable

Thank you so much for your work, which has really changed our diet and our lives. We are very much into integrative medicine and healthy living. We have researched and tried lots of diets and this one that you recommend is not only the most enjoyable, but but the one that has made us feel the healthiest. My wife is a holistically oriented MD and we just did extensive blood tests. After about two years on your diet, eating as much butter, coconut, eggs, avocados and meat as we want, our cholesterol and hormones are fantastic! And we have not gained any weight. Seems like confirmation that eating a diet full of saturated fats and cholesterol does not negatively affect one’s health. It can be challenging to convince others of this because the propaganda against animal fats is so extensive.

Rob Constantine
Beth McDougall, MD
Mill Valley, CA

Proof against Infection

Proof is in the pudding: an old adage? I run a daycare drop-in, meaning, I get kids whom I may have never seen prior to their stay and parents that I may not know all that well. Recently we had a virus of almost epidemic proportions run through our communities here in Phoenix.

When I got calls asking whether I would take the ailing children. I said yes. I follow the nutritional traditions found at the website of the Weston A. Price Foundation. Go ahead, ask me if ANY of my family members got the virus. Go ahead, ask me. Thanks for asking. NO! We didn’t.

Since that time, I have three families on better eating programs. Not because I told them to do it, but simply because they wanted to know why we continued to thrive despite the fact that we had ailing children in our home. Say what you will, the proof is in the pudding.

Jennifer Thompson
Phoenix, AZ

Fats and Behavior

At choir last night, one of the younger women, who has a son about 3-4 years old, said that she wanted to tell me something she’d noticed about my daughter Susan, who will be 6 in June. She said that Susan has recently become more easygoing than she used to be.

That surprised me, because I did not think that Susan had exhibited less-than-easy-going behavior around her before. But as I think about it, I know that she has exhibited almost infantile separation anxiety anytime I had to leave her in the nursery. She never did that as an infant, but she had begun doing that in the last year or two. I guess that’s what she was referring to. And it’s true. My daughter no longer cries when I drop her off at the nursery.

Anyway, I thanked her and asked whether- she would like to know what made the difference. She said she would. I told her about how we switched from 2% to whole milk in January, and I’d been using more eggs and making pot roast at least once a week. And Susan loves the pot roast and continues to be a big milk drinker.

Until we started using whole milk, she cried a lot and was kind of “brittle.” And I have noticed that I don’t get as angry since we started drinking whole milk and my daughter hasn’t run off crying in ages, even though occasionally she is rebuked strongly.

This gal and a close friend of hers, who also has young children and is in choir, both seemed amazed about what I told them about cholesterol being healthful and whole milk being that much better than lowfat milks. I told them about how my foot had stopped giving me trouble, and instead of gaining weight (which I was resigned to do when we switched to whole milk), I have actually lost weight and am able to wear clothes that 2-3 sizes smaller than I had been wearing. And I’m stronger and have more stamina.

I have a friend with three children. They’re all pretty lean and getting taller. As my daughter and I ate our supper while waiting for choir time to arrive, I noticed that my friend’s kids (especially the older 2) kept picking at each other, even throwing kicks at each other! The youngest child is a vegetarian.

On a recent Max-X show, they aired videos of people rioting, including a riot between factions of Buddhists. This fits right in with evidence showing that vegetarianism doesn’t make your life quiet and full of peace.

Good nutrition influences behavior, as well as overall health. There is a school district in Pennsylvania, where they’ve lost 6 kids since December to health-related problems. They need your message!

Laura J. Cooper
Stillwater, OK

Editor’s Response: Your story proves that when raw milk is not available, even whole milk from the supermarket can be beneficial for many children. We condemn our children to all sorts of behavioral and emotional difficulties when we deny them healthy fats.

Raw Milk Benefits

I have been involved in your organization for a year now and my health keeps improving. I had hypoglycemia and was a vegetarian. I could not understand why I craved sugar and gained weight. My periods were coming every two weeks. Then I stopped eating soy and began taking cod liver oil. My periods evened out to every six weeks, and were much less painful. In addition, my blood sugar is much more balanced.

Raw milk and fats have changed the way I think about food. Now I look forward to meals, knowing that I’m eating well and giving my body what it needs to be well.

An older lady friend of mine has been suffering terribly from arthritis. I introduced her to your literature and she started drinking raw milk and eating more eggs and butter. Within two weeks her symptoms were 80 percent better.

My sister has suffered from severe allergies for years and resorted to using Benadryl whenever she would visit our house with all its pets. She started drinking raw milk and her allergies have dramatically improved.

I have so many stories, I could go on and on, but suffice it to say, thank you!

Marianne F. Kelsey
North Manchester, IN

Grass Versus Corn

Wise Traditions has advocated grass-fed meat. It is my understanding that grain-feeding greatly reduces the concentration of conjugated linoleic acid in the meat and does so for many months or years thereafter even if returned to grass-only diet. It is my understanding that grain feeding of beef, buffalo and lamb greatly decreases the omega-3 ratio. Why, then, do you advocate venison, as in your Spring 2001 edition? Do deer somehow handle grain differently from buffalo and domestic livestock?

Local hunters who have looked estimate more than half the rumen content of their prey is corn. An official research study done in Wisconsin on road-killed deer showed that corn was 32 percent of the rumen content in September, 40 percent in October, 75 percent in November and 70 percent in December. It is ironic that we now must put an animal behind a fence to possibly have the former benefits of wild game meat.

Charles Henkel
Norfolk, NE

Editor’s Response: Modern beef production should approximate what happens in nature to ruminant animals and incorporate the dietary wisdom of traditional peoples. Native Americans always hunted older animals because these animals had developed large amounts of storage fat on the back and in the cavity. Animals in the wild do consume grains and seeds, particularly in the fall, either from wild grasses or domestic crops to which they have access. This is why we do not object to a period of grain feeding to fatten animals before slaughter, as long as this is done in a way that does not require hormones and antibiotics. However, studies by Weston Price and Francis Pottenger demonstrated that the quality of butterfat in milk is greatly diminished by feeding of grain, hay or anything other than green grass. Therefore, we encourage pasture feeding of dairy cattle during all but the coldest months.

Mad Deer

It has been such an impressionable experience here in Australia studying a local variant of wasting disease. Whilst the neurological disease problem lies in a manganese induced mutation, via a combination of genetical susceptibility and excessive manganese, plus low magnesium, there are some major, major inadequacies with the modern day Aboriginal diet. It’s the worst I have seen, in fact: coca cola, white bread, sugar, sugar and sugar! I kept on remembering Weston A Price’s reports on the Aboriginal people with their beautiful teeth. Some kids in their twenties have lost all their teeth these days.

I did find out a very important piece of information which explains the cause of chronic wasting disease in deer. The hunters in Wisconsin and Colorado have been putting down a dual purpose mineral block designed to addict the deer to the hunters’ shooting territory as well as supplying manganese for making the antlers grow big. They have been using this stuff exactly where chronic wasting disease has burst out.

Mark Purdey
Somerset, UK

Note: Be sure to read Mark Purdey’s articles about Mad Cow Disease, BSE, TSE, etc. under Myths & Truths.

Unsustainable

Iowa Beef Packers (IBP) is an unsustainable business structure with plants that are far too large for the communities in which they are located, and in addition to many other negative factors, dependent upon a retail sector that now dictates to them instead of the other way around.

Today, with big retail dictating terms, all the big packers are forced to exploit suppliers and workers to improve returns. I believe that IBP will self-destruct with basically no salvage value. We have no future in a food distribution system that includes Wal-Mart, Kroger, Safeway, Albertson’s and Ahold unless we want to live in tarpaper shacks and eat fish heads and rice (and maybe boiled chicken heads and soybeans as a sop to US producers).

I want to build a new sustainable, widely diverse, dispersed and locally controlled food production and distribution system, one that compensates fairly and benefits producers, workers and rural communities. The system should provide consumers with excellent food rather than the leftovers and chemically treated by-products that they are forced to eat today. . . a system that is responsible for the public good rather than the corporate good, and that doesn’t externalize costs onto the public.

Let’s call it Family Farm Foods.

Mike Callicrate
St. Francis, KS

Activist Victory

Your Caustic Commentary on the Model Emergency Health Act (Spring 2002) was right on target. We actively fought this proposal here in the state of Tennessee, and met with some success. The committee tabled most of the proposals, and actually read the 37-page document we submitted (which is somewhat of a miracle!). Many members of the committee recognized the dangers to civil liberties and the attendant problems that would be caused in our health-care system if such a plan were implemented.

Unfortunately, we also ran into significant ignorance and apathy from the groups that would be most affected by this horrendous plan–doctors and pharmacists. Only civil liberties groups were involved in seeing most of these provisions tabled. A sad commentary on the state of affairs in the so-called health industry. . . .I hope your commentary will spur more people to action in seeing this attempt at control thwarted in as many states as possible. Thanks for the good work!

Tracey Croteau
Chattanooga, TN

According to our information, 30 states have introduced various versions of the draconian Model State Emergency Health Powers Act (MSEHPA); Five (MD, NM, SD, UT, WI) plus the District of Columbia have enacted bills.

Oxymoron

There is a new “gourmet” product on the grocers’ shelves from Land O’ Lakes called Fat-Free Half-and-Half. The label says ultrapasteurized, 100 percent oil free. It contains corn syrup and artificial color. “Shake well, keep refrigerated and best when used within 7 days of opening. . . Great for use in baking and cooking.” Isn’t there some kind of law that would prevent them calling this Half-and-Half?

Jane Greenleaf
Yarmouth, ME

Soy and Fibromyalgia

There is a great need to make public the dangers of soy, not only in infant formula but in any product containing soy. I personally have suffered from consuming soy protein shakes for a period of 2-3 years, once a day for breakfast. There are no warning labels on these products! I had been hypothyroid for many years and was taking Synthroid at the time. In spite of the medication I became ill as the result of the effect the soy had on my thyroid. I developed fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue, which by the way is due to low thyroid function. (I will wager that 99 percent of all medical doctors are not aware of the connection.) My doctor did not find any change in my lab work so he never suspected that my thyroid was the source of my illness. (I have since found out that blood tests are a poor way to determine thyroid function, but that’s another subject.)

Not only did the soy affect my thyroid, it also affected my digestion and brain function! I developed cognitive problems and had difficulty spelling and figuring out basic problems that before had never been a challenge. My memory was steadily going downhill, which at age 45 was a scary prospect, especially since my dad has Alzheimer’s disease. As the result of my illness I decided to leave my job.

Many people apply for disability as the result of fibromyalgia. Through prayer and two years of research I am fortunate to be 95 percent symptom-free, part of which is due to avoiding soy products.

Oregon is a leader in recognizing dangerous health issues. I would like to see our government take a stand and make it a requirement that warning labels be printed on any product containing soy. If this were current law, I could have avoided years of misery not to mention the economic damage this situation created. I wonder how many more people out there are experiencing health problems and are clueless that it is the soy in their diet! After all, we have been brain washed for years that soy is good for us! I know one doctor who decided to experiment on herself by using soy daily and within 10 days she became hypothyroid! Even though I was hypothyroid to start with, this problem can happen to anyone.

Soy is dangerous and the public has the right to know what the dangers are so that they can make informed choices. Think of the many helpless babies that are exposed to this toxic chemical every day and their mothers are totally unaware of the damage that may result!

Colleen Witzel
Eugene, OR

Man and Milk

You often hear the argument, “Man is the only animal that continues to drink milk after being weaned,” presuming the animals stop milk ingestion because they don’t need or it is harmful to continue it and therefore humans should follow suit. Having witnessed our sheep wean their lambs, I assure you there is only one reason they stop “drinking milk”–that was because the source was no longer available to them! American mothers often discontinue nursing their babies for their own convenience, but most children would continue nursing or taking a bottle for years if allowed. Hence, the length of time animals or humans nurse their young says nothing about vital nutrients in the milk and its benefits.

If it not difficult to determine why animals and humans must wean their young–the population of both would have long ceased otherwise as neither animals nor humans can continue nursing the first offspring while at the same time reproducing and nursing others. Until the last century, the average family included seven children. Our sheep would have had to nurse half a dozen offspring simultaneously before they stopped bearing. Animals with multiple births could not possibly nurse countless offspring; except for weaning and forcibly denying a continual supply of milk, animal and human life could not have survived. Certain wild animals do fairly well with raw meat or grazing. However, today’s depleted soils on which fruits and vegetables are grown, plus countless other reasons for less-than-optimal human nutrition, give reasons to compensate with raw, whole milk from cows grazed on green grass. I do not recommend supermarket milk. (I suspect that confined cows fed grains and hay rather than grazing on untreated, growing green grass, and pasteurized/homogenized dairy products with pesticides, hormones and antibiotics are the cause of allergy and intolerance to milk.) But let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. We must differentiate between real foods and “faux foods”–be they milk, fats and oils, or meat substitutes.

Sylvia Zook, PhD
Salem, OR

Good Start

I talked with a bus driver on a recent trip. A 59-year-old African American from New York City, he grew up on a farm in Georgia where they grew all their own food. He had eight brothers and sisters and said that all were still alive and healthy. Growing up they all drank raw milk and made their own raw butter. When I inquired about lactose intolerance in African Americans, he said they didn’t have any problems.

His father said eating fat was good and sometimes he would eat mostly fat instead of met. They used the fatback for cooking collards and other foods. He was a very calm and collected person. His description of driving buses for 16 years through city traffic, over long distances and dealing with bad drivers showed his calm, cheerful nature. He had a well developed wide jaw and wonderful smile.

Sandy Redemske
Greenfield, MA

Divergent Views

After reading your excellent Spring issue I must conclude that Wise Traditions just keeps getting better.

However, I am wondering, does Dr. Ron Schmid agree or disagree with Krispin Sullivan? Sullivan says: “If you sun regularly and spend winter months in the south, you need to [avoid too much supplemental] vitamin D.” Schmid, by contrast, never expressly cautions against overdosing on natural vitamin D, with or without sun exposure. “Traditional diets [typically supply] upwards of ten times the RDA,” he says, and, “There has never been any indication of anything but benefit from these natural forms.” Perhaps I’m not the only reader left unclear by these two slightly divergent back-to-back articles.

Christopher Morill
San Anselmo, CA

Editor’s Response: Dr. Schmid uses cod liver oil as a source of vitamin D in his practice in Connecticut, a state not noted for providing many days conducive to sunbathing. One tablespoon of cod liver oil provides about 1800 IU vitamin D per day, a dosage that is generally safe. When using vitamin D concentrates, which can provide much higher doses, then testing is advised, particularly when you are also getting a lot of exposure to the sun. Remember also that traditional peoples consumed large amounts of vitamin D in a diet that was also rich in minerals–particularly calcium–and other factors. Use of cod liver oil should always be carried out in conjunction with a diet of whole foods that includes either raw whole dairy products or bone broths. Use of vitamin D supplements should be carried out with professional supervision.

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