Website Changed Our Lives
Thank you for the information provided on your website. It has literally changed our lives! About two years ago, I began researching nutrition because of certain health problems I was experiencing (allergies, migraine headaches, severe cervical dysplasia, etc.). Somewhere along the way, I stumbled upon the Weston A. Price Foundation website and have referred to it over and over again, to the exclusion of most other resources I was using.
With very little support from others and much opposition, our food intake gradually changed from pasteurized milk to raw and cultured milk, from “low-fat” boneless chicken breasts to free-range whole chicken and stock. Presently, I have crème fraiche sitting on top of my kitchen counter, beans soaking in lemon juice, grass-fed pot roast soaking in buttermilk in the refrigerator and freshly ground spelt soaking in a warm place for buttermilk biscuits tomorrow morning. This is a complete turnaround from the way we were eating two years ago and our health is all the better for it. The only medical problems I and my family experienced this past year were some minor cold symptoms that lasted a few days, which is a very different health status for us! And, after seeing results, more of my friends and family are following suit.
What attracted me to your website at first was the absence of advertisements and the fact that many statements in the articles I read were backed up with documentation that I could read myself. These facts alone distinguish the Weston A. Price website from all others on the same subject. I was hard-pressed to find quality information that was not sponsored by a company clearly only concerned with making money. I continued to refer to your website not only because I began to feel healthier as I put to practice the advice given, but because the website is so functional, making it easy to find the answers to my questions from well-written articles. Thank you again for your website and the help you have provided for our family.
Elizabeth Kingery
Kent, Washington
Already Working
Thank you so much for the article on vitamin B12. I am certain it will help a great many people. My friend with an autistic son started him on B12 capsules and reports that he improved dramatically within just 24 hours. She was shocked that it would work this fast.
Terry Smith
Akron, Ohio
Having It Both Ways
I want to share my happy suspicion that we “WAPF mommies” may be able to have the best of both worlds: nursing and sleeping. The statement from a reader in your last issue–“when a baby sleeps through the night, the mother’s milk typically dries up”–is not my experience. That is because my son nurses at night while continuing to sleep.
I believe that our comparatively restful nights are due to two factors: our practice of having our baby sleep with my husband and me (“co-sleeping” or “family bed”), and our diet of nourishing foods as outlined by the Weston A. Price Foundation.
Before conceiving, all through my pregnancy and to this day, my diet has included cod liver oil, lacto-fermented vegetables, raw milk products, eggs from local free-range chickens and organ meats. I am forty years old; my husband is fifty-five. After several miscarriages we finally have our long-awaited child. Baby Gillis is robust and cheerful.
As a newborn, Gillis nursed voraciously through the day and slept through the night while nursing (one major session and some little nips). As he got older and became more interested in his surroundings, he nursed a bit less during the day and more at night–while continuing to “sleep through the night.” As of this writing, Gillis is nearly 10 months old and continues to nurse like a champion, even though he now eats some other food as well. He goes to sleep around 8 pm and remains asleep until 7 am or later. When he wants to nurse during the night, he wiggles a bit, and I pop him on the breast. He does not wake up, and I barely have to wake up myself. Papa slumbers on. . .
Fortunately, John and I learned of the nourishing traditional diet in time to improve our health and become parents. Our days of soy and other so-called “health foods” are behind us. Your magazine and philosophies have truly given us new life.
Eveline MacDougall
Greenfield, Massachuestts
Good Food in Ukraine
I recently spent three weeks in Ukraine, a former state of the Soviet Union, which gained its independence in 1991. During my trip I was delighted to discover that traditional food is alive and well in Ukraine, although modern techno-food is fast making inroads.
The average Ukrainian is poor by American standards, with the average wage something around $200 a month. This forces most people to eat simply and prepare their own foods. Except for the very rich, eating out at restaurants is reserved for rare special occasions. Many people live with or near their grandparents, and grandma usually prepares traditional favorites like borscht and dumplings filled with giblets.
While in Ukraine, I often ate in Ukrainian cafeteria-style eateries, where a full meal costs about $4. There I found a variety of foods on offer that are little utilized in the US, including kefir, kvass, liver and fermented vegetables. The Ukrainians love fat, and sour cream, butter and meat are used liberally. Unfortunately, factory farming supplies the cities, so the food there, while still traditional, is not as good quality as one would like.
By chance, I had a conversation with an agricultural minister on a train ride from Yalta to Kiev, and he told me that chemical agriculture had been adopted by farmers for some years, but they were beginning to see that it hurt the soil so were seeking alternatives.
Many Ukrainians I talked to said that they knew Coca Cola and other such concoctions were not healthy, and they avoided them. However, just as many were using these anti-health foods. It’s time to open a Weston A. Price chapter in Ukraine!
Roger Windsor
Chapel Hill, NC
Milk in Japan
You might be interested to know that we consume more milk in Japan than people think. Many people believe that milk is full of nutrients like eggs. Sadly, the quality of milk may not be as good as it should be. At the same time, I have not really heard people attacking milk either. Lowfat milk is not so widely available like it is in the US. However, skim milk is sold in powder form.
My parents (ages 65 and 62) have the milk delivered every morning, but otherwise their diet is a typical Japanese diet. They start their day with a bowl of miso soup made with kelp and small dried fish broth or dried shiitake vegetables and/or sea vegetables, as well as hoshizakana [fermented fish] or eggs.
School children get milk every day at school. If you will go to the following website you will see a sample of a school lunch menu. You may not be able to read the Japanese text but you can see the photos. The website is www.pureweb.jp/~natural/lunch/lunch-box16/lunch2004.htm.
Kayako Tanaka
Kyoto, Japan
Maine Shrimp
I was excited to see an article about Maine shrimp in Wise Traditions (Spring 2005), since I’m a Mainer and have been eating these delicious creatures as long as I can remember. I always remember having to stand on a chair in front of the counter to help my dad pick shrimp.
Now, every winter, we wonder when shrimp season is going to start and as soon as I see one of those fluorescent signs and a pickup truck on the side of the road I pull over and buy a whole bunch. Then we have a peeling/shelling marathon and freeze most of the shrimp meat.
As kids, our favorite shrimp dinner was breaded and fried with lots of tartar sauce! Now that we’re WAPF-ers, we use the heads and shells to make shrimp stock. I still fry the shrimp but use lard and tallow instead of Crisco. This evening I sauteed some with butter, then mixed in cilantro pesto and chopped mango and stuck it into a corn tortilla with creme fraiche. . . delicious!
Emily Lowe
Owls Head, Maine
No Surgery
About 18 months ago my husband developed a painful condition called Dupuytren’s contracture and another GP referred him to a hand surgeon. I told my husband I’d look on the internet first, and read there that if you changed to unpasteurized, unhomogenized milk the contracture would lessen or disappear without surgery.
We now only have real milk and Ian’s hand is almost perfect. Thought you may be interested in this information.
Robin Mitchell
Queensland, Australia
No More Complaints
From seeing the improvement in my husband since I got him off the soy-based Morningstar Farms Breakfast Patties (of which he ate a whole box at a time!), and started fixing him eggs for breakfast, as well as using more natural fat in our food, I have concluded that he had made himself hypothyroid from the soy foods and lack of fat, but has largely come out of it. He used to complain every day about feeling too cold, having tingling hands and feet, having dry skin and being unable to sweat and not being able to concentrate on his work. After reading your articles about soy, I told him I was no longer going to buy the soy patties for him. I had to give him an article or two about the cholesterol myth to get him to eat his eggs that I began fixing him for breakfast, but now he knows they are better for him. Now, instead of being unable to concentrate and plan (he’s a farmer), he has improved to the point where he does most of his own legal research and much of the strategizing for cases he has been involved with, such as his grandmother’s probate.
Stillwater, Oklahoma
Fat Deficiency Syndrome
I have seen a lot of children who eat butter by the spoonfuls directly out of the butter bin. That is what I call “acute fat deficiency syndrome.” They also lick the butter off the sandwich and then throw the bread away. Wise parents give the child more butter as the child signals fat deficiency.
In 1991, I wrote an article with the provocative title “Children Starve in Sweden,” (of course rejected by peer review) where I found that 50 percent of the children in the area where I worked, in the south of Stockholm, Sweden had a normal height development but had a weight lag of .5 to 2 standard deviations below the normal weight curve from 4-6 months of age until 18 months-4 years of age when the children had caught up to normal weight again. In Mora in the province of Delacarlia, a rural area 300 km northwest of Stockholm, there were only 10 percent of children having a weight lag. Cause: lowfat, low-calorie diet in Stockholm, high fat and higher-calorie diet in Delacarlia. Lowfat and low-calorie diet means canned baby food with 75 Kcal/100 grams. A 7-month-old child needs 840 Kcal/day. The high-fat, high-calorie diet meant traditional Swedish rural food.
Bjorn Hammarskjold
Mora, Sweden
Editor’s Response: Leanness in children with normal or above-normal height is a sign of adequate protein but deficiency in fat-soluble vitamins. Extreme smallness (height and weight) can be a sign of protein deficiency.
Sedative in the Formula?
My son and daughter-in-law are convinced that formula is fine. I shudder when I see my grandson using plastic bottles, liners and silicone and the plastic pacifier constantly in his mouth.
I have observed something that frightens me further. After feeding the baby sleeps forever, like he is drugged. They have to wake him up. Is it possible that they are putting a sedative in the formula? Could they be adding an ingredient to make parents believe their children are very content on the formula? When he does wake up he can be fussy, like a drug has worn off.
He is gaining weight and my thought is that he is being fed the same ingredients as cows on the feed lot.
Beth Marble
Columbus, Ohio
Editor’s Response: According to Barbara Heiser of the National Alliance for Breastfeeding Advocacy, DHA and ARA from non-nutritional sources (DHA manufactured from fermented micro-algae and ARA or arachidonic acid from soil fungus) added to certain baby formulas have been causing trouble in babies, notably severe explosive diarrhea. (She has not heard reports of babies acting like they are drugged, but several ingredients in the formula could cause such a reaction.) The National Institutes of Health is so concerned that they are conducting post-market surveillance on DHA- and ARA-enriched formulas. Another frightening revelation is the fact that none of the powdered formulas is sterile, and they may harbor lethal bacteria; but the carrageenan added to pre-mixed formula may cause severe digestive problems.
Shock in Holland
Holland has been shocked by a tragedy in which a police officer shot his wife, three sons and then himself, apparently without any reason. These things have happened before, but I can’t help but speculate.
A few months ago I interviewed a statin victim, also a police officer, who told me, that “when they changed me from Zocor to Lipitor, the muscle pain only got worse. And the world turned even blacker than it had been. It got so bad that I took a nail and connected myself to the grid. But I did not succeed. Then the doctor put me on Seroxat as well, for the depression. Man, you cannot guess what happened to my head on that combination. I had this scary urge to take my gun and just shoot everybody.”
This officer told me that policemen in Holland get regular checkups and are talked into a statin as soon as their cholesterol is a little above 200. “Half the service is on a statin,” he told me. “When they get the statin, they start functioning lousy. Then they go on Seroxat and feel dumb.”
Melchior Meijer
Zoutkamp, The Netherlands
Blatantly Ignorant
Recently, I was running errands with my mom and we stopped at the local pharmacy. At the entrance of the store was a large barrel-shaped cooler filled with soda. On top of this cooler was a sign announcing that proceeds from the soda would benefit the American Diabetes Association.
Having been raised by my mom who is an avid Weston A. Price Foundation supporter and an outspoken nutritionist, and being only seventeen, I was grateful to have been able to recognize an inconsistency such as this. I laughed and asked my mom if it was supposed to be a joke. How could the American Diabetes Association be promoting a substance such as soda that is a direct cause of the very disease that the organization is trying to prevent and cure? To me, this was a blatantly ignorant fund-raiser, but unfortunately, many less-educated people probably will think of purchasing a soda as a charitable donation and are later dumbfounded when they discover they have health problems such as diabetes. So I have to wonder where all the money they raise goes because it surely isn’t doing anything to help people avoid diabetes.
Caroline Valvardi
Berwyn, Pennsylvania
Editor’s Response: Great observation! Our readers may wish to tell the American Diabetes Association what they think of this fund-raiser at www.diabetes.com
The Heidi Solution
Your enthusiasm for milk as a simple, workable solution for the “walking wounded” is just what we all need. This “Heidi Solution” really is a political solution, as you say. For one thing, we cannot just fix our own families with our communal cowshare programs and watch others suffer. This is a political movement in so far as it empowers the individual with freedom from disease. I am so much less judgemental now that I have more fully comprehended the tremendous burden of illness and pain our fellow citizen must bear.
We must envision a societal solution that encompasses the entire polis. Being part of what will soon be an enormous cultural revolution for the welfare of my community has been tremendously exciting–almost as exciting as seeing the health of my whole family transformed before my very eyes.
Paul Hubbard
Poquoson, Virginia
Safety of Raw Cheese
My doctor has given me dire warnings about drinking raw milk and eating raw cheese during my pregnancy. Should I be concerned?
Anne Smythe
San Bernadino, California
Editor’s Response: Raw milk produced in clean conditions and raw hard cheeses are safe for pregnant women (we recommend that pregnant women drink 1 quart of whole raw milk per day), but it’s best to be careful about all commercial soft cheeses, not because they are “raw,” but because they are often improperly pasteurized, that is, the temperature, which kills all the protective components of milk but not the pathogens.
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Any idea by what mechanism raw milk would relieve Dupuytrens contracture? What about a safe alternative for a (dairy allergy) chemo patient with compromised immune system -and- DC?