ANCESTRAL EATING: Dairy, pt.1

In this new sub-series, I'll look at the role of dairy products in achieving "perfect health"

The Swiss really know how to make cows feel special

Welcome back to ANCESTRAL EATING, my friends, my long-running series in which I discuss the central insights of Weston Price’s classic book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration and help you apply them to your own life, so you too can enjoy “perfect health”—or at least get a little bit closer to it.

This instalment begins a new mini-series on dairy products. I’ll start, today, with a look at how dairy features in Weston Price’s book, by considering a couple of the traditional groups he met: high-alpine Swiss farmers and African pastoralists. In next week’s instalment, I think I’ll examine the emergence of dairying on the Caspian-Pontic steppe in the Bronze Age and how this really should be considered as decisive an event in world history as the emergence of fixed-field farming (the “First Agricultural Revolution”), which I’ve discussed at length in my book The Eggs Benedict Option. Subsequent instalments will consider specific topics like lactose intolerance and, of course, there will be delicious recipes.

So grab a glass of delicious raw milk or a piece of aged cheese and let’s get dairying!

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Dairy features quite extensively in Weston Price’s book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. A number of the traditional groups he identified as exhibiting “perfect health” relied heavily on dairy in their diets. These people were not confined to any single area of the world, but found in Europe as well as Africa. If Price had also travelled to, say, Mongolia, he would have found Asian examples too, and if he’d remained in the Midwest, he would also have found examples of Americans who displayed exemplary health due to massive consumption of milk-based products.

Dairy products are yet another form of nutrient-dense animal food, the kind of food that contains the macronutrients, micronutrients, vitamins, minerals and enzymes—including what Price calls “fat-soluble and water-soluble activators”—that are essential to proper growth and development/

Loetschental today

To start, let’s consider the people of the Loetschental Valley, in Switzerland, whom Price visits early on in his globe-trotting adventure. He describes a vigorous, healthy people inhabiting what can only be described as a rural idyll.

The people of the Loetschental Valley make up a community of two thousand who have been a world unto themselves. They have neither physician nor dentist because they have so little need for them; they have neither policeman nor jail, because they have no need for them. The clothing has been the substantial homespuns made from the wool of their sheep. The valley has produced not only everything that is needed for clothing, but practically everything that is needed for food. It has been the achievement of the valley to build some of the finest physiques in all Europe. This is attested to by the fact that many of the famous Swiss guards of the Vatican at Rome, who are the admiration of the world and are the pride of Switzerland, have been selected from this and other Alpine valleys. It is every Loetschental boy's ambition to be a Vatican guard. Notwithstanding the fact that tuberculosis is the most serious disease of Switzerland, according to a statement given me by a government official, a recent report of inspection of this valley did not reveal a single case.

Life in the valley was organised completely around farming and dairying.

The valley has a fine educational system of alternate didactic and practical work. All children are required to attend school six months of the year and to spend the other six months helping with the farming and dairying industry in which young and old of both sexes must work. The school system is under the direct supervision of the Catholic Church, and the work is well done. The girls are also taught weaving, dyeing and garment making. The manufacture of wool and clothing is the chief homework for the women in the winter.

The nutrition of the people was remarkably simple—rye bread, butter, cheese, milk and a little meat—but the people displayed, as noted above, “some of the finest physiques in Europe.”

The nutrition of the people of the Loetschental Valley, particularly that of the growing boys and girls, consists largely of a slice of whole rye bread and a piece of the summer-made cheese (about as large as the slice of bread), which are eaten with fresh milk of goats or cows. Meat is eaten about once a week. In the light of our newer knowledge of activating substances, including vitamins, and the relative values of food for supplying minerals for body building, it is clear why they have healthy bodies and sound teeth. The average total fat-soluble activator and mineral intake of calcium and phosphorus of these children would far exceed that of the daily intake of the average American child. The sturdiness of the child life permits children to play and frolic bareheaded and barefooted even in water running down from the glacier in the late evening's chilly breezes, in weather that made us wear our overcoats and gloves and button our collars. Of all the children in the valley still using the primitive diet of whole rye bread and dairy products the average number of cavities per person was 0.3. On an average it was necessary to examine three persons to find one defective deciduous or permanent tooth. The children examined were between seven and sixteen years of age.