Optimal Diet and Immunity
The observations
of Price and other anthropologists studying native
people in their indigenous state and in the early
stages of modernization made it clear that even
small amounts of "the white man's foods"
resulted in sickness. We tend to think in black
and white terms: that native people were eating
their native diets and were immune to disease,
and then they started eating lots of white flour
and sugar and got sick. What really happened was
in many cases much more subtle. Physicians on
Arctic expeditions in the 1920s and 1930s, referred
to above, found that the introduction of relatively
small amounts of refined flour products into otherwise
pristine native diets resulted in some natives
developing high blood pressure and heart disease.
Northern Indians
and Eskimos Price studied in trading villages
commonly ate a combination of native foods and
refined foods, and many developed the diseases
of civilization. Meanwhile, Josef Romeg, a surgeon
who spent 35 years amongst native Eskimos and
Indians and who was interviewed by Price in 1933,
found that native Alaskans with tuberculosis usually
recovered when returned to their remote native
villages--where none of the white man's foods
was available.
This calls to mind the work of Max Gerson, a medical
doctor who developed a dietary treatment for cancer
and other chronic diseases in the 1930s. Gerson's
regime involved large amounts of raw vegetable
juices and raw liver juice (extracted in a special
way by pressure, not by pulverization); fermented
raw milk; a variety of natural medications; and
strict avoidance of everything not specifically
included in his program. Very thorough documentation
exists showing that many of Gerson's patients
recovered from advanced cancer (virtually all
had not had chemotherapy, a highly toxic therapy
that severely impairs chances of recovery by natural
means). Gerson was adamant that the use of even
the smallest amounts of what he called forbidden
foods would prevent recovery.
It's important to realize that we're considering
here the optimal diet for people with very serious
medical problems. What may work well for the vast
majority of basically healthy people is very different
from the far more stringent routine that seriously
ill people may require.
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