Vegetarianism in Traditional
Cultures?
Dr.
Weston Price was very interested in vegetarian
ideas. Of Vitu Levu, a large island in the Pacific
Ocean, he wrote, “I had hoped to find
on it a district far enough from the sea to
make it necessary for the natives to have lived
entirely on land foods…one of the purposes
of the expedition to the South Seas was to find,
if possible, plants or fruits which together,
without the use of animal products, were capable
of providing all of the requirements for growth
and for maintenance of good health and a high
state of physical efficiency.”
He expressed
his “disappointment” that “…I
have not found a single group of primitive racial
stock which was building and maintaining excellent
bodies by living entirely on plant foods. I
have found in many parts of the world most devout
representatives of modern ethical systems advocating
the restriction of foods to the vegetable products.
In every instance where the groups involved
had been long under this teaching, I found evidence
of degeneration.”
Dr. Price’s
disappointment that vegan diets are invariably
deficient appears to be echoed in the histories
of many of us who follow his teachings. Who
among us has not at some time tried to follow
a vegetarian or near vegetarian regime? Vegan,
fruitarian, vegetarian, ovo-lacto-vegetarian,
with or without occasional fish or chicken…it
sometimes seemed we were conditioned to eat
as little animal food as we could get by on.
Even after reaching an intellectual understanding
of Price’s work and the critical importance
of nutrients, especially fat-soluble activators,
found only in animal foods, we often appear
to be perhaps unconsciously concerned about
eating too much of them. Such concern and an
accompanying aversion to eating very much animal
food is most marked, of course, before one learns
about Price’s work. Years of vegetarian
or near vegetarian eating result in, to use
Dr. Price’s word, degeneration. How does
one recover?
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