Open Future Health

The Diets of Tribal Peoples

We seem to be blind to Local Filethe previous work of people who's names we have forgotten.

We assume that we know best, and that people from other languages and cultures know less than us. Language barriers get in the way. Institutions become barriers to progress rather than repositories of knowledge.

Many people have studied the diets of isolated and tribal peoples, often finding that they are very healthy. None of the most healthy ate a diet anything like the diet recommended to us today.

Today with the Internet, it is possible to find out what other people say, and to cut through the walls we build around knowledge, that make it inaccessible to people.

The Diets of Tribal Peoples are well Researched

Dr Aleš Hrdlička

Dr Aleš Hrdlička, was a world-renowned Czech anthropologist and physician.

Weston Price

WA Price DentistPrice was a dentist. He realised that his American patients over 20 years has increasingly poor teeth and posture.

In the 1940s he travelled the world to find people who, firstly, had good jawbones and strong teeth.

Price found many groups of healthy strong tribal people: good teeth, no tuberculosis, no arthritis, no heart disease or cancer, strong bones, with upright stance. Gall bladder and kidney disease is rare.

People with a strong seafood culture, WWW LinkWeston Price identified as particularly healthy.

Download this video of Price on MovieTone News

Healthy people ate lots of game, and ate it nose to tail. Their diet had very high mineral and vitamin content.

Price identified some super-foods: Insects, offal meats, fish eggs and bone marrow.

He made a special effort to find healthy groups with a vegetarian tradition and could find none.

All the diets he found that were healthy were nothing like the sort of diet we have been taught to believe is healthy. Since we're obviously not very healthy, we might ask ourselves what's wrong?

George V Mann - The Maasai - 1962

Good body structure, tall, with broad shoulders

Diet 60% saturated fats. They drank 2-3lt of milk a day, or a mixture of milk and animal blood.

They usually ate twice a day, mostly the meat of goat or beef cattle.

There were vegetables in the diet, but few of them.

Young Maasai men walked many miles most days.



Stephen Phinney talks about how Inuit ate fat in their diets.

George V Mann - The Maasai - 1962

Mann did 1546 physical examinations.

No diabetes

No heart disease
(He did 400 electro-cardiograms)

No cancer

Very low cholesterol

 

Mann also did 50 autopsies on Maasai men, only one of those died of a heart attack.

George Mann
Dr. George Vernon Mann

George V Mann - the Akikuyu - 1962

Local FileThis tribe ate a diet that is mostly vegetarian.

Mann did 6349 physical examinations.

Numerous bone deformities

Substantial tooth decay.

More anemia and lung disease

Ulcers and blood disorders


60% of the Akikuyu men were unfit for military service.

Compared with the nearby Maasai they averaged 5 inches shorter.

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