By Julia Gumm
Grains. Who needs ?em? Paleo man didn’t need them. The Inuit didn’t need them. Certainly, health-minded people clad in stylish yoga gear don’t need them.
But does anybody need them?
Today’s anti-grain sensibilities can be tough to swallow for some folks. It wasn’t long ago that the USDA Food Pyramid was advising we eat a whopping 6-11 servings of grains per day, without any differentiation between bran flakes and Wonder Bread!
Now, the powers that be have devised some kind of plate looking thing that still gives the nod towards a hearty portion of grains, but vegetables now take up as much or more of your ideal ?plate? as grains. In previous incarnations of government dietary suggestions, your grain intake was to be’twice that of veggies.
Besides the government crackdown on grains, there is a popular movement that aims to rid us of cereals once and for all. C?mon, what are they good for? A whole lotta insulin spiking carbohydrates, phytic acids that rob us of minerals, inflammation from gluten- why should we eat them?
AND let’s not forget all the changes in human physiology that appear to be correlated with grain consumption! Crowded teeth, lower palates, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, IBS….hey, when you look at it like that, the answer is clear. Grains= Bad. Spirulina infused coconut flour brownies made with stevia and raw cacao= good. Duh squared, right?
And besides, grains just provide a whole lotta carbohydrates. We eat too many carbs already, right? Ancient man never had this kind of access to this much readily available glucose. No, he foraged for leaves, roots and fruits, hunted game and went into long periods of fat-burning ketosis, instead of relying on a constant glucose supply like his modern counterparts. No wonder we’re such whales.
We?re just not adapted to eat the stuff, right? Don’t forget that popular bit of wisdom that suggests we haven’t been eating grains for longer than 10,000 years or so, when we began farming. Obviously, we haven’t had enough time to break our digestive tracts into the stuff. Yep, grains are bad, grains are awful, we should all stop eating grains.
Or maybe not.
While it is true that human beings haven’t been ingesting domestic cereal grains in large quantity for more than 10-12,000 years, the fact remains that ancient peoples did indeed forage for their wild cousins. Researchers in Mozambique have found evidence of grain-eating going back some 70,000 years! Wow! That really throws a wrench in things.
And while it may indeed be true that our physical prowess has suffered since the dawn of agriculture, I think it might be useful to look at the whole picture. 
True, our teeth have probably become more crowded, but could that be because our brains are getting bigger and our diets require less gnashing and chomping than they did when we were eating raw Wooly Mammoth for lunch?
I understand the romance of having a steely frame, ready to lunge at and dismantle an elk with one’s bare hands in a moment’s notice, but perhaps we aren’t like that anymore because we just don’t need to be.
Perhaps it’s more so our own domestication, rather than solely the domestication of the food supply (i.e grains and sweet, cultivated fruits and vegetables) that is to blame for our doughier, less agile bodies and shrinking jaws.
But is that a bad thing?
I know it’s popular to mourn our lost athleticism and vibrant health, but hey guys, cheer up! Since we started eating grains, the human experience hasn’t been ALL bad. In fact, maybe we’ve improved on a few fronts. I know there’s not much to point out here, but let me try: Ok, let’s see: the Enlightenment, indoor plumbing, the printing press, the Internet, automobiles, poetry, space flight, Bavarian cream filled doughnuts, radio, satellite, hot air balloons, whiskey, movies, birthday cake, the Olympics, increased life expectancy, french toast….
?Hold on,? you’re saying. ?Just because we did all that stuff after we started eating grains, that doesn’t mean that’s why we did all the cool things you just mentioned! Other than that bit about the Bavarian cream filled doughnuts…mmm, doughnuts.
I see your point, but consider this:
In a 2009 study of dieters done by Tufts University, the low-carb crowd displayed signs of impaired memory once they hit the end of their glycogen reserves, putting them in ketosis (or burning fat for fuel.) ?These cognitive issues were improved by the reintroduction of carbs. Now, even though grains aren’t the only source of carbohydrate available to humans, their place at the table has vastly increased our access to a high quantity of carbohydrates. Could it be that once we started shoveling in pancakes, we had a ton more readily-available glucose (the brain’s preferred fuel), and were then able to build rocket ships and get PhD’s and invent Silly Putty?
Could it be that every lifestyle carries with it a level of risk, and that instead of pretending a readily available supply of energy doesn’t exist, we could instead take advantage of that fuel and burn it appropriately?
Could it be that if we never got around to inventing bread, we might not be here today, on the Internet, discussing whether or not we should have ever invented bread?
I don’t actually know. I can’t tell you. It’s just food for thought. There are studies that have shown how a ketogenic diet actually improves brain function,’so there is still much to be understood.
But in researching this article, I had to read a blog about how human testicles are shrinking at an alarming rate, the culprit of course being Cap?n Crunch.
So I figured I should make a counterpoint.
Julia you really made me laugh!
I agree, it’s silly to think that only grains or carbs are the cause of our less athletic bodies. It’s EVERYTHING that happened since agriculture, I think.
But we’ll just keep blaming the food because it feels good to eat it, and everybody knows that pleasure is bad for you.
Ah that’s why I need so much sugar. My amazing brain is enormous.
Great broscience article!
Great dickhead response!
Regarding teeth crowding, I think that’s mpre a result of micronutrient depletion (not enough minerals, vitamin A, etc) rather than macros (carbs, fats, etc). Price was on to something methinks, namely ‘less processed food, more micronutrients’.
Historically however people with teeth crowding were probably less likely to reproduce because of health problems, so genetics comes into play I am sure, but seperating that from epigenetics is a losing battle.
A lot probably has to do with the health of the mother and what she ate when she was pregnant.
People with tooth crowding are less likely to reproduce because of the health problems? I have to say that I think tooth crowding and rotten teeth are two different things. I have a very tiny mouth. I’m runnin’ short a good handful of normal adult teeth. I even have some baby teeth still, because no adult teeth formed behind them. My mouth only made one wisdom tooth. The whole mess of ’em are crooked, crowded and small. And I’ve never had a cavity in my life, and that includes a childhood of very lax brushing habits.
I think it’s possible that some of us just have smaller mouths and perhaps it’s just a continuation of the ages-long trend of our shrinking jaws and mouths, in concert with our expanding heads. Like check out the picture in this article. http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2008/05/12/but-if-you-teach-an-ape-to-fish/
Julia, the “teeth crowding” issue has already been analyzed and solved by Weston A. Price. It’s not a genetic thing, since it can go back and forth simply by changing the mother’s diet. (E.g, Eldest son has a large jaw, no crowded adult teeth. Middle son has a narrow jaw, crowded adult teeth. Youngest son has a wide jaw, no crowded adult teeth. Mother went from traditionl foods, to modern foods, and back to traditional foods.) This is nutrition and epigenetics at play; not simply genetics.
I am getting tired of hearing how “genetics” explains EVERYTHING under the sun. It’s outdated and illogical. Genetics, on its own, cannot explain how a pig can give birth to blind piglets (simply from removing crucial nutrients from her diet), yet her blind offspring are then able to give birth to normal piglets simply by raising them with proper nutrition.
The crowded teeth observation implies more than just crowded teeth. It is an indicator that not everything went right during skeletal formation: likely to have a narrow jaw, narrow nasal passages, improperly placed eye sockets, uneven sternum, et al. Again, Price has demonstrated this over and over across dozens of racial stocks in several continents.
Epigenetics, nutrition, and environment is what the research should focus on; not genetics.
I’m not at all challenging the significance of your argument, epigenetics, or the brilliance of Price, but your overly-simplistic take on genetics and swift dismissal of it’s role don’t help your cause. In your simple example, genetics most certainly can explain how a pig could give birth to blind piglets, who in turn give birth to sighted piglets. You don’t just get what your parents plainly had. That’s one of the simplest concepts that most people DO understand about genetics.
All I’m saying is you’re not going to convince many people with that example.
@Fred
“I am getting tired of hearing how genetics explains EVERYTHING under the sun.”
“Genetics, on its own, cannot explain how a pig…”
“Epigenetics, nutrition, and environment is what the research should focus on; not genetics.”
I did not claim genetics has no role, if you read what I wrote.
A blueprint is just that: a blueprint. It does not dictate what the final product will become. Diet, lifestyle, drugs, environment, societal and psychological stressors, et al, affect how genes will express themselves. To place everything on genetics is not sufficient, nor is it helpful. However, the message that YOU can make changes in your life (see above) and are not entirely at the mercy of your inherited genes is INCREDIBLY empowering.
Far be it for me to not believe Weston A Price figured out everything. Also, I’m pretty sure I never said it was genetics. I said it was adaptation. Evolution. Human teeth have gotten more crowded over the ages. Maybe they’re just getting even more crowded. Maybe it’s not the worst thing ever. Maybe when we lost our tails, some people went around freaking out about it and tried to get people to climb around in trees more, thus increasing our need for tails. Probably not. Anyway. I’m just wondering out loud. Thanks for reading.
And hey guys, I have some fucking stunning eye sockets. You would not believe. Say something nice about them and maybe I’ll show you my poker straight sternum…
I would seriously doubt human teeth are getting more crowded as an adaptation. You don’t provide any research or argument to support this claim other than casual observation. But what is observed in modern societies with mouths getting more crowded is exactly what we would expect from the research of Weston Price and therefore NOT an indicator of genetic factors.
The example Threonate cites is clearly an epigenetic and heredity issue and not a genetic issue as demonstrated by Price. The second generation of pigs are blind because they never got the nutrients necessary to form proper eye sockets in utero, but this did not change their genetic blueprint. With restoration of proper nutrition, future generations return to normal. This is exactly what Price observed with teeth crowding. We should NOT de facto take narrow faces and teeth crowding as signs of genetic adaption when there is no clear evidence of that. Rather, since it has already been shown this is very likely a sign of poor nutrition and nutrient depletion, we should be looking there first.
Ok, here’s a study that backs up what I’m saying: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3241821/
I just think it makes obvious sense. Form follows function. If our function is to eat cooked meats and porridge, the form needed to do so will follow.
Just to note, I’m not saying nutrition isn’t a player. I am saying though, our jaws have been getting smaller in relation to our craniums for eons. Even people with “good” teeth have issues with Wisdom teeth, right? Isn’t that a weird issue, dealing with these vestigal teeth we don’t need anymore? What other animal has teeth come in that they don’t need and just cause pain and rot and all that? I don’t know. Probably none. But we have teeth coming in that used to fit in our mouth and that we used to use to grind down food, but now we can’t even fit ’em and we don’t need ’em! Now, why can’t shrinking jaws and other kinds of tooth crowding possibly be attributable to similar causes?
And just a side note, me and my itty bitty jaw and miniature mouth have had no problems with our sole wisdom tooth. The dentist was shocked at what good condition it’s in and said it would not need pulling.
I don’t really think this paper actually backs up what you’re saying. It does not address why all of a sudden in the past 100 years people’s teeth have gotten significantly crowded. We’ve been eating “softer” agricultural food for a long time.
I don’t like thinking that I display qualities of degeneration either, but many of us do. I had some crowding as a kid, but lucked out in that rather than pulling teeth, my orthodontist used spacers to expand my jaw nicely into a WAPF-type face as a teen. I had the wide jaw and awesome cheekbones. Unfortunately it narrowed again when my wisdom teeth got removed – totally unnecessarily, I will add, they caused no problems. I’m actually really pissed that I didn’t know better than to keep them in, and I was never warned it would change my face, but such is life. If it ever becomes possible to get wisdom teeth implants, maybe I will!
I think you should save your money, sister. You’re probably lovely and I’m sure, quite functional. See, I had the option of getting my mouthful of degeneration fixed when I was a kid. It was an intervention on scales I’d never yet seen, rich uncles and grandmothers offering to foot astronomical orthodontist bills. They were gonna give me braces and space my teeth out and then knock out the babies and give me a pile of implants. After six years or so, I’d finally have the mouth of my grandmother’s dreams or whatever. But I just asked if my teeth were healthy, if they were functional and if the orthodontist foresaw any real problems down the line. He answered yes, yes and no. So I opted against it. And I bare my “degenerations” proudly. It’s probably a very small matter, in my humble opinion. Otherwise in my life I’ve been pretty healthy. Not a frequent cold sufferer, not an allergy sufferer, no asthma, always been strong, high I.Q….
I don’t think it does:
“In comparisons of morphology and genetics, only the mandible and the palatomaxilla were not significantly correlated with genetic patterns, supporting the notion (14, 15) that the mandible does not reflect neutral population history.”
There are all sorts of things that have happened to us that were adaptations that don’t look ideal from the outset. Why’d we lose our nictitating membranes? Those things were cool. And we used to even be able to make our own vitamin C! Damn! Imagine the horror as we watched our body hair grow thinner and thinner until all that was left was some fuzz and some goosebumps…what dread degeneration is responsible for all this!!!
Julia,
You might be right… but you might not be…. Better to study Weston Price work and realize that small mouth, crooked teeth are a sign of malnutrition during fetal stages and early childhood, like the other reader wrote.
The ages-long trends of our shrinking jaws and mouths could be looked at an acentuation of malnutrition and poor eating habits during pregnancy and early childhood. Nutrients availability and freshness of foods have decreased with progress…we as society have gained many things; but we have also lost much health and vitality.
This is a hot topic and to find what’s the best way of eating makes no sense, since it is probably different for every one and dinamic as the seasons; but one thing for sure, studying our past and comparing with our present; we can realize how much we have lost, nutritionally and biologically speaking.
I am glad you never had a single cavity by the way.
I think Price definitively proved that eating grains does NOT lead to tooth crowding. Just look at the photos of people with lovely wide jaws and perfect teeth consuming things like rye bread, oatmeal, etc. I even have some friends with lovely teeth who didn’t need braces whose parents most definitely ate grains!
Yeah, that’s what I was about to say too. Grain consumption has nothing to do with shrinking jaws. Julia, you might want to read Price’s book if you haven’t already. His argument that a narrow jaw is related to decreased nutrition in the parents is pretty strong. Now, eating grains exclusively is an entirely different thing. I know there’s evidence of shorter stature being related to the introduction of grains, but I’m not sure if that has more to do with the emergence of civilization in which the masses were confined to a rather bleak diet, consisting largely of agricultural products with little animal food. In Sweden, grain consumption goes hand in hand with dairy and we’re still pretty tall (except for me;)).
Hey guys, I’m not saying grains make jaws narrow. I’m saying a bunch of bloggers say that and I think it is likely hooey.
As The Real Amy and rosajo point out, grain consumption and nutrient deficiency are not one and the same. The bloggers that are drawing conclusions between the two are probably based on an incomplete understanding of Price’s work. As already pointed out, Price demonstrated there were cultures with strong, wide jaws and plenty of grain consumption.
My parents definitely ate (and still eat) grains. Buckwheat, barley, bread, pasta and rice all featured heavily in my childhood diet and I have all 32 teeth and they’re naturally straight, too.
It’s not so much the heat as the acrylamides…
http://drbenkim.com/articles/acrylamide-food.htm
Interesting list. I like how a couple of the worst offenders had ” health” in the brand name. I would use a list like this weed out the worst offenders but like I stated in my following comment I wouldn’t stay away from everything out of abject fear. I think the key is moderation and variety. Imagine the person eating a boatload of the health valley snacks that have a level of 1500 acrylamides for years on end. That may be a problem. A bowl of potato chips on movie night every week? Probably not worth worrying about.
The beautiful thing about the modern world is that we have a choice in what we eat. Back then food was about survival period. Now we have the freedom and intelligence to be neurotic about our dietary choices. Paleo man had no such luxury. When food was plentiful you ate as much of whatever was there regardless of what it was. When food was scarce you worked your ass of to remedy the situation. Disease, infection, predators, death in childbirth, etc, were all rampant. Watch the discovery channel sometime, the rainforest people’s that still exisist around the world aren’t the glowing picture of health that Weston Price disciples would have us believe. They have there own sets of problems. Believe me they don’t want our lifestyle and none of us want there lifestyle. I think we are all searching for some utopia were we all live long healthy lives free from disease and in the bodies of Hollywood stars and supermodels etc. Unfortunately this is real life. This is the modern world. We’re on this ride and there is no turning back. We can make some rational choices about our health and that’s ok. If grains mess you up, don’t eat them. But don’t live life through anecdotal evidence and wild claims made on anyone’s website, including this one. Life is to short to be paranoid about every choice you make. I only say this as someone recovering from years of paranoia over G.M.O.’s , B.P.A. , tap water, air pollution, you name it. When your not feeling well everything becomes the culprit.
Excellent, excellent comment Jdubs. Trying my best here to slim things down to a few fundamentals and let life move on from the elusive hunt (as in CJ Hunt) for the perfect diet and perfect health.
Thank you Matt. Your site has been a big help in my getting over food and health paranoia. The thing I like the most is that you never really claim to have all the answers like some people do. You have lots of really good suggestions based on a lot of research as do a lot of your readers and the rest is upon us as individuals to take what we can and utilize it in a way that fit our own needs. None of that militant this is the only way and all opposing views shall be banished crap.Keep on rocking buddy. ; )
P.s. looked up that C.J. Hunt reference. It seems like they have found the perfect human diet, now all they have to do is find the perfect human.
And all of that perfectionism can lead to ocd…. Leading you to believe that what you do has merrit, and then you spend time defending your beliefs untill you start having problems with health or other aspects of life. See it a lot in th? dieting world. Good to have a open mind and let others follow by setting a example instead of you trying to change someone’s belief because it works for you, and thus it has to work for another.
And that is the real lesson I am learning here. I need to change my thought patterns and beliefs. I need to work out my mental and stress issues etc. to become a calm, steady, relaxed, and confident person. It gets deep. It goes all the way down to fears, of death, illness, loss of livelihood, loss of love, all of the common fears we humans have. Usually once you get comfortable with that stuff in life the eating falls into place. All of the really relaxed together people I know ( which aren’t many) usually just eat whatever’s good whenever they are hungry and don’t really think about it. They don’t binge eat and usually don’t go ape shit over sweets. I have found that usually they people that fall Into dieting pitfalls are usually very bright ,well researched, slightly neurotic , maybe a little o.c.d. Etc. But once some of the dieting damage takes effect the neurosis,o.c.d. And other negative mental behaviors seem to become exacerbated. I’m not pointing fingers we all do it, but I have noticed it gets real bad in people like fruitarians or strict vegans etc.
Just wanted to say that this is really well said. It is deep, and I think we are almost hardwired to avoid that kind of digging within–it’s easier to blame gluten. I think there are a lot of us here who have fallen into that rabbit hole of feeling “well-researched” only to find that the spirulina-infused coconut flour brownies (I loved that line) aren’t making us feel better and taste awful to boot!
Yes the spirulina brownie thing is hilarious. I saw a paleo cookbook in whole foods the other day with many such recipes that involved long lists of complicated and expensive ingredients. I thought to myself what caveman was cooking up gooey dark chocolate coconut flour brownies. I have to admit those paleo people go to great and creative lengths to recreate the food they left behind.
Jdubs, your comment about “those paleo people” shows a biased opinion in you. You can’t paste a global label on people who eat paleo because there is a wide variation in that group. People that eat sorta paleo, but eat dairy, or legumes, or even things like cake and pizza on occasion. And regardless of your own opinion of what is going too far or getting into OCD territory, it’s good that some people push the envelope and dig, because real truth is not relative. Truth is truth, we just may have not found it yet. Some foods are good for you, some are not. The human body and digestive system is enormously complex. Being anal about the details will help us figure it all out in time. That’s my opinion anyway.
Brad, I’m not very sophisticated but my heart is in the right place. I was more trying to make light of cavemen eating brownies.
This site is just another one of many that drive me crazy. Yes people go to extremes, but Paleo, Vegan, etc. all have something in common. They are moving people to eating foods in their whole state and become aware of what is in their food…. something we all could use.
Vilifying a group of users and poking fun of them without providing any hard facts to support your position is not helping anyone…it’s just contributing to the problem.
Awesome stuff jdubs, I think that a lot of us get to that point after riding the “healthy lifestyle” rollercoaster for a few years. It gets to the point where every damn thing is bad for you and you eventually just say “fuck it”
Life is short and you’re only making it shorter if you spend half of it obsessively trying to live longer. ;-)
Thank you, this is the first time I’ve ever thrown my thoughts out into the cyber world. I’m doing it because I feel a sort of kinship with the people on this site. I feel like I can really relate on a personal level to the majority of the people’s stories and everyone’s interactions feel pretty laid back and genuine. I started really researching my health issues about three years ago and have been all around the net. I am familiar with a lot of the health blogs that I’ve heard mentioned on this site. I have tried a few different things had minor success and major failures And like you said I have reached the point where I just said “fuck it “. And I mean that in the most positive way possible : )
I’m not sure what your point is. These were tribes that had lived with virtually no human contact and lived pretty much like there Stone Age ancestors. I’m not talking about the ones who have been corrupted by western diet and influences.
Jdubs,
Are the Discovery Channel shows you speak of in watchable quality? I would guess they’re probably black-and-white with a poor audio-video quality, being that they were recorded in the 1920’s and 1930’s. They were recorded back then, right? They’re not any newer than that, correct?
It’s a good thing the Discovery Channel traveled the world to document and capture these varied racial stocks about 80 to 90 years ago.
Sorry that above comment was meant in reply to the theonate. I’m not saying Weston prices research was bad or that the tribes people he studied didn’t have nice teeth. Unfortunately there is no other research than his that I know of as to the state of there teeth so I’ll have to take his word for it. There are people in the rainforest of Papua New Guinea who are still dying from a Mad cow like disease that is leftover from there cannibal days. They were still eating human flesh as recently as the the ’70s and I’m sure they were doing it back in Weston’s day. Not a dietary choice I’d like to make but at least they had nice teeth.
@Jdubs
It was not just about teeth (as explained before, and his book and research goes into much more details). The point is, when he traveled the world, he documented, analyzed, and observed things, well ahead of his time, The fact that this took place 80 to 90 years ago is a large gap from today’s “primitives”, so it’s hard to say “These people in this forest are dying, and thus it must have been the same for them 90 years ago.”
Besides, there’s more than diet that affects lifespan. Tribal conflicts, infanticide, infested water, lack of vaccinations and antibiotics, lack of hygiene, et al. If we could go back in time and convince more people to do what Price did, that would be awesome! However, few actually did, especially at such a diverse scale, and so here we are in 2013 with what he has documented and demonstrated. I’ll take the principles of his work over a National Geographic or Discovery Channel documentary. (The most important being that the mother’s diet is one of the largest, if not the largest, factor in determining the healthy growth and formation of the child.)
There definitely seems to be a misunderstanding of the process of evolution amongst the paleo crew, in that they appear to think we stopped evolving sometime prior to 10,000 BC.
It takes a bit for the brain to adapt to ketosis. I would go back and research that part more if I were you. I would consider the statement you made to be overly simplified and incorrect.
Ah, but I did say that there are studies that say ketosis is good for the brain too! But this study exists as well. As does the “study” many people do at home suffering from brain fog on a low-carb diet. So I just wondered, hey, what a coincidence that all these readily available carbs exploding on the scene coinsided with the exponential take-off in human creativity and knowledge…makes you think! If you’ve had your pancakes, that is…:)
The jaw shape is determined during pregnancy by mother’s nutrients. However, cavities are determined by your personal diet. You can have all your teeth fit in your mouth yet eat like crap and have them all fall out or have a narrow palate, but eat well and have no cavities or tooth decay. I have three children whose teeth have no problem fitting in their mouths even though there are many VERY crowded palates in our family (including my husband’s). All the cousins have crowded palates too. I think I’m the only one who drinks raw milk, doses up on CLO and grass fed butter before, during and after pregnancy. I know a lot of other mothers who added fat soluble nutrients to their pregnancy diet and noticed a drastic difference in the palate size of their subsequent children. Price definitely knew what he was talking about there.
I think people take Price’s work a little too far. My sisters and I have great teeth, room for all adult teeth and no cavities. My parents are generally healthy, but being pregnant in the 80s and 90s I know my mom wasn’t drinking raw milk and eating raw butter. I’m pregnant now and the last thing I want to eat is CLO…gross.
There’s such a thing as nutrient stores and genetic tendencies too. You usually can’t build up or undo good health in one generation or even two sometimes. All I know is, my “farm bred” raw milk drinking, butter spreading, grain eating ancestors all had beautiful straight teeth in their pictures…and then I see all the braces and crowded teeth today and no something went drastically wrong in less than a century.
*know* lol
You don’t need CLO or raw milk for good teeth, although they definitely help if the diet is lacking otherwise. The key is just having a good diet and nutrient stores however that is attained. Your parents probably had this one way or another. There are people in Africa who never had any dairy who have excellent teeth on a grain-based unprocessed diet.
Proper oral posture (and swallowing) is critical too, as George Caitlin tentatively acknowledged in his book, “Shut Your Mouth and Save Your Life,” though his main focus was the importance of nasal breathing (which I also agree with). Being from the 19th century, it’s dated, but those observations were pretty impressive, although unfortunately never became very popular. He noticed how the Native American tribe women would close their babies’ mouths as they slept if they happened to drop open, and how they all kept their mouths closed except when they spoke, and noted their great health and beautiful facial structure.
Dr. John Mew much more recently (compared to the 19th century!) has delved into this extensively in his development of orthotropics. Googling pictures of “orthotropics” will show a lot of pictures of kids who’ve used it who had severe problems with underbites, overbites, crowding, etc. that came to have beautifully developed faces. Truly amazing stuff, and I wish it was more publicized and better known.
The idea that the tongue is the best orthodontic device makes perfect sense, as when it’s against the palette with the lips closed and the teeth touching or slightly apart, especially combined with regular anterior swallowing (where the tongue flattens against the roof of the mouth and there is no forward thrusting against the incisors), the pressure the tongue exerts on the surrounding teeth on a daily basis encourages them to develop in a “U” formation that would allow for all teeth, wisdom teeth included, to come in without any crowding problems at all. This also has a tremendous influence on facial development.
In Caitlin’s time, I don’t think tape had been invented. I’ve been taping my mouth shut at night with durable cloth medical tape for months now and that seems to be working out very well. No dry mouth in the morning at all and I seem to be waking up more rested.
I do wish that the basics of oral posture were taught to children in civilized societies where that kind of basic education is needed the most — again with Caitlin, even he noticed that mouth breathing was becoming a problem back in the 1800’s due to people living more comfortable and less natural lifestyles.
I’d get into squatting in the bathroom and how painfully obvious it should be that humans are meant to defecate that way, but I’ll save that for another day ;)
Nutrition is tremendously important, but I think a few things like this that we’ve lost touch with in more developed countries are just as critical. I find them particularly interesting because there’re really just a handful of daily habits I can think of that would be easy for so many people to change that have the potential to make huge differences.
That is very interesting! Thank you for sharing this!
Ha yeah my mom would always tell me keep my mouth closed while running and so forth, and my teeth have come in pretty well. :)
Good point! I think as long as your diet is varied and you eat enough you’re okay. Eating enough is more important than worrying about micronutrients IMO. Humans have had healthy babies on drastically different diets.
I would agree totally except that I didn’t start with eating traditional foods or anything like that until after the birth of my second child. I ate a largely unprocessed diet of home-cooked food and avoided fast food, but I did not have much of a preoccupation with nutrients. Both of my children have excellent teeth with wide spacing and very wide jaws, especially the younger. I did breastfeed both of them far past infancy, and I do believe that the physical action of breastfeeding has a lot to do with healthy palate development, so maybe prenatal development is not as crucial as that.
When I was pregnant with my two, I wasn’t super focused on eating a Weston Price-esque diet. However, I did eat home-cooked food, yummy eggs and meat, plenty of veggies and fruit and fat (butter and olive oil, esp, at the time). I certainly wasn’t drinking raw milk, or eating CLO or organ meats at the time.
My son has a little crowding with his grown up teeth, but it’s not bad. My daughter has no crowding and plenty of tooth space. And despite all the crappy, food restrictions and starvation diets we’ve done…(and then all the subsequent fast food binges while refeeding), my kids haven’t had any cavities at all. I haven’t had any cavities in a long time also.
We eat more organ meats now (but definitely mixed in with our other meats, like liver + ground beef in recipes), but for my sake, we try to stay away from getting too preoccupied with the foods we eat. I won’t ever sprout my wheat and our raw milk source is 1 1/2 hours away (although the cost isn’t THAT high, maybe $10-$12 a gallon). And CLO is too expensive for our budget.
P.S. I typed this while sitting in my air conditioned house, while outside the temperature is 105 at 9:30 at night! The Hohokam Native Americans who lived here centuries before us did not have that luxury and many of the young and old probably died when they got stung by the abundant bark scorpions in our neck of the woods…because there were no emergency rooms/hospitals that could give people bark scorpion antivenom. 2013 is a great year to be alive! :D
I should add that I nursed my kiddos for a few years at least. Some say this could have helped their teeth and palates.
My husband has straight teeth, with very little crowding and a nice palate. His mother ate similar to my mother (when they were pregnant), and I have crowded teeth, with no space at all (and a narrower mouth/jaw). I think we were both breastfed for about a year (I might have been breastfed longer than my hubby). And looking back at family recipes, I believe our Grandmothers and Great-Grandmothers cooked very similar foods, as well.
It’s stuff like this that helps me to less paranoid about what our 3rd child’s teeth and palate are going to look like if I’m not following the WAPF diet perfectly.
Maybe PUFAs affect teeth and palates and noses?
Honestly I can’t be too paranoid about my nutrients, and good for you that you’re not either. I’m just so far past the Price and WAPF fascination. I eat what I crave, because I figure my body knows what it wants. CLO is disgusting to me and I’m not convinced that its going to help my baby in any major way. The interesting thing I’ve noticed is that I don’t really ever want any meat or anything fatty or oily, the only fats I can handle are dairy fats like cheese and sour cream in small amounts…and ice cream in larger amounts :) And I agree, I would much rather live in 2013 with my A/C and grocery store down the road.
I LOVE ice cream! :D
I wouldn’t be surprised if PUFAs affect teeth, palates and noses, but I would guess only the refined vegetable oils that pull nutrients from the body. Weston A. Price was highly critical of the vegetable fats. I would highly doubt if natural PUFAs in the form of avocados and lard (unless possibly the stuff from industrial pigs) affect development negatively.
Oh, and the other thing that probably has an effect is certain pesticides (like the ubiquitous glyphosate, which has been shown to cause developmental issues in children born in areas where it is heavily spayed).
I hate pesticides. Although we’re relaxed in our food choices, we try to eat organic.
I would never live next to any fields that are used for farming. When we lived in New Mexico, we lived close to quite a bit farmland and you could smell the chemicals in the air. Blech.
I believe there are PUFAs in many, many natural foods. We still eat those. :)
We stay away from the highly refined vegetable oils though. If I eat chips or even pretzels that might only have a little bit of vegetable oil in them, I can sometimes smell a rancid smell coming from them.
Right now, I’m trying to find olive oil that doesn’t have added vegetable oils to it and doesn’t cost the same amount as our mortgage payment.
But perhaps they didn’t have high mortality from cancer and other degenerative diseases. And I’m sure they had strategies to deal with the heat. I love my AC when it gets unbearable, but there are certainly drawbacks to it.
AZ has definitely gotten hotter because of AC and the use of electricity…all the “energy usage” heats up the environment. Temps were probably cooler for the Hohokam back way when (lower than 100 degrees in the summer, maybe). They cooked outside and built their structures to keep them “cooler” also. I have a friend who told me about her Grandmother sitting in ice baths during the summer to keep cool (50-60 years or so ago).
We went through an intense heat wave in Italy with no AC one summer and it was super hot. I would have LOVED to have it. Tourist shops in places like Venice and Florence displayed signs on their windows if they had AC. Those shops were packed with people, LOL. And gelato sales were probably high too!
If I lived somewhere like Colo, I’d probably be okay without AC.
I think early native people didn’t have chronic stressers like we do and I believe THAT’s why we see more cancer (cancer has been around for thousands of years) and degenerative diseases than we do now. Eating super “healthy” foods made my health worse. But relaxing more about life and having fun has made my health better. Also, some exercise helps. We still eat pretty healthy, but we’re not eating the “Golden Diet of An Immortal Life” anymore. Too many Gurus claim eating one way or another is going to give everyone “Perfect Health” and that’s just not true.
I suspect chronic stress affects babies in utero and babies before utero too. Quite a bit. And lots of different things pile on chronic stress for people. Lack of sleep affects me, as well as psychological stress.
Although I want a more simplified life, I’m glad to be alive here and now.
Another thought I just had:
I know Weston Price did some research on North American Native Americans. I’ve seen pictures of the decline of their teeth health after they were introduced to more processed foods like white flour, white sugar and so on.
However, one thing that I don’t see in these types of studies is that when they were being given “white food products”, the U.S. government was taking away their native lands, breaking up their families by putting this children into boarding schools far away and taking away their traditional foods.
I have a friend who is Navajo and came from a reservation up north of us. One of her favorite foods is mutton. Sheep are very important to Navajo people, and very sacred. In the early days of putting the Navajo on reservations, the U.S. government killed many of them and some herds were entirely decimated. Herds are doing better now and my friend goes to help her family with the sheep often.
Also, when the children were sent to boarding schools, their hair was cut short (the boys, at least). The Navajo people considered that the longer their hair was, the more knowledge they had. Children were punished for speaking in their traditional language and holding cultural ideals and practices.
If you want to give large populations of people chronic stress, take away their homes, their food, break apart their families and then see what happens.
I suspect that chronic stress might have played a large part of the tooth, palate and nose structure changes of Native Americans.
Also…after some severe chronic stress, which included very limited access to enough food to eat, my Dad’s appearance of Fibro and no money to pay bills, my mom had severe tooth problems and had to have one of them pulled.
One more thing: in our tribe a man’s hair is only cut when he is in mourning.
I ate the bullshittiest diet growing up. No dairy. None. No eggs, none. My paranoid mother told me I was allergic, as she was. Meaning no eggs and milk for me in casa de womb. I ate low-fat or no-fat cuts of meat, fake soybean oil cheese, iceberg lettuce- besides the Flintstones multi-vitamins, my diet was totally void of all that is good and holy. No cavities. My mom, despite a poor diet had strong ass teeth too. Methinks genetics might have a thing or two to do with it.
In addition, I believe that a lot of people are trying to look at what we eat as a modern society and correlate that to our modern health epidemics. But I truly believe that one of the key factors is the overwhelming stress of the modern lifestyle in combination with what we eat and a lot of times it is the stress directly causing us to eat the wrong things in the wrong quantities at the wrong times. The stress also then changes the way our bodies process these foods. There are lots of studies that show that similar people eating the same things can have vastly different health and weight outcomes due to stress on particular individuals in the study. One last thing I have noticed is that I can also find completely sound a viable scientific studies on exact opposite sides of almost any argument on the net. Usually people only believe the ones that side with there opinions. It can really screw with your head sometimes and almost paralyze you because you start to not know who or what to believe anymore.
Yes! I think stress is one of our biggest problems nowadays and that many, many things compound that stress.
thanks, i liked the style and content of this article.
i do believe that price learned something important. which is why i became a wapfer.
matt explains some things that being a weston pricer didn’t.
intuition could help us a bunch IF we could get our hands on those brain-washing devices that the men-in-black carry. without that… it is going to be a long haul.
each of us can probably trace our parentage back to the generation that had straight teeth. so much has changed since that generation, including farming that does not feed the soil, (price: food is soil transformed)… manufacturers of “store food” have erased our food traditions through advertising and government policy… the role of the at-home nurturer has been down-graded to non-existent … most people think cooking is below them.
if we could wave harry’s wand and adopt a proven way-of-living that fosters straight teeth…
i almost think it would take the fall of our society and return to self reliance for straight teeth to re-emerge for a new generation. how jaded am i.
There seems to be a preoccupation with straight teeth. Go over to England where the majority of the population has had very bad teeth for quite a while then you may feel better about your teeth ; )
Seriously though Weston Price did some fine research. Groundbreaking stuff for his time really. But the fact still remains that we as modern people would do very poorly if cast into that lifestyle tomorrow. I was watching a show were a guy was living with a rainforest tribe. It was amazing how hard it was for him. He had boots, long pants, long sleeve shirt and he was being eaten alive by bugs and scratched from thorns etc. The tribe was running around this seeming hostile environment butt naked without a worry. No scratched, no bug bites no thorns in the foot etc. Their small compact bodies were made for the jungle, they didn’t require as many calories, they spent an amazing amount of time hanging out and relaxing. They actually put in less time working during the day then we do and when they do go out and hunt or the women collect food, they laugh, smile, sing songs. The westerner made a good go of it but it was not his natural environment and you could tell he was miserable.
i raise a portion of my family’s food. my skin is approximately as dark as gollum. so–it is done fully and utterly clothed.
textiles have always been a part of self-reliant caucasian lifestyle.
i farm in long pants with socks tucked in, long shirt, big floppy hat and gloves. yes, even in 100 degree weather. it keeps me from getting bit, scratched, poison ivied and sunburn.
i agree i wouldn’t last a day naked in the jungle. but that is not how my ancestors lived.
i’ve got two friends who have different views. one gardens in street clothes and is often covered with poison ivy. the other liked to garden in her bikini, but now she can’t garden because she has lyme.
there is a reason our (white) ancestors weren’t naked. and it isn’t all about puritanism.
I hear that. No matter how hot it is I go on my walks in the woods fully dressed. No shorts and sandals here. To many ticks and poison ivy in my neck of the woods.
“Seriously though Weston Price did some fine research. Groundbreaking stuff for his time really.”
As much as I would like to disregard Price and his findings, I’ll have to agree with you. Although I haven’t read all of N&PD, the parts I skimmed made me want to, and I’ll say this in the most PG way possible, do bad things to him with a crowbar inserted into very naughty places on his body.
For instance, I read through his section on “Moral Deterioration” where he describes how young men will go against the law because of brain damage inflicted from malformation of the skull. Now, I’ve read in a few places that Price had actually been pretty wealthy his whole life and so I’m going to assume he’s had it easy from the beginning. He has never experienced the emotionally crippling stance of poverty and abuse, and yet had the audicity to claim he knows exactly what turns people to crime and goes on to label them as degenerates.
Truth be told, I see this in the whole “holistic” dentistry group aswell. They all babble about how strong character and happiness are symbolized by proper “facial development” as they advertise their expanders and nasal balloons stating that all this and more are only one key-turn or pump away. Sure, there probably are people who would actually benefit from such treatment, but for the majority of us I feel it’s unnecessary. I get the impression that these deluded doctors get so caught up in their beliefs that they start to see psychology as some kind of phony, human-derived concept and the brain as being so simple that moving some bones a few millimeters makes everything better and erases all problems.
Quite insulting to human complexity, if you ask me.
” the parts I skimmed made me want to, and I’ll say this in the most PG way possible, do bad things to him with a crowbar inserted into very naughty places on his body.”
gross can you not? surely there’s another way to make your point without giving me that mental image.
lol yeah maybe that was taking it a bit too far
Still pissed me off though
Yeah Brad, that was pretty sick. Is your skull malformed??? Ha! No, it was sick. But I agree with the rest of your statement.
Yes. On that line of thinking the Indian tribes that practiced cranial malformation by strapping their kids to boards must have been real degenerates. I have read a few scientific books from the twenties and thirties and it is interesting to see the particular prejudices of that era sprinkled in amongst the science. There definitely was a different thought pattern back then even by the most well meaning people. Because of this whole tooth crowding debate I have looked into some more modern research and it is true that contact with the modern way of life does seem to have a bearing on this issue. The one study I read was about two amazon villages. The more remote village had split off From the first village and remained un contacted until 1987 by any modern influence. The first village had been dealing with modern man for a few generations by that point. So you have two villages with the same original genetic stock, virtually same dietary and living habits. The split off village had one man out of forty test subjects with tooth crowding. The original village had a very high rate of tooth crowding. Unfortunately variables such as massive in breeding and other things left the researchers unable to pin point any definitive reason for this. So although there is no definitive proof of what the of an exact cause it is pretty compelling that the tribe that had modern contact for a few generations had the tooth crowding . The other study I read was about the remains of a per historic tribe known as the Roaix. Apparently they all had tooth crowding. Those scientist surmised that this may have had something to do with the fact that they were a more sedentary agricultural
People that lived in an isolated are. They also talked about less intense mastication of their food and other hereditary and genetic factors possibly weighing in. So yes. There does seem to be something going on with tooth crowding in the modern world and with modern diets. There is also evidence that this isn’t a wholly modern condition. Unfortunately there may be no answers yet as to what nutritional factors are being added into or left out of our diets to cause this. Good nutrition is paramount in a pregnant woman but what really is the right nutritional balance and what foods are truly the best. I believe maybe some of the odd cravings women have during pregnancy are the bodies own clues to what it might need. So I wouldn’t skip the ice cream and peanut butter or what ever your craving in fear that you will damage your child. All of the saturated fats, and meat, and dairy or whatever seem like no brainers. Orange juice too. Folic acid is important. My mother was the second of four children and the only one to have bad tooth crowding. Her mother may have very well been missing out on a key nutrient during her pregnancy, who knows, all I know is that at 70 she has better health than I do and much better health than two of her siblings. During all of my “healthy” eating adventures I would try to get her on board but she just eats like she always did. Grilled cheese in margarine, chipped ham sandwiches, boxed cereal, low fat milk, etc. all of the things that I would cringe at. I believe that the biggest difference between her and I and her two not well siblings is stress , attitude, and a very consistent schedule for most of her life. Trust me if science ever catches up and figures out what we have added into or left out of our diets for perfect health it will also come up with ways to kill us off just as quickly. It’s the modern equivalent of natural selection.
P.s. please forgive the atrocious spelling and punctuation :)
i did have cravings. once, hubby was out for the night. i made myself duck a l’orange–and ate the entire DUCK! we’re talking fat soluble activators here. i ate lots of oranges. there was a memorable mango smoothie at an indian restaurant…
i keep forgetting to mention. i read 2 books on how to prepare for pregnancy. followed them to the letter. can’t remember one! the other was “what to expect when expecting”. i followed the diet advice to a tee. now, it may have been changed to be better or worse since then (we are talking 20 years ago). but whatever diet that was did not product straight teeth (with my lifestyle of software engineer). i can remember it was quite high in carbs. like 12 servings a day. and i can remember that there really much push for the fat soluble activators. i took prenatal vitamins.
my husband is basically a tech genius and i was an excellent student myself. our daughter had some learning disabilities, nothing heavy–but if there was one thing i did not expect was for our children to struggle in school. genetics had to count for something! when i asked the teacher why that was… i got a funny look. i think teachers are worried too, why kids can’t learn these days. well, it cleared up after some wapf-ing and both of my children went on to excel in school.
sure, wapfing can make you a bit OCD. but more is still more when it comes to nutrition.
that should be “wasn’t much push”… in other words not much was mentioned in “what to expect” about getting vit A, D, E, K
i’m sorry, but that is sort of a silly thought. narrow teeth and pelvis show that for some reason the genetic blueprint was not completed.
you wanna be a woman with a narrow pelvis and have to push out a watermelon?
i was referring to “pre-occupation with straight teeth” it isn’t just vanity.
I agree. I was just trying to be silly. I know when something affects someone personally how frustrating it can be and how much we would do anything to not pass such traits on to our children. I feel like there are so many scary things happening to our world and our food supply that it can be overwhelming at times. It can be hard to sort it all out. I allowed the whole Weston Price root canal thing to really screw with my mind for a while and felt like I had been duped by modern medicine etc. . The truth is no one has really been able to reproduce his research in that field. How many people go and have teeth yanked out on the basis of sketchy research that is almost a hundred years old. I’ve read a few on the net that have. So based on that logic am I going to get paranoid that eating some wonder bread is going to screw my kids teeth up? There is a vast difference between making healthy choices and following the Internet dietary guru insanity to the point of agonizing over minute details.
yes, sigh. i’m right there with you.
wanna hear the weirdest thing? my grandfather was a wonderbread man.
something did happen in his lifetime. his first child was healthy. his second was my mother–failure to thrive. his third child was very ill with mental and physical illness and didn’t make it to age 25. i’m not sure it was the wonder bread he delivered (or perhaps it was the hydrogenated vegetable oil pastries), but my grandmother seemed to be pushing out less and less healthy children as she went along–unlike her mother who pushed out 12 good ones in a row.
my grand father himself (the wonderbread man) died on the young side (63). from cancer. his wife however still walks this earth at 98. however, she has also had cancer and and all the other diseases or at least it seems that way.
i still think price was right: store food makes store teeth. if there is a way around that without guru insanity that IS the best.
just recently i read the story of George Washington’s lack of health. growing up on a farm and not being exposed to modern fats — well it wasn’t enough.
weston price found some people that seemed to have accumulated wisdom and passed it down in the form of a tradition–i almost wonder if there is any other way that doesn’t feel “insane”. also, they were still in situ. the swiss tradition might not have worked on eskimos and vice versa.
tradition is very hard to impart.
maybe i can vent a little? my kids were born ten years after i read price but have had the benefit of me trying to feed them more well since then–both by purchasing and raising better food.
(they have crooked teeth but are generally healthy)
they are now twenty-somthings at home.
i sometimes wonder as i build chicken coops and weed tomatoes if i’m burning more calories than i create.
i work very hard to try to wrest calories and nutrients from the earth —
it kind of ticks me off when my grown kids get up from the table and say: wow, all these calories! i’m off for my run. or i’m going to lift weights! bye! off to kick box aerobics!
you know, maybe, just maybe they could use them up those calories on the farm? you know, in a sort of symbiotic fashion?
i asked for feedback on what they would like to see for winter storage. they don’t want anything that looks odd–like the way jams can make “sediments”. they think it is mold and won’t eat it. they want grocery store ketchup don’t even bother to make it. none of the pickles are quite right. they want a different jam or jelly ever week, not blackberry all the time. the kim chi doesn’t taste like the korean restaurant and they don’t trust it.
i need to turn out some new kids from scratch, home school them…
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/magazine/the-island-where-people-forget-to-die.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Queenbee, I don’t know if this link will work. But I just read this article. Someone over at the forums posted the link. It’s about a very long lived people from the Mediterranean island of Ikaria. These people just “are” the way they are. I don’t we could ever reproduce their lifestyle. As I said over in the forum it brings out a nostalgia for a life I have never lived.
yes i’ve read that article, love it! of course, if you sent a young american there to live that life it would feel like a disney vacation at first and then they’d get sick of it and wish for the life THEY grew up with.
Too true :)
Queenbee, if you’ve got twentysomethings living at home, I think now is THE time to assign them chores around your farm and to tell them to buy their own bloody store bought ketchup and eat it in their own apartments if that’s what they want to do!
julia, why don’t you come live with me? :)
Hey, if I get to help out on a farm and get fed free blackberry jam, I’m down.
That’s interesting about women having more narrow pelvises.
After having a c-section because the doctor told me my pelvis was too narrow (actually he had an engagement to get to and needed to get done with me and my birth that was taking too long, but I digress…), I went on to have two vaginal births.
Both of my children had “normal” sized heads and my son’s head is/was larger than most. The fact that I got that head out of my vagina means that my pelvis really ISN’T too small to birth children, after all.
I think that quite a few women are told that they’re pelvises are too small, when they aren’t, and that they get c-sections due to a “failure to progress”, which can happen because of being on too many painkillers for birth, not walking around, not squatting, stress, too many lights on in the labor and delivery room, and so on.
Many women in the past used to squat to get babies out because squatting is a natural way to open up the pelvis for childbirth.
I was a small baby at about 5 1/2 pounds, but when on to have larger babies at 7 and 8 pounds.
It’ll be interesting to see how my next pregnancy goes. I’m obese now and I wasn’t when I had my other children.
I watched a fascinating program the other day about microbes and their symbiotic relationship in the human body. Very recently they have started to do research into swabbing the bodies and mouth of c section babies with fluid from the birth canal in order to inoculate them with the lactobacillus and other organisms required to help jump start the immune and digestive systems. The said that c section children tend to have higher rates of asthma and immune related illnesses. It was quite interesting. The research is fairly new ( at least as far as swabbing babies is concerned) it would be interesting to see how long it takes to become a common practice. If you do have to have another c section it might be something to bring up. Another interesting point they brought up is that our super sterile modern living conditions are altering our microbial make up, possibly resulting in being a factor in our modern day diseases especially immune related ones.
That’s very cool about the swabbing…babies need the bacteria from their mothers and pick it up on the way through the birth canal. There are several reasons why a vaginal birth can be more beneficial than a c-section.
I read in a book about how people used to get more mild Polio cases (and get immune to it). When things became more sanitary, the mild types of polio were eradicated and the stronger types of Polio started sweeping through and made people very sick. And then they came out with the vaccines and so on.
Antibiotic resistant bugs are more common, like the MRSA. I think we keep things waaaay too clean now.
The really interesting thing is that when the baby is in the womb it is a completely sterile environment. It is truly amazing in light of the fact that we have more living organisms in us an on us then we have cells in the body.
It is interesting. Someone I know told me that often men are interested in sex in that last trimester. I wondered if that was so that he could contribute to the flora and fauna of the baby. We know that the first baby gets one set of bacteria and the second baby gets another in a set of twins.
i know a set of twins in which one is autistic and one isn’t.
Many women (as much as 50% of those of childbearing age) died in childbirth also before modern obstetrics. Don’t get too caught up in the natural birth woo. It’s dangerous.
We have evolved to be the humans we are today, and evolution involves trade offs. To walk upright we need a narrow pelvis. To be the most intelligent predators on the planet we need big brains. Big heads + narrow pelvis = birth problems. Which is part of the reason so many women and babies died in the past. That’s the problem I have with fantasizing about ancient and past cultures- it wasn’t that great and a lot of us wouldn’t be here today if we hadn’t advanced like we have.
Childbirth “woo” is in the eye of the beholder. Some women are still squatting and having babies. Squatting is a much, much easier way for me have a baby than lying on my back, on a table, in the delivery room. It really does open up the pelvis. Women’s bodies are pretty awesome.
Since I’ve had both types of births, I would much rather have a vaginal birth than a c-section. It’s much easier to recover from and benefits the baby and the mom. Also, the more c-sections a woman has, the more likely other complications can arise. Like scar tissue problems and tissue healing and adhering to the wrong place problems. Uterine ruptures (during labor and NOT during labor) can arise too. And infections. Some babies are “born” too early with scheduled c-sections, as well. And other things.
But…if a woman has to have a c-section…then that’s okay too. An emergency c-section truly saved the lives of my sister and her son. The kind of birth a woman has doesn’t take away from who she is.
With that being said, I’ve had to fight hard to have #2 and #3 vaginally and I’m pretty ademant about having babies vaginally. Doctors told me I couldn’t, I told them I could…and I did. I learned that without much intervention, birth (for me) is very fast and labor and delivery is pretty easy on me. And without any drugs, birth is a crazy, painful, fun, wild time. :D
Thank goodness for some advances in technology that help women deliver babies safely. And thank goodness that women like me still have a choice to birth vaginally after a c-section. It’s been very cool to do things that others have told me I’m unable to do.
Thank God for women period. I think if men had to give birth we would become extinct ;)
I agree, Stephanie. The natural way isn’t always the safest way. Nature don’t give a hoot if a substantial percentage of women die in childbirth. We’ll keep going as a species, small price to pay for our big brains and bipedal way of life.
But I do think there is merit to natural child birthing. I personally would do it near a doctor though, and would not refuse a C-section if my life appeared at all in danger.
Although I believe nutrition plays a role in skull development, so does chewing and oral posture. When babies are breastfed for long periods, it ensures that the correct tongue placement (between the upper palatte) and swallowing pattern occurs so that the jaw expands enough to accomodate your teeth.
Mike Mew gives a really good argument on this (look up “modern melting faces” on youtube); he basically explains how eating hard foods, correct tongue posture, and breathing can drastically effect the shape and width of the face. I think the best example he gives is the case of well-fed Roman Emperors having more “adenoid” features than the poor despite clearly having better nutrition from softer foods while the latter is ingesting more coarse calories, which pretty much goes back to what Julia said about our mouths not being worked as much as they used to.
Just food for thought, no pun intended.
And this is where I feel like a moron because I completely skipped over Jib’s comment where he already explains this lol
my mother was a large baby from a mother from a good, old-country start. she actually came down with failure to thrive because the doctor told her mother to bottle feed. she has straight teeth.
i was a small baby and my mother breast fed me. her doctor told her not to gain, so she restricted calories when pregnant with me. i was a small baby but healthy. i have crooked teeth.
It’s times like this I wish this website had an “edit post” button. Rather, I should have said breastfeeding for long periods HELPS to instill good oral and swallowing posture. So maybe both you and your mother weren’t fed long enough for the good and bad postures to become ingrained into your regular function. I think I’ve read how people in traditional cultures would breastfeed children way past infancy, like age three or something; how many people in modern culture do you know that do that, much less breastfeed?
I also mentioned two other factors: chewing and breathing. Some people in traditional cultures would have babies chewing on things like raw meats and seafood before their baby teeth even erupted. Weston Price even said the Eskimos he studied carried things between their teeth regulary as part of their daily work. Correlation, maybe? The muscles in the face are just like the ones in the rest of your body and will grow/strengthen in response to stimuli which also causes bone growth to your genetic limit.
Also, what was the air quality for you and your mother both like? Did you have allergies growing up? Walking around with your jaw hanging down vs. almost closed with lips together can make a bigger difference than you think.
Anyway, not trying to attack you or anything, I just like to include every POSSIBLE cause when looking at things like this. It could also be possible that your account on you and your mother’s feeding habits are just as YOU remember it, and you’re missing details.
i did have allergies as did my brothers who also had crooked teeth. i found price’s work long after i had my children. they have crooked teeth. i breast fed each of them for 9 months. they were not hampered by allergies. just more data for you. and yes, i agree that mouth habits DO count! but i also think the time in the uterus counts as well.
for the record, my pelvis was on the narrow side. according to my doctor–i could probably pass a 7 pounder but no more. my body must have agreed because both of my children were 7 1/2 pounds. but i was able to deliver (although with with the help of a vaccuum extractor) my son who had a pretty large head. it wasn’t an easy delivery however, and after 3 hours of pushing i was screaming to be cut open. i delivered my daughter vaginally without help.
oh, and let me share another anecdote. ten years ago i became a wapfer. but my children were aready in middle school. however, my daughter has some learning problems that did clear up and she no-longer needed a tutor after about 1 year. anyways this story isn’t about my kids.
my neighbor had 2 kids whose teeth were decaying and soft. i told her about wapf. she changed the diet and has kept up an extremely strict wapf diet over there including the fermented cod liver/butter oil. the two children’s teeth hardened up some and the younger of the two needed braces.
neighbor had a third child–completely wapf. the girl has a wider face than the first two and is built like a football player. as a toddler she saw her mother building a rock wall, so she built her own. she over-achieves in gymnastics so mother took her to the olympic-track gymnasium where the best in the state are taugh. they said “well, we don’t take just anyone”. the little child went over to the ropes that go from floor to ceiling and climbed to the high ceiling with arms only and legs in the split position.
“uh…we’ll take HER.” they said.
Jdubs comments alone would make an awesome article.
Jdubs is blowing my mind. Here and at the forum. Well, maybe that’s a step too far. But kid can write and has some great thoughts. Now if we can just keep him from peeing all night.
Peeing all night is good for the metabolism… if you lay in your own pee, it heats you up for a few seconds, then gets really cold, making your body heat up to stay alive!!! If your into pee therapy, you don’t have to drink it, because it just reabsorbs back through your skin!!!
I can’t say I ever laid in my own pee but then again I may have been too drunk to remember : )
So the summary is that grains are good because of carbs.
Is there any reason to prefer them to “safe starches” like sweet potatoes, white potatoes or rice as it is advocated in the perfect healt diet or paleo 2.0?
I can think of a couple reasons: grains, especially flours, have lower water content and higher palatability, so they make consuming adequate calories without flushing yourself out easier. Wheat, especially, is very versatile as a cooking ingredient, and can go sweet or savory, light or dense, very readily. Also, it allows for greater flexibility and social functionality.
Also, the picture of phytic acid is not entirely clear cut; there’s potentially some antioxident, anti-cancer benefits. And more to the point, paleos typically have few compunctions about consuming nuts, which present some of the same ‘anti-nutrient’ and oxidation concerns, coupled with a typically unfavorable fatty acid profile. I suppose you could go straight Rami Nagiel and cut out all seed foods, but I’m not convinced that’s necessary, even for targeted reasons like restoring proper dental health.
Second to Rob. Once I keyed into drier foods eaten strategically, it really helped me. Potatoes are great and I still eat them almost daily, but being able to eat some really good white sourdough (fer instance, this is just my favorite staple grain-type starch) when I needed a quick, very dense starch hit was a huge help. Salted butter and jam for a bonus.
Also, once the bread has been baked (and I don’t bake my own) it is a convenience food … just slice some off. Potatoes have to be cooked.
Finally, and this is the biggest reason for me, if you CAN eat all different types of food, why not enjoy what great chefs and traditions have managed to do with grains? Unless there’s some really obvious beneficial tradeoff to avoidance (i.e., celiacs or severe bowel problems), of course. Otherwise, it’s a real bummer be restricted.
Have you ever noticed how many Japanese models have crowded teeth? Turns out, it is considered cute (kawaii).
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2060422/Japanese-cosmetic-trend-sexy-child-like-look-fuels-demand-CROOKED-teeth.html
I also heard from a dentist that children of vegetarian parents have many times more crowded teeth and narrow jaws (but I have no data to back this up).
Also, Roman gladiators dined almost exclusively on barley, but also received charred bones for the calcium. But contrary to popular belief and shows like Spartacus, the gladiators were actually fat. Muscular, but fat.
Grains are fine as long as they are soaked, or are naturally low in anti nutrients. No culture ever ate high phytate grains without soaking them first. My teeth are much much better since I started taking CLO and soaking flour for the bread I eat.
The reason people can’t “tolerate” grains anymore is because their gut is fucked up! And it’s because they’re stressed out! Even good stress is stress. I would remind people that would come into my health food store that falling in love can have the same effect on your stomach as losing your job.
Interesting point
Check this guys diet out!! https://www.youtube.com/user/DUDEABIDES001/videos Looks pretty well rounded if I do say so myself. Ignore the fact that he whispers while he eats. I didn’t understand when I found the videos, but because he was so seemingly odd I just had to add him.
Jdubs thanks for your positive comments.What diets did you try?And how are you doing now?
Tried four months of totally sugar free anti candida diet a year of paleo, and a few months of an anti candida anti food allergy diet. This was done in succession over the last couple of years . I was pretty much gluten free the whole time as well and did a couple of water fasts and juice fasts. I have been re- feeding for about three and a half months now and am starting to feel like I’m able to deal with normal foods Again. My digestive issues are getting better, my stress and fatigue are getting better, and my psoriasis is stabilizing a bit. I still have a long way to go. But I think I am done monkeying with my diet to try to cure my psoriasis. I’m just learning to accept life as it is and make slower, calmer more sensible changes to my life. I will eventually tighten my diet back up a bit . I think everyone has to go through a bit of a binge period and get it out of their system after eating restrictively for so long. I feel like I’m reaching the end of that phase and now I am going to continue to rest and build myself back up with some nutrient dense foods and not worry anymore about the occasional crap food that we all crave from time to time. Hope that helps ;)
I would never give up bread. I eat it daily and it serves me good. :)
Hi Matt. Jimmy Moore says there is no nutritional need for carbohydrates, and that the ideal human diet is something called ‘nutritional ketosis’. Thoughts?
No thoughts on that at all. It makes me giggle though.
I agree that in 10,000+ years we have adapted well to eating grains and I much prefer it to blugeoning and eating raw furry animals and birds (although the former is still common practice in the “meat industry”), although I am not 100% veggie either. I tried it and my body does not function well that way, so my path is “moderation.”
I also understand and empathize with the “belly bloat” and other adverse symptoms even with exclusively whole organic grains after giving up refined non-organic grains in an effort to alleviate the symptoms.
I believe it is the last few decades of GMO/hybridized grains we’ve not adapted to, and been eating for a long time unawares. Hybrids were the “pre-cursors.” GMO’s (which is like extreme hybridization with no limits) are the “curse,” and over the decades, they’ve cross pollinated with non-GMO crops (as planned my “the big M”), so finding anything pure and non-adulterated isn’t easy, even if it’s been grown organically so…
Our bodies are treating these “foods” we’ve come to love as “hostile invaders” (and they are also killing beneficial insects like the bees we need to pollinate all of our food and life-oxygen-producing flora and fauna) with the accompanying neurotoxicity, inflammation, indigestibility, and other allergic/immune responses…because they are hostile invaders that are genetically incompatible and laced with poison…pesticides, neurotoxins, etc. The proteins, sugars, etc can not be digested, we are being pumped full of toxic sugars our liver cannot process…
…which has resulted in huge profits for the chemical an, drug, and “health care” industries…who now have to “band-aid” and “race for the cure” for these modern “dis-eases.”
Google Codex Ailamentus if you’re interested in more on the bigger picture.
Check out the timelines with the groundswell of hybridized/GMO foods and Celiac’s, Krohn’s, IBS, and food allergies and food sensitivities.
Allergies are straightforward. Food “sensitivities” and “intolerances” have been marginalized by the mainstream but provide important clues about how we can safely eat and be healthy.
While the “paleo” approach seems extreme, there are some positive elements that have worked for me. I do love good bread, especially in the winter, but even the “gluten-free” grains have been adulterated, so it is what it is and even if we “buy local and organic” GMO’s are still a risk, so…moderation. If you go off of grains and feel a difference (better) trust that.
Stay away from prepared foods. I’m fortunate to live in a place that is focused on staying healthy naturally so many restaurants offer these kinds of choices…but most do not and they’re not cheap.
There isn’t one thing that works for every body, but balance, respect, and care works for everyone. Taking personal responsibility for our “day-to-day” care and feeding and learning as much as we can about what works for each of us…and doing it, is the best we can do until we can heal the damage to our mainstream food supplies enough to have them be safe again..
Save your organic heirloom seeds, grow as much as you can yourself (or buy from trusted local organic/non-GMO sources) including meats, poultry, and fish (which are often fed GMO, chemical laden, and diseased food) learn what works best for your body and get the best possible well researched, pure and absorb-able, supplements you can afford…and the purest water as well.
The documentary “Hungry for Change” offers some great ideas and education.
I dont think that grains or carbs are necessarily a problem (nor did our ancestors eat ‘low carb’ or regularly enter ketosis. Even the inuit ate animal starch); but to try and claim that the narrowing of our jaw lines and crowding teeth is the result of our adaptation to a post-industrial lifestyle and not due to nutrition is just complete and utter nonsense…as are the inferences that this doesnt represent an unhealthy state. Dr.weston price observed these deteriorations in traditional societies after just one generation on a western diet. Clearly these jaw and dental abnormalities are a sign of malnutrition during the formative years and not a normal evolutionary adaptation to a less rigorous and physically demanding lifestyle. Its equally ridiculous to assume that agriculture elevated human intelligence, the last evolutionary leap in human intelligence was precipitated by the advent of cooking which increased the nutrient density of man’s diet and allowed our brains to grow larger. Our skulls and brain mass actually temporarily shrunk after agriculture was introduced. I dont even eat strict paleo but come on…
Correction: Cooking increased the calorie density of man’s diet, allowing adaptations to occur. Early agriculture was nothing like it is today. It was inconsistent and foods cultivated were low in calories and difficult to eat. Nothing like today’s produce, grains, or even meat.
There is evidence Marcus, and you should know this as a Guyenet follower, that not using the mandible as it was intended can lead to jaw malformation just like not exposing your body to gravity can cause osteoporosis. As humans, we do very little chewing and the food we eat is soft and almost predigested compared to early human diets. I’m not saying that nutrition doesn’t play a role, or that it doesn’t play a leading role in dental formation. It does. But eating a diet of exclusively soft foods creates unique problems aside from any lack of nutrients in those foods. Or at least, there is some evidence that it does.
Our ancestors did eat tough foods along with our soft foods to be fair so I’m not saying that’s not important. Actually I had another look at stephan guyenet’s series on malocclusion since you brought it up. Stephan argues that chewing tough food during the formative years is important to developing healthy dental arches and occlusion, but this is not genetically determined as a result of eating soft food for generations, its a modifiable adaptation to physical stressors during the formative years.
sorry, I did mean caloric density* Although cooking also increased the micronutrient density of our diet, which probably helped somewhat.
You’re right that our jaws and dental structure have adapted to a ‘soft food diet’, and this has occurred over hundreds of thousands of years since eating cooked foods; however the author of this article was hypothesizing that agriculture can explain the dramatic narrowing of our jawlines and crowded teeth over the past ten thousand years (much more dramatic in the past 100 years).
Since we have already been eating soft food for hundreds of thousands of years that doesn’t make much sense; especially in light of dr.price’s work. Not only did the cultures he studied already eat mostly cooked and soft foods, he observed dramatic changes in their facial structure after only one generation on a western diet. One generation is not evolution, it’s epigenetics and malformation.
There are also real health and functional problems associated with ‘long face syndrome’ and malocclusion of the jaw which can be corrected by surgical procedures like ‘jaw distraction osteogenesis’.
In my experience, what you are saying here is false Matt.
I really appreciate your work and I understand that you are trying to help people to get out of eating disorders, fears and fanatism/superstition about diets and false beliefs but I believe that what you are saying on grains and starches can be misleading to people that are trying to improve their health.
When I discovered dr. Peat’s work, I finally understood why I was not able to eat any starch and grain without becoming really sick and getting a worsening of my symptoms (and a lot of crusty/hard dandruff, I discovered later that endotoxins increase fibrin which can explain that and maybe calcifications (crowded teeth explained?)).
These fibers create an endotoxin overload and increase serotonin a lot (and curiously you are talking about gram negative bacteria on your blog but not of how fibers/starches are the things that increase them). Dr. Peat also said that butyrate increases serotonin and I’m feeling completely autist/drugged after eating them.
I can tell you that I’ve honestly tried to re-introduce grains and starches into my diet on many occasion (and I had a lot of improvements when I stopped to eat them) as I did with a lot of other products but it makes me sick everytime, even if I try to eat it for a long time.
Lowering PUFAs and banning starches and being sure to drink/eat only isotonic fluids where the best things I ever did for my health…
Also dr. Peat talked about mucopolysaccharides IIRC coming into the joints from hypothyroidism, maybe that is what crowded teeth are also?
Well, I’m open minded and I have to admit that being able to eat starches/grains again would make my life a bit easier. What do you think about it?