Commentary
A nation is only as healthy as the people—the individuals—of which it is comprised. If we recognize this simple, obvious, fact, what are we to say about the health of our nations today? Look around at your fellow men, women, and children. How have we reached this point? And who, ultimately, benefits?
Doctor measuring a man’s waist. (Shutterstock)
A new government-funded program aimed at tackling the ever-growing problem of childhood obesity will put the focus on changing the parent’s behavior rather than that of the child. (Tim Boyle/Getty Images)
It’s an undeniable fact that for the last 100 years, ordinary people throughout the developed world have been getting sicker and sicker. Why? Our diet, which has changed profoundly, is an obvious culprit. The negative effects of the new industrial diet were evident from the start. The great pioneering dentist Weston A. Price charted the emerging effects as part of a globe-trotting adventure that became the seminal book “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration” (1939). In an effort to make sense of the deteriorating health of the patients, especially children, at his dental practice in Ohio, Price intuited that it was what they were eating that was to blame. This led him to seek out traditional societies and groups around the world who did not yet follow Western-style industrial diets, in the hope of discovering what humans really should be eating in order to flourish and grow to their full potential….