Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Sally Fallon's reports on Dr. Weston Price's work are inaccurate. He never reported that the people groups he studied ate the way Ms. Fallon claims. He never claimed that all or even the vast majority of them ate fermented foods, or soaked grains, lots of meat, or bone broth! Yet, Ms. Fallon bases her whole method on this inaccurate analysis of Dr. Price's work. I checked into this book because I kept hearing about it from different friends. When I began reading the author's work, I was puzzled by many of her claims, which I knew to be inaccurate (Butterfat has no hormones. Iodine shrinks goiters. etc). And, I noticed that many of her footnotes were to her own works, or works of the organization she founded, rather than to actual nutritional journals or other peer-reviewed sources. I also noticed that she claimed that famous studies said exactly the opposite of what they actually said (she claimed, for instance, that the Framingham Heart study demonstrated that people with High Cholesterol had fewer heart attacks than those with Low Cholesterol!). That made me curious - if her research and reporting were so flawed, what about the claims she made about the actual work of Weston Price himself? So, I found his book on the internet and started reading. And, I discovered that Sally Fallon's claims about Weston Price's work were stunningly inaccurate. Firstly, not only was he a dentist, but his primary interest was Dental Health (Straight Teeth, etc) - he didn't DO research on the things she reports she gleaned from his writing. He never claimed that the women he looked at had no fertility problems (as Ms. Fallon claimed). He never did studies on people's overall health and longevity - only their teeth! He did make other observations as any tourist might - like he mentioned a 63 year old woman carrying a heavy burden a great distance. He mentions the opinion of a medical doctor who worked with one of the people groups- but never claims that he or they did any real research on the topic being discussed. He never tried to explore any reasons behind the doctor's opinion. He did look at Tuberculosis rates. But, given the fact that TB grows with lack of sunlight and overcrowding, the fact that rural people who spent all day in the sun got less TB than those in crowded cities with little sun exposure is hardly an earthshaking observation (nearly 100 years after he wrote what he did). He didn't claim that all of the lifestyle choices the people groups he studied were actually worth following. For instance, he mentions that nearly every group he looked at (if not every one) didn't brush their teeth, and had food caked on their teeth. That wasn't an endorsement, just an observation. He didn't claim that they all ate fermented foods, lots of meat, soaked grains and bone broth! In fact, quite the contrary. Invariably, his comparisons were done between people groups eating a whole foods diet and getting lots of exercise and sunshine, and those who lived on refined flour, sugar, and jam. Ms. Fallon has a huge following, and presumably has made lots of money on INACCURATE reports about the work of Dr. Price. If you're interested in the work of Dr. Price, it IS very interesting. I really enjoyed reading his book. But, you'll get a much better view of his work if you read it in the original than if you read such a flawed summary (which is much longer than the original, anyway!) Besides all of that, Ms. Fallon's recipes are made by modern methods, while she represents them as "traditional" She adds Whey to ferment foods - a practice which must have been rare among some of Dr. Price's subjects who had no access to milk or refrigeration! If you want to learn how to make pickles or sauerkraut, just do an internet search. It's easy, and requires no Whey when done the traditional way. Don't waste money on this book.