On Wed, 10 Mar 2004 18:24, Nicole Rendezvous wrote:

>I just read an article about a doctor from the past, Price, who wrote
>about the importance of animal protein.  He stated that he noticed that
>groups untouched by western civ'n had wide faces and naturally straight
>teeth.  Does this mean that so many people need braces due to nutritional
>deficits?  My husband is the one with the narrower face and yet he has
>naturally straight teeth.  My wider face still needed braces.

That's it in a nutshell, but you need to read Price's book to appreciate
the nutritional impact on physiognomy and how Price focuses on the middle
third of the face (he was a dentist, rather than a medical doctor and this
explains his attention to the upper and lower jaws).  There is a picture
on page 119 that illustrates this very point in the starkest way.  Price
gathered information about traditional diets from around the world and
matched these with meticulous measurements of facial structure and dental
health for hundreds of people, but he did not conduct experiments, so
there may have been confounding variables which he was unable to take into
account.  Price (like Enig and Fallon) observed outstandingly robust good
health among farmers who consumed their own butter, fishermen who ate a
lot of fish and oats and others who consumed less meat and more carbs than
is generally supported by most contributors to this list.

Keith