Ok, I finally managed to lay my hands on a copy of
Weston Price's _Nutrition_and_Physical_Degeneration_
to see what all the bru-ha-ha was about the people
of the Loetschental Valley (note the spelling -- not
"Loenschental").  Well, I'm still wondering.

All I know now (perhaps there's more in the book than
what I've found so far) is that 1 in 3 kids have cavities
(fairly high, but not as high as those on western diets),
their teeth are straight, and that the people have great
physiques.  Given as possible reasons why:

  * they are not materialistic,
  * they do all labor by hand (no machinery or even
    draft horses or plows),
  * they eat mostly rye grain with dairy (milk, cheese,
    and butter)
  * they eat meat once a week,
  * they live in a very remote valley and are pretty much
    self contained,
  * Price says that the milk samples were high in vitamins
    (he doesn't say which ones),
  * and the cheese and butter is high in minerals (he
    also doesn't say which or in which forms).

Price doesn't say it, but I think it is fair to assume that
milk in all unpasterized, but that the meat is cooked. I
should probably have also have put everything above in the
past tense, since there seems to be a popular resort there
now, so most of the above is likely no longer true.

So I'm quite disappointed.  There's not much really to go
on -- though the diet of cooked rye grains and milk with
little meat (once per week) ought to drive people on this
crazy.

alan