Ben Balzer said:
>Unfortunately, I don't know the incidence of depression in hunter gatherers.
>If their incidence is very low (as it is for most Western diseases), then
>diet might be important- as well as lead poisoning, etc etc.

If you read the works of Dr. Weston Price, who traveled around the world
studying and living with 13 isolated primitive groups (eating their native
diets), who were not eats the foods of commerce (canned, boxed, refined,
processed, white foods). They were free from the diseases of
civilization. Price wrote at length about their exceptional physical health
and strength, emotional stability, and moral health.  He also analzyed their
foods and found they were eating TEN TIMES the fat soluble vitamins of
modern people (this was in the 1930s,  not doubt the difference is greater
now!!).  They were many times more vitamins, minerals, and protein than is
typical in industrialized nations.  Price was amazed to find a lack of crime
and prisions, and in exceptional dentition seen in few modern people.  All
the wisdom teeth came in along with all the teeth.  They had beautiful broad
dental arches, straight teeth, and no need for dentists.  In some groups he
had to look at 2000 teeth to find one decayed or missing tooth.   Their
vision was phenomenal too!  (Plenty of EPA & DHA!!)  The Maori could seen
the moons of Jupiter with the naked eyes.

Special foods were given to men and women prior to conception, during
pregnancy, lactation, etc. These foods were particularly rich in minerals
and fat soluble activators.  These people were eating the raw materials
needed to build strong bodies, materials which are lacking from most modern
diets.  They were also breastfed--and intensively so--increasingly rare over
the past 40-50 years in America. Lack of breast feeding paired with general
malnutrition (common in the U.S. even among those who are not impoverished)
is the major  contributor to the high rates of dental deformites (need for
orthodontia), visual deformities, depression, attention deficit and learning
disorders, asthma, allergies, deformities, obesity, degenerative disease,
and many, many social problems.

Ask 100 people who suffer from mood disorders or any of the other things
listed above how many were intensively breast fed for at least 1 1/2-2
years.  How many in the past or present generation grew up eating as the
Primitives Price studied?

Many modern people live on diets with little reedeeming (nourishing)
value.  Is it any wonder they cannot build strong brains, fully operational
nervous, digestive, respiratory, and reproductive systems and suffer from so
much deformity, disease and breakdown? We cannot separate physical and
emotional health.  They are intertwined.

Interestingly, when the primitive people Price studied strayed from their
native diets, within one generation they developed diseases and deformities
that were so drammatic, so obvious, and so common in Western nations (and
that was in the 1930s!!!).  They had narrowed faces, crowded teeth, reduced
immunity to disease, and countless physical and emotional disorders.  I
highly recommend reading NUTRTITION & PHYSICAL DEGENERATION by Dr. Weston A
Price.    The pictures are as priceless as the text and it will lay to rest
any question as to whether what we eat affects our mental, emotional, moral,
spiritual, and physical health.

Kids living on Kool-Aid, soda pop, pop tarts, doughnuts, Twinkies, Oreos and
all the other daily sweets, cinnamon toast, cold cereals with milk, ice
cream, bologna and processed cheese-food sandwiches, cupcakes, cookies, corn
chips, hot dogs on buns, pizza, margarine, french fries, etc........ are not
getting the nutrients they need to properly develop.  DHA and EPA
deficiencies are just the tip of the ice berg.  Where are they getting the
vitamins, minerals.....?  They cannot make the proper brain chemicals nor
hormones on the junk they are eating.  That is why so many kids and adults
are on mind/mood altering drugs.

Rachel