Don Matesz said:
>> Eskimos ate plenty of preformed vit A (fish sources).  They are one of the
>> few cultures that have been shown to be virtually free of dental decay on
>> their native diet--i.e. about 90% animal products.  When Weston Price
>> studied diets and dental health of many native cultures with varying amounts
>> of animal products in their diets, he found that the incidence of dental
>> decay was invariably inversely proportional to the amount of animal products
>> in the diet:  The cultures that ate lots of animal products had very little
>> or no dental decay, while the cultures that ate few animal products had many
>> times more dental decay (invariably, the lower the animal product intake,
>> the more decayed teeth) (Nutrition and Physical Degeneration).

Todd Moody <[log in to unmask]> said:
> Could you give an exact reference?

Don said:
I don't have exact pages for everything, since the data is so voluminous,
however if you go through and look you will find that he gives the incidence
of tooth decay for each group and then you can correlate that to what the
various groups were eating.  I have a great chart I created using Price's
data but it won't hold its format when converted to e-mail.

Here are some illustrations:
The Maori living mostly on seafood, vegetables, and fruits had only 1 in
2000 teeth with decay.  The Eskimo had only 2 in 2000 teeth with decay.  The
Masai using milk, blood, meat had 8 in 2000 teeth with decay.  The Gaelics,
who included oats in their diet with fish, had 14 decayed teeth out of 2000
teeth.  The Alpine Swiss who included rye bread, potatoes, dairy, and little
meat had 46 decayed teeth out of 2000.  The Kikuyu who ate mostly corn,
beans, bananas, sweet potatoes, millet with very small amounts of animal
foods had 110 decayed teeth out of 2000 teeth.  For comparison modern
Americans show greater than 180 decayed teeth per 2000 teeth.

Also, on page 201 Price quotes Pickerill regarding the dental decay
incidence among the primitive Maori, "This is lower even than the Esquimaux,
and shows the Maori to have been the most immune race to caries, for which
statistics are available."

(Price generally gave the numbers in a percentage, but on page 201 he used
the  x in 2000 teeth  formula I used above.  I prefer the x in 2000 because
it is hard to understand half a tooth in a thousand and because most people
don't think or conceptualize well in percentage terms.)
>
Todd said:
> My impression is that Price's main thesis is that the amount of
> tooth decay is directly proportional to exposure to "white man's
> foods," especially flour and sugar, and lack of vitamins A and D
> and certain minerals.  It's correct that he found no vegetarian
> societies, and found some that went to great lengths to procure
> certain specific animal foods, especially sea foods.  But I can't
> find anything about the ratio of plant to animal foods being
> correlated with rates of tooth decay.

Don said:
Page 153 of *Nutrition & Physical Degeneration* by Weston A. Price discusses
dental irregularities in relation to type of diet among African tribes:

"The purpose of these studies has included the obtaining of data which will
throw light also on the etiology of deformities of the dental arches and
face including irregularity of position of the teeth."

"A marked variation of the incidence of irregularities was found in the
different tribes.  This variation could be directly associated with the
nutrition rather than the tribal pattern.  The lowest percentage of
irregularity [in Africa] occurred in the tribes living very largely on dairy
products and marine life.  For example, among the Masai living on milk,
blood and meat only 3.4% had irregularities.  Among the Kikuyu and Wakamba,
18.2% and 18.9% respectively had irregularities.  These people were largely
agriculturalistis living primarily on vegetable foods. "

This was the quote that led me to catalog all the relative rates of decay
and correlate them to dietary habits (animal:plant subsistence) among the
tribes.  This quote is not specifically about tooth decay but the data for
tooth decay gives the same impression as I noted above.  There isn't in
Price's book any one place where the correlation is done for you, I had to
do it myself.

Btw:  There is a chart on page 209 of Nutrition & Evolution by Crawford &
Marsh which confirms my statements.  The chart does not provide diet details
but looking at the chart, if you know what these people eat, you will see
clearly that the rate of dental decay went up with increasing reliance on
vegetable foods and a decreasing reliance on animal foods.

Don Matesz