IMPORTANT UPDATE, SPRING 2007:
Price’s “X Factor” or “Activator X” is now believed to be the fat-soluble vitamin K2.
Please follow the link to read Chris Masterjohn’s article on the Weston A. Price Foundation site to learn how this sixty-year-old mystery was finally solved!
Dr. Weston A. Price, a Cleveland dentist, has been called the “Charles Darwin of Nutrition.” In his search for the causes of dental decay and physical degeneration that he observed in his dental practice, he turned from test tubes and microscopes to the evidence supplied by human beings. Dr. Price sought the factors responsible for fine teeth among the people who had them —the isolated “primitives.” The world became his laboratory. As he traveled, his findings led him to the belief that dental caries and deformed dental arches resulting in crowded, crooked teeth and unattractive appearance were a sign of physical degeneration, resulting from what he had suspected —nutritional deficiencies.
Price travelled the world over in order to study isolated human groups, including sequestered villages in Switzerland, Gaelic communities in the Outer Hebrides, Eskimos and Indians of North America, Melanesian and Polynesian South Sea Islanders, African tribes, Australian Aborigines, New Zealand Maori and the Indians of South America. Wherever he went, Dr. Price found that beautiful straight teeth, freedom from decay, stalwart bodies, resistance to disease and fine characters were typical of primitives on their traditional diets, rich in essential food factors.
When Dr. Price analyzed the foods used by isolated primitive peoples he found that they provided at least four times the water soluble vitamins, calcium and other minerals, and at least TEN times the fat soluble vitamins —vitamin A and vitamin D —from animal foods such as fish eggs, shellfish, organ meats and butter from cows eating green grass.
Dr. Price discovered an additional fat soluble vitamin that he called “Activator X” and which was also referred to by others as the Price Factor or X Factor, and is now believed to be vitamin K2. It is a powerful catalyst which, like vitamins A and D, helps the body absorb and utilize minerals. It was present in the diets of all the healthy population groups he studied but unfortunately has almost completely disappeared from the modern western diet. Sources include organ meats from cows eating green grass, fish eggs and shellfish. Butter can be an especially rich source of Activator X/vitamin K2 when it comes from cows eating rapidly growing grass in the Spring and Fall seasons. It disappears in cows fed cottonseed meal or high protein soy-based feeds. Fortunately, Activator X/vitamin K2 is not destroyed by pasteurization.
The importance of good nutrition for mothers during pregnancy has long been recognized, but Dr. Price’s investigation showed that primitives understood and practiced preconception nutritional programs for BOTH parents. Many tribes required a period of premarital nutrition, and children were spaced to permit the mother to maintain her full health and strength, thus assuring physical excellence to subsequent offspring. Special foods were often given to pregnant and lactating women, as well as to the maturing boys and girls, in preparation for future parenthood. Dr. Price found these foods to be very rich in fat soluble vitamins A, vitamin D and Activator X —nutrients found only in animal fats.
These primitives with their fine bodies, homogeneous reproduction, emotional stability and freedom from degenerative ills stand forth in sharp contrast to those subsisting on the impoverished foods of civilization —sugar, white flour, pasteurized lowfat milk and convenience foods filled with extenders and additives.
The discoveries and conclusion of Dr. Price are presented in his classic volume Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. The book contains striking photographs of handsome, healthy primitives and illustrates in an unforgettable way the physical degeneration that occurs when human groups abandon nourishing traditional diets in favor of modern convenience foods.
From Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook That Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats, by Sally Fallon Morell and Mary G Enig, PhD. Available from NewTrends Publishing, (877) 707-1776.
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price is now available from Radiant Life (888) 593-8333.
Sally Fallon Morell is the author of Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats (with Mary G. Enig, PhD), a well-researched, thought-provoking guide to traditional foods with a startling message: Animal fats and cholesterol are not villains but vital factors in the diet, necessary for normal growth, proper function of the brain and nervous system, protection from disease and optimum energy levels. She joined forces with Enig again to write Eat Fat, Lose Fat, and has authored numerous articles on the subject of diet and health. The President of the Weston A. Price Foundation and founder of A Campaign for Real Milk, Sally is also a journalist, chef, nutrition researcher, homemaker, and community activist. Her four healthy children were raised on whole foods including butter, cream, eggs and meat.
Mary G. Enig, PhD was an international expert in lipid biochemistry. She headed a number of studies on the content and effects of trans fatty acids in America and Israel, and successfully challenged government assertions that dietary animal fat causes cancer and heart disease. Recent scientific and media attention on the possible adverse health effects of trans fatty acids brought increased attention to her work.
She was a licensed nutritionist, certified by the Certification Board for Nutrition Specialists, a qualified expert witness and nutrition consultant, contributing editor to a number of scientific publications, fellow of the American College of Nutrition and president of the Maryland Nutritionists Association. She was the author of over 60 technical papers and presentations. She served as vice-president and board member of the Weston A. Price Foundation (WAPF) and scientific editor of Wise Traditions, the Foundation’s quarterly journal. She is the author of Know Your Fats: The Complete Primer for Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils, and Cholesterol and Eat Fat Lose Fat (with Sally Fallon Morell) and co-author of the bestselling cookbook Nourishing Traditions. Her three healthy children were brought up on whole foods including butter, cream, eggs and meat.