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Originally Posted by EdnaMarie  Well I do think it is the latter but I guess my question is, to what extent is TF really Weston Price's vision of what tradition constitutes, and to what extent does "tradition" really refer to something that is a tradition, i.e. "the transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation, or the fact of being passed on in this way" (Oxford English Dict.)?
Certainly, the Hindu diet is very traditional in the regular sense of the word.
But yes, Persia and India and China have long traditions established and shaped by civilization so does civilization contaminate tradition?
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I'm not sure that that all of the societies studied by WAP were "primitive" in the sense of "not shaped by civilization." The mountain Swiss, for example, seem to have been fairly similar to other Europeans in terms of their education, religion, etc. They were just isolated from regular trade routes because of their mountain location, so they weren't able to purchase what Price called the "foods of commerce": canned goods, refined flour and sugar, etc. This all changed in short order with modern transportation, which is why Price's work was so timely. Even in his day, only the most remote societies were still eating their "traditional" diet, i.e., one that was based on locally grown, unrefined and traditionally processed foods. I think we can assume that a century or two earlier, a great many more Swiss, Germans, Austrians, etc. used to eat a similar type of diet. Perhaps not all of them enjoyed such "outstanding" health as those of the Loetenschal (sp.?) Valley -- who had glacier water to add precious minerals to their soil -- but still, it would have been a huge improvement on the cheap, mass-produced white flour that many people were eating by the late 19th century.
In Asia, Price had more trouble finding societies that met the criteria for his research, but it wasn't because these nations were more heirarchical, civilized, etc. The thing that mattered to him was that they already had highly established systems of trade, and sometimes considerable food processing technology, going back for centuries. This made it much harder to study and evaluate the various elements of their diet, and relate these to the health of the current generation. All the talk of Okinawa is a case in point. Even in Price's day, they were heavily reliant on imported foods. For centuries, they've eaten large amounts of kombu -- more than in other parts of Japan -- but it doesn't grow in their local waters; it's all been brought in from other regions. And as snowbunny points out, they didn't always have much rice. For that matter, they didn't always have sweet potatoes, which were the staple of ordinary farmers before rice became more available. And, from what I've read, they weren't able to successfully raise pork until they already had a steady supply of sweet potatoes. So it gets pretty confusing, and you have to study the history books to get a clearer idea of what they were eating when. (BTW, Okinawa didn't even become part of Japan until the 19th century; before that, they were the center of the
Ryukyu Kingdom, which was very active in maritime trade since the 1500's.)
For the broader purposes of this forum, I think it makes sense to look at various types of diets eaten by healthy traditional societies, even if they don't meet the criteria that Price was using for his analysis. Even if they ate some modern foods (such as white rice, or white sugar), we can still look at other aspects of their diet, and speculate as to what their diets would have been like if and when these "displacing foods" weren't available. WAPF has some discussion along these lines in their articles about China, "Merrie England," etc.
Regarding India, Dr. Robert McCarrison did considerable research on the relative health of people in different regions, and wrote about this in his excellent book,
Studies in Deficiency Disease. It's available free online. He was very concerned with the effect of refined sugar and flour on the population of England -- especially the poorer people, who couldn't afford much milk or eggs -- and showed contrasting examples from regions such as the Punjab, to show the importance of whole grains and dairy foods.
BTW, I'd totally agree with the observation that populations on high-carbohydrate diets are far more vulnerable to the effects of refined and processed foods. Even today, if you're stuck with what's available at a typical North American supermarket, pretty much the only way to eat reasonably healthy meals is to go on a "paleolithic" or "whole-food Atkins" type of diet. The fluid milk, and especially the grain products, are almost entirely of very poor quality. OTOH, conventionally raised meat, eggs, butter, natural yogurt, and vegetables are still fairly nutritious, even if there are numerous ethical and environmental problems associated with their production.
