Monday, July 02, 2012

Chapter 19: Physical, Mental and Moral Deterioration


Continuing my review of Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price...

This is likely to be the most controversial chapter in the whole book - it is certainly the most difficult to read for the postmodern.


As I go through this book, I have a choice to simply summarize the content and/or add my own thoughts to critically reflect on the content. This chapter shall be no exception, but I'd like to be very brief. Neither Price nor I are judging people based on their looks - what he has written and what I am reflecting on is an observation of physical, mental and moral characteristics. At no time is there a prescriptive personality matrix - there is only description of the defective and undesirable abnormal with an eye to their prevention via nutrition. 


The premise seems to be that a lack of proper nutrition can lead to a poorly developed mental capacity and also poor moral character. Personally, I have no trouble whatsoever understanding the connection with mental capacity, but the extension to a moral deficiency is not so easy to follow. Mostly Price refrains from making a direct causal relationship between poor nutrition and deviant behavior such as criminality, but he attempts to show that the statistics suggest some sort of correlation. He reports that prenatal injury was seen in all but two patients in a prison (p.330), and suggests that criminals rarely have normal physical appearance.


There is much in this chapter concerning childbirth and I will save it for a later post specifically on Price's childbirth writings in this book. So for now the take home message from this chapter is none other than it is important for prenatal development to occur properly so as to not handicap a person for life - either physically or mentally.

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