Weston Price's Global Dental Health Journey

In 1931, a dentist named Weston A. Price embarked on a photographic journey across five continents. He'd started to spin from seeing narrower faces on his young patients, observing a surge in dental issues — alongside obvious dental decay to crooked teeth. He refused to accept that genetics were the sole cause: a claim that was buzzing around the medical community at the time. Price launched a search for individuals living traditionally on ancestral diets: the people still eating the way their grandparents had. As he said, "In the Swiss Alps with raw cheese, deep yellow butter, and rye nearly two teeth in a hundred had ever decayed. In one Arctic community, the local diet — fish and organ meats — had left participants with broad, strong jaws and almost no tooth decay. The Cleveland dentist's conviction was clear: the vanishing dental health of his young patients was not a matter of natural inheritance, but of diet. His exploration covered roughly a decade, until 1942, the year when he released his final research.

The Price of Progress and Some Missteps

Price, in his global search, compared isolated populations who had not yet been affected by the "displacing foods of modern civilization." This included white flour, sugar, and tinned food. Conversely, when processed foods invaded, so did the dental chaos. Long before modern science caught up, Price's studies concluded that lack of tooth decay and broad, straight jaws were not coincidentally present in regions that sustained traditional diets. Price’s hypothesis was eventually backed by studying family lines, in the same generation "narrowing faces, crowding teeth, ten times the decay of the valley next door." Price documented the phenomenon happening in a few years. The dental changes — shifts in jaw structure and dental alignment — were due to a dramatic shift in diet.

Honoring the Old Guard

The major factors in traditional diets that Price studied were:

• hard-to-chew foods: The mechanical stress of chewing tough foods helped build broad, straight jaws and healthy teeth.
• fats and vitamins: Dense in fat-soluble vitamins, including a factor Price called Activator X, now thought to be vitamin K2. Despite debate amongst health researchers today, one thing remains constant — the broad and strong jaw structures, near-perfect teeth, and dental health Price documented. In the Hebrides, Maasai, and Arctic, Price found that traditional diets enriched with fat-soluble vitamins, including Activator X (now known as vitamin K2), led to strong jawlines and excellent dental health. Price ensured that dental health was not about what people looked like, "the same face looked back": broad, strong, almost no decay. Price proved to be ahead of his time, making observations on how different foods — processed and unprocessed — impact the body, and finding the link between diet and dental health and facial structure.

Price’s photographic evidence

Price focused on portraiture — his viewfinder would capture faces, mouths, teeth. The portrait series was evidence of dietary habits. Every portrait was a visual lesson in cause and effect, showing that Western processed foods lead to narrow faces, crooked teeth, and increased tooth decay. The visual content was tightly and consistently styled, creating a narrative through imagery and text, the portraits with somber expressions, a clear impact of the "modern" invasion on their traditional lifestyles. This series is Price’s photographic evidence that highlights the impact that a diet heavy in refined foods had on the people he documented. As shown, dental health and jaw structures are imperceptibly molded by diet.

The influence of White Flour, Sugar, and Tinning

To Price, the worst culprits were white flour, sugar, and canned food — he called them "the displacing foods of modern civilization." These food items, he believed, had begun to replace traditional diets in places across the globe, leading to a sharp rise in dental issues. Price saw that these foods were not present in places like the Arctic or Maasai. However, if they could be replaced with nutritious and tough foods, people would improve dental health.

A Threat to a Healthy Smile

There is a growing debate on how our diets affect our health. Price's findings suggest there is a deeper link between our teeth, faces, and overall health outcomes. In this sense, Price's life works can now be looked at again. His findings can be a gateway to improved health through diet. He saw that the more people ate processed foods, the more their facial structures and dental health deteriorated. As noted by Price, proper nutrition is vital in maintaining a healthy body and mind. The link between nutrition and health is complex, and there is still much we don’t know.