Two points though:

1) I don’t think its ahistorical to offer a theory for the cause of historical phenomena such as death rates or life spans;
2) I’ve never actually said anything anti-vegetarian in my posts – other people have been reading between the lines.

As for modern medicine, remind me to lend you a book called “Confessions of a Medical Heretic.” It is a bit dated, but also quite shocking. I’m not trying to sway your point of view in any direction, however.

Herbal medicine existed in medieval Europe but it was not effective against serious infectious diseases. Also the mechanisms of the spreading of diseases were not understood at the time. Likewise elsewhere in the world. This has nothing to do with the ability of a people as a cultural group in any part of the world. There was a universal absence of the concept of microorganisms and in many cases, public health control. Religion was often obstructive rather than being of help (but it probably made the dying feel better.)

Elsewhere in the world, say in the Far East, the Chinese developed a seemingly sophisticated system of herbal medicine that was a mixture of empirical studies and unquestioned philosophical and religious ideas. It was no match against the wrath of infectious and chronic diseases. Life expectancy in ancient China ranged between the early twenties and the mid-thirties – pretty comparable with other parts of the world.

How do we actually measure the immune level of pre-modern peoples?

In relation to Egypt medical studies were performed on mummies. Similar studies were performed on mummies in China to identify the diseases that ancient Chinese died from.

Price has some very good ideas but in true heathen spirit we have to be careful about the fallacy of “confirmation bias”. Nutrition is a very complex field and I don’t believe that one thinker – and Price is an original thinker – has all the answers!

Life expectancy is ironically higher among we modern people who are “unhealthier”, because we now have medical help. Even in 1900, life expectancy in the West was 45. Antibiotics changed all that decades later.

Let us apply the principle of avoiding confirmation bias again: Japan has reportedly the highest life expectancy in the world, despite the fact that white sugar is a main ingredient in modern Japanese cooking (along with other processed nasties); high stress in social norms and structure; overcrowded living. The Japanese level of medical service is comparable with the West. So what is causing this? One suggestion is that the great amount of seafood that they consume may counter the effects of the nasties that they also ingest and are surrounded with, such as pollution and congestion.

We cannot get away from diseases, partly because bacteria and viruses are all around us, and partly because we have to live with genetic anomalies and the natural wear and tear of the human body. Physical existence involves a high level of contingency; this is probably why religion is still with us. (A joke: immortal vampires may have less need for religious faith!) Good nutrition will help us live better and longer, I believe, but we cannot do without modern medicine.

So by bringing up the subject of life expectancy (a theme in medical anthropology as well as an issue of practical concern), other factors are thrown into light. We all want to live long in a healthy body – otherwise the topic of nutrition will not have come up at all in the first place.

As to your suggestion that taking away ancient and medieval living conditions will mean that our ancestors would have lived longer, that is an ahistorical argument after the fact. Those conditions were part and parcel of those historical periods and in modern heathenry, we have no need to “reconstruct” them! Adopt our ancestors’ wisdom and the good things about their life-style and their belief systems, but let us not mimic them uncritically! The Odinic spirit is open and enquiring, in contrast to mainstream Christians, Buddhists etc. who want to adhere to processed dogmas in order to avoid living with the contingencies of existence on earth. (The spirit realm has different laws but as spirits – including ghosts – do not eat, nutrition is not relevant to them. What they need is a healthy mental “diet” so that they can ascend.)

This is why it is important to keep on reading both inspirational and scientific sources (and the latter can be inspirational, too), so thank you to your blog articles to provoke and to encourage thoughts on this subject matter – and its relevance to living a heathen life in postmodern times!

Sure, he is a romantic, but that doesn’t mean that his claims that – to pick three central points of his views – nutrient dense food is good for you, that vitamins A and D are good for you, or that high calorie processed foods are destructive to your health, are false! It just means that he lived and wrote in a time before political correctness and while his tone can offend our more refined sensibilities that doesn’t make a lick of difference to the truth or falsity of his nutritional ideas.

A lot of the counter evidence you cite is also irrelevant. Price says nothing about medieval Britain, for example. That said, we know that in medieval Europe there was an incredible level of squalor, particularly in cities – plenty of conventional epidemiological research has concluded that the biggest contributor to modern health has been improved sanitation, not diet or medical developments. Similarly, in medieval Europe infant mortality was much higher and so were deaths by injury…but if we control for these factors then the life span back then suddenly gets a lot longer. These factors have vevry, very little to do with nutrition and everything to do with having limited access to emergency medicine.

Similarly, Price doesn’t say that all premodern peoples had perfect health – re: those ancient Egyptians. He merely reports that a range of premodern cultures that DID have excellent health that he encountered had certain common themes in their diets – low calorie but high in nutrients, plenty of fat-soluable vitamins, etc.

So yes, let us all keep reading, but also let’s try to think carefully about what we read…as I know you do!

Heathenry is about being well-informed, so we should all keep reading. The Vikings explored new horizons – the world of knowledge should be treated the same.

When I lived in Germany I enjoyed eating multigrain bread with lard. Lard is really tasty and contains fat soluble vitamins lacking in processed food. German bread is uniquely good: you just can’t get it in Australia. Even when baked in the German style, the ingredients are different.

So to take out sugar from one’s diet is to become like a Viking! Heilir Aesir and Vanir!