American Scientist

To the Editors:

I read with great pleasure “The Root of Misaligned Jaws” by Sandra Kahn and Paul R. Ehrlich (March–April). I first heard about the relationship between diet and jaw structure from reading Weston A. Price’s 1939 book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, which I had found by chance in my undergraduate college’s library in the late 1950s. The book made a great impression on me, and I was happy to see Kahn and Ehrlich’s article because at the time it was published Price’s work was considered more “evangelistic” than “scientific.”

Price’s book has many photographs of the mouths of parents and children who lived in at least 12 transitioning societies on five continents. The parents, and their parents, who ate their native diet (what Price refers to as “locally produced natural foods”), had broad maxillae, perfectly aligned teeth, and wide mandibles. The children whose parents had started eating Western refined food (what Price calls “modern dietaries”) before their children were born showed narrow maxillae and mandibles with malocclusions of all types. In addition, they showed narrower nostrils and lack of development of the middle and lower third of the face. The children presumably ate this Western diet after birth. Remarkably, his findings were consistent across all the transitioning societies he studied.

Although Price, a dentist by training, was remarkably insightful, some of his ideas and recommendations are outdated in light of today’s knowledge of nutrition and dentistry, as is to be expected after 80 years. But Kahn and Ehrlich’s article certainly confirms Price’s main thesis.

Harvey F. Carroll
Lake Forest Park, WA

To the Editors:

The article “The Root of Misaligned Jaws” sent me back to 1945 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, when I was fitted with braces as a 13-year-old. I now realize after reading Sandra Kahn and Paul R. Ehrlich’s article that my orthodontist was very enlightened: He told my parents that I did not need braces and that if I would exercise my lower jaw every day by jutting it forward and practicing a sort of reverse overbite, all of my problems would resolve. I attended a posh private school, however, where braces were a status symbol. I badgered my parents to get me braces not because they would straighten my barely overlapping front teeth, but because all of the popular girls wore them.

Elsa Feher
La Jolla, CA