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A, B, and D, omega-3 fats, and minerals. The children's health— and their performance in school—
     improved sharply. "A properly balanced diet," Price wrote, "is good for the entire body."
    THE FERTILITY DIET
    In traditional diets, special foods were reserved for couples before conception and for women during pregnancy. Key nutrients
     include calcium, iodine, zinc, vitamin A, and omega-3 fats. Peruvian tribes in the Andes traveled hundreds of miles to trade
     with valley tribes for kelp and salmon roe, for iodine, vitamin A, zinc, and omega-3 fats. Alaskan Inuit ate dried fish eggs
     for fertility, while in North America, Indians ate the iodine-rich thyroid glands of the male moose. In Africa, the largely
     vegetarian Kikuyu fed girls extra animal fat for six months before marriage. In dairy villages, the fertility diet included
     raw spring-grass butter for vitamins A and D.
    Today doctors tell pregnant women to take folic acid to prevent the birth defect spina bifida, but few couples are advised
     to eat a preconception diet. The first thing a woman needs to conceive is enough estrogen (in her fat) to ovulate. Men and
     women who would be parents should eat plenty of foods containing zinc, omega-3 fats, and vitamin A (needed to make estrogen).
     Eat cod-liver oil and butter, cream, egg yolks, and liver from grass-fed animals. Vitamin E is essential for sperm production;
     deficiency can cause permanent sterility. Sperm health improves dramatically when vitamins A and E are taken together, probably
     because vitamin E prevents oxidation of vitamin A. Protein and B vitamins, especially B 12 , are crucial for egg production, sperm count, and sperm motility. The omega-3 fat DHA is found in high concentrations in
     sperm.
    Nutrition and Physical Degeneration was comprehensive, monumental— and controversial. Dentists and anthropologists welcomed the work— at one time, the book was
     on the reading list for anthropology classes at Harvard— but most medical professionals ignored it. Price himself noted frequently
     that his approach to disease was unorthodox. His work did, however, inspire the nutritionist Adelle Davis. Davis had a masters
     degree in biochemistry from the University of Southern California Medical School, but she wrote about nutrition in a friendly,
     common-sense style. In the 1950s and '60s, titles like Let's Eat Right to Keep Fit and Let's Get Well became bestsellers.
    Growing up on a farm in Indiana, Davis ate a traditional American breakfast of hot cereal, steak, ham, eggs, sausage, and
     fried chicken with gravy, all washed down with grass-fed, whole milk— and that was exactly the food she recommended for a
     diet rich in protein and vitamins A, D, and B. Davis extolled whole grains, unrefined fats, whole milk, and plenty of protein,
     including beef, liver, fish, and eggs. She called for raw foods, including eggs, liver, and milk. Davis was ahead of her time;
     she wrote that hydrogenated fats were dangerous and fish oil reduces cholesterol.
    Like Price, Davis was controversial. "She so infuriated the medical profession and the orthodox nutrition community that they
     would stop at nothing to discredit her," recalls my friend Joann Grohman, a dairy farmer and nutrition writer who says Adelle
     Davis restored her own health and that of her five young children. "The FDA raided health food stores and seized her books
     under a false labeling law because they were displayed next to vitamin bottles."
    Price and Davis were pioneers in the field now known as nutritional epidemiology— the study of nutrition and disease— and
     modern research confirms their work. The experts now agree, for example, that hydrogenated vegetable oil, not butter, raises
     LDL. As we'll see later, heart disease is caused by a diet deficient in B vitamins, not by saturated fats. Researchers even
     explore the subtle interplay between diet and how genes function. The omega-3 fats EPA and DHA, for example, activate the