This comes to us from The Weston A. Price Foundation. They recently sent the message below to all WAPF members. I am including it here for those of you who are not yet WAPF members:
OCTOBER 2014 MEMBER INFORMATION ALERT
CONFERENCE
November 7 – 10: International Conference – Indianapolis, IN
See details on our conference pages: http://conferences.westonaprice.org/
Please let us know if you would like to team up with us on promoting these events, exhibiting or exhibiting suggestions, donating food and/or sponsorships.
Recordings of past conferences are available at: http://www.fleetwoodonsite.com/index.php?cPath=40
VOLUNTEER AND SCHOLARSHIP SPOTS
We have nearly 700 people attending the Indianapolis conference so far. We hope you will join us and bring friends. If you need financial assistance, see the information for volunteer spots and scholarships at:
http://conferences.westonaprice.org/main-conference/2014-scholarships/
CONFERENCE BANNERS AND MEMES YOU CAN USE
http://conferences.westonaprice.org/main-conference/2014-banners/
FTCLDF FUNDRAISER DINNER & ALASKAN TRIP
The Full Moon Feast on the Prairie, FTCLDF FundRAISER Dinner
Thursday, November 6, 2014
JW Marriott Indianapolis – Indianapolis, IN
Register by October 24, 2014 to get Early Bird savings!
The highlight of the evening will be our feast: delicious nutrient-dense foods…and of course … kombucha! This year’s sponsor is Buchi–the maker of Sovereign…named in honor of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund’s work! What’s included?
· Reception featuring raw milk cheeses, pastured charcuterie, sprouted crackers and cash bar
· Three-Course Feast that any WAPF diner is sure to love
· Food Freedom Program including the 4th Annual “Never a Doormat” Award
· and more, much more!
Want to play a bigger part in the evening’s festivities? Why not donate food or sponsor a table?
Check out the sponsorship info or contact Patti Cheatham at thecountrygourmet@gmail.com
Win an Alaskan Fishing Expedition for Two with Food Renegade (over $4,000 value)
Help Us: Buying tickets not only enters you to win, but helps small farmers exercise their freedom to sell directly to consumers without excessive government meddling. Learn more and buy tickets – click here.
HEALTHY 4 LIFE TRANSLATED
Sano de por Vida
We are pleased to announce that Healthy 4 Life has been published in Spanish as Sano de por Vida. The price is $10 each or $6 when you buy ten or more.
We also have our main brochure in Spanish and French. Please help Spanish and French speakers learn our dietary principles by providing these materials.
On our website, many articles have been translated into other languages. See: http://www.westonaprice.org/translations/
MEMBERSHIP
We will keep you posted about our upcoming membership drive—and how you can help!
THANK YOU FOR YOUR MEMBERSHIP & FOR ENCOURAGING OTHERS TO JOIN!
Your membership fees are being put to good use in supporting these many projects:
- Hosting and maintaining a huge website
- Hosting conferences
- Publication and mailing of 100+ page quarterly journal, brochures and Healthy 4 Life booklets
- Shopping Guide research and publication
- Research on traditional foods
- Raw milk project for education and access
- Legislative work and updates by Judith McGeary
- A registered nurse on call to answer baby questions
- Maintaining the WAPF office and four paid employees
- Phone and email correspondence to answer countless inquiries
- Action alerts sent for events and legislative issues
- Over 100 exhibits per year—payment of registration fees and materials
- Offering inexpensive advertising in our quarterly journal
- Financial support to Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund
- Financing a PBS program about traditional foods
- Soy Alert Campaign
- Advertising in other publications, posting on Facebook and blogs
- A publicist doing press releases and arranging media interviews
- Future restaurant rating project
WAPF BANNERS
Help others find out about the Weston A. Price Foundation. Please post these banners with a link to westonaprice.org on your own website, Facebook or Twitter page.
http://www.westonaprice.org/uncategorized/weston-a-price-banners-for-your-website/
JOURNAL
The Fall 2014 issue will be mailed the second week of October and will be posted on our website shortly after. This issue addresses what causes heart attacks and heart disease, liver detoxification and more. The journals are found at www.westonaprice.org/journal
We now offer an option of membership without receiving the paper copy of the journal. If that is your preference, please let us know. We appreciate you supporting our work, even if you don’t want a paper copy of the journal.
IN THE NEWS
HUS OUTBREAK IN KY FALSELY BLAMED ON RAW MILK
Many of you may have heard of an outbreak of Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS) in five children who consumed raw milk. For example, see the extremely biased report at Food Safety News:
This post is typical of anti-raw milk propaganda and really amounts to slander. The truth is, investigators into the farm commented on how absolutely clean the conditions were with all tests including: manure, rectal swabs, milk samples and environmentals negative on initial screening with confirming cultures due back last week (and presumed to be all negative as well). The farm was not shut down and continues to produce and distribute raw milk with coliform counts in the extremely low levels, usually 1 or non detect. Non detect for coliforms means that Ecoli 0157H7 cannot exist and there is no load to create a risk to even to a susceptible host.
Meanwhile CDC has mountains of illnesses directly connected with pasteurized milk outbreaks and many deaths–dozens of deaths from pasteurized milk in the last few decades including 3 in Massachusetts in 2007. There have been no deaths reported in their databases from American raw milk consumption going back to 1972.
There are 125 cases of HUS per year in Kentucky, none of them remotely associated with raw milk consumption. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that these illnesses had nothing to do with raw milk either, and were caused by the same things that are causing the other HUS cases–most likely tainted water from confinement farm runoff.
TRIBUTE TO MARY ENIG, PhD
It is with great sadness that we announce the loss of Mary Enig, PhD. Our 15th annual conference will be dedicated to her memory.
Mary was a founding board member of the Weston A. Price Foundation and for several years a board member emeritus. She was a driving force in the move to alert the public to the dangers of trans fatty acids, contributor to Nourishing Traditions, co-author of Eat Fat Lose Fat, author of Trans Fatty Acids in the Food Supply and Know Your Fats, and a frequent contributor to the Wise Traditions Know Your Fats column.
THE ADVENTURES OF ANDREW PRICE
Sandrine Love, who leads Nourishing Our Children and serves as a Portland, Oregon co-chapter leader, traveled to Lötschental, Switzerland this summer where Dr. Weston A. Price began his series of travels in 1931. She participated on the 8th Annual Tour of Switzerland lead by chapter leader Judith Mudrak. Sandrine recounts her experience of walking in Dr. Price’s footsteps in this recent blog post: http://bit.ly/Loetschental
Sandrine is in the process of co-creating a children’s book with Mohammad Naser called The Adventures of Andrew Price. Andrew is the fictitious great, great nephew of Dr. Price. In the book, he recounts what Dr. Price observed in Lötschental, Switzerland. The Adventures of Andrew Price will also include travels to Alaska and Africa.
Please support their pre-sale fundraising efforts, which includes an opportunity to save on the usual donation request for Nourishing Our Children’s educational materials: http://adventuresofandrewprice.com
Have you seen our blog on realmilk.com? http://www.realmilk.com/blog/
And the two blogs on westonaprice.org? http://www.westonaprice.org/blog/
GOODSEARCH.COM
If you pick the Weston A. Price Foundation as your ‘cause,’ we get a penny every time you search the Internet using www.goodsearch.com.
You can earn money for your ‘cause’ through searching the Internet, shopping online and dining out.
- Goodsearch: Search the Internet with our patent-protected, Yahoo!-powered search engine (just like you’d search on any other search engine), and we’ll donate about a penny for nearly all searches to your selected cause.
- Goodshop: Shop at one of our more than 2,800 participating stores (from Amazon to Zazzle) and a percentage of what you spend will be donated to your cause at no cost to you. Oh, and by the way, there’s a big added bonus here too. Goodshop lists more than 100,000 coupons and deals so you could save money while doing good!
- Gooddining: Dine at one of our 10,000 participating restaurants around the country and a percentage of what you spend will go to your cause – again at no cost to you.
AMAZONSMILE
Another way to support our work: Shop on smile.amazon.com and they will help the Weston A. Price Foundation.
· Amazon donates 0.5% of the price of your eligible AmazonSmile purchases to the charitable organization of your choice.
· AmazonSmile offers the same products, prices and service as amazon.com.
· Go to smile.amazon.com and chose Weston A. Price Foundation to receive the donations. It will give you two options, we are the one in Washington, DC.
RESEARCH PROGRAM ENTERS NEW PHASE
As you may know, member donations to our research program over the last few years have supported research at the Burnsides Laboratory at the University of Illinois. Most importantly, the Foundation has funded the postdoctoral work of Chris Masterjohn, PhD, working with Fred Kummerow, PhD, head of the research lab.
First, we would like to thank all those members who have donated to our research efforts so far–especially those who have signed up for recurring donations.
With these funds, Chris initiated a research program focused on the interaction between fat-soluble vitamins A, D, and K. This program is an outgrowth of the work on fat-soluble vitamins that Chris laid out in the pages of Wise Traditions between 2005 and 2007. The program has two long-term goals: first, to enrich our understanding of how to utilize the fat-soluble vitamins in the form of nutrient-dense whole foods to prevent and treat degenerative disease and to optimize performance and well-being; second, to lay down solid evidence for the complex interactions between food nutrients that will move the nutritional science community toward embracing the value of the nutrient-dense foods so deeply valued by the traditionally living societies studied by Weston Price.
Chris’s first study within this program explored the effect of vitamin D on the metabolism of vitamin K in rats. The study showed that high doses of vitamin D harm the kidneys by increasing soft tissue calcification and impair vitamin K status, consistent with the hypothesis that Chris first developed in the pages of Wise Traditions, but it also generated a number of surprising findings. One was that the true response of rats to excess vitamin D takes six months to become clear, while most rat studies in this area only last for several weeks. Another was that, despite poor kidney health, and despite higher serum undercarboxylated osteocalcin—usually considered a marker of poor bone health—the rats dosed with extra vitamin D actually had improved bone health. This introduces a major caveat into the typical interpretation of this marker in human studies, and highlights the importance of understanding why a blood marker is changed rather than simply observing that it has changed, just as is true of serum 25(OH)D or serum cholesterol. Chris plans to publish two peer-reviewed papers from this study by the end of this year, and ultimately to publish a third paper from this study on the effect of vitamin D on vitamin A metabolism. Ultimately, this study provides a preliminary foundation for further studies investigating the protective effects of vitamins A and K on vitamin D-induced soft tissue calcification, and for human studies examining the ability of these vitamins to prevent and reverse cardiovascular calcification.
Chris was also able to use these funds to mentor Grace Hile, a medical student interested in ancestral health and integrative medicine, who took the lead this summer in examining the bone health of the vitamin D-dosed rats. This was part of Southern Illinois University’s Mentored Professional Enrichment Experience.
Finally, the postdoctoral grant also enabled Chris, through his position at the university, to teach the first-year veterinary students about vitamins and minerals. As a result of his student evaluations, he was included in the University of Illinois’s Spring 2014 “List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students.”
In addition, contributions paid for studies that looked at the levels of trans fats in common processed foods (www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/trans-fats-in-the-food-supply/) and the fatty acid profile of grass-fed versus grain-fed beef tallow (www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/fatty-acid-analysis-of-grass-fed-and-grain-fed-beef-tallow/). The results of a WAPF-funded study on hexane levels in common foods will soon be published in a peer reviewed scientific journal, to be followed by a report in Wise Traditions.
The traditional purpose of a postdoctoral grant is to provide a young researcher with the ability to establish a reputation as an independent researcher and thus to become well-positioned to obtain a tenure-track faculty position and thereby establish a career in research and other contributions to academia. Chris’s independent research, conducted with funds from WAPF and generous support from Dr. Fred Kummerow and the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine, together with the experience he gained mentoring and teaching in that position, allowed him to obtain a position beginning this fall as assistant professor of health and nutrition sciences at Brooklyn College.
The focus of our research funding will now enter a new phase as Chris settles into this new position. He will be teaching undergraduate courses in nutritional chemistry for students aiming to become registered dietitians and mentoring graduate students. Most importantly, Chris will be running a laboratory where he will have access to the latest testing equipment. Thus, he will be in an excellent position to continue and expand his research on fat-soluble vitamins.
The Burnsides Laboratory at the University of Illinois does not have the expensive modern testing equipment that would allow us to continue research in the field most important to us—testing the levels of fat-soluble vitamins in foods grown and prepared by various methods. Therefore, while we will continue to support Dr. Kummerow’s research to a limited extent, especially for performing fatty acid analyses, our primary support will now go to Chris Masterjohn at Brooklyn College.
We will keep our members informed of the progress of our research with the new opportunities presented to us with Chris’s move to Brooklyn College.
