Before the degenerating group completely lost the ability to breed, Pottenger began to again feed them all raw food.  It took four generations on a perfect, raw food diet before some perfect appearing individuals showed up in the group.  It takes longer to repair the damage than it does to cause it and it takes generations of unflagging persistence.

I think much the same process has happened to humans in this century.  With the invention of the roller mill and the consequent degradation of our daily bread to white flour; with the birth of industrial farming and the generalized lowering of the nutritional content of all of our crops; our overall ratio of nutrition to calories worsened.  Then it worsened again because we began to have industrial food manufacturing and national brand prepared food marketing systems; we began subsisting on devitalized, processed foods.  The result has been an even greater worsening of our ratio of nutrition to calories.

And just like Pottenger’s cats, we civilized humans in so-called advanced countries are losing the ability to breed, our willingness (or the energy) to mother our young; we’re losing our good humor in the same way Pottenger’s degenerated cats became bad tempered.  As a group we feel so poorly that we desperately need to feel better fast, and what better way to do that than with drugs.  Is it any wonder that the United States, the country furthest down the road of industrial food degeneration, spends 14 percent of its gross domestic product on medical services.  Any wonder that so many babies are born by Cesarean, any wonder that so many of our children have crooked teeth needing an orthodontist?  The most depressing aspect of this comes into view when considering that Pottenger’s cats took four generations on perfect food to repair most of the nutritional damage.

In the specific case of my daughter, I know somethings about the nutritional history of her maternal ancestors.  My daughter’s grandmother grew up on a Saskatchewan farm.  Though they certainly grew their own rich wheat on virgin semi-arid prairie soil, I’m sure the family bought white flour at the store for daily use.  Still, there was a garden and a cow producing raw milk and free-range fertile eggs and chicken and other animals.  There probably were lots of canned vegetables in winter, canned but still highly nutritious because of the fertility of their prairie garden.  My mother consequently had perfect teeth until the Great Depression forced her to live for too many years on lard and white bread.

During this time of severe malnutrition she had her three babies.  The first one got the best of her nutritional reserves.  The second, born after the worst of the malnutrition, was very small and weak and had a hard time growing up.  Fortunately for me, for a few years before I (the last child) was born, the worst of the economic times had past and the family had been living on a farm.  There were vegetables and fresh raw milk and fruit.  My mother had two good years to rebuild her nutritional reserves.  But “Grannybell” did not managed to replace enough.  Shortly after I was born my mother lost every one of her teeth all at once.  The bone just disappeared around them.