Q. What do you see as the most fundamental causes of our modern health crisis?

A. The most fundamental cause of modern chronic disease comes from our fear of cholesterol and animal fat, and the replacement of wholesome fats like butter, lard and coconut oil with processed liquid and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. This fear has resulted in the wrong food choices for most Americans In addition, the unwise application of technology to farm and food production has resulted in the disappearance of key nutrients from our food.

Another source of illness derives from our fear and mistrust of "germs". We now that to be healthy, the intestinal tract must contain at least six pounds of beneficial organisms. These protect us against pathogens and toxins and help digest and assimilate our food. Traditional cultures naturally populated the gut with beneficial bacteria by consuming lacto-fermented foods like sauerkraut, beverages like kvass, and raw and cultured dairy foods.

Q. How did we get ourselves into this situation?

A. The main onerous influence on our food supply is the vegetable oil and food processing industry, which has worked behind the scenes to demonize their competition - animal fats and the tropical oils. The food industry prefers vegetable oils because they are much cheaper than the nutritious alternatives. And this industry has had a very unfortunate influence on our universities, resulting in a plague of falsified and manipulated research used to justify the replacement of animal fats with vegetable oils.

A second problem is the advent of corporate agriculture, resulting in the confinement of our sacred chickens, pigs and cows. This is not only cruel to animals, but also cruel to ourselves, because the important nutrients that we need to get from animal foods will be largely lacking if these animals are raised inside on inappropriate feed.

Q. Your foundation has republished a large amount of groundbreaking nutritional research by award-winning scientists - including vitamin research by Emmanuel Cheraskin, M.D., D.M.D., who was Clayton College's first director of naturopathic research. What are Weston A. Price Foundation's most pressing priorities?

A. Our most pressing priority is to correct the misinformation about fats and cholesterol that is leading us down the right dietary path. We are also working to establish universal access to clean, raw milk; to ban the use of soy formula for infants; and to alert the public to the dangers of modern soy foods. And our emphasis is always on educating future parents on the best diet for pre-conception, pregnancy, lactation, and the period of growth in children so that all of them may reach their optimal potential.

One of our key messages in all of our work is ""Don't be afraid of saturated fats because, if so, the consumer is doomed to make incorrect nutritional choices." Americans have been tricked into following low-fat fad diets and choosing the wrong oils. The human body needs nutrient-dense animal fats as well as the vital fat-soluble activators that they exclusively provide. Our bodies NEED demonized foods like liver, eggs, and cod liver oil. We need these foods in our thinking processes as well. The human brain is the fattest, most cholesterol-rich organ in our body. We definitely want a well-fed brain, not a fat-starved brain.

Coconut oil is known to protect against various infections - viral, yeast, fungal, and bacterial. As a saturated fat that supports the immune system, it reduces the risk of several degenerative conditions and cancer. It is also wonderful for the skin. But again, islanders derived their splendid physical health from the coconut oil. By the way, there is nothing wrong with olive oil but it should not be used as our only fat. We need mostly animal fats in our diet. I recommend olive oil for salads but animal fats for cooking. And you need to be careful when purchasing olive oil - much of what is sold as olive oil is not olive oil, but highly processed seed oil, even if is labeled "extra virgin". One of the most important things you can do for your health is to replace margarines and spreads with good, old-fashioned butter. Margarine and shortenings are unnatural, synthetic, bad fats that contribute to almost every health problem imaginable - from growth problems and learning disabilities in children to infertility, cancer and heart disease in adults.