In 1932, Dr. Francis M. Pottenger, Jr., a physician and researcher who had successfully treated patients with TB, asthma, allergies and emphysema by putting them on a diet of raw butter, cream and eggs, decided to experiment with a raw food diet involving cats.

In one study group, the felines ate only raw milk and raw meat, while in the other groups they ate some raw meat mixed with pasteurized milk and cooked meat. During the 10-year study, Pottenger discovered that only the all-raw group maintained good health generation after generation. They had excellent bone structure, few parasites, easy pregnancies and gentle dispositions.

The groups whose diet was partially cooked developed “facial deformities,” including narrowed faces, crowded jaws, frail bones and weakened ligaments. They harbored parasites, developed diseases and had difficult pregnancies. The female cats became much more aggressive compared to those on the raw diet. The males on the other hand were unnaturally timid and exhibited lower sexual interest.  After just three generations, young animals died before reaching adulthood and stopped reproducing.

While Pottenger’s cat experiments do not mean humans should eat only raw foods, it is a testament as to the potential consequences of a diet without the nutrients provided by real grass-fed foods.  Chiefly the fat-soluble Vitamins A,D,and E. Pottenger believed that when the human diet produces facial deformities like crowded teeth, degenerative diseases will soon emerge if the diet is followed for several generations.

With western civilization’s love of refined, highly sweetened convenience foods and low-fat items, could it be that Americans are now experiencing an epidemic of degenerative diseases as a result of generations who were raised on these foods?

Preventing disease now and for generations to come is one reason we need to get back to a more natural diet consisting of grass-fed beef, free-range poultry, organic eggs and produce, raw milk and cheese – all produced without man-made chemicals, hormones, pesticides, dyes.