Back in the 1890’s, dentist Weston A. Price became an early subscriber to National Geographic Magazine. He ordered it initially as waiting room reading for his patients, but quickly became obsessed with it himself. In particular, he couldn’t help but notice that the indigenous people featured in its photographs all had excellent teeth. Healthy, straight, excellent teeth. Whereas, his patients, and the patients in most practices in the American Dental Association (for which he chaired the research section), emphatically did not.

So, when he retired from dentistry, Price headed out around the globe, studying native cultures everywhere he could find them: Switzerland, Scotland, Alaska, Canada, New Caledonia, Fiji, Samoa, Kenya, Uganda, the Congo, Sudan, Australia, New Zealand, Peru.

And, in every case, he found that those indigenous groups were remarkably free from the diseases that then (and still now) plagued Western civilization – from cavities and impacted molars, through to allergies, asthma, heart disease, and cancer.

During the time he studied them, the younger generations of many of those cultures began to abandon their traditional diets in favor of Western foods like refined flowers and sugars, and canned goods. And, inevitably, that new-diet-eating younger generation would suddenly manifest the same ailments as the rest of the Western world. Even down to crooked teeth, which apparently are the result of jaw growth and structure – something, not surprisingly, that’s hugely driven by pre-natal and childhood diet.

To this day, research comes out constantly to support the same idea: that eating food rather than ‘food products’ has a huge impact on our health. That if we contrain our diet to unprocessed, nutrient-dense foods like meat, seafood, fruits, nuts and vegetables, we’re far, far healthier.

Problem is, that stuff is expensive. And US food policy – which heavily incentivizes production of corn and wheat to the exclusion of nearly everything else – only makes it more so. So, in short, it’s not your fault that you eat badly. It’s the US Government’s.

Or is it? Turns out, eighty years ago, people spent nearly 25% of their income on food; now, we spend barely 10%. In other words, people are quite literally no longer putting their money where there mouths are.

So what, exactly, is the above graph telling you? Basically, that your high blood pressure and your fat ass are both the result of your being a cheap bastard.