Francis Pottenger

The centerpiece of Pottenger's work, as Aajonus described it repeatedly, was a controlled feeding experiment involving more than 900 cats conducted over a period of ten years. Aajonus described this as an enormous undertaking, noting that Pottenger paid for much of it himself. The experiment involved dividing cats into groups fed different diets: one group received entirely raw foods, including raw dairy and raw meat, while other groups received the same foods cooked, and still other groups received progressively more processed versions of those foods, including condensed and evaporated milks and other manufactured products.

The raw-fed cats developed no diseases whatsoever. Aajonus described the findings in detail: those cats had no dental caries, no abscessed or deformed jaws, no malformed bones, and perfectly developed skeletal structures. Their behavior was calm and peaceful. At autopsy, after living full natural lives, their organs and tissues remained clean and healthy.

The cats fed cooked foods developed all of the diseases that humans get. Aajonus emphasized this phrase as a deliberate and precise finding, not a loose generalization. Every disease associated with human chronic illness appeared in these animals. As the processing of food increased, the diseases became more frequent, more severe, more complex, and more chronic. The cats fed the most processed foods, such as condensed and powdered milks and other refined products, developed the worst and most acute versions of all these diseases.

The finding Aajonus cited most frequently from Pottenger's work was what happened when diseased animals were placed back on a raw diet. Pottenger found that it took five generations of cats to return from a diseased state to optimal health. Aajonus used this five-generation finding as the basis for his own clinical framework regarding how long it takes a human being to recover fully from generations of cooked-food living.

Aajonus reasoned from this directly: five generations of cats corresponds to roughly 40 years of optimal raw food eating for a human being. He stated this consistently across multiple workshops. "According to Pottenger's work it takes 40 years to get a body from ill health to optimal." He applied this to his own experience and to his clients, explaining that every year on the Primal Diet produces measurable improvement, but the full arc of recovery to truly optimal health, including mental and neurological health, requires that full 40-year period from the day a person begins eating a genuinely good raw food diet.

Aajonus also noted that Howell's separate rat experiments arrived at the same conclusion from a different direction, and he often cited both researchers together when invoking the 40-year figure, describing it as something "Howell and Pottinger's work" both supported.

Aajonus specifically cited Pottenger's findings on bone development as evidence that raw dairy and raw meat, consumed without the consumption of bones themselves, were sufficient to produce strong, perfectly formed skeletal structures. In the cats fed raw diets, the bones developed properly, the jaws formed correctly, and there were no dental deformities. This was in direct contrast to the cooked-diet animals, which developed the same patterns of bone and dental malformation that Weston Price was simultaneously documenting in human populations moving away from traditional diets.

Beyond physical disease, Aajonus noted that Pottenger's raw-fed cats were behaviorally different from the cooked-diet groups. He described the raw-fed animals as calm and peaceful when housed together. The more processed the diet, the more aggressive and disturbed the behavior of the animals. Aajonus used this repeatedly to illustrate his broader argument that mental health, temperament, and neurological stability are directly tied to whether foods are consumed raw or cooked, and that behavioral disorders in human populations are inseparable from the degradation of the food supply.

Aajonus also referenced Pottenger's observation about reproduction. Cats raised entirely on cooked foods, continuing through successive generations on that diet, eventually became completely sterile by the fourth generation. They could no longer produce offspring. Aajonus contrasted this with Howell's rat experiments, noting that Howell's rats fed cooked food all lived the same lifespan of three years as the raw-fed rats, which was different from Pottenger's cats, where cooked-diet animals lived only about two-thirds of their normal lifespan.

Aajonus connected Pottenger's findings to a broader pattern of institutional suppression of research that inconvenienced the food industry. He described an account given to him by a man who claimed to have worked for one of the largest grain and cereal companies in the United States for 37 years, as part of a research team operating from roughly 1926 through 1937 or 1938. This team was assembled specifically to prove that cooking and processing made food healthier and safer and eliminated disease-causing bacteria. Every test they conducted proved the opposite of what they were tasked to demonstrate. The animals fed processed and cooked food got sick. The animals fed raw food, including the bacteria-containing raw food, remained healthy and disease-free.

Aajonus said that rather than publish these findings, the company ordered all 12 years of research destroyed. Every animal was incinerated. Every researcher was required to sign a contract prohibiting them from ever disclosing the results, under penalty of ruinous financial consequences. Aajonus described this suppression as operating in direct parallel to Pottenger and Howell's published findings, noting that industry insiders privately confirmed what Pottenger had demonstrated openly but that the food industry could not afford to acknowledge.

Beyond the cat experiments, Aajonus noted that Pottenger applied the principles he derived from his research to the actual clinical care of patients suffering from tuberculosis and other chronic diseases, with excellent and well-documented results. Aajonus noted that Pottenger's clinical work was initially well received within the medical profession, and only later was ignored as the pharmaceutical and processed-food industries consolidated control over medical education and practice.

Aajonus directed readers and workshop attendees toward the Price-Pottenger Foundation, located in La Mesa, California, as the publisher and custodian of Pottenger's documented research. He listed the Foundation's publications in his bibliography, including "Pottenger's Cats: A Study in Nutrition" and Weston Price's related works. He also pointed people toward this Foundation as a resource for information contradicting claims made by soy advocates and the processed food industry, listing it alongside the Weston Price Foundation and authors Mary Enig and Sally Fallon as reliable references for documented research on traditional and raw foods.

Aajonus placed Pottenger's work as part of his own intellectual and personal history. He described committing fully to a raw food diet in February 1972, at age 25, and stated that it was in the context of understanding Pottenger's research that he came to appreciate what that commitment meant in terms of the long timeline required for genuine recovery. He told audiences that when he started on raw foods he understood from Pottenger's work that he would not be optimally healthy immediately, but rather that the body was engaged in a decades-long restoration process, and that each year of improvement was part of that arc.

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