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Bone Smither
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- Apr 8, 2026
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ANCESTRAL NUTRITION AND YOUR FACE
gonna keep it real before anything - some of this is hard biochemistry with actual studies, some is more theoretical from ancestral health research. ill tell you which is which so you can make your own call. not trying to be a grey and post vague shit with no sources.
WESTON A. PRICE - BASED OR COPE?
guy was a dentist in the 1930s who spent years traveling to indigenous populations before and after Western food showed up. swiss villages, inuit, african tribes, aboriginal australians. same finding everywhere without exception.
traditional diet = wide dental arches, prominent cheekbones, forward grown jaws, straight teeth, zero cavities.
switch to white flour + sugar = narrowed faces, crowded teeth, recessed features in the very next generation. sometimes you can literally see it between siblings raised on different diets.
his book is called "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" and the photos are publicly available. look at them yourself before dismissing this.
honest caveat: mainstream "nutrition scientists" dispute his exact causal conclusions. the observations are documented and real. what caused them specifically is where it gets debated. the main suspect he identified was fat soluble vitamins, specifically something he called Activator X - now known as Vitamin K2.
THE A-D-K2 STACK - THE MOST SLEPT ON THING IN LOOKSMAXXING
these three fat-soluble vitamins work together and almost everyone on a modern diet is deficient in all three. ngl this is where most nutrition threads/guides completely fall apart.
VITAMIN K2 (MK-4 form)
the evidence on this one is actually solid mechanistically. K2 activates two proteins - osteocalcin directs calcium into your bones and teeth, matrix Gla protein stops calcium depositing in your arteries and soft tissue instead. without K2, the calcium from your food and D3 supplements has no address.
where it gets more theoretical: the claim that K2 reshapes your adult facial bones goes beyond proven clinical trials. what IS proven is bone density, calcium metabolism, arterial health. the facial angle is extrapolation from Price's work. make your own call.
MK-4 is found almost exclusively in:
grain fed animals produce almost none. conventional supermarket eggs and dairy = basically zero K2. most of you are eating zero.
VITAMIN A (retinol not beta-carotene)
when people say eat carrots for vitamin A they mean beta-carotene, which your body converts to retinol at a conversion rate that's frankly ass. studies put the ratio anywhere from 3.8:1 to 28:1 depending on your genetics. some people barely convert it at all and don't know.
preformed retinol only comes from animal sources - liver, egg yolks, full fat dairy. involved in skin cell turnover, collagen synthesis, sebum regulation, and testosterone production at the Leydig cell level. multiple published studies on that last one.
VITAMIN D3
you've all heard of D3. what nobody mentions is it's basically useless without K2 directing the calcium it mobilizes. high dose D3 without K2 can cause soft tissue calcification. if you're taking 5000IU D3 with no K2 you might actually be doing damage. take K2 with it. not optional.
ORGAN MEATS - THE OG LOOKSMAXXING FOOD FR
every traditional culture Price documented prioritized organs. not because they were poor - organs were given to pregnant women, warriors, children first. muscle meat was secondary. this got completely inverted in modern western diet and it's one of the worst things that happened nutritionally.
100g beef liver contains roughly:
copper specifically gets ignored here and it shouldn't. copper deficiency causes premature gray hair, reduced melanin production, poor skin elasticity, weak connective tissue. the reason most guys end up deficient is zinc and copper compete for absorption. if you've been hammering zinc without copper you've been making it worse over time. liver naturally has the zinc to copper ratio your body is built to handle.
how to eat it: cook in butter or tallow with onions on high heat, pull off just before it stops being pink inside. overcooking makes the texture horrible. 100g twice a week is enough. if you can't do it, desiccated liver capsules exist.
SEED OILS - SLOW DESTRUCTION WITH ACTUAL DATA
linoleic acid, the main PUFA in seed oils, incorporates into your cell membranes and stored body fat. adipose tissue biopsies show Americans went from roughly 9% linoleic acid in body fat in 1960 to over 21% today, tracking directly with seed oil consumption increases. this is published data from actual biopsies.
PUFAs oxidize. oxidized linoleic acid produces metabolites called 4-HNE and malondialdehyde that damage collagen and drive inflammatory signaling. documented biochemistry. the direct "seed oils ruin your skin" framing is extrapolated from this mechanism rather than proven in dedicated skin trials - but the mechanism itself is real.
your linoleic acid stores turn over slowly - 2 to 4 years. long game. cook with butter, tallow, ghee, coconut oil. stop cooking with anything that comes in a plastic jug.
CHOLESTEROL AND FACIAL MASCULINITY
bluepill take: saturated fat and cholesterol bad. actual biochemistry: testosterone, DHT, and all steroid hormones are synthesized from cholesterol. low fat diets associating with lower testosterone is backed by multiple studies including meta-analyses.
DHT specifically drives jaw growth, brow ridge development, cheekbone density, and facial masculinization post-puberty. guys who went through puberty on low-fat processed diets show softer features because the substrate for androgen production was compromised during the developmental window. not fully reversible but you can optimize your adult baseline.
the dietary cholesterol fear has been substantially revised in the literature. eat your grass-fed red meat, eggs, full fat dairy.
PRACTICAL PROTOCOL
REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS
your developmental bone structure is largely set. not gonna tell you eating liver grows a new jaw. what you're actually optimizing as an adult:
the gap between what you look like running on nutritional deficit vs properly fed is bigger than most people here acknowledge. This is about fixing the foundation that everything else sits on top of.
read Price's book yourself if this interests you. form your own opinion on his causal conclusions.
SOURCES
beta-carotene conversion: Tang G. 2010, Am J Clin Nutr / Leung WC 2009, FASEB J
linoleic acid in adipose tissue: Guyenet & Carlson 2015, Advances in Nutrition (PMID 26567191)
low fat diet + testosterone: Whittaker & Wu 2021, J Steroid Biochem (PMID 33741447) - note: one 2025 meta-analysis found mixed results, not fully settled
retinol + Leydig cells: Livera G 2002, Reproduction
4-HNE oxidation: Esterbauer H 1991, Free Radical Biol Med
K2 / osteocalcin mechanism: Vermeer C 2012, Food & Nutrition Research / Geleijnse JM 2004, J Nutrition (Rotterdam Study)
Price source material: Nutrition and Physical Degeneration (1939)
gonna keep it real before anything - some of this is hard biochemistry with actual studies, some is more theoretical from ancestral health research. ill tell you which is which so you can make your own call. not trying to be a grey and post vague shit with no sources.
WESTON A. PRICE - BASED OR COPE?
guy was a dentist in the 1930s who spent years traveling to indigenous populations before and after Western food showed up. swiss villages, inuit, african tribes, aboriginal australians. same finding everywhere without exception.
traditional diet = wide dental arches, prominent cheekbones, forward grown jaws, straight teeth, zero cavities.
switch to white flour + sugar = narrowed faces, crowded teeth, recessed features in the very next generation. sometimes you can literally see it between siblings raised on different diets.
his book is called "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" and the photos are publicly available. look at them yourself before dismissing this.
honest caveat: mainstream "nutrition scientists" dispute his exact causal conclusions. the observations are documented and real. what caused them specifically is where it gets debated. the main suspect he identified was fat soluble vitamins, specifically something he called Activator X - now known as Vitamin K2.
THE A-D-K2 STACK - THE MOST SLEPT ON THING IN LOOKSMAXXING
these three fat-soluble vitamins work together and almost everyone on a modern diet is deficient in all three. ngl this is where most nutrition threads/guides completely fall apart.
VITAMIN K2 (MK-4 form)
the evidence on this one is actually solid mechanistically. K2 activates two proteins - osteocalcin directs calcium into your bones and teeth, matrix Gla protein stops calcium depositing in your arteries and soft tissue instead. without K2, the calcium from your food and D3 supplements has no address.
where it gets more theoretical: the claim that K2 reshapes your adult facial bones goes beyond proven clinical trials. what IS proven is bone density, calcium metabolism, arterial health. the facial angle is extrapolation from Price's work. make your own call.
MK-4 is found almost exclusively in:
- grass-fed animal fat
- organ meats
- pasture raised egg yolks
- full fat raw OR fermented dairy from grass fed animals (goat/cowmilk)
grain fed animals produce almost none. conventional supermarket eggs and dairy = basically zero K2. most of you are eating zero.
VITAMIN A (retinol not beta-carotene)
when people say eat carrots for vitamin A they mean beta-carotene, which your body converts to retinol at a conversion rate that's frankly ass. studies put the ratio anywhere from 3.8:1 to 28:1 depending on your genetics. some people barely convert it at all and don't know.
preformed retinol only comes from animal sources - liver, egg yolks, full fat dairy. involved in skin cell turnover, collagen synthesis, sebum regulation, and testosterone production at the Leydig cell level. multiple published studies on that last one.
VITAMIN D3
you've all heard of D3. what nobody mentions is it's basically useless without K2 directing the calcium it mobilizes. high dose D3 without K2 can cause soft tissue calcification. if you're taking 5000IU D3 with no K2 you might actually be doing damage. take K2 with it. not optional.
ORGAN MEATS - THE OG LOOKSMAXXING FOOD FR
every traditional culture Price documented prioritized organs. not because they were poor - organs were given to pregnant women, warriors, children first. muscle meat was secondary. this got completely inverted in modern western diet and it's one of the worst things that happened nutritionally.
100g beef liver contains roughly:
- retinol - 16,000+ IU preformed and bioavailable
- copper - 10mg+ (covers you for a week)
- B12 - ~70mcg
- zinc - 4-5mg highly bioavailable
- folate - more than most vegetables
copper specifically gets ignored here and it shouldn't. copper deficiency causes premature gray hair, reduced melanin production, poor skin elasticity, weak connective tissue. the reason most guys end up deficient is zinc and copper compete for absorption. if you've been hammering zinc without copper you've been making it worse over time. liver naturally has the zinc to copper ratio your body is built to handle.
how to eat it: cook in butter or tallow with onions on high heat, pull off just before it stops being pink inside. overcooking makes the texture horrible. 100g twice a week is enough. if you can't do it, desiccated liver capsules exist.
SEED OILS - SLOW DESTRUCTION WITH ACTUAL DATA
linoleic acid, the main PUFA in seed oils, incorporates into your cell membranes and stored body fat. adipose tissue biopsies show Americans went from roughly 9% linoleic acid in body fat in 1960 to over 21% today, tracking directly with seed oil consumption increases. this is published data from actual biopsies.
PUFAs oxidize. oxidized linoleic acid produces metabolites called 4-HNE and malondialdehyde that damage collagen and drive inflammatory signaling. documented biochemistry. the direct "seed oils ruin your skin" framing is extrapolated from this mechanism rather than proven in dedicated skin trials - but the mechanism itself is real.
your linoleic acid stores turn over slowly - 2 to 4 years. long game. cook with butter, tallow, ghee, coconut oil. stop cooking with anything that comes in a plastic jug.
CHOLESTEROL AND FACIAL MASCULINITY
bluepill take: saturated fat and cholesterol bad. actual biochemistry: testosterone, DHT, and all steroid hormones are synthesized from cholesterol. low fat diets associating with lower testosterone is backed by multiple studies including meta-analyses.
DHT specifically drives jaw growth, brow ridge development, cheekbone density, and facial masculinization post-puberty. guys who went through puberty on low-fat processed diets show softer features because the substrate for androgen production was compromised during the developmental window. not fully reversible but you can optimize your adult baseline.
the dietary cholesterol fear has been substantially revised in the literature. eat your grass-fed red meat, eggs, full fat dairy.
PRACTICAL PROTOCOL
ADD:
CUT:
IF YOU SUPPLEMENT:
- beef liver 100g twice a week - fixes copper, B12, retinol, zinc in one food
- pasture-raised egg yolks daily
- grass-fed butter or beef tallow as primary cooking fat
- fatty fish 2x a week OR cod liver oil (natural A+D together)
- aged gouda or brie - high K2 from fermentation specifically
CUT:
- restaurant food cooked in seed oils - basically all fast food
- canola, soybean, sunflower, corn oil at home
- high dose zinc without copper intake to match
IF YOU SUPPLEMENT:
- D3 must be taken with K2 - non negotiable
- cod liver oil covers natural A+D without thinking about it
- don't megadose retinol from supplements - get it from food
REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS
your developmental bone structure is largely set. not gonna tell you eating liver grows a new jaw. what you're actually optimizing as an adult:
- skin texture and collagen quality - noticeable within 1-2+ months
- reduction in facial puffiness from inflammation dropping - weeks
- hair quality and premature graying - slower but consistent over months
- testosterone baseline and body composition - 1 month to a year
- eye area as oxidative stress reduces
the gap between what you look like running on nutritional deficit vs properly fed is bigger than most people here acknowledge. This is about fixing the foundation that everything else sits on top of.
read Price's book yourself if this interests you. form your own opinion on his causal conclusions.
SOURCES
beta-carotene conversion: Tang G. 2010, Am J Clin Nutr / Leung WC 2009, FASEB J
linoleic acid in adipose tissue: Guyenet & Carlson 2015, Advances in Nutrition (PMID 26567191)
low fat diet + testosterone: Whittaker & Wu 2021, J Steroid Biochem (PMID 33741447) - note: one 2025 meta-analysis found mixed results, not fully settled
retinol + Leydig cells: Livera G 2002, Reproduction
4-HNE oxidation: Esterbauer H 1991, Free Radical Biol Med
K2 / osteocalcin mechanism: Vermeer C 2012, Food & Nutrition Research / Geleijnse JM 2004, J Nutrition (Rotterdam Study)
Price source material: Nutrition and Physical Degeneration (1939)
Last edited:
shit took mad longgg
