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Were the Inuit Healthy?

inuit meat

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#1 ta5

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Posted 06 March 2015 - 12:22 AM


You can find two opposite claims made about the Inuit and their health:

  • Paleos say the Inuit ate primarily animal meat and fat and had super health
  • Vegans say the Inuit ate primarily animal meat and fat and had horrible health
Is there any good evidence it's one way or the other?
 
In this post titled "Are the Inuit Healthy?", Dr. Furhman and Chris Masterjohn have a little debate. (Well, Chris tried to have a debate and Furhman didn't.) Chris wrote: 

The Inuit and other natives in Alaska have been in the process of modernization for nearly a century, and they are not on anything remotely like a "primitive" diet.
 
This is what I found for native Alaskans as of the late 1980s:
 
According to this reference:
Nobmann ED, Byers T, Lanier AP, Hankin JH, Yvonne Jackson M. The diet
of Alaska Native adults 1987-1988. Am J Clin Nutr 1992; 55: 1024-32.
 
... as of the late 80s, these were the top ten foods eaten by Alaskan
natives, ranked by frequency of consumption:
 
1. Coffee and tea
2. Sugar
3. Whitebread, rools, crackers
4. Fish
5. Margarine
6. White rice
7. Tang and Kool-aid
8. Butter
9. Regular soft drinks
10. Milk (whole and evaporated)
 
Notice that the only native food in the top 10 is fish, and that it is
out-ranked in consumption by coffee, tea, sugar, and white bread.

 

So, it doesn't sound like we can use any recent studies, and we are left to rely on historic reports that may not be very scientific or accurate.

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#2 Darryl

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Posted 06 March 2015 - 06:24 PM

Good dental health (as Weston Price noted), but otherwise not particularly healthy among populations eating traditional diets. Some resources:

 

Fortuine, R. (1969). Characteristics of cancer in the Eskimos of southwestern AlaskaCancer23(2), 468-474.

Young, T. K., Moffatt, M. E., & O'Neil, J. D. (1993). Cardiovascular diseases in a Canadian Arctic populationAmerican journal of public health83(6), 881-887.

Zimmerman, M. R. (1993). The paleopathology of the cardiovascular system.Texas Heart Institute Journal20(4), 252.

Bjerregaard, P., Young, T. K., & Hegele, R. A. (2003). Low incidence of cardiovascular disease among the Inuit—what is the evidence?.Atherosclerosis166(2), 351-357.

Ebbesson, S. O., Risica, P. M., Ebbesson, L. O., & Kennish, J. M. (2005). Eskimos have CHD despite high consumption of omega-3 fatty acids: the Alaska Siberia projectInternational journal of circumpolar health64(4).

Eilat-Adar, S., Mete, M., Nobmann, E. D., Xu, J., Fabsitz, R. R., Ebbesson, S. O., & Howard, B. V. (2009). Dietary patterns are linked to cardiovascular risk factors but not to inflammatory markers in Alaska EskimosThe Journal of nutrition, jn-109.

Jamieson, J. A., & Kuhnlein, H. V. (2008). The paradox of anemia with high meat intake: a review of the multifactorial etiology of anemia in the Inuit of North AmericaNutrition reviews66(5), 256-271.

Howard, B. V., Comuzzie, A., Devereux, R. B., Ebbesson, S. O., Fabsitz, R. R., Howard, W. J., ... & Wenger, C. R. (2010). Cardiovascular disease prevalence and its relation to risk factors in Alaska EskimosNutrition, Metabolism and Cardiovascular Diseases20(5), 350-358.

Fodor, J. G., Helis, E., Yazdekhasti, N., & Vohnout, B. (2014). “Fishing” for the Origins of the “Eskimos and Heart Disease” Story: Facts or Wishful Thinking?.Canadian Journal of Cardiology30(8), 864-868.

 

From the last paper:

 

In 1940, A. Bertelsen, a Danish doctor that practiced for many years in Greenland, described frequent occurrence of CAD in this Inuit population. Bertelsen’s report, which was written in Danish and published in a book with limited circulation, was largely ignored. More recently, a number of studies have confirmed what Bertelsen ascertained more than 70 years ago, i.e. that the prevalence of CAD among Eskimos in Greenland and other Inuit populations in Canada and the US is similar or higher compared to that of non-Eskimo/Caucasian populations

 

 

 


Edited by Darryl, 06 March 2015 - 06:30 PM.

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#3 Juangalt

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Posted 06 March 2015 - 06:25 PM

It'd be really hard to find out how healthy they were. You could take a few full-blooded ones and try to approximate the old diet. But that wouldn't be super scientific, either. Or you could just put a random sample of the population on a traditional Innuit diet to see if it is ubiquitously healthy.


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#4 Chupo

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Posted 07 March 2015 - 02:11 AM

One thing to keep in mind is that Inuit mummies have been found to have suffered from severe pulmonary anthracosis caused by inhaling soot from their constantly burning seal oil lamps. This alone is a major confounder for cancer and atherosclerosis - not to mention the harsh environment over all.


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#5 aza

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Posted 19 September 2015 - 03:38 PM

really interesting two part article here. http://freetheanimal...prebiotics.html http://freetheanimal...prebiotics.html

Basically, the inuit ate some carbs from freshly killed animals and did eat some plant foods. They also got prebiotics in the form of glycans, which degrade with time and cooking. Seriously interesting stuff.

 

"In addition to the high glycogen content of the fresh postmortem skin, few people seem to be aware that blubber isn't just fat. It tends to have significant levels of carbohydrates. For instance, the posterior, dorsal blubber of a sperm whale is 25% carbohydrates."

"Internal organs are rich in glycogen and skin and gut epithelium are composed largely of glycoproteins."

 

"The Inuit ate plants as well, when they were available. As Tim Steele will tell you firsthand, Alaska is not a barren wasteland devoid of plants. Berries, seaweed, nuts, corms, and tubers are found everywhere in Alaska.

They also ate lots of "mouse food" (see photo), which are caches of seeds and roots and foods that mice gathered for the Winter. This would including "Yupik potatoes" which were gathered in the Fall and consumed by the Inuit over the Winter."

 

"Approximately 50% of the calories were derived from fat and 30 to 35% from protein. Carbohydrate accounted for only 15 to 20% of their calories, largely in the form of glycogen [animal starch] from the meat they consumed."

"the Eskimo practice of preserving a whole seal or bird carcass under an intact whole skin with a thick layer of blubber also permits some proteins to degrade into carbohydrates."

 

This probably means that other hunter gatherers would also eat slightly more carbohydrates then they seem.

http://www.nrjournal...0091-1/abstract

"Hunter-gatherer diets were characterized by an identical carbohydrate intake (30%-35% of the total energy)"

It could very well be slightly higher, such as 35%-40%







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