-------------------- --Lymetutu-- Opinions, not medical advice! Posts: 96223 | From Texas | Registered: Feb 2001
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Keebler
Honored Contributor (25K+ posts)
Member # 12673
posted
- It's not true:
"Inuit of the Canadian Arctic thrived on fish, seal, walrus and whale meat."
This is a myth. While the meat & fat did make up a larger part of their diet, they also had much more than that.
And they planned for winter by saving berries, roots, dried leaves, etc. gathered during summer. They made soups with many dried plants during the winter.
During summer, they ate more plants than we might think. Even just under the winter snow, it's possible to forage some plant life - mosses, lichen, etc. These provided key nutrients.
But one really has to look around to find the research on it. It's there and it is fascinating. I wish I had saved some of the articles at a time when I studied this. But it was on a computer that went bye-bye long ago. -
Posts: 48021 | From Tree House | Registered: Jul 2007
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beaches
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 38251
posted
This is SO interesting!!
I buy whole milk organic yogurt and Kerrygold (grass fed) butter. I buy grass-fed beef as much as possible (for burgers especially). I use extra-virgin olive oil and I buy organic salad and fruits/veggies as much as possible too. If's ridiculously expensive.
But I gotta tell ya--if it's a choice between a salad or a burger, my family is going burger, hands down.
Posts: 1885 | From here | Registered: Jul 2012
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steve1906
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 16206
posted
. How The Inuit People Thrive on Almost No Carbs April 27, 2015
A few warriorz have mentioned the Inuit people in my recent posts about eating meat and low-carb diets. I did some investigating and was really fascinated by what I discovered!
More commonly known as Eskimos, the Inuit live mainly in Alaska, Canada and Greenland – incredibly cold climates that are commonly known as arctic (that’s really frickin’ cold!)
More importantly for us, their diet is almost completely lacking in carbs of any kind. Not even fruits and vegetables aside from some wild berries in the summer! Naturally, I was incredibly curious about what they eat and how it relates to my perspective on diet and nutrition.
Traditionally speaking, the Inuit live by hunting and fishing. Their sources of food include seal, walrus and even whale. They also eat a lot of wild game including moose, elk, duck, geese, etc. Pretty much their diet is made up of protein and fat and lots of it!
Muktuk is very common staple of the Inuit diet as well. What is muktuk? Oh nothing, just chunks of whale blubber! Apparently, muktuk has the consistency of a car tire according to Patricia Cochran, a native Inupiat (a tribe of the Inuit) and director of the Alaska Native Science Commission. Still, such fat must be very important in such a harsh climate where food is hard to come by.
What’s most interesting about the Inuit diet is how they get their essential nutrients. In an interview given to Discover Magazine, Harold Draper, a biochemist and expert on Eskimo nutrition, says that the Inuit get their essential nutrients from unlikely sources.
Instead of fruits, vegetables and whatnot, the Inuit get their nutrients from the variety of fish oils that make up their diet as well as – wait for it – an abundance of organ meats.
Nothing goes to waste. Liver, kidneys, hearts, brains (BRAINS!), etc., are all eaten. Many of these organ meats contain a lot of vital nutrients. In fact, some organ meats contain, of all things, Vitamin C. This is why the Inuit never developed scurvy – a terrible disease caused by a lack of Vitamin C that was very common in sailors for some time.
Also, for all that whale blubber and organ meat, heart disease is relatively low among the traditional Inuit according to this study. Unfortunately, now that ‘progress and development’ are available to the Inuit in the form of restaurants and grocery stores, illnesses such as diabetes are skyrocketing.
Who’s ready for my new recipe using muktuk? Seriously though, what the Inuit people demonstrate to us is that many conventional ideas about diet and nutrition are not truths set in stone. There are many diverse and different ways for us to thrive.
-------------------- Everything I say is just my opinion! Posts: 3529 | From Massachusetts Boston Area | Registered: Jul 2008
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Keebler
Honored Contributor (25K+ posts)
Member # 12673
posted
- That article seems to have overlooked a few things. The organ meats had to be eaten RAW so as to get the best nutrients. Certainly not something we should try these days, in our times.
But they had berries and leaves / roots all year long, too, dried from the summer and in teas and soups.
Excerpts [the footnotes lead to articles for further study].
Because the climate of the Arctic is ill-suited for agriculture and lacks forageable plant matter for much of the year, the traditional Inuit diet is lower in carbohydrates and higher in fat and animal protein compared to the global average.
When carbohydrate intake is inadequate for total energy requirements, protein is broken down in the liver through gluconeogenesis and utilized as an energy source.
Inuit studied in the 1970s were found to have abnormally large livers, presumably to assist in this process. Their urine volumes were also high, a result of the excess urea produced by gluconeogenesis.[9]
However, in multiple studies the traditional Inuit diet has not been shown to be a ketogenic diet. [10][11][12][13]
Not only have multiple researchers been unable to detect any evidence of ketosis resulting from the traditional Inuit Diet,
but the ratios of fatty-acid to glucose were observed to be well below the generally accepted level of ketogenesis. [10][11][12][13]
Inuit actually consume more carbohydrates than most nutritionists have assumed.[14]
Because Inuit frequently eat their meat raw and fresh, or freshly frozen, they can obtain more carbohydrates from their meat, as dietary glycogen, than Westerners can.[14][15]
The Inuit 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 ferment, or hydrolyze, into carbohydrates. [14]
Furthermore, the blubber, organs, muscle and skin of the marine mammals that the Inuit ate have significant glycogen stores which assist those animals when oxygen is depleted on prolonged dives.[16][17][18]
For instance, when blubber is analyzed by direct carbohydrate measurements, it has been shown to contain as much as 8—30% carbohydrates.[17]
While postmortem glycogen levels are often depleted through the onset of rigor mortis, marine mammals have a much delayed onset of rigor mortis, even in warm conditions, presumably due to the high content of oxymyoglobin in the muscle that may permit aerobic metabolism to continue slowly for some time after the death of the animal.[17][19]
Additionally, in cold conditions, glycogen's depletion is halted at -18 °C (-0.4 °F) and lower temperatures in comminuted meat.[20][21]
Traditional Inuit diets derive approximately
50% of their calories from fat,
30-35% from protein and
15-20% of their calories from carbohydrates,
largely in the form of glycogen from the raw meat they consumed.[22]
This high fat content provides valuable energy and prevents *** protein poisoning, *** which historically was sometimes a problem in late winter when game animals grew lean through winter starvation.
It has been suggested that because the fats of the Inuit's wild-caught game are largely monounsaturated and rich in omega-3 fatty acids, the diet does not pose the same health risks as a typical Western high-fat diet.[23]
However, evidence has shown that Inuit have a similar prevalence of coronary artery disease as non-Inuit populations and they have excessive mortality due to cerebrovascular strokes.[24][25].
Vitamins and minerals which are typically derived from plant sources are nonetheless present in most Inuit diets. . . .
. . . Searles defines Inuit food as mostly "eaten frozen, raw, or boiled, with very little mixture of ingredients and with very few spices added."[1] Some preparations include:
Akutaq: berries mixed with fat.
Bannock: flatbread
Food preservation techniques include fermenting fish and meat in the form of Igunaq
Labrador tea [plants] -
Suaasat a traditional soup made from seal, whale, caribou, or sea-birds.
. . Inuit only eat two main meals a day, but it is common to eat many snacks every hour.[27] . . . .
[Full article and many footnotes for further study at link above.] -
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