Buachaille
Well-Known Member
Have a Google, there is a lot of stuff out there in historical terms that suggests that the Inuits of the far north were not averse to getting into foods other than meat and fish.
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Want a NO carb diet.
- Thread starter Nemo
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DiabeticGeek
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Do you know of first hand accounts of this - I don't think there are very many? Other than the papers that I mentioned, my main source on this is the only one of Stefansson's books that I have read:
Stefansson, V. (1960) Cancer: Disease of civilization? An anthropological and historical study. Hill and Wang.
This is a truly fascinating book, and although the Inuit diet isn't it's main subject, he does talk a bit about it. His estimate is that at least 98% of these people's energy was obtained from meat and fish - with the other 2% being highly seasonal. He based this partly on his own experiences (gained on a series of expeditions to northern parts of Canada and Alaska between 1904 and 1916) , and partly on accounts given by others. In particular he cites August Krogh (who visited northern Greenland in 1902), John Murdoch (who lived amongst the people of Northern Alaska from 1881 to 1883), Joseph Romig (a missionary/doctor who visited the Berring Sea in 1896) and Samuel Hutton (a doctor who lived on the Labrador Peninsula from 1902-1913). Stefansson does point out various regional differences in diet, but nonetheless he claims that all of these authorities share his view that the traditional Inuit diet was extremely low in carbohydrate, and that these people lived on it with no apparent ill effects.
If you know of other first hand accounts from this period that disagree with this view, then please post them - I find this whole area extremely interesting.
Stefansson, V. (1960) Cancer: Disease of civilization? An anthropological and historical study. Hill and Wang.
This is a truly fascinating book, and although the Inuit diet isn't it's main subject, he does talk a bit about it. His estimate is that at least 98% of these people's energy was obtained from meat and fish - with the other 2% being highly seasonal. He based this partly on his own experiences (gained on a series of expeditions to northern parts of Canada and Alaska between 1904 and 1916) , and partly on accounts given by others. In particular he cites August Krogh (who visited northern Greenland in 1902), John Murdoch (who lived amongst the people of Northern Alaska from 1881 to 1883), Joseph Romig (a missionary/doctor who visited the Berring Sea in 1896) and Samuel Hutton (a doctor who lived on the Labrador Peninsula from 1902-1913). Stefansson does point out various regional differences in diet, but nonetheless he claims that all of these authorities share his view that the traditional Inuit diet was extremely low in carbohydrate, and that these people lived on it with no apparent ill effects.
If you know of other first hand accounts from this period that disagree with this view, then please post them - I find this whole area extremely interesting.
I'm with you there, DiabeticGeek, Stefansson's experiences were fascinating and I'd love to read more. His Bellvue Hospital Experiment was remarkable in itself, but really proved nothing he didn't already know. He had lived in the Arctic for a total of around 5 years on nothing but meat and water not only to no ill effect, but to the overall improvement in his health.
He wrote in 'My Life with the Eskimo' that the only illness which befell them was after having to eat very lean caribou for 2-3 weeks, his point being that the absence of fat was the issue. He was careful not to sign up to a lean meat diet for his year long trial!
I think Bellvue was possibly more inended to demonstrate that this carried no risk to health and was certainly presided over by the most eminent scientists from Cornell, Harvard, Chicago and John Hopkins Universities.
I can only imagine the uproar from the 'healthy balanced diet' brigade if the trial was carried out these days!
All the best,
fergus
He wrote in 'My Life with the Eskimo' that the only illness which befell them was after having to eat very lean caribou for 2-3 weeks, his point being that the absence of fat was the issue. He was careful not to sign up to a lean meat diet for his year long trial!
I think Bellvue was possibly more inended to demonstrate that this carried no risk to health and was certainly presided over by the most eminent scientists from Cornell, Harvard, Chicago and John Hopkins Universities.
I can only imagine the uproar from the 'healthy balanced diet' brigade if the trial was carried out these days!
All the best,
fergus
