Eskimo Diet

[YT2095]

this has bugged me for a long time!

 

I`ve seen many documentaries about Eskimos and Inuit, and they all seem to eat very little other than meat and fat!

there`s no ballanced diet at all, no fruit and veg, just seal and whale and fish in the main.

now if you or I were to even try this diet for a month we`de end up quite ill!

so how is it they can get away with it and we can`t?

 

and yes I know NOW they do get stuff flown in that`s of the veg variety, but the Ancients certainly didn`t!

[aommaster]

well, ur right about the fact that their diet is not balanced. But, they have a much lower chance of actually getting arthritis, heart attacks and other stuff. A doctor named Donaldson had found that they ate whales and seals and fish. Well, they have an intake of ogega 3 fatty acids. LOTS of it!

some more info:

http://www.easy-site.com.au/sites/1118/page32.cfm

 

And the ol' google:

http://www.google.ae/search?q=+Eskimo+Diet&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en

 

Hope that helps!

[YT2095]

most splendid and I agree Omega 3FA and GLA is certainly a good and essential part of any diet.

I also neglected to mention Caribou meat that they eat too (I`ve eaten it also it`s quite nice

the fact is, the British Explorers went down with Scurvy after many months at sea without a Vit C supply, how do THEY compensate for this???

[aommaster]

they were called 'limeys' because they noticed that having lemons (which contains Vit C) prevented that! They did not know that at the time

[Sayonara]

Narwhals (Monodon monoceros) are hunted intensively by the indigenous people of Greenland, the Inuit.

 

In 1999, a long-standing policy of regulating the hunt in Nunavut, eastern Canada, was abandoned. In Greenland, no direct measures for regulating the hunt have ever been taken.

 

"They take [the narwhals] for the tusk but they also hunt them for the skin and the meat. The skin is rich in vitamin C, which is a good defence against scurvy when you don't have vegetables," Dr Heide-Joergensen told BBC News Online.

 

Ah hah! I got da gold.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3587251.stm

[aommaster]

hmmm.... didn't they take a daily meal of lemons to keep thm from getting scurvey. They saw that it prevented it. Later was vitamin C discovered!

[Sayonara]

Who?

 

I'm talking about Inuit. Not a lot of lemons in Greenland

[aommaster]

yeah, the one that you were talking about was for the inuit. YT asked about the other parts of the diet!

[Sayonara]

I think you might be getting your wires crossed.

 

YT2095:

I`ve seen many documentaries about Eskimos and Inuit, and they all seem to eat very little other than meat and fat!

there`s no ballanced diet at all, no fruit and veg, just seal and whale and fish in the main. now if you or I were to even try this diet for a month we`de end up quite ill!

 

Sayonara³:

They take [the narwhals] for the tusk but they also hunt them for the skin and the meat. The skin is rich in vitamin C, which is a good defence against scurvy when you don't have vegetables.

 

He's asking where they get the dietary components that we get from fruit and veg.

These components cascade down the food chain and many are stored by other animals, which we could eat if we did not have more efficient alternatives at hand (IE fruit and veg).

 

Inuit and Eskimo do not have easy access to fruit and veg, so they need to eat animals that do in order to get the same components. Vitamin D will be another one, as well as calcium and trace metals.

[aommaster]

oh yeah! Sorry

[Technologist]

Actually traditional inuit people suffer many metabolic diseases due to their diets high in fat and proteins.

 

To answer your question inuits also eat a lot of organ meats that have high nutritional values. This is why many very low carbohydrate dieters (atkins) end up with nutritional deficiencies. Western people eat muscles which are simple structures and thus have fewer resources compared to more complex organs/tissues like the liver for example.

[coquina]

I read somewhere that they also dried berries during the summer to be eaten during the winter.