Posted on 08/17/2008 12:31:54 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Shaped by glacial temperatures, stark landscapes, and protracted winters, the traditional Eskimo diet had little in the way of plant food, no agricultural or dairy products, and was unusually low in carbohydrates. Mostly people subsisted on what they hunted and fished. Inland dwellers took advantage of caribou feeding on tundra mosses, lichens, and plants too tough for humans to stomach (though predigested vegetation in the animals' paunches became dinner as well). Coastal people exploited the sea. The main nutritional challenge was avoiding starvation in late winter if primary meat sources became too scarce or lean.
These foods hardly make up the "balanced" diet most of us grew up with, and they look nothing like the mix of grains, fruits, vegetables, meat, eggs, and dairy we're accustomed to seeing in conventional food pyramid diagrams. How could such a diet possibly be adequate? How did people get along on little else but fat and animal protein?
What the diet of the Far North illustrates, says Harold Draper, a biochemist and expert in Eskimo nutrition, is that there are no essential foods -- only essential nutrients. And humans can get those nutrients from diverse and eye-opening sources.
One might, for instance, imagine gross vitamin deficiencies arising from a diet with scarcely any fruits and vegetables. What furnishes vitamin A, vital for eyes and bones? We derive much of ours from colorful plant foods, constructing it from pigmented plant precursors called carotenoids (as in carrots). But vitamin A, which is oil soluble, is also plentiful in the oils of cold-water fishes and sea mammals, as well as in the animals' livers, where fat is processed.
(Excerpt) Read more at discovermagazine.com ...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1628791/posts?page=33#33
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1847382/posts?page=7#7
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After all, that politically incorrect word simply means "meat eaters" -- which, after all, is exactly the point of the article!
And to think what life would be like without my multi.
LOL.
LOL! Couldn't quite make it through without bringing in global warming! Once the article started its hit on the Atkins Diet (more than the brief mention that would have made the point!), I was afraid it would deteriorate into unbridled PC!
I can’t handle green veggies, only very rarely eating corn or potatoes. I do occasionally drink a can of V-8 - about half a dozen small cans a month. My fruit intake is limited to the occasional serving of applesauce.
According to the experts, I should either be dead or laid up.
Sort of adds credibility to the Adkins diet.
So...it's illegal to eat as healthily as the Eskimos.
Seem like my kind of people. Except that I can’t stand the cold and live in a place where it gets 110 regularly.
and the Inuits have low incidents of diabetes and heart diease.
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