Inuit (Eskimo) population not as healthy as we thought?

(Courtney Henderson) #1

https://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2015nl/apr/eskimos.htm

I often hear on the many keto podcasts I listen to, a reference to the Inuit/Eskimo populations and how they live on (basically) a completely carnivore diet and have no disease. I figured this was a great example but to be honest, I never really looked into it myself. I stumbled across this newsletter which has me second guessing our beloved keto reference to this “healthy” population. I know this community prides itself on the facts…so thoughts?

(Aimee Moisa) #2

I think you have to take anything with a grain of salt when it’s written by the person who makes their living selling the opposite of what they’re arguing is bad.

"The foods consumed by these hardy people are in “polar” opposition to those recommended by me (the McDougall Diet of starches, vegetables, and fruits): a carnivore vs. an herbivore diet. " Emphasis mine.

(Doug) #3

Great, on-target response, Aimee.

For a long time, McDougall’s position has been that people were abandoning the diet he recommends, and going to saturated fats, etc. He blamed a lot of the growing obesity and other problems on that, when (of course) the truth over the past 4 or 5 decades is much more substantially the opposite.

#4

Plus life span when you live in a place that turns you into polar bear ice pops probably isn’t a really good indicator of health …

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #5

The low average life-span in the 19th Century and earlier was the result of infectious disease, especially the diseases of childhood. Go to any cemetery, and you will see an inordinate number of tombstones with only a single date, or with the birth and death years very close together. This was normal until the discovery of penicillin in the last century (it may become normal again, if we run out of antibiotics). But the odds were that, if you survived to adulthood, you would live a pretty long life.

As for the actual topic of this thread, they didn’t believe Stefansson was telling the truth about the Inuit diet a hundred years ago, but the experiment they ran on him and Anderson at Bellevue in 1927 pretty much proved him right. Not only that, but the absence of the chronic metabolic diseases in the Inuit population on their traditional diet—whatever it was—and the coming of those diseases as they Westernized their diet is well documented. The same is true of a number of other peoples around the world.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

—Upton Sinclair

(Sheri Knauer) #6

When I saw McDougalls name in the link my eyes automatically rolled at least half a dozen times. That man is so rigid in his beliefs he can’t see anything beyond what he believes and advocates. If its not his way, then its the wrong way.

#7

What a load of garbage!! The only thing i agree on is that the diet of the “Eskimos” (yes im Canadian and yes we find that term offensive - unless in reference to a certain CFL team) is that the diet has gone downhill.

I lived in the North West Territories for a year, in the arctic circle mind you. The diet of the local people there was chips, pop, soda, and hungryman dinners. My husband worked at the Grocery Store. Yes there was Caribou as well. I was lucky enough to try some Caribou head soup - it was made with Lipton soup mix FYI.

This guy is a punk. Where the hell does he think you are going to find ANY fast food chain in the middle of the freaking arctic. What Inuit has he seen driving around in SUVs in a remote fly in community.

The truth is that most places have one shitty grocery store full of ratty vegetables, frozen meat, and expired groceries. No one has an “all mighty dollar” and Milk is $12 a carton. I could go on. What an add hat.

#8

this guy is a pure idiot. he simultaneously dismisses the “eskimo diet” as unhealthy by talking about how bad their diet is NOW?

his vegan induced brain disease is painfully obvious.

(Bunny) #9

They still live longer than Canadians and Americans and depending on the type of meat (organ meats, fermented meats) and fat eaten and that’s eating a mixed modern SAD (the processed crap) type diet with a traditional diet. There is also a not well known tribe\clan of Eskimo (I will not mention names) Indian that is untouched by modernization who‘s tribal members live past a hundred years old! The high quality type of animal fats, marine fats and organ meats including plant and marine life in the diet they eat is not something we would have access to in a practical way!

References:

  1. The Inuit Paradox