Inuit Diet Touted as Health Tonic
January 4th, 2007Via: Vancouver Sun:
The Inuit traditional diet offers natural protection against two of the planet’s biggest killers — heart disease and cancer — according to a study that gives an unprecedented glimpse of the health of northern Canadians.
While accelerating environmental and social meltdown is putting huge stress on Arctic communities, the study of almost 1,000 Inuit in northern Quebec shows the diet rich in game continues to offer remarkable protection, says lead researcher Dr. Eric Dewailly of Laval University.
“The study shows that they still have huge benefit and protection,” says Dewailly. He and his colleagues presented the results of the on-going study here yesterday at the annual scientific meeting of ArcticNet, a northern research consortium.
Dewailly says the traditional Inuit diet is high in selenium, common to whale skin, and likely explains why prostate cancer is almost unheard of in the north, as are most other cancers. Cardiovascular disease is also rare, likely because the Inuit diet remains rich in wild game. “The traditional Inuit diet is fats and proteins, no sugar at all,” says Dewailly. “It is probably one of the healthiest diets you can have. The human body is built for that.”
While the study indicates Inuit are still protected by their traditional foods, he says the evidence shows the benefits are “growing weaker and weaker” as consumption of processed southern food increases.
Inuit teenagers drink on average one litre of pop a day, Dewailly says. And unhealthy trans fats, common to chips, cookies and refined foods, are being seen in the blood of young Inuit in levels up to three times those seen among Europeans.
The health survey results from northern Quebec show obesity has increased by 50 per cent compared to 1992, and now affects 28 per cent of the Inuit population. While women are most affected, the researchers say obesity is a rapidly growing problem for men. High blood pressure rates have more that doubled to 14.5 per cent of the population between 1992 and 2004.
Inuit leaders, several of whom are at this week’s conference to support the study, are working to promote consumption of wild game and fish and reduce junk food consumption.
Related: Nourishing Traditions
Related: Weston A. Price Foundation
Say what?
http://quackfiles.blogspot.com/2005/01/inuit-diet-atkins-revisited.html
Kevin,
Fascism is everywhere these days – especially when it comes to Big Pharma and Medicaire Part D. This is one sure plan to increase profits and “reduce the surplus population” as Scrooge would say.
The Inuit diet is likely “high” in that “dread substance” cholesterol. I found a great article on statin drugs from your link to the Weston A. Price Foundation site.
http://www.westonaprice.org/tour/index.html
Big Pharma is making billions of dollars from drugs created to cure made-up diseases.
I think its called “disease mongering.” All to make a buck.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4898488.stm
But look what happens when we stop taking the pills Big Pharma tells us are good for us!
Breast cancer drop tied to less hormone therapy
Sharp decline in 2003 when older women stopped drugs, research shows
MSNBC News Services
Updated: 3:10 p.m. ET Dec 14, 2006
SAN ANTONIO – In a startling turnaround, breast cancer rates in the United States dropped dramatically in 2003, and experts said they believe it is because many women stopped taking hormone pills.
The 7.2 percent decline came a year after a big federal study linked hormone replacement therapy used at menopause to a higher risk of breast cancer, heart disease and other problems. Within months, millions of women stopped taking estrogen and progestin pills.
A new analysis of federal cancer statistics, presented Thursday at a scientific conference called the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, revealed the drop in tumors.
About 200,000 cases of breast cancer had been expected in 2003; the drop means that about 14,000 fewer women actually were diagnosed with the disease in 2003 than in 2002.
I pity the elderly the most. They don’t deserve to die a slow death caused by over medication.
Eileen
That hormone therapy thing was FDA approved genocide. Like NutraSweet. It’s not called the Fascist Drug Administration for nuttin!
Don’t worry about that, just enjoy a juicy, delicious clone burger!
https://cryptogon.com/?p=147
This article overlooks 2 things:
– Evolutionnary pressure in this context is quite different for Inuits and Caucasians: after the end of the last ice age, Inuits and similar populations continued feeding on the old ice age hunter/top of the food chain diet (proteins and lots of animal fats, quite appropriate for their environment)whereas after the spread of agriculture, caucasians went down the food chain, extended their feeding base, and those who were good at metabolizing carbs and making do with less animal fats were at a clear advantage. Result: Inuits fed a western diet of refined starches and fast sugars are PLAGUED by a variety of metabolic deseases, because their system are not good at handling this junk (neither are caucasians, but let’s just says they are better at it).
Symetrically, You can surmise that caucasian populations fed an inuit diet point blank would also develop a number of ailments linked to the surge in animal saturated fats and protein metabolism by-product that they are not good at processing (remember all these medieval and classical age European aristocrats gorging on a diet of game and farm animals, crippled by gout by their late 30s, bedridden by their early 40s, when their peasants who were producing this diet they could not afford to eat were running and kicking until they dropped dead?) Animal fats in the western world were rare and expensive…Carbs were plentiful (well, let’s say..”available” most of the time…)
– Secondly, the article overlooks the fact our oceans, and particularly the north atlantic has become a brewing stew of some 20 000 synthetic molecules, aka environmental toxins. These toxins are new, synthetic compounds that animal systems have not co-evolved to get rid of/detoxify efficiently. They accumulate in body tissues, particularly fat cells (encapsulation of toxins that the body does not know what to do with, and is inefficient at evacuating) and internal organs to name a few… If you are on top of an animal based food chain like the Inuits, you are at the top of the pyramid, and therefore at the the highest point of concentration of these toxins…A study conducted by Danes on the native populations of Greenland resulted in rates of toxin accumulation that were positively off the charts. The study was questionning the long term possibility of survival of these people, especially taking in account the reproductive disruptions linked to hormone mimickers (organochlorates and other herbi-pestiticides), The study was also documenting recent but exponential rates of environmental cancers…I really do not know how the author can assert that arctic populations do not know cancer, because now they do…and it HURTS….Maybe the canadian Inuits eat organic sea lion…