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Originally Posted by BoBoGuy
One thing is obvious, for optimal health, limit your red meat consumption!!
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The more I read, the less "obvious" this is becoming.
I've made mention in another thread that I've been reading Stefansson's "My Life With The Eskimo" for the past few days and something is very plain in these pages - the need for meat and fat. There is page after page of the Eskimo searching for the fattiest animals and included a large portion of read meat - including, but not limited to, caribou, polar bear, wolf, wolverine, etc. They do very occasionally dine on poultry by eating Ptarmigan, however this is more of a starvation food when they can't find red meat or a seal or a whale.. and even then will pick fish over the bird.
They have also talked about berries, and while I can't find the page right now to give you a direct quote (but I will search for it if you are interested), when he asked of the Eskimo why they were not eating the berries that were nearby, they replied that they didn't consider them food. There is apparently a root they dine on occasionally called the macu root (or polygonum bistontum), however only the "civilized" (read: have had contact with 'white men') Eskimo use it extensively, while the "uncivilized" do not... see here:
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These roots form on the mainland the chief food of the marmot and the grizzly bear, both of which are absent from Victoria Island. All Eskimo known to me use this root as food - the Alaskans extensively, but the Victorians to a negligible extent only.
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The obvious answer to this is always "inuit lifespan is short". I'm not necessarily disagreeing with that on face value, but after reading a few things have occurred to me.
1. The life expectancy rates that we keep digging up seem to be from newer sources as there really was no way to track mortality rates pre-'white man' intervention, which is also when their diet changed substantially.
2. The average lifespan would be lower due to infant mortality rates and "child accident rates" (see below) along with, in my estimation, adult accident rates. These things were also explained in Stefansson's book when he went into detail about one tribe's superstitions and how a man gave him a present (I believe it was a pair of pants) and in return Stefansson should "think well" for all the births and hunts in the next year. If game was scarce, starving to death was not uncommon. He also described the difficulty in catching a bearded seal and went into detail about one particular event where an Eskimo almost lost his life trying to harpoon the seal. He also went into detail about how he was almost killed himself when trying to take down a polar bear and how, if proper precautions are not taken, one can easily die of exposure, hunting on a mountain, walking on thin ice, etc. In this case, saying the Inuit have a shorter life expectancy due to eating meat is like the medical study we all dismissed reporting those who ate 7 eggs per week have a higher all cause mortality. Eating an egg doesn't make you walk in front of a bus any more than eating meat makes you fall into the water under thin ice.
Data here from 1993-4, which is long after westernization.
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The data are largely based on the 1993-4 Greenland health interview study. [...] Average life expectancy at birth for Greenland Inuit men is only 60.3 years, compared with Scotland's 72.5. Some, but by no means all, of this discrepancy is accounted for by much higher infant mortality (26/1000) and child accident rates.
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http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/318/7176/133
3. We also brought tuberculosis to the Inuit through not only bacterial means, but in the way we changed their housing. It has been described in the book that when the Eskimo left their westernized dwellings and spent the winter in their native housing, the tuberculosis stopped spreading due to appropriate ventilation and hygienic conditions for the climate. By spreading tuberculosis we not only killed off large populations of the Eskimo, but we also lowered figures in their life expectancy for that time period.
4. This, I think, is the biggest issue. We (in general) keep referring to the Inuit as if they are "one people" without realizing the separate tribes are as different from one another as say New Yorkers are from someone living in Kansas. Sure, we're both Americans, but with vastly different lifestyles based on what we are exposed to. By the book, the Mackenzie Eskimo (surrounding the Mackenzie River and on the western part of the Arctic) have a vastly different lifestyle than the Victoria Island Eskimo because the Mackenzie Eskimo had much dealing with the explorers, whalers and were therefore far more westernized - to the point of being turned christian by missionaries, considering potatoes food, not wanting to travel without tobacco, etc. So if you were to say "the life expectancy for the Inuit is __ years" it would, IMO, be misleading.
5. Here, though, is the one thing I can tell you. He does have discussions in the book of older members of the tribes and in two particular cases (there may be more... I'm only 3/4 through the book) he provided pictures of them. These two, by age given at certain time periods and knowing when the book what written, can be put easily in their 70s. Looking at the pictures of them, the thought has crossed my mind that I hope I look that young and that strong when I am in my 70s. Compared to the people I see today who are that age, there really isn't a comparison. [ETA: These two with pictures are from the 'uncivilized' populations of Inuit.]
So, in my estimation, if people who have an
absolute need to be the strongest and healthiest they could possibly be (because if they are not it basically means certain death) do it with a large portion of red meat in their diet, I certainly don't see how it is "obvious" that one should limit red meat consumption.
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