"I love that you've brought this to attention. An extensive database of uncommon but resistant and hardy plants/foods could be developed and organized by climate. Ease of growth and processing should also be taken in to account. I will try to…"
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Arctic-Paleo Diet
Undertaking a bit of research to help Evoke Agent Nate B with his excellent challenge to come up with an innovation that creates nutritious food but does it in a respectful manner that is culturally sensitive and completely inclusive utilizing not only dominant culture but also the people from a remote hypothetical Arctic community in the process.
I found a blog by Don Matesz who heads the nutrition department at the Southwest Institute of Healing Arts in Tempe, AZ and has doen alot of research on the Arctic Paleo Diet.
“Twenty-five years ago, I found that only a small number of plants was used by the Eskimo of northwestern Alaska. Among the more important were the leaves of Saxifraga punctata, the leaves and flowering axes of marshfleabane (Senecio congestus) and coltsfoot (Petasites frigiqys), all of which were made into a form of “sauerk****” mixed with blubber; the root tubers of Eskimo potato (Claytonia tuberosa) and those of the vetch (Hedysaruvzalpinum) were gathered in considerable quantities and used during the winter cooked as a vegetable with meat. Of the several kinds of berries used, cloudberry or baked-apple (Rubus Chamamorus) and crowberry (Empetrum) were the most favoured. Both were eaten fresh or preserved frozen in sealskin bags.”
Thus, the Northwestern Eskimos ate some leaves, flowers, tubers and berries. Regarding seaweeds,
Porsild states:
“A number of edible species of seaweed or marine algae occur along rocky shores of the arctic seas and several are used regularly, if mostly in times of scarcity, by the Eskimo. In Greenland, several species, including Rhodymenia palmata and Laminaria spp. [kelps] are eaten raw, dipped in boiling water or with seal oil. Rodahl (1950) estimated that 50per cent of the vitamin C intake of the east Greenland Eskimo is derived from marine algae.”
This indicates that Eskimos used kelp "regularly, if mostly in times of scarcity." So was scarcity regular for Eskimos? In regards to vitamin C, Porsild states:
The recent investigations by Rodahl (1944) and others, of the vitamin content of arctic plants, have demonstrated too, that it is just those arctic plants that are eaten by preference by nearly all arctic tribes, that have the highest content of ascorbic acid as well as of thiamine [emphasis added], and that the methods of preparation and of storing of vegetable foods used by these people are perhaps the best possible in the circ**stances for the preservation of vitamins.”
Anderson visited Eskimo villages of the Northern Bering Sea and Arctic Alaska during the summer of 1938. He states:
“The diet of the Eskimos is almost exclusively of animal origin. The total portion that is directly vegetable is very small. The food plants growing in the vicinity of the villages indicated that but little had been gathered.”
Anderson also found the Eskimos using leaves (greens), taproots, tubers, seeds, and berries (including blueberries). He also reports that they preserved plant foods for consumption out-of-season by either fermentation or storage in oil or fat. I may devote another post to some of Anderson’s interesting observations on Eskimo use of plant foods.
According to the online Encyclopedia of Food and Culture entry on Inuit food and culture (http://www.enotes.com/food-encyclopedia/inuit), the wild greens and berries “are much sought” by Inuit.
Anderson reports:
“Among monocotyledons, products of three species are consumed. The enlarged farinaceous [starchy] bases of a sedge, Carex sp., are called mouse food from the custom of robbing the nest of field mice (Microtis), which gather them for winter food. In some places fish is placed in the mouse nests so that the mice may live through the winter and be able to store a new supply of the sedge the following year.”
Thus he seems to indicate that Eskimos would “sacrifice” fish to feed mice so that they (the Eskimos) could get some starchy tubers! If so I would agree that Eskimos "eagerly sought" what plant foods they could get. (In another post I may report on similar practices among the Chukchi, another Arctic population popularly but incorrectly viewed as strictly carnivorous.)
So it seems possible that Eskimos would have preferred a greater portion of plant foods in their diets, but found that their environment could hardly meet their desires without some encouragement (e.g. feeding fish to the tuber-collecting mice) or fetching partially digested gra**** from the guts of caribou.
Therefore, for purposes of estimating nutrient intakes, a proper analogue of an Eskimo diet would have not more than five percent of calories from plants consisting primarily of some greens and berries, and little kelp.
Views: 49
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Comment by Nate B on March 19, 2010 at 8:51pm
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Thank you! The majority of country food, it's usually very high in protein and as your article highlighted lower in plant nutrients.
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/alt_formats/fnihb-dgspni/pdf/pubs/fnim...
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Comment by Michele Baron on March 22, 2010 at 4:30pm
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thank you for the informative blog
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