The Injun ate organic. I say injun here to differentiate them from people of the Indian SC :) He was a predominant meat eater, and did not eat excessively. Also got loads of exercise. If you have ever worked around a camp you realize that breakfast takes one hour - plus chopping wood and fetching water, and night chores about 3 hours with water, meal, wood, etc.. Nobody works for less than 4 hours per day. You can't over eat as nothing keeps long and you have to gather ever day. 70% of your time is spend in gathering. I remember laughing when I was getting grubstaked for prospecting back in the 70's. Rather naive folk would ask me if I intended to hunt for game in the bush. Suggesting I could take some beans and flour and a rifle and hunt rabbits and fish for main sustenance. For one thing I pointed out, hunting would take me 4 days out of seven to survive, and there were precious few greens in the winter to make it thru. I knew I could drink cedar bark and pine needle tea to avoid scurvy but the whole thing defeated getting any useful work done. I did hunt and fish to a degree. Fishing is far more successful than ever snaring. You can get fish just about every other day in about 2 hours, but land animals are some hard to catch. Figure once ever 4 or 5 days for a bird or a few rabbits. And prep time is some intensive. They don't keep except in the winter.
It is possible to survive off the woods. It is a lean existence. A group of people has to be pretty busy to make it work. 300 people in a band need about 20 by 15 miles of good hunting area to survive. That is why Injuns almost peremptorily killed any stranger entering their area, as they threatened survival of their group. If a stranger killed one moose or buffalo in their area, 30 of their group could be without meat for a month.
Primitive man never had too much to eat. Often went for weeks without proper sustenance. This actually improves health. It is better to eat less. I remember being in a winter camp miles from the road. I was down to one meal a day, rationed for greens, meat and flour. And not much of a meal at that. Perhaps 2 strips of bacon, 1/3 a cup of whole wheat flour and a ladle of green beans or peas. Tea and that was it. For 3 months. I could have trekked to town, but I decided to tough it out. I walked 3 miles on snowshoes every day. At the end of that time I had only lost 25 lbs, but I never felt better in my life. I found my energy for walking in the woods was better and better. I could practically run the whole three miles every day. Walk for 3 miles on snowshoes in deep snow and tell me how that feels. You will get an idea of the effort involved if you only try it for 200 yards. I will bet you are puffing like a steam engine at the end of that!
What did north american primitivos actually eat? Well they ate everything. Meat and fish and eggs for sure. But wild plants for medicine and food were plentiful. Mushrooms, green plants of the forest floor, squash, maize, bark from trees, sap from maple, birch, pine, etc.. water plants, rice, lilies, berries, nuts... and all this forage had wild amounts of anti-oxidants. They dried meat in strips and smoked it for preservation. They smoked fish. I would say their wild diet was low in carbs and very high in anti-oxidants. Feed them white man's food today and they turn diabetic fast. They are made to exist on low carbs.
Some writers allege the Indian ate high sat fat diet and the wild meat is not low in sat fat as some people claim. That is true and he also ate dried ground meat that was mixed with at least 40% fat for vitamins and preservation. But he did not eat anything excessively.. and he was very active to boot.. the table below is the sat fat content of the fat in the native's food. This list is a bit prejudice as it predominantly lists the fat of the guts of the animal. Trust me, the Indians at the muscle meat of the animal at least 4 to one over the guts. Anything less would have been inordinate waste. The guts they mostly used for line (babiche for snow shows and ties) and to feed the dogs. They ate certain organs, as in giblets of chickens, but the mass of muscle to organs is a large ratio. 8 to 4 to one. Ditto muscle to fat ratio. The plains indian had to eat more of the guts of the animal as he had less access to anti-oxidants in the grasslands.
Probably sat fat to mono to poly was more or less evenly divided.
Percent of Types of Fat for the fats of American Indian Food
Sat Mono poly
Antelope, kidney fat 65.04 21.25 3.91
Bison, kidney fat 34.48 52.36 4.83
Caribou, bone marrow 22.27 56.87 3.99
Deer, kidney fat 48.24 38.52 6.21
*Dog, meat, muscle 28.36 47.76 8.95
Dog, kidney 25.54 41.85 7.69
Elk, kidney 61.58 30.10 1.62
Goat, kidney 65.57 28.14 0.00
Moose, kidney 47.26 44.75 2.11
Peccary, fatty tissues 38.47 46.52 9.7
Reindeer, caribou,
fatty tissues 50.75 38.94 1.25
Seal (Harbor), blubber 11.91 61.41 13.85
Seal (Harbor), depot fat 14.51 54.23 16.84
Seal (harp), blubber 19.16 42.22 15.04
Seal (harp), meat 10.69 54.21 23.51
Sheep (mountain),
kidney fat 47.96 41.37 2.87
Sheep (white faced),
kidney fat 51.58 39.90 1.16
Sheep, intestine,
roasted 47.01 40.30 7.46
Snake, meat 26.36 44.54 0.09
Squirrel (brown),
adipose 17.44 47.55 28.6
Squirrel (white),
adipose 12.27 51.48 32.3
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The Indians also ate nixtamilized corn, (lime water soaked to bring out B3), corn flour and he cultivated corn, beans pumpkin, squash, and tubers. |
