I don't think the Inuit diet, which is high in fat, is the reason they are not living as long as their southern neighbours.
That said, if comparisons were made to today, Inuit people (Eskimos) have had a high fat diet, which is probably excessive and as a group haven't fared well for longevity. I nuit life expectancy lags as rest of Canada living longer
In other articles, relative lack of access to medical attention (hospitals and doctors) is also cited. Smoking is endemic in Inuit culture and many suffer from smoking related diseases. Alcoholism and suicide are major problems in living in the North.
Famine in the far past was a major cause of death... Also in the 19th century there was a major decline in population of the Inuit due to exposure to white man's diseases such as small pox, measles, TB and flu which they had no immunity to.
"In October (2017) the federal Minister of Indigenous Services, Jane Philpott, announced that in 2015 tuberculosis . . . was 270 times . . . more common among the Canadian Inuit than it is among non-indigenous southern Canadians." The Canadian Medical Association Journal published in 2013 that "tuberculosis among Canadian Inuit has dramatically increased since 1997. In 2010 the incidence in Nunavut . . . was 304 per 100,000 -- more than 66 times the rate seen in the general population."
... Dr. Kevin Patterson, "Out in the cold," The (Toronto) Globe and Mail, 31 March 2018 I always wondered how they avoided vitamin C deficiency. Why did they not suffer from scurvy during winter when berries and plants were non-existent in their diet? Turns out they get vitamin C from the eating of raw meat such as ringed seal liver and whale skin.
You will not find much mention in the literature about the fats in their diet being a problem in their longevity. Their bodies have adapted after thousands of years of having such a diet . |
