ADVENTURES IN DIET

Evening Post, Issue 28, 1 August 1936, Page 8

ADVENTURES IN DIET

EXPLORER'S TESTS

EVIDENCE OF ESKIMOS

Vilhjalmur Stefansson is not only a I self-taught dietitian, like every Arctic explorer, but a man of scientific training and inquiring mind, and, *. therefore, an iconoclast, says the "New York Times." By living ' "off the country" in the Arctic, he shattered many a tradition cherished by the leaders of well-equipped Polar expeditions. The chemists at Kansas City listened to him with interest as he disposed of many a picturesque tale about the gastronomic practice of Eskimos and riddled the teachings of the medicos. Take the matter of a diet consisting wholly of animal flesh and fish, meaning that milk and eggs are among the many things excluded. What would happen? Calcium deficiency in a few weeks, according to the doctors. But Stefansson and his Arctic colleague, Karsten Anderson, lived in the United States under rigorous- hospital control for a year on nothing but meat and fat without a sign of calcium deficiency or of arthritis. Thereupon the doctors decided that perhaps a year was not long enough for a real test." Besides, "didn't the Eskimos gnaw bones, and aren't bones full of calcium? Stefansson pointed put, by way of reply, that some Eskimos live wholly on seal meat. It is caribou bones that they crunch and suck, and this for the fat. Unless fat is eaten, as well as lean, the body does suffer. But with fat there is perfect health. Balanced diet—how often do we hear its need preached? But the Eskimos thrive not on varied meats and different fish, but on one kind of meat or fish for weeks and months. So do explorers who drive on over the ice. And so did Stefansson in his now famous year's test conducted by the Russell Sage Institute of Pathology. IS CHEWING NECESSARY? And. then there is the matter of chewing. "Good for the teeth and gums," says the dentist. "Exercise, massage." The Eskimos bolt their food as we. bolt raw oysters. Yet their teeth, when they have not learned the white man's way of eating, are perfect. This is not to say that Stefarsson thinks that chewing is unnecessary. It is necessary for vegetables, which constitute. so large a proportion of a civilised man's diet. Because we hav*e to masticate these we have acquired the habit of grinding up all food between the molars. Stefansson indicates' for what it may be dentally worth that 'the primitive Eskimo eats more cooked food than we- do, but eats it lukewarm. When he takes, to hot food, after the white man's fashion, nothing can be hot enough He wants his oatmeal steaming, his pancakes straight from the griddle, his bread right' out of the oven. Some think that it is hot food rather than white man's food that has ruined the teeth of Eskimos. Stefansson ventures no opinion. But it is clear from his evidence that the chemical quality of food alone counts for much and perhaps for everything in the development of caries. "Not one cavity," he says, "has' yet been found in any tooth of any Eskimo who died before his food was Europeanised.V Some of the fish that the Eskimos eat after having kept it for weeks and months is politely described as "decayed." By all the medical rules the Eskimos ought to die of what is called "ptomaine poisoning." They know nothing of any such affliction. This does not mean that civilised mankind may also thrive' on rotting fish and animal flesh—the kind the Eskimos consume is so far gone that it has the consistency ,of ice cream—but it does mean that "ptomaine poisoning" seems to be a mystical designation for something that is not well understood. There is a sort of superstition that meat-rich diets may cause cancer. Even doctors have been known to promulgate, it. Cancer, then, ought, to be prevalent among the Eskimos. Stefansson never saw a true case. Constipation is unknown in communities where white men's food has not been introduced. Also kidney troubles seem to be no more prevalent in the North than in America and Europe. Stefansson thinks that possibly the primitive Eskimos may not live as long as we do, not because of their 99 per cent, meat diet, but because of the heat in their homes—heat so terrific that they walk about naked and sweating. The increased metabolic rate thus induced may possibly shorten lives and partly explain the fact that women are mothers at 10 and great-grandmothers at 32. But the evidence on this point is none too good. To make sure that his hearers would not take him for anothe^ food faddist Stefansson fired this parting shot at Kansas City: "The broadest and the reasonably sure conclusions of the study of a meat diet, when collated with the studies of other diets, would be: You can be healthy and live at least the Biblical three score and ten on a vegetarian diet, on a meat diet, or on a combination of the two."