Inuit and vegetables

[Brad Pierce]

Where do the Inuit get their vegetables? Do they eat marine plants?

-- Brad Pierce -- 16/Jan/1994

[Tom Molnar]

In article <1994Jan16....@cs.ucla.edu>,
Brad Pierce <pie...@lanai.cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
# Where do the Inuit get their vegetables? Do they eat marine plants?
#
# -- Brad Pierce -- 16/Jan/1994

Today? Or in years past? I can't answer with any authority, but I
know a little from spending time in the far north and in the high
arctic.

Today they get them from the Northern (I think these stores used to be
run by the Hudson's Bay company, and they are a large general store).
But they are very expensive in the remote communities and so are not a
large part of their diet from what I understand. In years past, the
locale determined the composition of their diet. Plant food sources
were meager, and only available in the more southern areas. In the
high arctic, lakes are frozen for 9 or more months per year. The way
the Innu got all the nutrients they needed from food, like vitamin C,
was to eat all of whatever it was they killed, and they usually ate it
raw. There was a taboo against cooking caribou in some areas for
example (raw caribou flesh has appreciable amounts of vitamin C in
it).

Marine plants of the kind we normally eat, like kelp, dulse, etc. are
not easily harvested through the ice. The waters are always very very
cold up there.

The Innu used to relish the partially digested contents of the
stomachs of the animals they killed -- probably due to an innate
realization of the need to eat more than just flesh.

The Innu diet of years past was one of meager necessity, and one that
pushed the envelop of human nutrition to the edge. It's interesting
to study for some, but it's hardly a model to use to feed modern man
and a poor excuse to use to eat the disease promoting foods people are
manipulated into eating today.

Tom

[Dick Wilmot]

pie...@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (Brad Pierce) writes:

>Where do the Inuit get their vegetables? Do they eat marine plants?

>-- Brad Pierce -- 16/Jan/1994

They told me in Tuktoyaktuk (Sp?) that they go out on the tundra and
gather berries. They showed their refrigerator/freezer which was a tunnel
down a dozen feet or so into the permafrost. I was told that lots fof the
tundra plants are edible. Maybe some of them are high in vitamins people
need? There is a large variety in the tundra plants. I was shown a maple
tree that was about 2" high and has only two leaves. Really hardy stuff.
--
Dick Wilmot
Editor, Independent RAID Report
(510) 938-7425