Uninformed Choices

"Inuit are undergoing rapid cultural changes with reduced reliance upon traditional foods and increased consumption of highly processed market foods", reads the study published in the latest issue of Journal of Nutrition. "A nutrition transition is occurring in Arctic communities with consequences for increased obesity and diet-sensitive chronic diseases."

In other words, Inuit populations within Canada are making the very same self-harming poor choices that Canadians living everywhere in the country are choosing to make. Except that the processed food they're eagerly taking to in lieu of traditional foods cost twice as much in the Arctic as it does in urban centres in Ontario and Quebec, for example.

Bearing in mind that fresh fruits and vegetables do not grow in that Northern environment. That the Inuit diet evolved over hundreds of years and more to supply the nutritional needs of the people living in the Far North. And since, while still living in the Far North, the Inuit are increasingly turning to salt-laden, sugar-stuffed, fat-heavy processed foods, they're suffering obesity rates equal to what occurs elsewhere.

And doubtless, just as it is proving fairly useless to try to persuade people living anywhere in Canada that they should be consuming nutrition-rich foods, not empty-calorie-rich foods, attempting to do the same to the Far North Inuit will prove equally useless. People tend to think they are being denied something of value.

They prefer to opt for the quick-and-easy and what seems to them with their corrupted taste buds, to be perfectly good and tasty food, requiring little-to-no preparation, since everything has already been done, including converting basic foodstuffs to basic drained-of-goodness shells overburdened with fat, salt and sugar.

If people continue to live in remote villages how is it a mystery that they do not have easy access to fresh fruits and vegetables and dairy products and grains, all required for a healthy, urban diet? The traditional Northern diet was heavy on hunting, on gathering local greens, and Inuit were equipped by nature to acquire the vitamins, minerals and nutrition they needed for good health through that traditional diet.

So, like the rest of the Canadian population - and a reflection in general of populations elsewhere in North America and Europe, Inuit too have rejected tradition and opted for processed garbage. Little wonder they, like population demographics elsewhere are suffering increased health problems.