Nutrition of the Inuit: a brief overview

Changing food preferences and health beliefs are resulting in a decline in use of traditional Inuit foods and an increase in use marketed foods. These changes are associated by many researchers with a variety of health concerns that currently are increasing among Inuit populations. Recent food composition studies have facilitated evaluation of dietary intakes of nutrients and organochlorine contaminants. In one Baffin Inuit community, traditional Inuit food species were found to still be a major component of women's diets, and to make a significantly greater contribution than marketed foods for certain nutrients; however on the annual average marketed foods contributed greater amounts of total dietary energy, fat and calcium. Vitamin A and calcium were found to be routinely below recommended amounts in women's diets. PCBs and toxaphene's were contained in the diet in fatty sea mammal tissues; however the average woman's diet, on the annual basis, contained less than one-third of the provisional tolerable levels of these organochlorine contaminants. The diets of the Inuit, as of all Indigenous People, are not comprised solely of the historically traditional foods; however these foods are still vitally important as a source of nutrients and cultural definition. The presence of industry-derived organochlorine contaminants in Inuit food species is yet another demonstration that action is needed on environmental protection by local, national and international agencies.