Inuit dietary patterns in modern Greenland

Area of Science:

• Nutritional epidemiology
• Public health nutrition
• Sociology of food

Background:

• Understanding contemporary dietary patterns in indigenous populations is crucial for public health interventions.
• Urbanization and socioeconomic changes significantly impact traditional diets worldwide.
• The Inuit population in Greenland has experienced rapid societal transformations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To apply and compare two distinct methods for defining dietary patterns in the Greenlandic Inuit population.
• To analyze contemporary dietary patterns in relation to urbanization and socioeconomic position.
• To assess the applicability of different dietary pattern methodologies.

Main Methods:

• A cross-sectional population survey involving 2,247 Inuit aged 18+ in West Greenland.
• Dietary intake assessed using a 67-item Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ).
• Two analytical approaches used: factor-cum-cluster analysis and a normative approach based on dietary recommendations.

Main Results:

• Six dietary patterns were identified by the factor-cum-cluster analysis and five by the normative approach, with partial overlap.
• Dietary pattern distribution varied significantly by age, gender, urbanization, and socioeconomic position.
• A 'healthy' pattern was associated with older women in towns; an 'unhealthy' pattern with young individuals; and a 'traditional' pattern with older, village-dwelling hunters/fishermen.

Conclusions:

• Both data-driven and normative approaches yielded comparable results for characterizing Inuit dietary patterns.
• The normative approach offers direct applicability for dietary interventions and can be applied to diverse datasets.
• The data-driven approach is valuable for identifying novel dietary patterns but is dataset-specific.