Misconceptions

• The U.S. recommends 75 to 90 milligrams of vitamin C, yet some dieticians state only 10 milligrams are required to avoid scurvy, a degenerative disease affecting connective tissue. Many traditional Inuit foods have over the amount required to stave off scurvy. Seal brain, for example, has close to 15 milligrams of vitamin C stored within the tissue.
  
  

Considerations

• Though many of the vitamins required for normal dietary maintenance can be found in the Inuit diet, a specific process called gluconeogenesis is required to form glucose. In the Western diet, we get our glucose from carbohydrate rich grains. The Inuit diet, lacking in any real carbohydrate source, requires the body to transform protein to glucose in the liver through gluconeogenesis.
  
  

Warning

• Though a protein-rich diet can provide the body with some of its requirements, a diet relying solely on protein has serious health deficiencies. Too much overwhelms normal liver function, leading to protein poisoning. The Inuit diet circumvents this problem by including fat. In fact, 50 percent of the Inuit diet is fat, and that fat is the source of the nutrients missing in protein.
  
  

Theories/Speculation

• This type of protein-rich diet has become popularized in the United States with the Atkins diet. The differences between the Atkins diet and traditional Inuit nutrition is in the types of fats and proteins consumed. Fats taken from wild animals, especially cold-water fishes, have less saturated fats than what you would find in a hamburger or processed food. Instead, the fats found in the Inuit diet are rich in polyunsaturated fats that may benefit the vascular system.
  
  

Western Alternatives

• Taking fish oil as a dietary supplement has some of the positive effects found in the Inuit diet. Fish oil is rich in the same polyunsaturated fats found in seal fat. In 2010, researchers have found that taking fish oil may even help prevent certain types of cancer, namely breast cancer. As an added benefit, polyunsaturated fats in fish oil reduce inflammation, in turn reducing the risk of disease.