The Inuit Paradox
"How come the people here, who for long periods eat nothing but the meat from one type of animal, are healthier than we are?" Andreas Viestad, author of "Where Flavor Was Born," poses the nutritional question in Where Home Cooking Gets the Cold Shoulder. This is another example of how an evolved system is superior to an engineered one. It shows the connection between culture (cuisine and taste) and nutrition. A food culture that survives, survives because the people are still alive to continue eating according to their food ways. This is also another way in which folklore affects us.
The more distance you put between yourself and the nutritionists with their reductionist theories, the better your health will be.
I disagree with the statement by nutrition researcher Harriet V. Kuhnlein, who says "Every time you process or cook something -- anything -- you are likely to be losing nutrients at every step..." This is not true for cooking tomatoes, which liberates and makes certain nutrients more bioavailable. We don't know what the tradeoffs between raw and cooked are.
It is worth noting the author's book is concerns flavor. Because taste is an important determinant in the choices a food culture makes. We suspect that in pre-scientific socities people somehow discovered what foods, what parts of the animal, were the most nutritious and the higher status or wealthier people (quite the opposite in the West, where eventually wealth meant less nutritious foods) ate the best parts. It turns out the best parts provide critical nutrients not found in other parts of the animal.
Traditional cultures cannot afford to waste any part of the animal and therefore generally eat liver, brains, etc. that are undesirable to most Americans or modern Westerners. These parts have gradually disappeared from the Western diet because they are "yucky" to think about. These parts can be an acquired taste. So it leaves open the question, were these pre-scientific people guided by taste or by observing people were healthier when they ate these parts? Maybe it is simple as a large number of groups eating different diets, the ones with a better diet survived, and their choices became a food tradition.
The more distance you put between yourself and the nutritionists with their reductionist theories, the better your health will be.
I disagree with the statement by nutrition researcher Harriet V. Kuhnlein, who says "Every time you process or cook something -- anything -- you are likely to be losing nutrients at every step..." This is not true for cooking tomatoes, which liberates and makes certain nutrients more bioavailable. We don't know what the tradeoffs between raw and cooked are.
It is worth noting the author's book is concerns flavor. Because taste is an important determinant in the choices a food culture makes. We suspect that in pre-scientific socities people somehow discovered what foods, what parts of the animal, were the most nutritious and the higher status or wealthier people (quite the opposite in the West, where eventually wealth meant less nutritious foods) ate the best parts. It turns out the best parts provide critical nutrients not found in other parts of the animal.
Traditional cultures cannot afford to waste any part of the animal and therefore generally eat liver, brains, etc. that are undesirable to most Americans or modern Westerners. These parts have gradually disappeared from the Western diet because they are "yucky" to think about. These parts can be an acquired taste. So it leaves open the question, were these pre-scientific people guided by taste or by observing people were healthier when they ate these parts? Maybe it is simple as a large number of groups eating different diets, the ones with a better diet survived, and their choices became a food tradition.
posted by Steve Knoblock at
7:55 PM
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