August 8, 2006
Kamloops Daily News


If I can find a sexy name for my new diet, I'll make
millions of dollars. I'm not greedy; I just want a small
fraction of the $50 billion spent by desperate dieters in
North America annually.

A name that sounds carefree and easy like the South Beach
diet would be good, or maybe a serious and scientific name
like Dr. Atkins diet.

My diet will revolutionize the way you eat and it's
guaranteed to shed pounds. There is nothing to measure and
you can eat as much as you want.

I'll call the Inuit diet for now. The instructions are as
simple as Dr. Atkins' diet: meat good - carbs bad. However,
unlike Dr. Atkins who was obese when he died of kidney
failure in 2003, you'll eat your way to good health.

What's more, my diet has been tested on thousands of Inuit
for centuries.

You can eat all the muktuk you want. Muktuk is raw whale
skin with the underlying blubber attached. You'll find the
consistency a bit like chewing a tire but its novel texture
is part of the exotic appeal. For variety, try some raw
caribou liver. Seal oil is perfect for party dips.
Salmonberries whipped with walrus fat makes for a special
treat.

So how, you ask, can such a diet be healthy when it contains
no vegetables, fruit (except for a few berries), and no
carbohydrates? I'll reveal how the Inuit lived remarkably
healthy lives on a high-protein, high-fat diet.

The secret is that vitamins and minerals can come from a
variety of sources. Remember that there are no essential
foods, only essential nutrients.

So, don't worry about eating your vegetables. Vitamin A is
vital for healthy eyes and bones but you can get it from the
livers of sea mammals and fish.

It's the same with the sunshine vitamin D. Canada's Inuit
never fretted about getting direct exposure to sunlight, not
in world of complete winter darkness. Nor did they get
vitamin D through fortified cow's milk as long as they had
muktuk.

As for vitamin C, the source in the Inuit diet was a mystery
until recently. Humans are exceptional in the animal world
because we can't synthesize that vitamin in our livers
(along with other primates, guinea pigs, and bats).

Failure to synthesize vitamin C was a serious problem for
the European explorers who visited the Inuit. While the
explorers suffered from the gruesome and painful disease of
scurvy, the natives of the north didn't.

The Inuit diet easily provides enough vitamin C by eating
raw Caribou liver, or seal brain, or raw kelp. Only 100
milligrams of raw muktuk can supply 36 milligrams of vitamin
C; weight-for-weight it's as good as orange juice.

What's more, the Inuit diet is heart-healthy. Dr. Dewailly
from Laval University in Quebec found that Inuit who get at
least 40 per cent of their calories from traditional sources
have one-half the cardiac death rate as other Canadians.

You will lose weight on the Inuit diet, as the explorer
Vilhjlmur Stefansson found out when he tried it in 1928.
The secret is in the way that our bodies produce energy from
protein. The fastest way to make energy is to covert
carbohydrates to glucose as our primary fuel.

The conversion of protein to energy is more complicated.
The dizzying slew of enzymes required in the protein
conversion develops a lot of nitrogen waste for the liver to
deal with. Too much protein overwhelms the liver, resulting
in nausea, diarrhea, wasting, and eventually death.

So be sure to eat your fat with your protein. But unlike
Dr. Atkins' diet, you can't eat just any fat.

Farm animals, cooped up and stuffed with agricultural
grains, have a lot of solid, highly saturated fats. And
trans-fats are just as bad. Although they are made from
vegetable oil, these processed fats clog artery walls.

Wild animals eat what nature intended. Much of their fat is
monounsaturated, like olive oil. Cold water mammals and
fish are rich in healthy omega-3 fatty acids. Whale blubber
consists of 70 per cent monounsaturated fat and close to 30
per cent omega-3, says Dewailly.

I think I'll call my diet the Borealis diet. It has a
catchy ring to it. All I need is a few celebrity
endorsements and appearances on talk shows so I can
advertise my diet. I'm waiting by my phone for Oprah to
call.

David Charbonneau is the owner of Trio Technical.
He can be reached at dcharbonneau13@shaw.ca

go back to my Columns in the