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volume 36 , number 1 published 20 december 2020
review article
Comparison of Traditional Indigenous Diet and Modern Industrial Diets and Their Link to Ascorbate Requirement and Status Authors: Alexander J Audette; Francesco Anello; Richard Russell Johnson Citation: Audette AJ, Anello F & Johnson RR (2021) Comparison of traditional indigenous diet and modern industrial diets and their link to ascorbate requirement and status. J Orthomol Med. 36(1) abstract
Traditional indigenous diets contained liberal amounts of parts of animals such as internal organs, glands and other tissues in addition to edible insects and foraged wild vegetables. As a consequence, carbohydrate loads in traditional indigenous diets were much lower than modern diets of today. Ascorbic acid is a small molecule that utilizes similar transporters as glucose to enter cells in its oxidized form. It has been observed that hypoglycemia can occur as a side effect of intravenous infusions of vitamin C. Conversely, when glucose levels are elevated, absorption of ascorbic acid is decreased due to competition with glucose, which necessitates an increased need in those consuming a modern industrial diet to increase their consumption of ascorbic acid in order to satisfy tissue requirements for the vitamin. In traditional indigenous diets, which would be very similar to ketogenic diets today, lower amounts of ascorbic acid are required due to that lack of competition from lower blood glucose levels. This paper examines the superiority of the forgotten traditional diets and how instituting elements of them into our modern diet can aid therapeutic outcomes where high dose intravenous Vitamin C is used as a treatment. history of dietary change
In the early 19th century, arctic explorers and whalers began trading with the Inuit, which brought substantial changes to the traditional indigenous diet by introducing pilot biscuits, flour, sugar, coffee, tobacco and salt (Fediuk,
2002). Subsequent to this in the 1930s, pioneering nutritional studies were done by the dentist Weston A. Price. Price travelled the world examining pre-contact indigenous peoples to understand the reason behind formation of dental caries. He observed that there was an almost complete lack of carious and or deformed teeth, congenital skeletal malformations and a high immunity to infectious disease among indigenous peoples from every continent with low or no contact (Price, 1939). One of the groups Price studied were the Inuit in northern Alaska. The traditional Inuit diet was comprised of salmon, salmon eggs, entire body of seal, caribou with organ meats, dried sea kelp, berries, sorrel grass (i.e. Cochlearia) preserved in seal oil, and entire body of whale (Price, 1939). A particularly important feature of the Inuit diet is the relatively high level of vitamin A and D, which is present in the liver organ meats, seal oil, whale blubber and fish eyes and eggs, as well as the moderate vitamin C levels that are found in the liver, adrenal glands of caribou, the blubber and skin of whales, the liver, brain and fat of seals (Iwama et al., 2012), (Fediuk, 2002), berries and sorrel grass also colloquially known as scurvy grass (Pereira, 1854). Additionally, the macronutrient ratios (i.e., protein ~56%, fat 43%, carbohydrate 1%) of the Inuit diet indicate that pre-contact Inuit people were in ketosis due to their very low carbohydrate intake (Heller & Scott, 1967). The carious teeth study reported by Price performed with the residents of Bethel, Alaska, on the Kuskokwim river is shown in Table 1. Types of diet clearly affected the proportions of dental caries.
© 2021 International Society for Orthomolecular Medicine ISSN 0317-0209