Inuit cuisine


Historically, Inuit cuisine, which is taken here to include the Greenlandic, the Yupʼik and Aleut cuisines, consisted of a diet of animal source foods that were fished, hunted, and gathered locally.
After hunting, they often honour the animals' spirit by singing songs and performing rituals. Although traditional or country foods still play an important role in the identity of Inuit, much food is purchased from the store, which has led to health problems and food insecurity. According to Edmund Searles in his article Food and the Making of Modern Inuit Identities, they consume this type of diet because a mostly meat diet is "effective in keeping the body warm, making the body strong, keeping the body fit, and even making that body healthy".

Food sources

There has been a decline of hunting partially due to the fact that most young people lack the skills to survive off the land. They are no longer skilled in hunting like their ancestors and are growing more accustomed to the Qallunaat food that they receive from the south. The high costs of hunting equipment—snowmobiles, rifles, sleds, camping gear, gasoline, and oil—is also causing a decline in families who hunt for their meals.
  • Seal: Depending on the season, Inuit hunt for different types of seal: harp seal, harbour seal, and bearded seal. Ringed seals are hunted all year, while harp seals are only available during the summer. Because seals need to break through the ice to reach air, they form breathing holes with their teeth and claws. Through these, Inuit hunters are able to capture seals. When a hunter arrives at these holes, they set up a seal indicator that alerts the hunter when a seal is coming up for a breath of air. When the seal comes up, the hunter notices movement in the indicator and uses their harpoon, especially a toggling harpoon, to capture the seal in the water.
  • Walrus: They are often hunted during the winter and spring since hunting them in summer is much more dangerous. A walrus is too large to be controlled by one person, so it cannot be hunted alone. In Uqalurait: An Oral History of Nunavut, an Inuk elder describes the hunt of a walrus in these words: "When a walrus was sighted, the two hunters would run to get close to it and at a short distance it is necessary to stop when the walrus's head was submerged... the walrus would hear you approach. then tried to get in front of the walrus and it was harpooned while its head was submerged. In the meantime, the other person would drive the harpoon into the ice through the harpoon loop to secure it."
  • Bowhead whale: Similar to walrus, they are captured by harpoon. The hunters use active pursuit to harpoon the whale and follow it during attack. At times, Inuit were known for using a more passive approach when hunting whales. According to John Bennett and Susan Rowley, a hunter would harpoon the whale and instead of pursuing it, would "wait patiently for the winds, currents, and spirits to aid him in bringing the whale to shore".
File:Bowhead Whale 2002-08-10.jpg|thumb|Bowhead whale, caught in an Inuit subsistence whale hunt in Igloolik, Nunavut in 2002
  • Caribou : During the majority of the year, they roam the tundra in small herds, but twice a year large herds of caribou cross the inland regions. Caribou have excellent senses of smell and hearing so that the hunters must be very careful when in pursuit. Often, Inuit hunters set up camp miles away from the caribou crossing and wait until they are in full view to attack. There are many ways in which the caribou can be captured, including spearing, forcing the animals into the river, using blinders, scaring them, and stalking them. When spearing caribou, hunters put the string of the spear in their mouths and the other end they use to gently spear the animal.
  • Fish: They are caught by jigging. The hunter cuts a square hole in the ice on the lake and fishes using a fish lure and spear. Instead of using a hook on a line, Inuit use a fake fish attached to the line. They lower it into the water and move it around as if it is real. When the live fish approach it, they spear the fish before it has a chance to eat the fake fish.

    Nutrition

Because the climate of the Arctic is ill-suited for agriculture and lacks forageable plant matter for much of the year, the traditional Inuit diet is lower in carbohydrates and higher in fat and animal protein compared to the global average. When carbohydrate intake is inadequate for total energy requirements, protein is broken down in the liver through gluconeogenesis and utilized as an energy source. Inuit studied in the 1970s were found to have abnormally large livers, presumably to assist in this process. Their urine volumes were also high, a result of additional urea which the body uses to purge waste products from gluconeogenesis. However, in multiple studies the traditional Inuit diet has not been shown to be a ketogenic diet. Not only have multiple researchers been unable to detect any evidence of ketosis resulting from the traditional Inuit diet, but the ratios of fatty-acid to glucose were observed to be well below the generally accepted level of ketogenesis.
Inuit might consume more carbohydrates than most nutritionists have assumed. Because some of the meat the Inuit eat is raw and fresh, or freshly frozen, they can obtain more carbohydrates from their meat, as dietary glycogen, than Westerners can. The Inuit practice of preserving a whole seal or bird carcass under an intact whole skin with a thick layer of blubber also permits some proteins to ferment into carbohydrates. Furthermore, the blubber, organs, muscle and skin of the marine mammals that Inuit eat have significant glycogen stores, which assist those animals when oxygen is depleted on prolonged dives. For instance, when blubber is analyzed by direct carbohydrate measurements, it has been shown to contain as much as 8—30% carbohydrates. While postmortem glycogen levels are often depleted through the onset of rigor mortis, marine mammals have a much delayed onset of rigor mortis, even in warm conditions, presumably due to the high content of oxymyoglobin in the muscle that may permit aerobic metabolism to continue slowly for some time after the death of the animal. Additionally, in cold conditions, glycogen's depletion is halted at −18 °C and lower temperatures in comminuted meat.
Traditional Inuit diets derive approximately 50% of their calories from fat, 30–35% from protein and 15–20% of their calories from carbohydrates, largely in the form of glycogen from the raw meat they consumed. This high fat content provides valuable energy and prevents protein poisoning, which historically was sometimes a problem in late winter when game animals grew lean through winter starvation. It has been suggested that because the fats of the Inuit's wild-caught game are largely monounsaturated and rich in omega-3 fatty acids, the diet does not pose the same health risks as a typical Western high-fat diet. However, actual evidence has shown that Inuit have a similar prevalence of coronary artery disease as non-Inuit populations and they have excessive mortality due to cerebrovascular strokes, with twice the risk to that of the North American population. Indeed, the cardiovascular risk of this diet is so severe that the addition of a more standard American diet has reduced the incidence of mortality in the Inuit population. Furthermore, fish oil supplement studies have failed to support claims of preventing heart attacks or strokes.
Vitamins and minerals which are typically derived from plant sources are nonetheless present in most Inuit diets. Vitamins A and D are present in the oils and livers of cold-water fishes and mammals. Vitamin C is obtained through sources such as reindeer liver, kelp, muktuk, and seal brain; because these foods are typically eaten raw or frozen, the vitamin C they contain, which would be destroyed by cooking, is instead preserved.

Eating habits and food preparation

Searles defines Inuit food as mostly "eaten frozen, raw, or boiled, with very little mixture of ingredients and with very few spices added". Some preparations include:
  • Akutaq: berries mixed with fat.
  • Bannock : flatbread
  • Food preservation techniques include fermenting fish and meat in the form of igunaq
  • Labrador tea
  • Suaasat: a traditional soup made from seal, whale, reindeer, or seabirds.
One common way to eat the meat hunted is frozen. Many hunters will eat the food that they hunt on location where they found it. This keeps their blood flowing and their bodies warm. One custom of eating meat at the hunting site pertains to fish. In Overland to Starvation Cove: A History, Heinrich Klutschak explains the custom: "...no fish could be eaten in a cooked state on the spot where caught but could only be enjoyed raw; only when one is a day's march away from the fishing site is it permitted to cook the fish over the flame of a blubber lamp."
Inuit eat only two main meals a day, but it is common to eat many snacks every hour. Customs among Inuit when eating and preparing food are very strict and may seem odd for people of different cultures.
When eating a meal, Inuit place large slabs of meat, blubber, and other parts of the animal on a piece of metal, plastic, or cardboard on the floor. From here, anyone in the house is able to cut off a piece of meat. At these meals, no one is obliged to join in the meal; Inuit eat only when hungry. Sometimes, though, meals are announced to the whole camp. A woman does this by the shout of "Ujuk!" which means "cooked meat".
After a hunt, the eating habits differ from normal meals. When a seal is brought home, the hunters quickly gather around it to receive their pieces of meat first. This happens because the hunters are the coldest and hungriest among the camp and need the warm seal blood and meat to warm them. The seal is cut in a specific way directly after a hunt. Borré explains the cutting of the seal in this way: "one of the hunters slits the abdomen laterally, exposing the internal organs. Hunters first eat pieces of liver or they use a tea cup to gather some blood to drink." At this time, hunters may also chop up pieces of fat and the brain to mix together and eat with meat.
Women and children are accustomed to eating different parts of the seal because they wait until the hunters are done eating. Intestines are the first thing to be chosen and then any leftover pieces of the liver are consumed. Finally, ribs and the backbone are eaten and any remaining meat is distributed among the camp.