In the Arctic, the typical meal looks very different. There, a traditional plate would have some fatty marine animal like seal or whale and not much else – fruits and vegetables are hard to come by in the harsh climate.
And yet despite the fact that the high-fat Arctic diet may sound like a heart attack waiting to happen, these people tend to have low rates of heart disease and diabetes.
Researchers thought maybe it was the omega-3 fatty acids in the meat and blubber that might be protective. But a new study on Inuit in Greenland suggests that Arctic peoples evolved certain genetic adaptations that allow them to consume much higher amounts of fat than most other people around the world, according a team of researchers reporting Thursday in the journal Science.
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How 'Diet Gurus' Hook Us With Religion Veiled In Science - NPR
Flip through today's bestselling diet books and you won't see any references to religion. From Paleo to vegan to raw, nutrition gurus package their advice as sound, settled science. It doesn't matter whether meat is blamed for colon cancer or grains are called out as fattening poison — there's no shortage of citations and technical terms (tertiary amines, gliadin, ketogenesis) to back up the claims.
But as a scholar of religion, it's become increasingly clear to me that when it comes to fad diets, science is often just a veneer. Peel it away and you find timeless myths and superstitions, used to reinforce narratives of good and evil that give meaning to people's lives and the illusion of control over their well-being.
