The traditional diet of the Inuit, an enduring part of Canadian lore for hundreds of years, remains as much a part of life in the North now as it was a century ago. It has proven just as resilient as the western holiday tradition of eating turkey with all the trimmings.
Just don't try a trade - many in the North would turn down flat the fowl fare that's been gracing millions of tables across North America the past few days.
"There's a lot of us here in the Western Arctic that still hunt and go out and live the traditional life," says 65-year-old Billy Day, a member of the Inuvialuit Game Council in Inuvik, N.W.T.
Even dangerously high levels of pollutants in "country foods" like seal and beluga whale aren't enough to convince northerners to give up their hearty habits, says Day. "It would take an awful lot to really make us change our diet. It's part of our culture. It's something that's really hard to explain."
A Health Canada study released this month points to high levels of cadmium and mercury in many of the animals upon which traditional Inuit depend for sustenance. But despite the toxins, nutritional experts and Health Canada agree: a steady diet of meats and fats from the ringed seal and beluga whale still does more good than harm. "The nutritional value of our country foods probably overrides the danger of the pollutants that are in them," Day said in a phone interview from Inuvik, about 2,000 meters northwest of Edmonton. "If would take a lot of proof that it is harming us before we would give up our way of life, our way of eating."
A western-based diet - which includes everything form fast food to the standard Christmas meal - might be worse for the Inuit than eating toxin-laced country food.
"What was more important was the concern about malnutrition from foods imported form the West, because it's not as nutritious as whales and seals," said Leslie Whitby of Indian and Northern Affairs. Rather than have the Inuit eat food that would pose a known health risk, it made more sense to let them maintain their traditional diets, Whitby said.
Whale blubber's high caloric content provides the pure energy that also helps protect people from the frigid Arctic cold. "In cold temperatures, people tend to need more calories to fend off the cold, a lot more than people in the south are likely to need," said Dr. Bev Hasten of the Health Protection Branch in Ottawa. Beluga blubber also contains fatty acids called Omega-3 that seem to counteract the onset of heart disease, Hasten said.
Day said he gets hundreds of visitors from around the world who come to join his whaling camp and sample some country cuisine.
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