New food guide tailored to Inuit

Inuit are being told that their traditional foods should continue to be an important part of their diet. That's why Nunavut's new Food Guide includes things you won't find in southern guides such as bone marrow for calcium, and fat for vitamin A and other nutrients.

Aaju Peter won't have any problems following the new food guide. She loves "country food."

"The brains, with fat and blackberries, that is so good," she says as she prepares a stew from a freshly caught seal. Peter has access to other food imported from southern Canada, but she prefers traditional food.

"I need to have the blood, I need to have all the brains and the fat it invigorates me," she says.

In many remote communities fruits, vegetables and milk products are rare, or very expensive. But health officials are now recognizing and spreading the word that calcium and other nutrients can be consumed through such things as bone marrow.

"So even though Inuit have not traditionally eaten fruits and vegetables, they would get the nutrients that you typically get from fruits and vegetables from country foods," says Brenda McIntyre, a Nunavut nutritionist.

That's why the new food guide is tailored to the unique eating habits of Inuit. Rather than having pork or beef in the meat section, it will contain things like beluga whale, caribou and seal. And under fruits and vegetables 2!50; wild berries and seaweed.

"This is just a small way of reinforcing that what we have in the north is very healthy," says health promoter Ainiak Korgak.

Health problems like diabetes and some cancers are beginning to show up in Nunavut diseases that the Inuit say have never seen here before. Many blame changes in lifestyle and poor diet.

Health-care workers hope that once the new food guide is released in a few months, it will encourage people to return to more traditional and healthy eating habits.