Environmental and Health Benefi ts of Hunting Lifestyles and Diets 111there are few secure jobs for Innu, and thus a dependence on welfare has emerged
with little opportunity for self-reliance or self-determined life choices. A signifi-
cant component of this change involves food. In the country, the Innu were self-
reliant in providing for their sustenance. Contacts with missionaries and traders
brought firearms, tea, flour and tobacco, but because they were relatively autono-
mous until sedentarization, the Innu diet largely consisted of wild meat, fish,
waterfowl and berries (Samson, 2003a, pp127–142).
The transition to processed foods
The nutrition transition is a well-established phenomenon in both industrialized
and developing countries (Popkin, 1998). In almost all of these industrialized and
developing country contexts, people have been largely dependent on the produce
from agriculture for several thousand years, and the nutrition transition has
involved a change from one diet based largely on foods from domesticated crops
and animals to another with similar derivation but with increased processing. For
the most recently settled hunter-gatherer societies, such as the Innu and other
indigenous peoples of Canada, their transition has occurred directly from wild
foods to modern refined (and often junk) foods.
In the Arctic and Subarctic regions, indigenous peoples’ diets have changed
from foods that are typically nutrient-dense, with high levels of protein and fat
(especially omega-3 fatty acids), and vitamins and minerals (e.g. vitamin C, sele-
nium), but relatively low levels of carbohydrates, to diets high in carbohydrates
and saturated fats and low in essential nutrients (McGrath-Hanna et al, 2003,
pp230–231). Importantly, these changes are on the whole very recent, with north-
ern peoples such as the Innu and Eastern James Bay Cree (Delormier and Kuhn-
lein, 1999, p182) still engaged in some hunting activities while domiciled in
villages. Hence, their diets consist of both country and modern, largely processed,
foods. While country foods can remain a significant part of the sustenance and
nutritional intake of some northern peoples, the diet that has become the norm
over recent decades is one that is deficient in many of the healthy properties of
food. A survey of seven northern aboriginal communities in the 1990s character-
ized this pattern as being low in fruits, vegetables and dairy products, high in
sugar, fat and saturated fat, and consisting of intakes of calcium, magnesium,
folate, vitamin C and vitamin A that do not reach recommended doses (Lawn
et al, 2002, p10).
Amongst Innu Tshenut, there is a widespread view that store bought food is
both unhealthy and makes people ill. This was evident almost as soon as the Innu
were sedentarized in the 1950s and 1960s when Father Frank Peters (1972,
pp10–11) quoted Innu at the new Davis Inlet village as feeling hungry after eating
processed food, and feeling that chicken, pork and beef were not as substantial as
caribou meat. At the same time, he also noted the rapid deterioration of the teeth
of the population, a condition he attributed to the sudden availability of sweets
and soft drinks in the store. Other observers noted exactly the same unfavourable