Todd Moody wrote:

>Why would
>we expect an Australian aborigine, whose traditional diet is low
>in meat but high in fibrous vegetation to do well on the Inuit
>diet?

But according to what I've read they ate plenty of animal foods. In the
Summer 1998 issue of Price Pottenger Nutritional Foundation Journal there
is an article by Fallon and Enig. It appears to be from Weston Price's
book. (Todd, you don't have Nutrition and Physical Degeneration?) Much
discussion of how they caught land mammals, birds, reptiles, seafood and
insects.

The men trapped the kangaroo in groups. Smaller marsupials, such as
wallaby, paddy-melon, bandicoot and kangaroo rat, were also hunted.
Nocturnal animals such as possum and koala bear were extracted from their
daytime resting places in various ingenious ways. Bats were caught during
the day as they slept in the scrub. Reptiles such as goannas (iguanas),
lizards, frogs and snakes found a place in the Aboriginal diet, as did
birds of all sizes -- emus, turkeys, swans, ducks, parrots and cockatoos.

The great challenge for the Aborigine was to obtain enough dietary fat.
They were close observers of nature and knew just when certain animals were
at their fattest.

Other sources of fat included eggs -- from bother birds and reptiles -- and
a great variety of insects. Chief among them was the witchety grub, or moth
larva, found in rotting trunks of trees. these succulent treats -- often
over six inches long -- were eaten both raw and cooked. Fat content of the
dried grub is as high as 67%. The green tree ant was another source of
valuable fat, with a fat-to-protein ratio of about 12 to one.

The traditional role for Aboriginal women was that of gatherer. They were
responsible for harvesting insects, shellfish and almost all plant foods.

Animal foods were generally cooked, either over an open fire or steamed in
pits.

Don.