Did the flame burn brighter but shorter for the Eskimo?

The following passage from Viljhalmur Stefansson's monograph "Adventures in
Diet" (1) illustrates his belief that the Eskimos of Coronation Gulf aged
more rapidly than normal. He attributed this to their all meat diet which
he also felt provided them with above average health and vitality:

   "While meat eaters seem to average well in health, we must in our
conclusion draw a caution from the most complete modern example of them,
the Eskimos of Coronation Gulf.
   Mr. Diamond Jenness...concluded from his experience in the Gulf, when he
was anthropologist on my third expedition, that the two chief causes of
death were accidents and old age. This puts in a different form my saying
that these survivors of the stone age were the healthiest people I have
ever lived among. I would say the community, from infancy to old age, may
have had on the average the health of an equal number of men about twenty,
say college students. The danger is that you may reason, with too much
confidence in a single factor, from this good health to a necessarily great
average longevity. So far as we can tell, the Eskimos, before the white men
upset their physiological as well as their economic balance, lived on the
average at least ten years less than we. Now their lives average still
shorter; but that is partly from communicated diseases.
   If it be true that the good average health of meat eaters is not
necessarily accompanied by a great average length of life, the explanation
may be along the line of what has been said, ante, that I found the
exclusive meat diet in New York to be stimulating - I felt energetic and
optimistic both winter and summer. Perhaps it may be considered that meat
is, over all, a stimulating diet, in the sense that metabolic processes are
speeded up. You are then living at a faster rate, which means you would
grow up rapidly and get old soon. This is perhaps confirmed by that early
maturing of Eskimo women ...It may be that meat as a speeder-up of
metabolism explains in part both that Eskimo women are sometimes
grandmothers before the age of twenty-three, and that they usually seem as
old at sixty as our women do at eighty."

Note here that Stefansson's belief that meat in some way "speeds up"
metabolism cannot be taken exactly literally. During the studies at
Bellevue while on an all meat diet, neither he nor Andersen showed any
increase in basal metabolic rate (2).

In later years Stefansson made a point that Eskimos of advanced years could
be identified (3). Nevertheless, his initial observation came to be
generally accepted and, as discussed below, seems to be in accord with
modern gerontological research.

While aging is clearly a multifactorial process and numerous mechanisms
have been proposed, oxidative stress (free radical damage) is one that is
likely to be of fundamental importance (4,5). The case for involvement of
oxidative stress in aging has direct experimental support in that
genetically engineered fruit flies with elevated levels of the free radical
scavenging enzymes superoxide dismutase and catalase have significantly
extended lifespans (6).

Considerations of oxidative stress are particularly relevant for the
ketogenic Eskimo diet. On a ketogenic diet, energy is derived primarily
from lipid oxidation, resulting in greater utilization of aerobic
metabolism due to the lower respiratory quotient (RQ) for fats (0.7) as
opposed to protein
(0.8) or carbohydrate (1.0). The lower the RQ the greater the amount of
oxygen necessary to produce a given amount of energy. Stefansson noted in
FAT OF THE LAND (7) that high fat diets would be expected to work less well
at high altitudes due to the increased oxygen requirement: "A physiologist
who has been in charge of instruction for high-altitude work in World War
II puts it that if a high fat-protein dietis fed to aviators 'immediately
before as well as during flight, the capacity to tolerate oxygen lack and
to work at high altitudes is reduced. On a high carbohydrate diet similarly
taken a definite increase in altitude tolerance is observed. The results
are probably due to the fact that, in comparison with carbohydrates,
proteins and fats require for use relatively larger amounts of oxygen,
which is less available at high altitudes.'"

A diet high enough in fats should cause significantly increased oxidative
stress and accelerated aging. This would seem to be the case with the
Eskimos Stefansson observed. If Stefansson is also correct about increased
health and vigor associated with a high fat diet (I know of no theoretical
basis for this), the long term cost of a high fat diet might be offset by
increased early survival and reproduction for primitive peoples.

I would be very grateful if anyone in the group could offer data, argument,
or comment relevant to these ideas. In particular, I'd appreciate hearing
from anyone familiar enough with Eskimo studies to more properly evaluate
Stefansson's comments than myself.


(1) Stefansson, V. (December,1935 and January, 1936) Harper's Magazine.
    "Adventures in Diet" pp. 34-35.
(2) McClellan, W.S. et al (1931). J Biol Chem 93(2): 419.
(3) Stefansson, V. (1958) Science 127: 16-19.
(4) Harman, D. (1956) J. Gerontol 11:298.
(5) Sohal, R.S. and R. Weindruch (1996) Science 273: 59.
(6) Orr, W.C. and R.S. Sohal (1994) Science 263: 1128.
(7) Stefansson, V. (1957) THE FAT OF THE LAND, pp.266-267.


Gary Ditta

PS My apologies to Dean for another fat question, but the point here is a
bit different than usual I think and I've been wondering about this for
some time.