[Source: Jane E. Brody] -- Going back to one's roots could soon take on a more literal meaning for the native Americans of the American Southwest, as well as for peoples elsewhere in the world who are poorly adapted to rich, refined foods. For the sake of their health, as well as their cultural heritage, the Pima and Tohono O'odham tribes of Arizona are being urged to rediscover the desert foods their people traditionally consumed until as recently as the 1940's. Studies strongly indicate that people who evolved in these arid lands are metabolically best suited to the feast-and-famine cycles of their forebears who survived on the desert's unpredictable bounty, both wild and cultivated. By contrast, the modern North American diet is making them sick.With rich food perpetually available, weights in the high 200's and 300's are not uncommon among these once-lean people. As many as half the Pima and Tohono O'odham (formerly Papago) Indians now develop diabetes by the age of 35, an incidence 15 times higher than for Americans as a whole. Yet before World War II, diabetes was rare in this population. Similar problems have been found among Australian aborigines, Pacific Islanders and other peoples whose survival historically depended on their ability to stash away calories in times of plenty to sustain them during droughts and crop failures. The Pima and Tohono O'odham Indians seem unusually efficient at turning calories to body fat; nutritionists say they gain weight readily on the kinds and amounts of foods people of European descent can eat with no problem. Preliminary studies have indicated that a change in the Indian diet back to the beans, corn, grains, greens and other low-fat, high-fiber plant foods that their ancestors depended upon can normalize blood sugar, suppress between-meal hunger and probably also foster weight loss. [Note: To read the full article, click here.]
