top of page

Historical Event

Copy URL to Share

Date:

December 1, 1957

Short Description:

Tweet:

twitter-icon_edited.png

Reddit:

meatrition.png
Screenshot 2023-09-23 at 1.31.54 AM.png

Dr Ray N. Lawson believes most or all other types of malignancy to be as rare as breast cancer, among those Eskimos of the Canadian Arctic who still depend for the main part of their food on fat and lean seal's meat, cooked moderately or eaten raw.

rollo-meat-diabetes_edited.jpg

Title:

Book:

Person:

Dr. Ray N. Lawson of 4459 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal 6 Conversation

URL:

Important Text:

 

Since this statement is restricted to one localized form of malignancy, breast cancer, I arranged through mutual friends to meet, on my next visit to Montreal, Dr. Ray N. Lawson of 4459 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal 6. He said in conversation, and has more recently said in writing, that he believes most or all other types of malignancy to be as rare as breast cancer, among those Eskimos of the Canadian Arctic who still depend for the main part of their food on fat and lean seal's meat, cooked moderately or eaten raw. Those whom he investigated, up to the end of 1957, were typically seal hunters, not much dependent on fur trapping, very little dependent on European foods or on European-style cooking.

At first Dr. Lawson's inability to find cancer led him to think that there might be some special immunizing agent in seal's fat, particularly if rancid. However, my understanding later (as of middle 1958) was that while he remains a believer in the general merit of high-fat, low-carbohydrate, little-cooked diets, he is no longer so strongly inclined to believe that seal's fat, fresh or rancid, has any marked anticarcinogenic effect, beyond whatever merit there is in the Stone Age Eskimo way of life as a whole. He feels that “there is something in primitive [Eskimo] diet that protects from malignant disease.”

Topics: (click image to open)

Facultative Carnivore
Facultative Carnivore describes the concept of animals that are technically omnivores but who thrive off of all meat diets. Humans may just be facultative carnivores - who need no plant products for long-term nutrition.
Eskimo
The Inuit lived for as long as 10,000 years in the far north of Canada, Alaska, and Greenland and likely come from Mongolian Bering-Strait travelers. They ate an all-meat diet of seal, whale, caribou, musk ox, fish, birds, and eggs. Their nutritional transition to civilized plant foods spelled their health demise.
Cancer
Cancer is a metabolic disease where the mitochrondria are no longer able to burn fatty acids and instead rely on fermentation of glucose and glutamine. Ketogenic diets have been used to prevent and cure cancer, as they induce a metabolic stress on cancer cells who cannot use ketones as fuel.
Carnivore Diet
The carnivore diet involves eating only animal products such as meat, fish, dairy, eggs, marrow, meat broths, organs. There are little to no plants in the diet.
bottom of page