INUVIK
"The body will do wonderful things if it has the fuel," Eric Shirt says.
Independent health, wellness and fitness consultant Eric Shirt of Pure North spoke about nutritional issues during a lunchtime presentation at the Aurora College campus April 12. - Shawn Giilck/NNSL photo
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Shirt is an independent health, wellness and fitness consultant working with the Calgary-based Pure North S'Energy Foundation. He was in Inuvik on April 12 to speak to a small group of spectators during a lunchtime presentation at the Aurora College campus. The foundation is a non-profit program that focuses on delivering preventative and integrative health and wellness strategies, and has a team of health and dental professionals, including physicians, nurses and naturopathic doctors, according to a news release from December.
He spoke at length on the importance of diet and nutrition as a way to find better health.
"Nutrition is fuel for growth, repair and maintenance," he told a handful of people who attended the talk.
Many foods that we commonly eat today, Shirt said, were not eaten before the industrial revolution. Along with revamping the way we work, that event also transformed the way we eat, and not for the better. Food has become industrialized to serve the needs of big companies, Shirt said, and that's killing us slowly.
"When I was growing up we had our own gardens, we had cows, chickens and we hunted," he said. "Now we open food."
He said that a more traditional diet is what allowed aboriginal people in the NWT and North America to perform incredible feats of endurance and strength. He said the "right fuel" is what enabled them to withstand a brutal climate and run down prey animals such as deer and caribou.
In contrast, many modern foods barely carry any nutrition, he suggested.
Shirt pointed to margarine, a common food item today, as an example. He said it is "one molecule away from plastic," and if left on a table, would never deteriorate. Many other prepared foods are similar he said.
"Even flies won't land on or try to eat them."
A lack of proper food, Shirt said, creates chronic diseases such as we see today. For example, he said that at one time diabetes wasn't a common disease.
"The body can take years of punishment before it rebels," he said. "There's a billion cells replaced every hour."
The main causes of cell damage, he said, can be narrowed down to trauma, poison and starvation. According to his philosophy, many of our modern problems are due to starvation and poison.
The solution is fairly simple and "easy," he said.
"The traditional diet is simple, easy and nutritious," he said. "We need to go back to it."
His advice corresponds with a burgeoning interest in growing food and small-scale livestock farming that's cropping up all over in Inuvik at the moment.
"Health Canada says Northern kids will die sooner than their parents," Shirt added. "That's tragic."
