A while back, I'd mentioned that there were very few studies done on the consumption of rendered fat such as pemmican. Fortunately, I just encountered a referrence to Cordain finding scientific data confirming that pemmican-eating Inuit had extensive atherosclerosis as a result of such dire food:-
"Here is part of a Cordain interview about finding extensive
atherosclerosis in an old Inuit woman from 1520 AD.
"…..I’m very farmiliar with pemmican. I’ve got all the pemmican stuff
forever. Stefanson tried to get a grant in World War II from the U-S
army to feed the troops pemmican.
I’m not saying that pemmican isn’t a healthy food. It’s probably an
expedient way to provide calories over a North American winter. It’s a
very great way to store these things. An all pemmican diet, I don’t
think is a healthy diet for a number of reasons. If you only eat
pemmican, I think you’ll become osteoporotic. You won’t get any
vitamin A. If you eat only pemmican, you will promote atherosclerosis.
So I just bring to you one paper that I’d like you to distribute. That
paper is published in an obscure journal, the Texas Heart Institute
Journal in 1993. So nobody’s read it, because you can’t get it on
Medline. What this guy did, he was a physician, an MD PhD by the name
of Zimmerman. Zimmerman was a pathologist, and he was lucky enough to
be in Alaska when a 400 AD, so we’re talking 1600 year old, frozen
Inuit mummy was recovered. He did an autopsy on this, and he sectioned
the coronary arteries. So this is 400 AD. These people had never seen
white people. They had only eaten what Steve Phinney had suggested
people eat–fat and protein–and significant atherosclerosis in a 53
year old Inuit woman, on pathology. That wasn’t just the only case. He
then was privy to another group of frozen Eskimo bodies that were
recovered in Barrow, Alaska, and these people date to about 1520 AD,
so just slightly after the time Columbus had discovered America. Once
again, no influence of Western civilization. So presumably, they were
living at Barrow, 60 degrees north, they were eating meat and fat
their entire life. They might get a little bit of berries sometime in
the summer. Extensive atherosclerosis was in the older woman, who was
30. All three of them were osteoporotic. They were severely
osteoporotic on that type of diet. So you can give this to people who
claim that all we need to eat is meat and fat...."
http://www.meandmydiabetes.com/2010/03/24/loren-cordain-caution-on-saturated-fats-disaster-with-grains-will-be-public-after-march-25th/comment-page-1/ "
*EDIT* It seems I was apparently wrong in not mentioning the original source after Cordain, so I should add that the above quote was by Kenneth Anderson, and featured on the PALEOFOOD list-group.*
There are other examples such as Mann's study of the Masai which confirmed that they had atherosclerotic tendencies. All this data is most useful as it counters the foolish notion of Weston-Price that hunter-gatherers in the Neolithic era all were super-healthy, and shows that even lightly-cooked, relatively unprocessed diets can cause a degree of ill-health.
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