Eskimo – Inuit cuisine – Eskimo Food & Drink App – Traditionally Inuit cuisine (or Eskimo cuisine), which includes Greenlandic cuisine and Yup’ik cuisine, consisted of a diet of animal source foods that were fished, hunted, and gathered locally.
In the 20th century the Inuit diet began to change and by the 21st century the diet was closer to a Western diet. They travel using snow mobiles and dog sleds qamutik. After hunting, they often honour the animals spirit by singing songs and performing rituals. Although traditional or country foods still play an important role in the identity of Inuit, a large amount of food is purchased from the store, which has led to health problems and food insecurity.
According to Edmund Searles in his article Food and the Making of Modern Inuit Identities, they consume this type of diet because a mostly meat diet is “effective in keeping the body warm, making the body strong, keeping the body fit, and even making that body healthy”
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Food Sources
Hunted meats:
Sea mammals such as walrus, seal, and whale. Whale meat generally comes from the narwhal, beluga whale and the bowhead whale. The latter is able to feed an entire community for nearly a year from its meat, blubber, and skin. Inuit hunters most often hunt juvenile whales which, compared to adults, are safer to hunt and have tastier skin. Ringed seal and bearded seal are the most important aspect of an Inuit diet and is often the largest part of an Inuit hunter’s diet.
Land mammals such as caribou, polar bear, and muskox
Birds and their eggs
Saltwater and freshwater fish including sculpin, Arctic cod, Arctic char, capelin and lake trout.
While it is not possible to cultivate native plants for food in the Arctic, Inuit have traditionally gathered those that are naturally available, including:
Berries including crowberry and cloudberry
Herbaceous plants such as grasses and fireweed
Tubers and stems including mousefood, roots of various tundra plants which are cached by voles in burrows.
Roots such as tuberous spring beauty and sweet vetch.
Seaweed
