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WSU researchers found that Native Americans had diverse diets that did not rely solely on lean meat, which debunks previous findings that suggested Native peoples’ diets along the Pacific Rim were almost exclusively made up of salmon.
It is impossible that Native Americans would have lived almost exclusively off of salmon, said Shannon Tushingham, WSU anthropology professor and lead author of the study. They would have suffered “salmon starvation,” similar to the rabbit starvation many European explorers experienced.
Diets that are reliant on lean meat like salmon or rabbit would not be possible for humans to live on because it causes protein poisoning, she said. The human body requires other nutrients to survive, so diets consisting almost exclusively of salmon would be unsustainable, leading to death.
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PULLMAN, Wash. - Humans cannot live on protein alone - even for the ancient indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest whose diet was once thought to be almost all salmon.
In a new paper led by Washington State University anthropologist Shannon Tushingham, researchers document the many dietary solutions ancient Pacific Coast people in North America likely employed to avoid salmon starvation, a toxic and potentially fatal condition brought on by eating too much lean protein. Salmon was a critical resource for thousands of years throughout the Pacific Rim, but there were a lot of foods that were important, said Tushingham the lead author of the paper published online on April 8 in the
April 12, 2021
By Sara Zaske, WSU News
PULLMAN, Wash. – Humans cannot live on protein alone – even for the ancient indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest whose diet was once thought to be almost all salmon.
In a new paper led by Washington State University anthropologist Shannon Tushingham, researchers document the many dietary solutions ancient Pacific Coast people in North America likely employed to avoid “salmon starvation,” a toxic and potentially fatal condition brought on by eating too much lean protein.
“Salmon was a critical resource for thousands of years throughout the Pacific Rim, but there were a lot of foods that were important,” said Tushingham the lead author of the paper published online on April 8 in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. “Native people were not just eating salmon. There’s a bigger picture.”