Native Food Groups--Future Possibilities

I've always wondered how native folks got by without having Twinkies, ring baloney, taco chips and ice cream---oh ya, cheese doodles, or for that matter plastic lettuce spinners. You know, all the really good things that make up our diets today. Seriously, your hanging out in the streams and woodlands of Wisconsin in, say, 1650, just cruising, doing your own thing getting by with the family and you have to come up with a couple of thousands calories a day per person.

I don't think we would be opening the day with a bowl of cereal, a warmed bagel, maybe a nice yogurt with berries from Honduras. Rather, one might have to settle for a few fresh river clams on the whole shell. They are huge, they were edible before pollution, but having dissected a few as a kid and smelled them, I don't recall pinning for a robust serving-- just not considered delectable fare. Maybe boiled in bear grease with a side of Lambs Quarters (the plant) topped off with some ground maze. Actually, that doesn't sound too bad. I could do it. The wife?

Well, the thoughts could go on and I am sure we could actually find some possibilities, not possibilities that would be seen as a culinary delight but still food. We might have to have a few new skills, but still there is hope.

When it comes to winter, I'm not so sure just what one would do when things got nippy. There would be no little bracer from Mr. Jack Daniels for sure and just maybe I would have to live off my accumulated summer fat. Dried stuff?

?

Anyway, above is a food pyramid put out by what I believe is the school system from Nelson Island in the Arctic where live the Yu'pick Eskimos. It does shed a little light on how things worked. There was no milk so they ate the bones of fish for calcium. Most interestingly, they consumed huge amounts of fat and had no know heart disease.

The bread part on the bottom was only for modern natives and didn't exist prior to white men. Take it in and go figure. Not my idea of fun but then I am a white dude from Europe. When my people were Neanderthals this would probably make our list as well. Just doesn't seem possible now.