The American Indian Quarterly

For Native Americans, current federal dietary guidelines promoting a meaty, cheesy diet amounted to, perhaps inadvertently, the nutritional equivalent of smallpox-infected blankets.

Ninety percent of diabetes and 80 percent of heart disease cases can be directly attributed to unhealthy eating and lifestyle habits.

Poor health resulting from lifestyle choice is a serious problem for Americans.¹ Heart disease, obesity, diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, and alcoholism rage across tribal Nations and have struck both the young and old. Members of my tribe, the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, for example, have been especially hard hit by a variety of ailments directly related to poor diet and lack of exercise.

In a recent commentary, physicians Neal D. Barnard and Derek M. Brown stated that the 1995 Dietary Guidelines (that were reviewed in mid-2000) advocate a diet that is unlike the traditional diets of Native peoples. An example of how out of step nutrition "experts" are with the needs of Natives is a study conducted in 1977 in Gastroenterology that revealed that 100 percent of Natives tested were lactose intolerant, which is a food intolerance to lactose, a sugar found in milk products. Those suffering from lactose intolerance are deficient in the enzyme lactase. Without being digested [End Page 807] by lactase, food then enters the colon where it produces uncomfortable bloating, cramping, and diarrhea. Almost 50 million Americans have lactose intolerance, and it is estimated that 75 percent of American Indian adults have lactose intolerance. Yet the Dietary Guidelines advises that everyone eat two or three servings of dairy foods, despite the reality that other foods, such as green, leafy vegetables and beans, also supply calcium.²

But lactose intolerance seems a minor problem compared to other ailments with which Natives must contend. Using the Oklahoma Choctaws' situations as examples, consider that almost every back issue of the Choctaw Nation's newspaper ( BISHINIK) since 1995 has at least one, but usually two or three, articles about diabetes, obesity, eating right (usually a wic—Women, Infant and Children—column that features recipes and nutrition information), and exercise. The Nation participates in the "Walk This Weigh" campaign, an annual Walk/Run for Diabetes Awareness sponsored by the Choctaw Nation Health Care Center, sponsors a Youth Wellness Camp and funds a Diabetes Treatment Center that tests and educates Choctaws. In addition, a group of workers with the Diabetes Multi-Resource Task Force travels across the Choctaw Nation to test fifth graders for diabetes and to give presentations about healthy lifestyles.

There is good reason for publishing this information and opening more centers. At the 2002 Labor Day Festival in Tushkahoma, Oklahoma, for example, 115 participants in a test to measure fat content revealed that over half of those people were at risk for developing diabetes; of 344 who took a blood test, 35 people had blood glucose levels of 140 mg/dl and 64 people who have diabetes were tested for blood glucose level and 22 had levels above 200 mg/dl. The Native American Diabetes Initiative asserts that in some tribes, Type II diabetes has stricken half the tribal members.³

Diabetes is one of the most common ailments afflicting Native people. It is estimated that 17 million Americans, or 6.2 percent of the U.S. population, has diabetes compared to 30 percent of American Indians who are 25 percent more likely to develop diabetes than non-Natives. In February 2002, the Choctaw Nation reported that in 2001, 831 new cases of diabetes were diagnosed, bringing the total number of Choctaws with diabetes in the service area to 3,800.⁴ The number may be much higher, however, because many people with diabetes have not been diagnosed.

Diabetes mellitus occurs when the pancreas stops producing the hormone [End Page 808] insulin or does not create...