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previously isolated group of natives called the Copper Inuit (so named because they used copper tools), and he lived with them for his entire stay. His third and final expedition began in 1913 and lasted for 5 years.
    Later, he wrote: “In 1906 I went to the Arctic with the food tastes and beliefs of the average American. By 1918, after eleven years as an Eskimo among Eskimos, I had learned things which caused me to shed most of those beliefs.” 6
    One of the beliefs Stefansson took to the Arctic was the prevailing notion that the less meat you ate, the better off you’d be. The view then—as now—was that if you ate a lot of meat, you would develop, among other things, hardening of the arteries, high blood pressure, and, very likely, a breakdown of the kidneys.
    But this is what he found: the Eskimos he lived with ate a diet that consisted almost exclusively of meat (or fish) and fat. And they were as healthy and robust as a bunch of wild horses. High blood pressure, coronary infarctions, and strokes were virtually unknown. The women rarely suffered with breast-feeding problems, complications in pregnancy, or difficult births. And prior to their contact with mainstream civilization, Eskimos seldom suffered from cancer. (Today, about a century after their contact with “civilization” and the modern diet, they routinely suffer from all of the above.)
    Ever the anthropologist, Stefansson lived with an Eskimo family for much of his time in the Arctic and adopted all their eating habits. Though he had hated fish all his life, he ate it night and day. He ate it raw, baked, and boiled. He ate the heads and the tails. He even came to like the Eskimo delicacy of rotten fish, which he likened to his first taste of Camembert. It was the beginning of an aggregate of five years on a diet that consisted almost exclusively of protein, fat, and water.
    According to the prevailing dietary wisdom of the times, he should’ve been dead.
    He wasn’t. And, by the way, he never gained weight. He also never saw a fat Eskimo. He wrote:
Eskimos, when still on their home meats, are never corpulent—at least, I have seen none who were. Eskimos in their native garments do give the impression of fat, round faces on fat, round bodies, but the roundness of face is a racial peculiarity and the rest of the effect is produced by loose and puffy garments. See them stripped, and one does not find the abdominal protuberances and folds which are so in evidence on Coney Island beaches and so persuasive an argument against nudism. 7 The guy did have a sense of humor.
    By the way, lest anyone think that Eskimos were somehow genetically or racially immune to getting fat, Stefansson was quick to point out how quickly they fattened up when they ate mainstream American or European diets. In other words, they stay nice and slim on a high-fat diet; but as soon as they start eating starch and sugar, guess what happens?
    Stefansson was genuinely curious to see if this strange diet had produced any ill effects that he perhaps hadn’t noticed. And there were plenty of doctors who were just as curious as he. A committee was convened, and Stefansson was put through as rigorous an examination as a potential astronaut would get today. The findings were published in The Journal of the American Medical Association on July 3, 1926, in an article titled “The Effects of an Exclusive Long-Continued Meat Diet.” The result? The committee had failed to find even one trace of evidence of all the supposed harmful effects of the diet.
    This brings us to the dietetic ward of Bellevue Hospital in 1928. Stefansson and Dr. Karsten Anderson, a colleague who had been on one of the expeditions with Stefansson, agreed to act as human guinea pigs in a twoperson experiment. Stefansson had not only survived but thrived on a diet that was supposed to have killed him, but this experience had never really been verified under scientific conditions. So Stefansson and Anderson agreed to live