CANADA
Medical Xpress
The severe hunger and malnutrition that many Indigenous children suffered at Canadian residential schools have contributed to Indigenous peoples’ elevated risk of obesity and diabetes, according to University of Toronto public health and anthropology researchers.
“Hunger has always been central to survivors’ accounts of their residential school experiences, and we strongly believe that this testimony must be taken more seriously by researchers and medical practitioners,” said Ian Mosby, a food historian who is an adjunct lecturer at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health.
Mosby and Tracey Galloway, an assistant professor of anthropology, at U of T Mississauga, published their findings in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. They found that for most of the history of the residential school system, Indigenous children were fed poor quality, often rotting food.
Based on survivor testimony, they estimate that the typical diet described by survivors delivered, on average 1,000 to 1,450 calories a day, with moderately active children requiring between 1,400 and 3,200 calories a day.
“We can now be fairly certain that the elevated risk of obesity, early-onset insulin resistance and diabetes observed among Indigenous peoples in Canada arises, in part at least, from the prolonged malnutrition experience by many residential school survivors,” said Galloway.
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