Mr. Stefansson wrote, "The groups that depend on blubber animals are the most fortunate in the hunting way of life, for they never suffer from fat-hunger. This trouble is worst, so far as North America is concerned, among those forest Indians who depend at times on rabbits, the leanest animal in the North, and who develop the extreme fat-hunger known as rabbit-starvation. Rabbit eaters, if they have no fat from another source - beaver, moose, fish - will develop diarrhea in about a week, with headache, lassitude, a vague discomfort. If there are enough rabbits, the people eat till their stomachs are distended; but no matter how much they eat they feel unsatisfied."
The Indians of the north hunted older reindeer bucks, because they carried an enormous slab of back fat that could weigh up to 50 pounds. They then made pemmican by mixing fat with meat in a proportion of one-to-one by volume. By caloric content, the pemmican amounted to 80% of mostly saturated fat calories to 20% protein calories. And don’t forget - among the northern Indians, cancer and heart disease were nonexistent.
Anyone who is compelled to live for several weeks on little but lean meat will actually experience rabbit starvation. Without fat or carbohydrates, it will make no difference the quantity of meat ingested. He will be hungry after every meal and will lose strength or become ill.
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