Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Food Security in the Alaskan Arctic, an Ethnographic Investigation of Yup'ik Food Storage and Processing

博士论文改进补助金：阿拉斯加北极地区的粮食安全，尤皮克食品储存和加工的人种学调查

• 批准号: 1504550
• 负责人: Liam Frink
• 金额: $ 2.52万
• 依托单位: University of Nevada Las Vegas
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-09-01 至 2017-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1504550&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Improvement; Grant; Food

The purpose of this study is to investigate Yup'ik Alaska Native subsistence storage and preservation techniques - an absolutely essential component of Yup'ik food preparation - and their potential mitigating influence on persistent organic pollutant (POP) concentrations in subsistence foods in two village communities in southwestern Alaska (Tununak and Chefornak). The Yup'ik are an arctic hunter-gatherer population living in southwestern Alaska in 70 villages dispersed throughout the delta of the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers. Despite a recent shift toward the inclusion of store-bought foods in the diet, Yup'ik people still depend on locally harvested resources, primarily fish and sea mammals. They retain and continue to utilize their extensive knowledge of ocean hunting, coastal fishing, tundra gathering, and, most importantly for this project, the processing and long-term storage of large marine mammals and sizeable catches of fish. As a result of their marine-based diet, the Yup'ik have health profiles that have attracted the attention of health researchers, such as low rates of diabetes and good cardiovascular health. However, recently, the diets of many Alaska Native groups have come under scrutiny because of concern over persistent organic pollutants (POPs) that are commonly present in seafoods. POPs are chemicals that were produced by humans during the chemical revolution in agriculture for their use as pesticides. Despite discontinuation of the production of most POPs, they remain dangerous to human health because they persist in the environment (for decades or more), can travel long distances, and accumulate up the food chain. Although far from major agricultural sites, arctic regions accumulate particularly high concentrations of leftover POPs. This is due to a number of factors including the ability of POPs to travel with ocean currents, the wildlife species that pass through the arctic, and the fact that POPs accumulate in the bodies of animals highest up on the food chain such as arctic seals, whales, and bears. The result has been a mixed message regarding the safety of eating marine-based foods: nutritionists promote their consumption because they are "heart healthy?"(i.e., high in polyunsaturated fatty acids) and environmental toxicologists caution their consumption because they accumulate POPs significantly more so than many other foods. Unfortunately, the primary source of data for the toxicological and nutritional profiles of fish and sea mammals that are frequently consumed by Alaska Native peoples comes from unprocessed muscle samples (i.e., species that are harvested, sampled, frozen for transport, and thawed for lab analysis). However, Yup?ik people not only consume many other parts of animals aside from the muscle tissue (blubber, organs, blood, small bones), but they rarely consume freshly caught species and have a vast array of methods for processing, storing, and preparing foods before they are consumed (for example, ninamayuk is a popular food that involves one month of sun-drying and two to three months of fermentation in rendered seal blubber before it is consumed). Nevertheless, the potential effects of processing, storage, and local dietary traditions on the nutritional and toxicological profiles of foods have received little attention. The Yup'ik community is not only eager to know about the potential benefits and hazards of the foods they eat, but also this information can shed light on processes that may impact the safety of foods in general.An examination of how Yup'ik food preparation and storage affects the nutritional and toxicological profile of subsistence foods will be achieved by 1) laboratory tests of foods that are prepared by Yup'ik people in Yup'ik communities and of the unprepared tissues of the origin subsistence species and 2) investigation, via direct observation and documentation (where possible), interviews, and semi-qualitative surveys, the ways in which the two staple marine foods in the study region (seal and herring) are cleaned, processed, stored, prepared, and eaten by the Yup'ik today and in the recent past. Alaska Native food processing and storage techniques have generally been overlooked in contaminant research, particularly in food risk assessments intended for present-day Yup'ik communities. However, there is evidence in other contexts that processing technique, storage time and conditions, and diet can have an effect on levels of various food toxicants and/or their bioavailability. The many diverse techniques of processing and storing foods in the circumpolar north have generally been limited to early descriptions in historical documents, sparse traveler accounts and more recent ethnographic (purely descriptive) accounts. The viability or recent memory of many traditional subsistence practices in Yup'ik communities today presents researchers with a unique opportunity to systematically investigate some of these processes on which, until only very recently, the survival of people absolutely depended. To date, no subsistence data on seal or herring exists for the village of Chefornak and the data that exists for Tununak dates no later than the 1990s. This study will provide new and needed subsistence data for both villages and add to ongoing debates about the role of small-scale food storage in human evolution.A general assumption in research on indigenous health is that once hunter-gatherer populations become involved in the market economy or become "Westernized" there is no turning back, and full integration will soon follow. Alaska Native peoples, because of their continued reliance on local subsistence hunting and gathering, question this assumption. Nevertheless, there are many real concerns for them, and this research project will make a risk assessment of Alaska Native foods by investigated the potential mediating effects of food processing and storing. This research will contribute to a better understanding and appreciation of Alaska Native life-ways, as well as add to knowledge about a primary health concern in the region and contribute to an understanding of key global health issues in general.

本研究的目的是调查阿拉斯加尤皮克原住民的生存储存和保存技术（这是尤皮克食品制备的绝对重要组成部分）及其对阿拉斯加西南部两个村庄社区（图努纳克和切福纳克）生存食品中持久性有机污染物 (POP) 浓度的潜在缓解影响。 尤皮克人是一个以狩猎采集为生的北极民族，居住在阿拉斯加西南部的 70 个村庄中，分布在育空河和库斯科奎姆河三角洲各地。 尽管最近人们开始在饮食中加入商店购买的食物，但尤皮克人仍然依赖当地收获的资源，主要是鱼类和海洋哺乳动物。 他们保留并继续利用他们在海洋狩猎、沿海捕鱼、苔原采集方面的广泛知识，以及对这个项目最重要的是大型海洋哺乳动物和大量鱼类的加工和长期储存。 由于以海洋为主的饮食，尤皮克人的健康状况引起了健康研究人员的关注，例如糖尿病发病率低和心血管健康状况良好。 然而，最近，由于对海鲜中常见的持久性有机污染物 (POP) 的担忧，许多阿拉斯加原住民群体的饮食受到严格审查。 持久性有机污染物是人类在农业化学革命期间生产的用作杀虫剂的化学品。 尽管大多数持久性有机污染物已停止生产，但它们仍然对人类健康构成危险，因为它们在环境中持续存在（数十年或更长时间），可以长距离传播，并在食物链中积累。 尽管远离主要农业地点，北极地区仍积累了特别高浓度的残留持久性有机污染物。 这是由于多种因素造成的，包括持久性有机污染物随洋流传播的能力、穿越北极的野生动物物种，以及持久性有机污染物在食物链最高层动物（如北极海豹、鲸鱼和熊）体内积累的事实。 其结果是关于食用海洋食品的安全性产生了一个混杂的信息：营养学家提倡食用它们，因为它们“有益于心脏健康？”（即富含多不饱和脂肪酸），而环境毒理学家则警告它们的食用，因为它们比许多其他食品更容易积累持久性有机污染物。 不幸的是，阿拉斯加原住民经常食用的鱼类和海洋哺乳动物的毒理学和营养状况的主要数据来源来自未加工的肌肉样本（即收获、取样、冷冻运输和解冻用于实验室分析的物种）。 然而，尤皮克人不仅食用除肌肉组织（鲸脂、器官、血液、小骨头）之外的动物的许多其他部分，而且他们很少食用新鲜捕获的物种，并且在食用前有多种加工、储存和准备食物的方法（例如，ninamayuk 是一种受欢迎的食物，需要在提炼的海豹鲸脂中进行一个月的晒干和两到三个月的发酵） 在食用之前）。 然而，加工、储存和当地饮食传统对食品营养和毒理学特征的潜在影响却很少受到关注。 尤皮克社区不仅渴望了解他们所吃食物的潜在益处和危害，而且这些信息还可以揭示可能影响总体食品安全的过程。对尤皮克食物的制备和储存如何影响自给食品的营养和毒理学特征的研究将通过以下方式实现：1）对尤皮克社区的尤皮克人准备的食物以及未准备好的食物进行实验室测试。 2) 通过直接观察和记录（如果可能）、访谈和半定性调查，调查尤皮克人今天和最近的清洁、加工、储存、准备和食用研究区域两种主要海洋食物（海豹和鲱鱼）的方式。 阿拉斯加本土食品加工和储存技术在污染物研究中通常被忽视，特别是在针对当今尤皮克社区的食品风险评估中。 然而，在其他情况下有证据表明加工技术、储存时间和条件以及饮食会对各种食品毒物的水平和/或其生物利用度产生影响。 环极地北部加工和储存食物的多种不同技术通常仅限于历史文献、稀疏的旅行者记述和最近的民族志（纯描述性）记述中的早期描述。 今天，尤皮克社区许多传统生存实践的可行性或近期记忆为研究人员提供了一个独特的机会来系统地研究其中一些过程，直到最近，人们的生存绝对依赖于这些过程。 迄今为止，Chebornak 村还没有关于海豹或鲱鱼的生存数据，而 Tununak 村的现有数据不晚于 20 世纪 90 年代。这项研究将为这两个村庄提供新的和需要的生存数据，并增加关于小规模食物储存在人类进化中的作用的持续争论。土著健康研究的一个普遍假设是，一旦狩猎采集人口参与市场经济或“西化”，就没有回头路，很快就会全面融合。 阿拉斯加原住民由于持续依赖当地狩猎和采集为生，因此对这一假设提出质疑。 然而，他们确实有很多担忧，本研究项目将通过调查食品加工和储存的潜在中介效应，对阿拉斯加本土食品进行风险评估。 这项研究将有助于更好地了解和认识阿拉斯加原住民的生活方式，增加对该地区主要健康问题的了解，并有助于了解全球主要健康问题。