Dietary Requirements of Historic Wisconsin Chippewa
Author:
Beverly A. Smith
Date Published:
2/1991
Description:
The diet of the late nineteenth century Chippewa of Wisconsin used venison and fish as staple foods in their subsistence strategy. The problem under consideration is the absolute amount of game and fish that was used for subsistence by an average Chippewa family in Wisconsin in 1887. Nutrient requirements is one measure which may be used to estimate the amount game and fish, necessary to supplement other known food types, which resulted in a nutritionally adequate diet for the subject population.
Nutritional requirements are a relatively standard unit of analysis which can be used to estimate the amounts of various kinds of foods necessary to ensure the survival of a human population. The units are nutrients, not foods, and therefore are not bounded by cultural preferences. The approach taken here is based upon scientifically derived estimates of amount of different foods required to maintain a healthy population can be calculated. Different foods contain various combinations of different required nutrients. Subsistence strategies, therefore, must be concerned with implicitly striving to provide combinations of foods which satisfy basic human nutritional requirements. The “diet” is this satisfactory combination of foods.
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