The superior mineral content of some American Indian foods in comparison to federally donated counterpart commodities

Abstract

In pre‐Columbian times, Indian diets were markedly different from patterns that have developed after forced introduction of refined modern foods. The nutritional outcomes of this change have been inferred but not documented. To this end, samples of traditional Hopi and Papago Indian foods and federal commodity foods donated in 1971–72 were analyzed for nitrogen and 15 other elements. Native foods produced in the Arizona reservation areas were consistently higher in essential minerals than were the substituted commodity foods. The Hopi culinary practice of adding ashes of green plants (usually ash of chamisa or spent bean pods and vines) to various corn foods raised still further the already superior content of most minerals, notably calcium and iron. Some uncultivated plant foods were found to be rich sources of minerals, especially Papago dried cholla cactus buds which contained 2.8 percent of calcium. These tribes appear to have had a better probability of meeting mineral needs from locally grown and traditionally prepared plant foods than from an isoenergetic amount of most of the counterpart commodities they have been given. The Indian foods were also higher than commodities in content of bromine, strontium, rubidium and lead; the consequence of altered intakes of these elements is unknown.