Ethnicity and optimal diet

Question
Hello,

After reading about the Inuit and the traditional Inuit diet consisting mainly of fish and other marine animals, and the harm caused when people from this region encounter a Western based diet I began to wonder if there is any basis to the theory that a person's ethnic makeup might have something to do with how to plan an optimal diet for that person. For example, olive oil: would it benefit a person of mostly Levantine genetic background, more than a person of, say, Scandinavian background? Or perhaps a person of central African ancestry might benefit most from nutrition derived from foodstuffs most easily obtained from that area and climate, as opposed to a Northern European diet consisting of cold-weather vegetables and salt water fish? Do you think a person's ethnicity should be taken into account when planning a healthy diet for that person? Thanks for your thoughts.

Answer
Dear Eleanor

It's a great and rare pleasure to receive questions like yours! I have no direct answers though, only circumstantial. For one thing, i tried to find a link between blood types (thought to be tightly liked to paleo-ethnological characteristics) on one hand, and any diet-related factors and wrote an article basing on the little I managed to find:
http://atkinszone.com/2009/02/blood-type-diet.html

However, it would be logical to consider effects of, say, ketogenic diet, which is close to what the Inuits habitually eat, on people of different ethnic origin -- but there are no such studies. What's more, in the meta analysis studies, the ethnicity factor was always abstracted along with athletes, socio-economic status, etc. Please find more on the ketogenic diet at my brainfuels.com

There only a few known to me facts related to the link between ethnicity and diet influences on health:

1. Japanese Americans tend to eat healthier and weigh less than Caucasian Americans, however, they have a higher risk of type 2 diabetes than same-weight Caucasians.

2. Vegetable-rich diets protect Japanese and Caucasian men but not Native Hawaiian men or women, these women benefit from eating fruit, and diary.

3. On the same diet, African Americans had a lower risk of hypercholesterolemia, lower level of high-density lipoprotein ("good" cholesterol), and a greater risk of high systolic blood pressure compared to Caucasians.

4. Moderate (25 ml a day) consumption of olive oil reduced blood pressure in those European populations where the Mediterranean diet is not typically consumed. Plasma oleic acid levels increased 2?% in Northern and Central Europeans but not in the Mediterraneans.

You might want to read an interesting discussion here:
http://mangans.blogspot.com/2009/06/paleo-diet-and-ethnicity.html

I know, my answer is not exhausting, but this is what I can offer without a real research and meta-analysis of every point. I just cannot afford doing this right now.

Tanay Zilberter

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