British Chef Plans Monthlong Greenland Ski Trek on Fermented Seal Meat

British explorer and chef Mike Keen will spend roughly a month skiing across northern Greenland this spring with a sled dog. The pair will eat only slowly decomposing seal meat for the duration of the roughly 320-kilometer trek. The journey serves as a proxy for how past Inuit and other Arctic peoples may have survived similar crossings of barren landscapes.

Keen will collect fecal samples from himself and the dog throughout the trip. Researchers will analyze how his gut microbiome changes after shifting from a Western diet to a traditional Inuit diet that is 98 percent meat. The traditional Inuit diet consists almost entirely of animal products because fresh fruits and vegetables cannot grow in the Arctic.

Before food imports from Denmark became common a few decades ago, Inuit people consumed mostly meat and almost no plants yet did not experience the cancers, digestive disorders and heart disease now associated with high-meat diets. An Inuit microbiologist at the University of Greenland in Nuuk hypothesizes that fermenting meat for months increases microbial diversity and supports gut health.

"There is a way to live healthily off an animal-sourced diet," the researcher said. Fermented meats known collectively as igunaq include walrus, caribou, reindeer and seal. One delicacy called kiviak is prepared by stuffing small birds inside seal hides and burying them under rocks for months.

Fermented foods are broken down gradually by microbes in a controlled process, while rotting occurs when microbial growth becomes dangerous. People worldwide have eaten fermented meats often near the edge of safety. An archaeologist at the University of Michigan reported in 2022 that such foods likely served an evolutionary purpose similar to cooking by freeing nutrients with less labor.