The ongoing nutrition transition in the Canadian Arctic is resulting in an epidemiologic transition towards the emergence of obesity and obesity-related chronic diseases. In response, the community of Pangnirtung in the Baffin Region of Nunavut, Canada, in partnership with the Centre for Indigenous Peoples' Nutrition and Environment, developed a community health promotion project in two phases. The first phase involved collecting health behavior data from adults (2005) and youth (2006), and recording and
transcribing elders??? stories on the value of traditional food, including plants and remedies (2006 to 2007). In the second phase, the health behaviour survey data and storytelling were used to help develop an innovative pilot intervention in the community (2008 onwards). The intervention aimed to increase knowledge about traditional food and nutrition and improve nutritional health behaviours through the age-old Inuit tradition of storytelling. It targeted youth and young adults because of community members' concerns that youth were consuming more high-sugar drinks and "junk food" and less traditional food than older adults in the community.
The youth survey found that youth had consumed an
average of 1.4 litres of sweet drinks a day, including two cans of pop, over the previous month. It also found that only five traditional food species had been consumed by more than 80 percent of the youth over the previous year, and that youth had a strong preference for caribou meat, with 98.7 percent of them consuming caribou in the past year, at an average of 87.2 g per day among consumers. No other traditional food was consumed to the same degree. Elders' stories were incorporated into a DVD promoting
knowledge and appreciation of a wide range of traditional foods. The stories were also incorporated with modern nutritional health advice for youth radio drama programmes aimed at reducing the high consumption of pop in the community. The DVD and radio programmes have already been pilot tested for effectiveness, cultural relevance and acceptability, and a broader community-wide evaluation of the community radio???s nutritional health promotion is
currently taking place. In addition, elders' storytelling revealed elders' perceptions of climate change and its impacts on local flora and fauna, and
their resulting concerns for the sustainability of subsistence food species. With climate change now outpacing projections, and potentially threatening favoured subsistence species, elders' storytelling can be a means of building youths' awareness and appreciation of the full range of traditional food available and increasing the diversity of traditional foods consumed. Elders' storytelling also provides opportunities for understanding changes in a historical context and, when combined with modern-day nutrition issues and modern media, may be a means of reaching youth, building social cohesion and promoting Inuit resiliency in a time of rapid
climate change and uncertain food security.