For a interval of two months final yr, a typical day for chef Mike Eager would see him skipping breakfast and lunch in favour of snacks similar to dried capelin (a small bait fish), dried halibut, jerky-like dried whale and an area Greenlandic whale pores and skin and blubber deal with referred to as mattak.
Within the night he would dine on seal or whale stew, basically simply boiled meat in water, whereas tenting on rocky islands. He may additionally add seabirds’ eggs and maybe fish, walrus, reindeer, fish roe and crowberries (much like blackberries), if he discovered them. He swapped his typical espresso for water or tea made with foraged herbs.
All this whereas kayaking virtually the space of a marathon every single day, via a very chilly spring in Greenland.
So what was Eager as much as? It began with a problem raised over a beer with a Greenlandic chef: what in the event you kayaked from the nation’s most southerly city to probably the most northerly? In Greenlandic, the phrase is a fast fireplace of Qs: qajak (Greenlandic for kayak) from Qaqortoq within the south to Qaanaaq within the north. Eager had repeatedly labored in Greenland as a chef in luxurious camps alongside its jagged fjords, and favored the sound of the three,000km (1,850-mile) journey.
“I assumed: if I did 30km a day, that’s 100 days,” he says. “It’s most likely doable. After which I assumed it could be attention-grabbing to incorporate a scientific examine.”
He determined to discover the consequences of an Inuit weight loss program on well being and wellbeing, working with the division of dual analysis and genetic epidemiology at King’s Faculty London.
“In Greenland and some different pockets on the earth, there are individuals related to the atmosphere, residing in a hunter-gatherer group. They’re nonetheless residing off the land and the atmosphere. I wished to strive that.”
Eager kayaked the west coast of Greenland in 2023 following a strict ancestral Inuit weight loss program, after which accomplished a second expedition in 2024, spending 60 days in jap Greenland consuming the identical weight loss program however with out the train, to match outcomes. The trek was removed from the same old luxurious foodie journey that may usually tempt a chef.
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Clockwise from high left: a number of the dishes that sustained Eager on his journey –walrus stew; seal pores and skin filled with little auk sea birds to make kiviaq, a standard Inuit meals; iginneq, fermented seal blubber from south Greenland; kiviaq and a fermented eider duck egg. Images: Mike Eager
“Local weather change has made the seasons in Greenland unpredictable,” he says. “I went in spring, however temperatures had been extra like winter: -12C. Generally the ocean was froze and I must break the ice in entrance of the kayak, every kilometre taking an hour.”
At one level he was caught in a storm for 3 days and three nights and the wind picked up his kayak and threw it with such pressure at his tent that the principle pole broke and reduce his face. It introduced residence to Eager how near the sting life in Greenland could be. When he lastly made it to Nuuk, he bought one other shock.
“I assumed I’d lose some weight due to the train,” he says. “However once I bought to Nuuk, about 4 weeks in, I used to be actually shocked at how a lot I had misplaced.”
Eager had entry to scales for the primary time and located that his weight had dropped from about 90kg to 75kg. “I assumed: really, that’s too quick. And if it retains going at this price, sooner or later I’m going to keel over within the kayak and drown.”
Nevertheless, Eager’s weightloss levelled out and he accomplished his journey. In pre- and post-trip exams taking a look at the whole lot from lung perform to blood stress and grip power, the outcomes had been putting.
“We noticed a dramatic enchancment in just about all his well being parameters,” says Dr Tim Spector, professor of epidemiology at King’s Faculty London. “I wasn’t stunned they improved, however I used to be stunned at how dramatically they improved.”
In each journeys, Eager misplaced a major quantity of weight – 12.4kg on the primary journey and 14.3kg on the second – and his blood stress lowered considerably, his grip power improved, his lung perform improved, and his physique fats dropped from 26.8% to 17.4%.
“What’s attention-grabbing to see is that he was following the precise reverse of a zero fats weight loss program, and it had this extremely helpful impact,” says Spector. “His fats consumption will need to have quadrupled, his protein consumption most likely doubled and he massively lowered carbohydrates. He was on one thing near a ketogenic [low-carb, high-fat] weight loss program, which most individuals can’t help long run.”
The expertise has modified how Eager seems to be at meals.
“There are only some people who find themselves nonetheless hunter-gatherers left in locations like Greenland and the Amazon,” he says. “They’re the one ones that also have that connection to the atmosphere and panorama. It’s kicked me off on a journey to discover an ‘eat your atmosphere’ mission.”
The mission includes wanting critically on the world meals system and in search of out methods to reconnect with the areas the place persons are nonetheless consuming meals untouched by it.
His subsequent expedition can be going down quickly when he heads off to dwell with the Kichwa and Huaorani tribes alongside the banks of the Napo River in Ecuador to see how their hunter-gatherer weight loss program will have an effect on his physique.
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Eager lands in Sisimiut, west Greenland, six days into his epic journey. {Photograph}: Aqqalu Inuuteq Dahl
For many who don’t have Arctic meals within the freezer, it’s nonetheless attainable to attach with the spirit of his mission. Mike’s recommendation is to decide on meals that’s as shut as attainable to its pure state.
“Most of our meals has modified a lot and been selectively modified so it doesn’t mirror what we had been consuming just a few thousand years in the past,” he says.
Again in Suffolk, nonetheless, he nonetheless has a style for the Arctic.
“I barely eat carbs now and my freezer is filled with Greenlandic meals,” he says. “It’s stuffed with seal and mattak and I often get away a few baggage of ammassak (capelin) as nicely.”
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