Alaska Natives have some of the country's highest cancer death rates. The reason, scientific health studies explain, has a lot to do with westernized, high fat, processed food diets replacing traditional, subsistence diets. That is why three women, part of the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium's team, decided there needed to be a wake-up call. It comes in the form of a guidebook.

"We've just mixed in seaweed, sesame oil a little bit of honey with rice," described ANTHC Tlingt Nutritionist Desire Simeon as she whipped up a batch of seaweed rice balls. Simeon said, "Seaweed is really good for you. It's a traditional Alaskan food."

Simeon is bound and determined to cook up the perfect recipe to help lower Alaska Native cancer

diagnosis and death rates. As she formed another creation Simeon said, "This recipe is just one of many in our traditional food guide."

Seaweed rice balls are just one of the 30 different recipes, and 70 different traditional land and sea foods you'll find in the book she helped co-author called the Traditional Food Guide For Alaska Native Cancer Survivors.

Fellow author, and Consortium Cancer Program Manager Christine DeCourtney said, "While it's designed for cancer survivors, it is really about preventing cancer too." DeCourtney added, "You know, I think it takes people with a certain passion to work so hard to put this book together."

The last leg of this 142-page book's author trio, a Lance Armstong Foundation grant helped fund, is the Consortium's Yup'ik Cancer Worker Karen Mitchell. Mitchell said, "It's the coming together whether you're Yup'ik Eskimo, or Inupiaq, Aleut, Athabaskan, Tlingt, it's coming together and sharing foods from your region."

"Because we know now even more so that a healthy diet can help prevent cancer," added DeCourtney.

That healthy diet is this book's true heart and soul. Simeon says as Alaska Natives switched their lifestyles to include westernized foods, cancer

ANTHC Tlingt Nutritionist, Desire Simeon
diagnosis rates shot up. This year Consortium officials estimate doctors will tell 400 Alaska Natives they have cancer.

Traditional Food Guide for Alaska Native Cancer Survivors

Great American Eat Right Challenge

Simeon said, "So we just started, at least I did with the premise that traditional foods, just going back to our land to get our nourishment."

In fact, the book includes the same kind of nutritional labels most of us have grown accustomed to helping make healthy food choices. In this case, though, the labels talk about foods like moose, whale and beach asparagus.

DeCourtney said, "We wanted a product that was well researched. That health care providers would recognize this as a scientific document with proper analysis done, and yet lay people could understand."

That is important because historically, health care providers have not understood the nutrients Alaska's wild foods contain. So Simeon says they would tell patients not to eat them. Now one of Alaska's only Native nutritionist said, "So a lot of our dietitians will be able to use this now, when they're meal planning with a lot of Alaska Native cancer patients to help them have a healthy diet

with Alaska native foods."

Since story telling is such an important part of Alaska Native's learning culture, the guide includes pictures and quotes from across the state.

Mitchell explains the guide includes Elders' stories telling you how to get traditional foods when you're living in an urban area. "The things they used to do to gather their foods or how those foods are shared with them, now that they're in a more open setting."

They are stories theses authors did not just write; they are stories they've personally experienced. DeCourtney spent 18 years working in rural Alaska with cancer patients. Mitchell shares one of her mom's stories in the book. Simeon lost her grandmother to breast cancer.

As she finished off one of the last seaweed rice balls Simeon said, "I think they look good." Adding she thinks the Traditional Food Guide's stories will act as a manual and guide her Alaska Native brothers and sisters back to where she says they need to be and, "getting back to health."

DeCourtney said, "Someone asked me at a meeting not long ago, 'Well I'm not an Alaskan Native cancer survivor.' Or, 'I'm not an Alaska Native. Is this book OK for me?' And I said, 'Do you live in Alaska? Do you eat fish? Yes? Then this books for you.' Because I would say 98 percent of people in Alaska must either eat fish or berries."

The ladies say an unintended, but wonderful, consequence has occurred since their book was first published this spring. It has become a health guide for doctors and schools across the state. In fact, Simeon says it is going to be used in UAA's nutrition classes.

The guide has been such a success it is now headed for a second printing. If you would like a copy click here.

This story also provides a great reminder to check out The American Cancer Society's Eat Right Challenge. Eating better is something we can all do to reduce our cancer risks.

To contact Matthew, call 907-273-3186.