Skip to main content

Transcript: Noa Emmett Aluli, M.D.

The tradtional, “Pre-Captain cook” diet, which reduces cardiovascular risk factors for Native Hawaiians

[Aluli:]
In our work especially here in Molokai it’s been incorporating traditional healing and the prayer, and in our work here it’s the diet. It’s really the diet. In 1985 a bunch of us were able to get together a cohort of three hundred Native Hawaiians who lived on homestead land to do a WHO end-result study. At the same time we gathered all the information, did cholesterol, A1C studies, did all the measurements, and were able to publish a paper as to the so-called cardiovascular risk factors in Native Hawaiians. And from there we moved on to looking at the traditional diet. We called it the pre-Cook diet, the pre-Captain Cook diet.