Researchers say the ancestors of Pueblo people consumed a diet dominated by corn and high-fiber foods.

Based on the study of fossilized feces from Antelope Cave in Arizona, researchers said about three-fourths of the diet came from insoluble fiber foods such as grains and vegetables. These foods are low on the glycemic, or blood sugar, index -- indicating that diabetes among modern Indians is linked to dietary conditions rather than genetic makeup.

“These were not just famine foods,” the authors wrote in the study, according to the University of Nebraska Lincoln. “These were the foods eaten on a day-by-day basis during all seasons in both feast and famine.

The study appears in the latest issue of Current Anthropology.

Get the Story:
Study: Native diabetes may be more from feast than famine (The Lincoln Journal Star 7/26)