Here’s the current BYU roster. I see a good half dozen or more potentially-Polynesian names.
http://www.byucougars.com/Roster.jsp?SP=130
Keep in mind anywhere in the Western part of the U.S. will be more appealing than the East Coast or Midwest for purposes of going back home, parents visiting, etc.
Spam is popular in the entire state of Hawaii, yet Asians, Filipinos, and Caucasians generally remain skinny, and Samoans and Hawaiians tend toward the heavy side.
It has a lot more to do than just sopapillas (Navajo fried bread) which have been around for ages. Aboriginal communities in Canada are also battling obesity and diabetes epidemics and it has nothing to do with fried bread.
In Canada, Aboirginal communities have diabetes rates that are about 5 times the national average. Studies indicated that communities that had more or less stuck with traditional diets (that were high in fats but low in carbohydrates) were much healthier that communities who were heartily tucking in to flour, potatoes and pasta which were introduced to Aboriginal communities comparatively recently (within the last century). Prior to 1945, diabetes was practically unheard of in First Nation communities.
There is a documentary called “My Big Fat Diet” in which Vancouver-based filmmakers documented the weight loss and overall boost in good health of members of the Namgis First Nation, who returned to a traditional diet. There is also a physician who has been studying this more comprehensively, Dr. Jay Wortman, but I don’t know what kind of results have been published.
Basically, you have a population that is genetically predisposed to put on weight if they eat certain foods, and then you create an environment where those particular foods are the most accessible to them. High rates of poverty mean stretching your food budget and buying more of the cheaper carbohydrates than salmon filets, so from a “What can you afford?” point of view, they are eating more of those carbohydrates than previous generations.
There does seem to be some genetic differences in Polynesians compared to other peoples ad this research paper seems to imply. To quote:-
At higher BMI levels, Polynesians were significantly leaner than Europeans, implying the need for separate BMI definitions of overweight and obesity for Polynesians. The regression equations using BIA, height and weight or skinfold thicknesses were good predictors of body composition in Polynesians.
spectulation here: If you are stuck on an island without much source of fat, and most of your diet is fish and starch then you become genetically disposed to lay down fat as much as possible to survive. Along comes the white man with KFC and your genetics become a liability.
That’s sbascially what’s been happening the the Canadian northwest. Fat has been fine (eg/ fish oils, whale blubber etc.), but the crazy amounts of carbohydrates that are now available are the problem. The Inuit diet has traditionally been very high protein and fat, cultivating high-carbohydrate foods was just not possible.
Anecdotally, a friend working in the Yukon has said the local native population is pretty much what keeps KFC in business. Enjoying the deep fried foods, but also consuming way, way more carbohydrates than their ancestors ever dreamed about.
Wait a sec…I thought that diabetes was common in First Nations b/c they were orgionally from VERY COLD areas. Diabetes is a nautral adapation for people in cold areas…their body is trying to increase the body temperture.
Wouldn’t a fair guess be that at some point the Samoans faced famine, and the ones who survived were the ones whose bodies were better at storing fat?
Isn’t there a big tradition of Samoans in wrestling as well? (Okay, so my data point is The Rock and his father.) People who are by nature big dudes are often very easily big fat dudes.
And his grandfather. Peter Maivia - Wikipedia
See also Jimmy Snuka (Fijian).
Paul Theoux (c.f. “Paddling the Pacific”) mentions the polynesian’s taste for fatty meat (spam, canned corned beef). I suspect that the original polynesian diet (carbohydrates, fruit, fish) was very low in fat, so evolution favored the people who could store fat (when it was available). These people survived the famines, while the skinny people died.
The high carbohydrates(sugar and processed foods) in the contemporary American diet are often cited a the cause of childhood obesity and early diabetes.
I wonder why the Irish peasantry (in the days before the “Potato Famine”) were so healthy-they lived on potatoes, cabbage, and a little milk and butter (and very rarely meat). It seemed that diabettes ad obesity was very rare among these people-even though they ate aminly carbohydrates.
Remember the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling? One of the stars was Mount Fiji
Why wouldn’t it end well? He didn’t ask a loaded question that assumed it. He was just honestly asking an honest and well phrased question.
Hey, if we can handle pan-fried semen and questions about how fat people wipe, we can handle this just fine.
Most of the people of Samoan descent that I’ve met have been big, but not necessarily fat. There is definitely a physiological difference in the way that these friends build muscle and store fat compared to, say, me or other friends of European descent; there also seems to be a different “texture” to the way the muscle and fat feels compares to my Western counterparts. For one friend*, who’s half Samoan, there is definitely a difference in how his body handles the foods he eats versus others-- like other ethnic groups, his ancestors have eaten a specific diet for so long that he does better on a diet not dissimilar to what he would have traditionally eaten had his family never left their homeland.
I definitely wouldn’t say that most Samoans are fat, but that there are a significant number of people of Samoan descent who appear to be fatter than their European peers, regardless of whether it’s muscle or actual fat.
*The guy is muscular, a little tall, but definitely makes people who are similarly healthy look “lanky” in comparison. His build is wide and his body is fairly trim, but, despite the fact that I know taller people, he still tends to mentally-visually come across as “huge”, even when standing next to Westerners of a similar height.
I think that’s Sumo wrestling. 
Honey, “The Rock” can wrestle me any time he wants.
Wikipedia lists 16 Samoan wrestlers, most of whom have spent some time in the WWE. Almost 1/2 of them come from the Anoa’i family.
ralph124c writes:
> I wonder why the Irish peasantry (in the days before the “Potato Famine”)
> were so healthy-they lived on potatoes, cabbage, and a little milk and butter
> (and very rarely meat).
Who claims that they were healthy? The little I’ve been able to find about them says that they were indeed fat:
http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=15712
Does anyone have a better reference on what the Irish population was like just before the Potato Famine?
The Pima people live on both sides of the US/Mexico border. Those on the US side have a very high incidence of diabetes, while those with a more traditional diet south of the border don’t. Best theory seems to be (as scm1001 and Spoke- have said regarding Samoans) that historically the population lived on a limited fat diet, and got those that thrived were good at storing fat. Once KFC arrives, this is no longer an advantage.
