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The Pre-Contact Diet

The Pre-Contact Diet

Remember Dr. Terry Shintani’s Waianae Diet? The one on which you could lose weight by eating Native Hawaiian foods? Unfortunately, the Hawaiian plate at L&L wasn’t what he had in mind. Shintani says what Hawaiians traditionally ate was much more simple—taro (and lots of it), sweet potato, breadfruit, some fish, limu and fruit. “Every once in a while, Hawaiians would have pig and have a luau and make an imu, but that’s party food,” he says. “That was never their main food. These days we have chicken, fish and pork served at every meal, but that’s not what they did. You couldn’t prepare flesh food all the time without refrigeration and if you lived up mauka.”

Liko Hoe of Waiahole Poi Factory, who is also a Hawaiian Studies professor at Windward Community College, says taro was really the backbone of the Native Hawaiian diet. “Poi was the basis—everything else was just flavoring, additions,” he says. “Sometimes their meal was just poi and a little bit of salt.” In addition, the taro stalk and leaves provided protein. “Taro was referred to as the ‘boneless fish of the land,’” he says.

Take a video tour of Keoki's Lau Lau Factory here.

More in this feature:

• Hawaiian Plate: A 20th Century Invention
• Hawaiian Plate Timeline
• Laulau: How It's Made
• Where are the Hawaiians?
• Luau Leaf Dynasty
• Where's the Kalua Pig?