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How do you avoid scurvy on that diet? Or does she just flat out deny that vitamins are vitally important?

by nikanj 4y ago

cdot2 4y ago
My understanding is that you generally include organ mean which is high in vitamins.
Swizec 4y ago
They've done this experiment! I wrote a summary years ago back when I was doing a 52papers challenge (that I failed, writing 52 academic paper reports in 52 weeks is grueling). https://swizec.com/blog/week-17-what-happens-when-you-only-eat-meat-for-a-year/ https://swizec.com/blog/week-17-what-happens-when-you-only-e... The tldr is that it works if you eat the whole animal. Enough essential nutrients in offal to keep you going.
PeterisP 4y ago
Scurvy isn't necessarily a problem in an all-meat diet, as evidenced by historic cultures with extremely low plant food consumption (e.g. historic Coastal Inuit and Masai); however, those diets aren't like "western meat eating" e.g. cooked prime muscle, but include uncooked blood, organ meats, etc.
maxk42 4y ago
Okay here we go.... The US RDI for vitamin C was produced not by studying hard what is necessary for the human body but by estimating the amount of vitamin C a small sample of people (N < 200) were getting from self-reported eating activities. They then took two standard deviations higher, rounded the result, and estimated people should be getting 60mg per day. Then in 1998, after lobbying from the orange juice industry and based on no new studies and zero additional information they decided to raise the recommendation 50% to 90mg. However, this is far in excess of the amount actually needed by the human body to ward off disease, which is around 10mg per day. [0]. In fact, eating fresh meat was a well-known cure for scurvy aboard sailing vessels until the early part of the 20th century since fresh meats do contain enough vitamin C to exceed this amount. The forms of vitamin C in meats are furthermore more bioavailable than vegetable sources of vitamin C and there's one more factor to consider: Although vitamin C plays a variety of roles in the human body, the majority of it is used for two purposes: the synthesis of collagen and the synthesis of l-carnitine. Which should strike an astute reader immediately as both being abundant in a carnivorous diet and therefore a person eating meat in abundance would have a much lower biological need for vitamin C to begin with. Furthermore, vitamin C is transported via the GLUT-4 transporter which implies it competes with glucose for absorption. A person on a ketogenic diet such as the lion diet will not have nearly as much glucose in their blood stream and may therefore absorb vitamin C more readily than someone on an omnivorous diet. All that said: no, carnivores do not experience scurvy. [0] https://www.washington.edu/news/2021/08/16/new-analysis-of-landmark-scurvy-study-leads-to-update-on-vitamin-c-needs/ https://www.washington.edu/news/2021/08/16/new-analysis-of-l...

How do you avoid scurvy on that diet? Or does she just flat out deny that vitamins are vitally important?

by nikanj 4y ago

How do you avoid scurvy on that diet? Or does she just flat out deny that vitamins are vitally important?

cdot2 4y ago

My understanding is that you generally include organ mean which is high in vitamins.

Swizec 4y ago

They've done this experiment! I wrote a summary years ago back when I was doing a 52papers challenge (that I failed, writing 52 academic paper reports in 52 weeks is grueling). https://swizec.com/blog/week-17-what-happens-when-you-only-eat-meat-for-a-year/ https://swizec.com/blog/week-17-what-happens-when-you-only-e... The tldr is that it works if you eat the whole animal. Enough essential nutrients in offal to keep you going.

PeterisP 4y ago

Scurvy isn't necessarily a problem in an all-meat diet, as evidenced by historic cultures with extremely low plant food consumption (e.g. historic Coastal Inuit and Masai); however, those diets aren't like "western meat eating" e.g. cooked prime muscle, but include uncooked blood, organ meats, etc.

maxk42 4y ago

Okay here we go.... The US RDI for vitamin C was produced not by studying hard what is necessary for the human body but by estimating the amount of vitamin C a small sample of people (N < 200) were getting from self-reported eating activities. They then took two standard deviations higher, rounded the result, and estimated people should be getting 60mg per day. Then in 1998, after lobbying from the orange juice industry and based on no new studies and zero additional information they decided to raise the recommendation 50% to 90mg. However, this is far in excess of the amount actually needed by the human body to ward off disease, which is around 10mg per day. [0]. In fact, eating fresh meat was a well-known cure for scurvy aboard sailing vessels until the early part of the 20th century since fresh meats do contain enough vitamin C to exceed this amount. The forms of vitamin C in meats are furthermore more bioavailable than vegetable sources of vitamin C and there's one more factor to consider: Although vitamin C plays a variety of roles in the human body, the majority of it is used for two purposes: the synthesis of collagen and the synthesis of l-carnitine. Which should strike an astute reader immediately as both being abundant in a carnivorous diet and therefore a person eating meat in abundance would have a much lower biological need for vitamin C to begin with. Furthermore, vitamin C is transported via the GLUT-4 transporter which implies it competes with glucose for absorption. A person on a ketogenic diet such as the lion diet will not have nearly as much glucose in their blood stream and may therefore absorb vitamin C more readily than someone on an omnivorous diet. All that said: no, carnivores do not experience scurvy. [0] https://www.washington.edu/news/2021/08/16/new-analysis-of-landmark-scurvy-study-leads-to-update-on-vitamin-c-needs/ https://www.washington.edu/news/2021/08/16/new-analysis-of-l...