So why did he object to having to eat the entire animal for the metabolic experiment? He saw no reason for the restriction because his experience with pemmican told him he didn't need to eat the entire animal to maintain perfect health.

I can't do anything more than point you to the texts that talk about pemmican. The book is Not by Bread Alone (The Fat of The Land) by Vilhjalmur Stefansson.

You're kidding, right?

Yet, during the experiment he indeed ate a wide variety of parts of the animal and a variety of animal types.

Gee, he objected, but still ate it anyway....things that make you go hmmm.....kind of like his dismissal of his chewing on the bones, possibly as a means to meet calcium requirements, what he later disclosed after the fact.....his works are one body of a much larger body of information, data and experience.

He did not eat only pemmican for the experiment, ergo, one cannot state with any certainty that only pemmican from birth can indeed provide for perfect health. Perhaps you'd like to step up and perform such an experiment on yourself - say to see how such a dietary regimen from whatever age you are now until you die works......let's see how long it is you continue along in good health and when you die.....then maybe we can have an "n of 1" to look at to begin to scratch the surface regarding an exclusively pemmican diet for future generations to consider.

Again, pemmican was supplemental for a period of time - it has never been an exclusive, only thing consumed, for a lifestime. Until you present a population that has lived and thrived exclusively on pemmican and nothing else, you're just throwing whatever out and hopign something sticks.

You're funny Martin.....sorry, but the dietary guidelines don't drive deficiency - it is simply a deficiency of nutrients that drive nutritional deficiency.....you don't consume enough of something, you're deficient.....you do, you're not - and it really doesn't matter what the food is, it's getting in the nutrient.

As I've noted, it's next to impossible to meet and exceed nutrients, as per the DRI, within the context of the current dietary guidelines. This does not mean the DRI is wrong or driving deficiency - it's the guidelines which are flawed.

You try surviving without, oh, choline for the long-term.....then come back and tell me the DRI is wrong, that you don't really need choline at close to the DRI as stated, OK?

It is well known that some Eskimo groups eat either no vegetable food at all or practically none. But in all parts where we have been, except in Coronation Gulf, they are fond of the berry known in Alaska as the "salmon berry" and elsewhere as the cloudberry (Rubus chamaemorus Linn).


The Friendly Arctic, Steffanson, 1921

No, I'm not.

Fasting and semi-starvation both cause emaciation. Fasting is the complete lack of nutrient i.e. a total nutrient deficiency. But semi-starvation means food is coming in yet it still causes emaciation. This implies that semi-starvation is also a complete lack of nutrient. A complete lack of nutrients means folate is also missing. If it's missing in fasting, it's also missing in semi-starvation therefore a high carb, low fat, calorie restricted diet causes a total nutrient deficiency including folate.

It really doesn't matter if there's food coming in on semi-starvation. All that matter is the result. If the result is the same as fasting, we have to treat it the same as fasting.

Not from birth. But certainly pemmican could be used exclusively after weaning.

And it would be better to experiment with carbohydrate to see how much is toxic to humans? I'll do your experiment if you do mine. But we have to do it until we die of it because that's what you just proposed. Deal?

I don't need to show any measure of the nutrients I eat nor that is currently in my body. All I need to show is that an all meat diet can sustain me in perfect health indefinitely. By doing so, we show that whatever is in meat, without knowing what is in meat, is enough. The DRI ceases to be useful.

From a study in 2002 that specifically analyzed various tradition Inuit foods for vitamin C content:

There are a variety of rich sources of vitamin C from animal and plant food with the most notable among items with multiple samples being raw fish (Coregonus spp.) eggs (49.6±12.3 mg/100 g, mean± S.D.), raw whale (Delphinapterus leucas and Monodon monoceros) skin, locally termed “mattak”, (36.0±8.7 and 31.5±7.0 mg/10 g), caribou liver (Rangifer tarandus) (23.8±4.9 mg/100 g), ringed seal liver (Phoca hispida) (23.8±3.8 mg/100 g), and blueberries (Vaccinium uliginosum) (26.2±4.9 mg/100 g).

So you can't say the Inuit diet is lacking vitamin C, or even much lower than DRI recommendations for intake - they get it from foods we don't, but it's there and some of their foods are quite rich with vitamin C.

That said, the daily intake DRI is indeed contentious and not something that needs to be argued - it's already known that level of vitmain C required varies according to dietary habits, with some dietary regimens needing more and others less....but whatever your dietary context is, if you don't get in enough vitamin C, you will suffer the consequences in time......how long depends on many variables since vitamin C is maintained within a recycled pathway in the body, so the nutrients that interact through that cycle also need to be considered as part of the equation toward deficiency too!

Not quite - the biological mechanisms triggered by fasting are actually different than in semi-starvation.....in a total fast the body works to conserve and recyle much more readily than in a semi-starved state, which is why it's observed in those doing a total fast, that at least for a period, the body has the ability to maintain blood levels and stores of nutrients quite effectively, despite no intake of those nutrients.....but change the scenario to one of semi-starvation, as you've noted, and the processes change and one is at a greater risk of deficiency due to less effcient recycling within to conserve.

I was being facetious, but that's OK.....I don't need to experiment with high carbohydrate, I already know the biological processes and understand what I'd be in for consuming a high carbohydrate diet from a metabolic perspective.....so your point is moot, I don't advocate a high carb diet, so no need to experiment with one.....I already do consume some carbohydrate and choose those offering the best nutrient bang-for-the-buck so to speak.

Based on what? Based on your assumption because "it is said..." rather than it is known or shown or understood? Come on Martin - would you seriously consider telling someone that it's perfectly fine to wean your child to an exclusive diet of just pemmican because "it is said...."?

You need to define "all meat" - which animal or animals? Which parts of the animal(s)? Are you eating everything or only select parts?

This is something that those who rely on Steffanson often overlook - the totality of the diet, in the context of season and a lifetime.....the Inuit do not eat only one animal their entire life, they do not exclude ALL plants, nor do they consume everything raw or everything cooked.....they have tradition and over generations have learned what works and what doesn't and, like many other traditional societies, when you look at the overall diet, it is nutrient-dense.....because they don't rely on only one animal type, or shunning the parts we're not fond of, or passing up opportunities as they come (ie. berries in season). We're omnivores, not carnivores Martin....and we're, at the end of the day, opportunistic apex predators, hunters, gatherers....we eat a lot of different things in different places and times and you can't extrapolate one population's dietary habits to another, different, place.....ie. no use telling those on island that cocount oil should be avoided, they should consume seal oil instead - it doesn't work and that's actually the beauty of being human - we can and do survive and thrive on a variety of different dietary approaches IF ---- and this is the important IF ---- we have the nutrient-density within the context of the diet.