Andrew Fildes wrote:
> Careful - as I understand it, the Inuit have an additional liver
> enzyme that allows them to live on a diet that would definitely kill
> the rest of us in about six months.
Do you have a reliable reference for this? I performed a modest Google
search and was unable to find any reference for it at all, reliable or
not. Maybe I just didn't look hard enough. The only references I found
to Inuit liver enzymes were 1) elevated levels due to hepatitis B which
is apparently quite common these days and 2) different distributions of
various types of liver enzymes in Japanese and Inuit populations which
cause a difference in drug metabolization rates.
As to a diet that would definitely kill us in 6 months I think you would
be unable to show that this is so. In fact, quite to the contrary,
there is some rather forgotten research upon anthropologist and arctic
explorer Vilhjalmur Stefannson and his friend Karsen Anderson that shows
exactly the opposite.
Stefannson and Anderson had lived amongst the Inuit for years while
subsisting entirely on the Inuit diet. The medical establishment was
highly skeptical of this so the two came to New York in 1929 and
underwent a meat only diet for a period of one year under the
supervision of the medical staff at Belleview hospital. Needless to say
they emerged in perfect health and Stefansson was long a proponent of
meat only diets.
I can't recommend this particular web site except that it has the text
of Stefansson's original articles describing his experiences which were
written for Harper's Monthly Magazine for the months December, January
and February of 1935,36.
<http://www.powerhealth.net/articles/adventuresindietpart1.htm>
<http://www.powerhealth.net/articles/adventuresindietpart2.htm>
<http://www.powerhealth.net/articles/adventuresindietpart3.htm>
These articles cover a lot of ground but part 2 covers most of the
Belleview experiment.
This type of racial variation is
> not unusual - note that about one third of Japanese cannot process
> alcohol adequately because they lack an enzyme and Australian
> Aborigines can often reverse mid-life onset diabetes by reverting to
> a native 'bush tucker' diet (that is, the type of diabetes that isn't
> normally reversible). So these types of generalisations are very
> dangerous indeed.
> Of course, if you want to try an exclusive diet of raw salmon and
> seal blubber with just a few berries in the spring, be my guest.
> Maybe you could make a movie about it called 'Supergrease Me' :)
> AndrewF
Since I don't like my meat raw (the means by which the Inuit avoid
scurvy, see part 3) I will eat more than a few berries. Bluberries and
(cooked) sausage. Yum.
Chuck Norcutt
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