Re: Why don't Inuit get scurvy?

On Tue, 21 Mar 2006 13:08:13 -0500, in talk.origins , r norman
<NotMyRealEmail@xxxxxxxxxxxx> in
<80g022dhj2hhb0a9791r8guts6dshpascb@xxxxxxx> wrote:

On Tue, 21 Mar 2006 10:55:59 -0700, dkomo <dkomo871@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Inuit (formerly, Eskimos), at least the Inuit of olden days, never ate
fruits and vegetables. So why did they not contract scurvy from vitamin
C deficiency?

Does anyone know the technical answer to this question? I did try doing
a quick google search, but pulled up agenda-based links that had a lot
of speculation, like this one:

"In fact, Eskimos derive vitamin C from the raw meat of animals who
synthesize ascorbic acid. If they had cooked their meat, they would have
developed scurvy".

This implies that if you cook your food, it loses its vitamin C. I'm a
bit skeptical.

Just what are you skeptical about? That vitamin C is heat labile or
that non-human animals can synthesize vitamin C? Both are quite true.
In fact, vitamin C is the most thermolabile vitamin of all and almost
every species known, with very few exceptions, can synthesize it. The
Inuit story has been known since 1928.

All of this is available in Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_C

Earlier, in fact, in that Shakelton figured this out. His men avoided
scurvy because they ate fresh seal and penguin meat.

--
Matt Silberstein

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Relevant Pages

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  • Correct nutrition - the cure for ALL disease
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  • Re: Running multiple HET in parallel?
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    (sci.space.tech)
  • Re: Unit pricing come-ons
    ... weeks from harvest until you buy it at a market. ... fortunate to have your own tree you are much better off buying citrus ... They didn't prevent scurvy, most of those stories are myth... ... The body does a fine job of storing Vitamin C so only a small amount ...
    (rec.food.cooking)
  • Re: Purveying Pharmaceutics
    ... For vitamin C the associated deficiency disease is scurvy. ... winning one) whose basic premise was actually that you could prevent colds ...
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