Fat

THE FOOD VALUE OF MEATS.

It is not the purpose of this article to discuss the pros and cons of vegetarianism. Man's adaptability to conditions is great, and while men may live and apparently thrive for a time upon a one-sided diet, a generous mixture of animal and vegetable food is best calculated to enable a man to meet the exigencies of our civilization and the nervous strain of our large cities.

In this country our prosperity, the excellence of our meat supply, and the habit which most Americans have formed of eating a good deal of meat, makes it more important to dwell upon

the ill effects of eating too much meat, rather than upon the necessity of eating some.

Fat and lean meat of animals taken together contains all the fourteen elements of which the human body is composed, but not in the same proportion. A man could, therefore, live on an exclusive meat diet, though owing to the great concentration of such food, it would not be advisable for him to do so. The human body requires four times as much heat-producing as muscle-making food and as the main function of meat is to repair old tissue and form new, he would need to eat great quantities — about six and a half pounds daily — to furnish heat which could be much more advantageously derived from some form of starchy or saccharine food. These, too, would furnish the bulk needed to keep the bowels in proper condition, and would lessen the waste products to be elIminated by the kidneys.

In a few cases of disease such as flatulent dyspepsia, chronic gastritis, diabetes, obesity and chronic dysentery, an almost exclusive meat diet, with only a little dry bread, has been found beneficial.

While for well persons, the stimulating qualities of meat eaten in moderation are desirable, the deleterious matter of which the system must rid itself when too large an amount is indulged in, thwarts the very purpose for which it is taken and renders the brain dull and the whole person lumpish.

To lay down a general rule for the amount of meat to be consumed by a person in a day would, however, be impossible since the state of health, the age, occupation and climate all modify very materially the proper daily ration.

It is thought, and not without foundation, that meat makes the blood rich by increasing the number of red corpuscles in it. It is, therefore, often prescribed by physicians for anemic persons and consumptives. Raw meat, which is sometimes given in such cases, has no advantage over lightly cooked meat, in fact the latter is much more wholesome. Meat should be entirely prohibited in acute or chronic Bright's Disease, gout and rheumatism. It is well known that meat is conducive to tissue building and for this reason children over eighteen months old should have meat at least once a day and better twice a day. Growing boys need much meat and should be allowed a larger amount at a meal than their elders ; but no person in health should take meat more than twice a day. A small boy may, with propriety, eat from five to six ounces at a meal. Boys of ten years from seven to eight ounces, and large boys from seven to twelve ounces. Men and women over fifty years of age ought to eat sparingly, especially of meat, as the waste products of meat are the urates, phosphates, sulfates and urea which must be excreted by the kidneys and hence tax these organs, besides making all the fluids of the body acid, causing rheumatism and gout.

Persons eating much meat should have abundant out-door exercise, as nearly every particle of meat must be burned up in the body and large quantities of oxygen are needed for this. Sedentary men should, therefore, not eat heavy meat meals especially during business hours.

Fat furnishes heat, but in so concentrated a form that a certain amount of fat produces two and a half times as much heat as an equal amount of starch or sugar. On this account pork with other food forms a suitable diet for cold weather, since the fat and the lean of an ordinary portion contain five parts of heat-producing material to one part of muscle-making substance. Veal is a good meat to serve in warm weather, as even the lean portions of it contain but little fat; but veal is only suited to persons with absolutely normal digestion, since, being an immature meat it is less easily digested and assimilated than beef or mutton.

Meat has been supposed by some to tax the digestive organs proper, more than other food; but, while it remains in the stomach from an hour to two hours longer than vegetables, the digestion of the lean part is practically accomplished in the stomach and little work thus devolves upon the intestinal ferments, so that it does not require more energy, on the whole, to dispose of meats than to dispose of foods such as starches and sugars which are hurried through the stomach, but must undergo a long process of intestinal digestion.

The products of the digestion of meats, moreover, enter more quickly into the blood, and its sustaining effect is more quickly felt than when another kind of food is taken. Any sudden exertion is known to be more easily withstood by a man accustomed to a meat diet than by another.

The thing which does tax the digestive organs is to oblige them to supply all the needs of the body from food of one kind, be that either meat taken entirely, or vegetables and starches eaten exclusively. Meat, vegetables and bread may be eaten together ; or milk or cheese may be substituted for meat, and eaten with vegetables and bread. Either of these combinations forms a good diet for well persons.

Helen G. Sheldon

 In his words “To one whose work has lain in India, and who for more than twenty years has been engaged in a study of the relation of faulty food to disease, the belief that such food is of paramount importance in the causation of disease amounts to certainty.”

McCarrison was a young medical doctor when he was stationed by the British administration in what is today northern Pakistan, at the beginning of the 20’s century. He had a neck for research and noticed soon after his arrival that the Hunza tribe are incredibly healthy in comparison to other populations in his region. He attributed the health to their diet and thus began a long career in nutritional research.

After WWI the British realized that they did not know what to feed their Indian soldiers, so they established a nutritional research center in Madras headed by McCarrison. The results of his 18 years of research are summarized in two Cantor lectures that McCarrison presented in England in 1936 after he was promoted to major-general and received a Sir title from King George V for his scientific achievements. via Miki Ben-Dor

"Add to this that the average Bengali or Madrassi uses relatively little milk or milk-products, that by religion he is often a non-meat-eater, that his consumption of protein, whether of vegetable or of animal origin, is, in general, very low, that fresh vegetable and fruit enter into his dietary but sparingly, and we have not far to seek for the poor physique that, in general, characterizes him. In short, it may be said that according as the quality of the diet diminishes with respect to proteins, fats, minerals and vitamins, so do physical efficiency and health; a rule which applies with equal force to the European as to the Indian."

The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz also discusses this, page 14 
"In the early 1900s, for instance, Sir Robert McCarrison, the Britist government's director of nutrition research in the Indian Medical Service and perhaps the most influential nutritionist of the first half of the twentieth century, wrote that he was "deeply impressed by the health and vigour of certain races there. The Sikhs and the Hunzas," notably, suffered from "none of the major diseases of Western nations such as cancer, peptic ulcer, appendicitis, and dental decay." These Indians in the north were generally long-lived and had "good physique[s]," and their vibrant health stood "in marked contrast" to the high morbidity of other groups in the southern part of India who ate mainly white rice with minimal dairy or meat. McCarrison believed he could rule out causes other than nutrition for these differences, because he found that he could reproduce a similar degree of ill-health when feeding experimental rats a diet low in milk and meat. The healthy people McCarrison observed ate some meat but mostly "an abundance" of milk and milk products such as butter and cheese, which meant that the fat content of their diet was mainly saturated."

Before leaving the subject of animal food we must say a word or two on cannibalism. Human flesh is nowhere a regular article of food ; some blacks undoubtedly kill to eat, others only eat those who are killed in battle, or have died of disease. Sometimes there is a magical idea attaching to the use of human flesh or fat, especially kidney fat, which is cut out before death has taken place : it is held to convey to the eater the courage of the victim. Sometimes it is the bodies of enemies which are disposed of in this way ; in South Queensland it was the recognised method of giving honourable burial to your friends. In many parts both sexes and all classes eat human flesh ; elsewhere it is only the men who will do so. There are no special ceremonies connected with cooking or eating in most districts, and most parts of the body are eaten, the thighs being the bonne bouche. In West Australia, on the Gascoyne River, some ritual is found in connection with eating human flesh. A girl was killed, when she was bathing with several others, by a native, who decoyed her away. She was very plump ; the object of killing her was to acquire this desirable quality. A big fire was made, and after removing her intestines, two natives carried her round the fire a few times in an upright position, the others meanwhile singing in a low voice. Then the body was put in the heart of the fire, where a space had been cleared, covered with ashes and cooked like a kangaroo. One of the participants in the feast was a companion who had been bathing with her. 

In the Turribul tribes ceremonial combats follow the initiation ceremonies. If a man is killed in one of these his body is eaten. Each tribal group sits by its own fire, and a great medicine man singes the body all over till it turns copper coloured. Then the body is opened, the entrails and heart are buried, and pieces of the flesh cut off and thrown to the different parties ; the fat was rubbed on the faces of the principal medicine men, and the skin and bones were carried by the mother for months. The grave in which were the heart and other parts was so sacred that none save a few old medicine men would approach it ; it was marked with blackened sticks tied with grass. Near Maryborough the skin was taken off, and the body distributed to the men and old women, the father or father's brother officiating as carver. The kidney fat was rubbed on the spears, and the kidneys themselves stuck on the points ; this was to make the weapons deadly. The meat is stated to look like horseflesh and smell like beef when it is being cooked. Statements have been made that a girl was sacrificed in South Queensland to some evil spirit ; there is no evidence to show that this was the case, and it may be dismissed as an invention.

Further to the north-east, on the Gulf of Carpentaria, the tribes eat the flesh of the dead man, and then, after some elaborate ceremonies, bury the bones. In the Binbinga tribe a fire is made in a hole in the ground, the head is cut off, the liver taken out, and the limbs dismembered. No woman may take part in the cannibal feast. The bones are taken to the camp of the dead man's father, and he puts them in a parcel : a stout stick is placed upright in the ground, and in the fork of this the parcel is placed ; a fire is lighted in a clear space round it, and in the smoke of this fire is supposed to be seen the spirit of the dead man. Only his father and mother may approach the fire. After a time the bones are placed in a log, and this in the boughs of a tree overhanging a water-hole, to be finally disposed of by a great flood or some similar catastrophe. 

South of the Arunta are the Dieri. After a death they wail for hours at a time and smear their bodies with pipeclay. Tears course down the cheeks of the women, but when they are addressed the mourn- ino- stops as if by magic. As soon as the breath leaves the body of the sick man, the women and children leave the camp, the men pull down his hut so as to get at the body, and it is prepared for burial by being tied up. The great toes are fastened together, and the thumbs are secured behind the back ; this they say is to prevent 'walking.' Eight men take the corpse on their heads, and the grave is filled, not with earth, but with wood, in order to keep the dingo at bay. The space round the grave is carefully swept, and the camp is moved from its original situation, so as to evade the attentions of the spirit if it should happen to get back to its old haunts. Mr. Gason, not a very reliable authority, says that the fat of the corpse is eaten ; the mother eats of her children, the children of their mother, brothers-in-law eat of sisters- in-law and vice versd ; but the father does not eat of his offspring, nor they of him.

I did now what I should have done the day before approached the animals directly, got within two hundred and fifty yards and secured them all . They turned out to be two young bulls and a cow with a calf. I did not stop to skin them, but covered them hastily with snow so as to prevent their freezing quickly, and made for the river as fast as I could , hoping to overtake Ilavinirk before he had moved camp far; for we had agreed in the morning before I left that he was to proceed up river on the presumption that I would be unsuccessful in the day's hunt and get as far south as possible, - we thought the farther south we got, the better our prospects. 

Ilavinirk had gone about the programme energetically , and it was only after about ten miles of hard running that I overtook him getting ready to pitch camp in the mouth of a small creek. Daylight was gone and both Ilavinirk and Palaiyak were played out, so that we had to camp where we were and take the chance of wolverines and wolves stealing our precious meat during the night. The next day, when we went to fetch the meat, we found that a wolverine had eaten up a portion of one of the caribou. We shot the wolverine, and as its meat was much fatter and juicier than the caribou meat, it paid us well for the little it had stolen. 

Our hunt had begun well. There is a saying that “well begun is half done.” In our case well begun was four fifths done, for another week of hunting gave us only one caribou, which I shot by moonlight one early morning the only caribou I have ever shot by moon light, although since then I have killed more than one wolf by night. 

This hunt, like the one before, I broke up rather sooner than I otherwise might, with the idea that Anderson must surely have returned by now and that I would get him and Natkusiak to help me. Considering how sick and weak he was, Ilavinirk’s conduct at this time was worthy of the highest admiration , but of course he could not do the work of a well man. We had hunted south about forty miles without finding the caribou there any more numerous than they were near home. Our return journey took us two days, and we got home on the evening of January 5th, to find that Ander son had not yet arrived . 

On the days between December 28, 1909, and January 8, 1910, there are no entries in my diary, for on every one of those days I was off hunting during the hours of daylight and we had no light in the house at night by which diary entries could be written. We had now been nearly a month without oil or fat of any kind, either for food or for light. But on January 8th the women, after gathering together all the old bones and breaking them up, had succeeded in boiling a little tallow out of them, and by its light I made the diary entries for the past ten days from memory, while the women mended clothes and did other sewing they had been unable to do before for want of light. 

Of our entire seven I was now the only one not actually sick , and I felt by no means well . Doing hard work in cold weather on a diet nearly devoid of fat is a most interesting and uncommon experi ment in dietetics, and may therefore be worth describing in some detail. The symptoms that result from a diet of lean meat are practically those of starvation . The caribou on which we had to live had marrow in their bones that was as blood, and in most of them no fat was discernible even behind the eyes or in the tongue. When we had been on a diet of oil straight, a few weeks before, we had found that with a teacupful of oil a day there were no symptoms of hunger ; we grew each day sleepier and more slovenly, and no doubt lost strength gradually , but at the end of our meals of long - haired caribou skin and oil we felt satisfied and at ease. Now with a diet of lean meat everything was different. We had an abundance of it as yet and we would boil up huge quantities and stuff ourselves with it . We ate so much that our stomachs were actually distended much beyond their usual size — so much that it was distinctly noticeable even outside of one's clothes. But with all this gorging we felt continually hungry. Simultaneously we felt like unto bursts ing and also as if we had not had enough to eat . One by one the six Eskimo of the party were taken with diarrhoea. 

By the 10th of January things were getting to look serious indeed. It was apparent not only that we could not go on indefinitely without fat, but it was also clear that even our lean meat would last only a few days longer. We had on December 11th estimated that we had two months' supplies of meat, and now in a month they were gone. Our estimate had not been really wrong, for if we had had a little fat to go with the meat, it would no doubt have lasted at least sixty days, but without the fat we ate such incredible quantities that it threw all our reckoning out of gear. It was not only that we ate só much, but also the dogs. They had been fed more meat than dogs usually get and still they were nothing but skin and bones, for they could not, any more than we, get along on lean meat only. 

The caribou in the neighborhood were increasing in numbers now and I saw them almost every day, but I had the most outrageous luck. One day, for instance, I saw a band in clear, calm weather ; it was one of those deathly still days when the quietest step on the softest snow can be heard by man or beast for several hundred yards. As the animals were quiet I did not dare to attempt approaching them, thinking that the next day might be cloudy or windy or in some way more suitable to deer- stalking, for it is a noticeable fact that even though the day be practically still, the condition of the air when the sky is clouded is such as to muffle any noise and to make the approach to deer within , say , a hundred yards feasible. The next day was windy, but altogether too windy, for it was one of those blind ing blizzards when it is impossible to see more than forty or fifty feet. Because our condition was desperate, I nevertheless hunted that day and walked back and forth over the place where the caribou had been the day before, knowing that it was possible, although unlikely, that I might fall in with the animals. I did not fall in with them , however, and the next day was a blizzard of the same kind and my hunt had the same result. The third day Ilavinirk and I went out together and found the caribou still, strange to say, in the same spot, but a half mile or so before we came up to them a fawn suddenly appeared on the top of a hill near us and saw us. It is the nature of a frightened caribou to run toward any caribou that are in the neighborhood and to frighten them away also, so that there was nothing for us to do but to shoot this fawn, although we knew that the shooting would scare the large band away, which it did. 

January 11th Ilavinirk and I were again out looking for caribou. He used to accompany me in the morning on the chance of our see ing something near home, but as his strength did not allow a long day's hunt he would return early while I went on as much farther as the daylight allowed. On this day we saw simultaneously to the north of us a caribou on top of one hill and three men on top of another hill. These must be Anderson, Natkusiak , and Pikaluk, we thought, and evidently they were hunting the same caribou that we saw. It was one of those still days, however, so that the chance of shooting him was not great for either party. We headed towards the caribou and so did the three men, but the caribou ran away long before we got near it. 

It turned out that these three men were not the ones we had expected, however, but three Eskimo, one of whom, Memoranna, is well known under the name of Jimmie to those who have read Amundsen's account of the Northwest Passage voyage. The others were Okuk, a Baillie Islands man , and a Mackenzie River “boy,” Tannaumirk, who was really about twenty-five years of age but who has an appearance and a disposition that preclude his being considered as grown up. They had come the 200-mile journey from the Baillie Islands to visit us with the hope of being able to get some caribou skins for clothing. They had had no particular luck so far in their hunts, but they had with them a little seal oil which they immediately offered to share with us. That night, therefore, we had lights again in our house and plenty of oil to eat. It was only a matter of two or three days from that time until all of us were in good form again.