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« on: August 08, 2008, 03:15:35 am »
Stefansson wrote in his book, The Land of the Fat, the following:
"The second provision, that you must eat the whole beast, has, in my
experience and observation, still less foundation than the first
provision, if that be possible. Both Eskimos and northern forest
Indians, and whites who live with them, have a clear mental picture
of each animal they butcher, dividing the carcass then or later so
that certain parts go uniformly to the dog team, the rest to the
family. These divisions of the carcass vary from one species of
animal to another but do not vary within the species, unless slightly
by season.
The way in which Eskimos divide, for instance, a caribou between men
and dogs has been described with some detail; here the fact is
emphasized that the organ commonly spoken of as richest in vitamins,
the liver, is nearly always given to the dogsāas are the sweetbreads
and, indeed, all things from the body cavity except the heart and
kidneys. The kidneys are usually given to children, somewhat as if
they were candy. So far as I know the Eskimos of northern Alaska and
northwestern Canada, and the forest Indians just to the south of
them, the only condition under which they ate nearly or quite the
whole caribou was in time of famine. Ceasing to give the dogs the
parts which normally are theirs was that stage of a famine which
immediately preceded the killing and eating of the dogs themselves.
So far as present knowledge goes, there is in ordinary red meat, or
in ordinary fresh fish, without the eating of anything from the body
cavity, enough Vitamin C, or whatever it is that prevents scurvy, to
maintain optimum health indefinitely, with a cooking to the degree
which we call medium. Certainly this is true if the meat is cooked in
large chunks, as with both Eskimos and northern forest Indians,
rather than in thin slices, which latter style of cooking may, for
all I know, decrease the potency of the scurvy-preventing factor.
There is no intention to deny, of course, that cooking to medium will
somewhat lessen the meat's antiscorbutic value. What is to be said is
only that even with medium cooking there appears to be left over, in
fresh red meat or fresh fish, an abundance if not a superabundance of
all the vitamins and of all the other factors necessary for keeping a
man in top form indefinitely."
From this I infer that, according to Stefansson and his experience,
muscle-meat alone is enough, even if cooked somewhat. The Bear has
also been living on almost exclusively muscle-meat for 47 years and
supports the idea that muscle-meat alone is sufficient.
This to me makes sense because there would not be much organ to eat
per person as one animal contains only one of each and there are many
members in a group. Some would probably not have any organ at all for
many days, if not, months. Some organs would also never be eaten by
anyone, ever, like polar bear liver or caribou lungs. To rely on
something that is more scarce as opposed to muscle-meat which is more
abundant just doesn't make sense to me.
Also...the Inuits would sometimes eat only fish for months on or just seal or caribou. Such was Stefansson's observation. And regardless, they all remained healthy and had strong bones.