> > I am increasingly convinced that this kind of
> > regime provides adequate (if not ideal) nutrition
> > for health -- just as Anchell ("Steak Lover's
> > Diet") claims.
>
> Sounds possible, but I'm pretty certain you'd have
> to include plenty of organs to get the RDA's of all
> the vitamins and minerals.  I can't stand eating
> organ meats and find it much easier to fill in the
> gaps with greens, berries, herbs, etc.
>
> Has anyone ever run a nutritional profile on 3 lbs
> of muscle meat a day?  It would be interesting to
> see how the numbers stack up.

The arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson lived on an
all meat diet at Bellevue Hospital for a year and
developed no known deficiencies. I don't know if
organs were included..

"Stefansson himself and a colleague, Dr. Karsten Ander
son, finally demolished the balanced-diet-for-health
idea in 1928 when they entered the Dietetic Ward of
Bellevue Hospital, New York, to be human guinea pigs
on an exclusively meat diet and remained, under the
strictest medical supervision , on this diet for
twelve months.
The committee in charge of the investigation must
surely be one of the best qualified ever assembled to
supervise a dietetic experiment. It consisted of
leaders of all the important sciences related to the
problem and represented seven institutions:

American Meat Institute: Dr. C. Robert Moulton;
American Museum of Natural History: Dr. Clark Wissler;

Cornell University Medical College: Dr. Walter L.
Niles;
Harvard University: Drs. Lawrence J. Henderson, Ernest
A. Hooton, and Percy R. Howe;
John Hopkins University: Drs. William C. McCallum and
Raymond Pearl;
Russell Sage Institute of Pathology: Drs. Eugene F.
DuBois and Graham Luck;
University of Chicago: Dr. Edwin 0. Jordan


The Chairman of the committee was Dr. Pearl. The main
research work of the experiment was directed by Dr.
DuBois, who was then Medical Director of the Russell
Sage Institute, and who has since been Chief Physician
of New York Hospital, and Professor of Physiology in
the Medical College of Cornell University. Among his
col laborators were Dr. Walter S. McClellan, Dr. Henry
B. Richardson, Mr. V. R. Rupp, Mr. C. G. Soderstrom,
Dr. Henry J. Spencer, Dr. Edward Tolstoi, Dr. John C.
Torrey, and Mr. Vincent Toscani. The clinical super
vision was under the charge of Dr. Lieb.

The aim of the experiment was not, as the press
claimed at the time, to prove or disprove anything. It
was simply to find out exactly the effects on general
health of an all-meat diet. Within that general plan,
it was hoped that the results would answer several
controversial questions:

Does scurvy arise when vegetable foods are withheld?
Does an all-meat diet produce other deficiency
diseases?
Is the effect on the heart, blood vessels and kidneys
bad?
Will it encourage the growth of harmful bacteria in
the gut?
Will it cause a deficiency of essential
minerals—notably calcium,
Dr. MeClennan and Dr. DuBois published the results of
this study in the American Journal of Biological
Chemistry in 1930 under the title, "Prolonged meat
diets with study of kidney functions and ketosis."
Here are their findings summarised for convenience
with those of other doctors who reported on other
aspects of the experiment:

Stefansson, who was a few pounds over-weight at the
beginning, lost his excess weight in the first few
weeks on the all-meat diet. His basal expenditure of
energy (metabolism or general rate of food using) rose
from 60.96 calories to 66.38 calories per hour during
the period of the weight loss, indicating an increase
of 8.9%. He continued the diet a full year, with no
apparent ill effects. His blood cholesterol level at
the end of the year, while he was still on the diet,
was 51 mg. lower than it had been at the start.
(Remember this when reading about the next objection:
the possibility of heart disease.) It rose a little
after he resumed an ordinary, mixed diet. After losing
his excess weight he maintained constant weight the
rest of the year, though food was taken as desired.
His total intake ranged from 2,000 to 3,100 calories a
day. He derived, by choice, about 80% of his energy
needs from fat and 20% from protein. These proportions
are close to those derived by a person from his own
tissues during prolonged fasting. The instinctive
choice of about 80 % of the calories from fat seems to
be based on selection by the metabolic processes of
the body. It was found that with carbohydrate
restricted in the diet, the appetite for fat greatly
increased. The body adapted itself to a greater use of
fat for energy when this substance was supplied in
increased amounts.
So the answers to our five special questions listed
above are all "no." Nothing untoward occurred and both
subjects remained healthy, free from scurvy and other
deficiency diseases, with normal heart and kidney
functions. Their bowels behaved normally except that
their stools became smaller and lost their smell.
Deficiency of calcium or other minerals did not
develop.
So much for the balanced diet. It is evidently not as
important as some pundits would have us believe. In
fact, many of the assumptions about diet on which
national food policies are based may one day have to
be revised."

http://www.ourcivilisation.com/fat/chap3.htm

Adrienne, you're going to like this link ;)


Max


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