On Fri, 7 Jan 2005 09:05:30 -0500, Todd Moody <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>I don't know that Stefannson and Anderson had any bone problems during
>that year, but it was reported that they both were in negative calcium
>balance the whole time, i.e., they were excreting more calcium than they
>were taking in.

Hi Todd,

A fellow on another site I post to said that the negative calcium balance
regarding Stefannson is not accurage.  And sure enough, it looks like he is
right.  I looked up Stefansson's "Advetures in Diet"  and found the
following quote toward the end of Part 2 which indicates that the purported
negative calcium balance was merely supposed by the chemists -- not
actually proved by tests.  (Reminds me of today's nutritionists who assume
that high meat/fat, low carb regimes are creating cancer and clogged
arteries despite evidence of people experiencing improved health on such
regimes.) Also, Stefannson apparently continued his all meat diet, enjoying
good health, until his death at age 83. I'm feeling better about my all
meat days.  I must say that my craving for all meat with lots of fat days
intensifies during the cold winter months -- I live in NY. Any other NY
paleos finding your cravings for fatty meat intensify as the temperature
drops?

From Part 2 of Stefansson's "Adventures in Diet":

"Part of our routine was to give the chemists for analysis pieces of meat
as nearly as possible identical with those we ate. For instance, lamb would
be split down through the middle of the spine and we had the chops from one
side cooked for us, while they got the chops from the other side to
analyze. When the diet was sirloin steaks, they received ones matching
ours. The only way in which the diet was not identical with the food
analyzed was that Andersen and I followed the Eskimo custom of eating fish
bones and chewing the rib ends; from these sources we no doubt obtained a
certain amount of calcium.

Toward the latter part of the test it became startlingly clear, on paper
that we were not getting enough calcium for health. But we were healthy.
The escape from that dilemma was assume that a calcium deficiency which did
not hurt us in our one year might destroy us in ten or twenty.

You study bones when you look for a calcium deficiency. The thing to do
then, was to examine the skeletons of people who had died at a reasonably
high age after living from infancy upon an exclusive meat diet. Such
skeletons are those of Eskimos who are known to have died before the
European influences came in. The Institute of American Meat Packers were
induced to make a subsidiary appropriation to the Peabody Museum of Harvard
University where Dr. Earnest A. Hooton, Professor of Physical Anthropology,
under took a through going study with regard to the calcium problem in the
relation to the Museum's collection of the skeletons of meat eaters. Dr.
Hooton reported no signs of calcium deficiency. On the contrary, there was
every indication that the meat eaters had been liberally, or at least
adequately, supplied. The had suffered no more in a lifetime from calcium
deficiency than we had in our short year (really short, by the way for we
enjoyed it)."