michael raiti
> Sent: Monday, January 15, 2007 10:43 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Calcium
> 
> 
> I am interested in any references any of you have
> regarding the calcium in meat.  Muscular contraction
> requires calcium that is stored in the muscle fibers
> (sarcoplasm reticulum organelle).  How significant is the 
> amount of calcium in muscle meats.  I am aware that nutrition 
> tables show meats to not supply any calcium.  I seem to 
> remember reading that during the year that Steffanson did his 
> all meat diet under testing conditions that he did not have 
> negative calcium balance.  Therefore, it leaves me to wonder 
> if meat has some available calcium.
> 

Why not check out what Stefansson himself said (see below)? Stefansson says
he got much of his calcium from eating fish bones and chewing the ends of
caribou ribs. His calcium intake was lower than the American RDI amounts,
but he was not found to be calcium deficient. He was probably excreting less
calcium and absorbing it better, as did the traditional Inuit. Consuming
modern foods like grains and dairy increases calcium excretion, reduces
absorption, and can lead to deposits of calcium in joints, bursa sacs, etc.,
exacerbating arthritis, bursitis, bunions, etc.

I'm not sure how Stefansson and the Inuit Eskimos avoided over-acidification
from high-meat diets, which can leach calcium out of the bones. Anyone know
this? I know some vegetarians claim that the traditional Inuit suffered
higher-than-average rates of osteoporosis, but I've never seen evidence of
this, and Dr. Hooton's study found "no signs of calcium deficiency."

---

	"Only one serious fear of the experiments was realized - our diet
for the year turned out low in calcium. This was not demonstrated by any
tests upon Andersen or me, and certainly you could not have proved it by
asking us or looking at us, for we felt better and looked healthier than our
average for the years immediately previous. The calcium deficiency appeared
solely through the food analysis of the chemists.

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)."

From: www.biblelife.org/stefansson2.htm