Meatritionist

 1898. Excerpt: ... GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 'He who gains a new idea, or has a fresh insight into an old one, is thereby invested with a new responsibility. He has no right to live exactly as he did before. A duty is laid upon him to bring it into practical operation for his own guidance, and, as far as possible, for the general welfare.' 

ANY persons seem to imagine that when they have said 'mince and hot water' they have polished off in a word the whole Salisbury treatment. They were never more at sea in all their lives. The Salisbury System is not one--but many-sided. Beef and hot water form a part and an all-important part; but here besides is a wide-embracing plan that minutely takes into account everything that concerns the patient, and provides for every day's contingencies. All doings, takings, quantities, etc. are considered and regulated so that every condition may be made and kept advantageous for the furthering of Nature's processes, and that the patient and his family may be continually aiding and fostering these as far as possible. The Salisbury treatment looks narrowly to the patient's eating, drinking, to the when, what, how, and how much he eats, to the cooking of his food, to the digesting of his food (for sensible people, like you and me, Reader, know that the proof of the pudding is--not the eating,--alas, no! it is the digesting!), to the internal cleansings, the thorough tranquil restings; the encouragement of a brave, placid frame of mind, a cheerful, hopeful spirit, with special avoidance of fatigue, friction, and worry; and it seeks besides to judiciously accommodate to its wise requirements every hour of the patient's day and every one of his doings.

I wonder are the Eskimos unique among the nations in their disregard of vegetable foods? I sometimes saw them getting young willow shoots and one or two other little bits of green, and eating them as a relish to their meat; but they make absolutely no attempt to till what soil there is, and they do not even make the most of the plants that grow. During the short weeks of summer the vegetation springs up in a perfectly marvelous manner. . . . Surely among this wild scramble of plant life there must be some things that are good to eat! I know that there are plenty of dandelion leaves, and I have tasted worse things in my time, but the people never touch them.

It was a marvel to me how the Eskimos managed to keep free from scurvy, eating so little green food; but the settlers on the coast say that seal meat does instead of vegetables, presumably because there are similar salts in it, and so eaters of seal meat are able to keep healthy. It is very likely true, for the Eskimos, whose main food it is, are practically free from scurvy. We Europeans could never take to seal meat; it looks very black and nasty, and has a queer, inky, fishy taste that goes against a fastidious palate; but the people only smile at our lack of appreciation of their greatest delicacy, and tell us "Mamadlarpok" (it tastes fine).

But though gardening is entirely foreign to the Eskimo nature, they do not entirely scorn the good things of the earth . . . In most years the scrubby bushes that crawl upon the ground are loaded with succulent berries—a truly marvelous provision—and the people gather them not only by the handfuls and bucketfuls, but by barrelfuls.

Among the Eskimos of Labrador; a record of five years' close intercourse with the Eskimo tribes of Labrador by S. K Hutton( Book )

24 editions published in 1912 in English and held by 238 WorldCat member libraries worldwide

Account based on author's experience as medical missionary on Killinek Island, 1908-12

In 1920, while Vilhjalmur Stefansson was just beginning his campaign to convince nutritionists that an all-meat diet was a uniquely healthy diet, it was already making the transition into a reducing diet courtesy of a New York internist named Blake Donaldson. Donaldson, as he wrote in his 1962 memoirs, began treating obese patients in 1919, when he worked with the cardiologist Robert Halsey, one of four founding officers of the American Heart Association. After a year of futility in trying to reduce these patients ("fat cardiacs," he called them) with semi-starvation diets, he spoke with the resident anthropologists at the American Museum of Natural History, who told him that prehistoric humans lived almost exclusively on "the fattest meat they could kill," perhaps supplemented by roots and berries. This led Donaldson to conclude that fatty meat should be "the essential part of any reducing routine," and this is what he began prescribing to his obese patients. Through the 1920s, Donaldson honed his diet by trial and error, eventually settling on a half-pound of fatty meat-three parts fat to one part lean by calories, the same proportion used in Stefansson's Bellevue experiment-for each of three meals a day. After cooking, this works out to six ounces of lean meat with two ounces of attached fat at each meal. Donaldson's diet prohibited all sugar, flour, alcohol, and starches, with the exception of a "hotel portion" once a day of raw fruit or a potato, which substituted for the roots and berries that primitive man might have been eating as well. Donaldson also prescribed a half-hour walk before breakfast.

Over the course of four decades, as Donaldson told it, he treated seventeen thousand patients for their weight problems. Most of them lost two to three pounds a week on his diet, without experiencing hunger. Donaldson claimed that the only patients who didn't lose weight on the diet were those who cheated, a common assumption that physicians also make about calorie-restricted diets. These patients had a "bread addiction," Donaldson wrote, in that they could no more tolerate living without their starches, flour, and sugar than could a smoker without cigarettes. As a result, he spent considerable effort trying to persuade his patients to break their habit. "Remember that grapefruit and all other raw fruit is starch. You can't have any," he would tell them. "No breadstuff means any kind of bread…. They must go out of your life, now and forever." (His advice to diabetics was equally frank: "You are out of your mind when you take insulin in order to eat Danish pastry.")

Had Donaldson published details of his diet and its efficacy through the 1920s and 1930s, as Frank Evans did about his very low-calorie diet, he might have convinced mainstream investigators at least to consider the possibility that it is the quality of the nutrients in a diet and not the quantity of calories that causes obesity. As it is, he discussed his approach only at in-house conferences at New York Hospital. Among those who heard of his treatment, however, was Alfred Pennington, a local internist who tried the diet himself in 1944-and then began prescribing it to his patients.

The dietetic observations and experiences of Vilhjalmur Stefansson during his career as an arctic explorer are worthy of careful scrutiny by students of nutrition. Because of his contributions, he is entitled to prominence in many departments of science, among them anthropology, geography, geology, oceanography, languages and comparative religions. Whether reading Stefansson's books, attending his lectures, or in private conversation with him, one is impressed not only by his broad knowledge of biology but also by the keenness of his observations and deductions in the domain of metabolism, particularly as applied to the science of practical dietetics. An anthropologist by training, an arctic explorer by choice, he became a student of nutrition by necessity. Perhaps there is no other man living today whose experimental studies have been so well controlled and done on so large a scale. His laboratory was the arctic circle, his experimental subjects human beings, and his experimental material, meat.

This paper reviews the medical history of this unique man. It is hoped that the facts gleaned from the study of his arctic dietetic regimen and body physiology may throw additional light on a subject about which our knowledge is still somewhat vague and controversial ; namely, protein metabolism.

During the month of September, 1922, I made a medical survey of Mr. Stefansson. He suggested at that time that the facts elicited from the studies might be of sufficient scientific interest to warrant publication. The present paper represents the work done on him at that time, amplified by a clinical survey of his condition some two years later.

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The following facts regarding Stefansson's life in the Far North are noteworthy:

1. He spent altogether eleven and one-half years within the arctic circle.

2. He lived for a number of days, totaling nine years, on an exclusive meat diet.

3. He lived for nine successive months on an exclusive meat diet.

4. He reached his maximum weight while subsisting on meat (fish).

5. His sense of physical and mental well being was at its best during that period of his life. 6. He found that the exclusive meat diet worked as well when he was inactive as when active, and as well in hot weather as in cold.

7. Constipation was never present. One month's entire absence from exercise produced neither constipation nor muscular weakness.

8. His hair thickened, and his scalp became healthier.

9. Teeth decay was apparently much less rapid. Stefansson avers that not a single case of constipation was observed in 600 exclusively meat-eating Eskimos for a period of three years

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Neither Stefansson nor any of his men, so far as we could determine, suffered any ill effects from long continued meat diet.

The reducing diet. 

A nutrition problem of considerable importance has arisen with the present-day fashion for a slender figure. It is doubly essential that the restricted diet be well balanced. A very important consideration in the reducing diet is the preservation of nitrogen equilibrium. In reducing there should be no loss of body protein. The reducing diet should be low in caloric value but sufficiently high in protein to abundantly equal the body needs. In addition to a liberal supply of protein, the quality of the protein is important. Proteins of high biologic value are necessary. These are the proteins which supply all of the amino-acids in adequate amounts for building the body tissues. Such proteins are found in meat, milk, and eggs as supplements to the cereal grain proteins. Sometimes in planning the reducing diet, the satiety value of the foods included is entirely overlooked. This gives rise to an unsatisfied feeling which is reflected in the disposition of the person on the diet. On this point McLester says: 

"Other things being equal, the patient should be allowed to eat the food which in largest measure allays his hunger and which gives him the greatest degree of satisfaction. Meat has the highest satiety value of all foods; it 'sticks to the ribs' longest. Therefore, the protein that the patient receives should be largely in the form of meat. For the same reason, clear meat soups and broths are also useful; they have high satiety values without carrying much real nourishment."! 

It is obvious that reducing is not to be entered into carelessly and without competent medical advice and direction. The growing girl who chooses a reducing diet neither wisely nor well is taking grave chances with her future health. She runs the risk of so lowering her resistance that she is an easy prey to disease. McLester points out the necessity of viewing the protein intake from a clinical viewpoint. He says: "I have been impressed by the anemia shown by many patients who, from necessity or from a desire to become fashionably thin, have subjected themselves to rigid dietary restrictions. Animal experimentation has proved that a diet which contains liberal amounts of meats is the best blood builder, and one wonders whether an optimum protein intake is not, after all, a good insurance against disease. Clinical experience shows that it is."2 

Overweight may be due to an organic condition which only a physician can diagnose, and a physician's guidance in matters of diet is essential. Where there is no organic cause for overweight, rational diet should still be the rule.