Protein

I did now what I should have done the day before approached the animals directly, got within two hundred and fifty yards and secured them all . They turned out to be two young bulls and a cow with a calf. I did not stop to skin them, but covered them hastily with snow so as to prevent their freezing quickly, and made for the river as fast as I could , hoping to overtake Ilavinirk before he had moved camp far; for we had agreed in the morning before I left that he was to proceed up river on the presumption that I would be unsuccessful in the day's hunt and get as far south as possible, - we thought the farther south we got, the better our prospects. 

Ilavinirk had gone about the programme energetically , and it was only after about ten miles of hard running that I overtook him getting ready to pitch camp in the mouth of a small creek. Daylight was gone and both Ilavinirk and Palaiyak were played out, so that we had to camp where we were and take the chance of wolverines and wolves stealing our precious meat during the night. The next day, when we went to fetch the meat, we found that a wolverine had eaten up a portion of one of the caribou. We shot the wolverine, and as its meat was much fatter and juicier than the caribou meat, it paid us well for the little it had stolen. 

Our hunt had begun well. There is a saying that “well begun is half done.” In our case well begun was four fifths done, for another week of hunting gave us only one caribou, which I shot by moonlight one early morning the only caribou I have ever shot by moon light, although since then I have killed more than one wolf by night. 

This hunt, like the one before, I broke up rather sooner than I otherwise might, with the idea that Anderson must surely have returned by now and that I would get him and Natkusiak to help me. Considering how sick and weak he was, Ilavinirk’s conduct at this time was worthy of the highest admiration , but of course he could not do the work of a well man. We had hunted south about forty miles without finding the caribou there any more numerous than they were near home. Our return journey took us two days, and we got home on the evening of January 5th, to find that Ander son had not yet arrived . 

On the days between December 28, 1909, and January 8, 1910, there are no entries in my diary, for on every one of those days I was off hunting during the hours of daylight and we had no light in the house at night by which diary entries could be written. We had now been nearly a month without oil or fat of any kind, either for food or for light. But on January 8th the women, after gathering together all the old bones and breaking them up, had succeeded in boiling a little tallow out of them, and by its light I made the diary entries for the past ten days from memory, while the women mended clothes and did other sewing they had been unable to do before for want of light. 

Of our entire seven I was now the only one not actually sick , and I felt by no means well . Doing hard work in cold weather on a diet nearly devoid of fat is a most interesting and uncommon experi ment in dietetics, and may therefore be worth describing in some detail. The symptoms that result from a diet of lean meat are practically those of starvation . The caribou on which we had to live had marrow in their bones that was as blood, and in most of them no fat was discernible even behind the eyes or in the tongue. When we had been on a diet of oil straight, a few weeks before, we had found that with a teacupful of oil a day there were no symptoms of hunger ; we grew each day sleepier and more slovenly, and no doubt lost strength gradually , but at the end of our meals of long - haired caribou skin and oil we felt satisfied and at ease. Now with a diet of lean meat everything was different. We had an abundance of it as yet and we would boil up huge quantities and stuff ourselves with it . We ate so much that our stomachs were actually distended much beyond their usual size — so much that it was distinctly noticeable even outside of one's clothes. But with all this gorging we felt continually hungry. Simultaneously we felt like unto bursts ing and also as if we had not had enough to eat . One by one the six Eskimo of the party were taken with diarrhoea. 

By the 10th of January things were getting to look serious indeed. It was apparent not only that we could not go on indefinitely without fat, but it was also clear that even our lean meat would last only a few days longer. We had on December 11th estimated that we had two months' supplies of meat, and now in a month they were gone. Our estimate had not been really wrong, for if we had had a little fat to go with the meat, it would no doubt have lasted at least sixty days, but without the fat we ate such incredible quantities that it threw all our reckoning out of gear. It was not only that we ate só much, but also the dogs. They had been fed more meat than dogs usually get and still they were nothing but skin and bones, for they could not, any more than we, get along on lean meat only. 

The caribou in the neighborhood were increasing in numbers now and I saw them almost every day, but I had the most outrageous luck. One day, for instance, I saw a band in clear, calm weather ; it was one of those deathly still days when the quietest step on the softest snow can be heard by man or beast for several hundred yards. As the animals were quiet I did not dare to attempt approaching them, thinking that the next day might be cloudy or windy or in some way more suitable to deer- stalking, for it is a noticeable fact that even though the day be practically still, the condition of the air when the sky is clouded is such as to muffle any noise and to make the approach to deer within , say , a hundred yards feasible. The next day was windy, but altogether too windy, for it was one of those blind ing blizzards when it is impossible to see more than forty or fifty feet. Because our condition was desperate, I nevertheless hunted that day and walked back and forth over the place where the caribou had been the day before, knowing that it was possible, although unlikely, that I might fall in with the animals. I did not fall in with them , however, and the next day was a blizzard of the same kind and my hunt had the same result. The third day Ilavinirk and I went out together and found the caribou still, strange to say, in the same spot, but a half mile or so before we came up to them a fawn suddenly appeared on the top of a hill near us and saw us. It is the nature of a frightened caribou to run toward any caribou that are in the neighborhood and to frighten them away also, so that there was nothing for us to do but to shoot this fawn, although we knew that the shooting would scare the large band away, which it did. 

January 11th Ilavinirk and I were again out looking for caribou. He used to accompany me in the morning on the chance of our see ing something near home, but as his strength did not allow a long day's hunt he would return early while I went on as much farther as the daylight allowed. On this day we saw simultaneously to the north of us a caribou on top of one hill and three men on top of another hill. These must be Anderson, Natkusiak , and Pikaluk, we thought, and evidently they were hunting the same caribou that we saw. It was one of those still days, however, so that the chance of shooting him was not great for either party. We headed towards the caribou and so did the three men, but the caribou ran away long before we got near it. 

It turned out that these three men were not the ones we had expected, however, but three Eskimo, one of whom, Memoranna, is well known under the name of Jimmie to those who have read Amundsen's account of the Northwest Passage voyage. The others were Okuk, a Baillie Islands man , and a Mackenzie River “boy,” Tannaumirk, who was really about twenty-five years of age but who has an appearance and a disposition that preclude his being considered as grown up. They had come the 200-mile journey from the Baillie Islands to visit us with the hope of being able to get some caribou skins for clothing. They had had no particular luck so far in their hunts, but they had with them a little seal oil which they immediately offered to share with us. That night, therefore, we had lights again in our house and plenty of oil to eat. It was only a matter of two or three days from that time until all of us were in good form again.

This evening was one of the most difficult of my entire expe rience on account of the levelness of the country. Our house stood on an island with a cutbank about a quarter of a mile long and so I knew that if I could hit the neighborhood of the house within an area of not more than a quarter of a mile, there was a fair chance of finding the camp. It was chiefly a chance, no doubt, but as a matter of fact I found the cutbank and got home about four hours after dark, much to the surprise of the Eskimo and also to their delight, seeing that I brought a caribou tongue, which was not only a deli cacy but also an advertisement of the fact that the reign of the tom cod was over . Two days later we moved camp about ten miles southeast to the east end of Langton Bay, from which we hunted caribou with such success that within a week we had seventeen carcasses piled up outside our tent. 

On one of his caribou hunts from this camp, Natkusiak was caught by just such a blizzard as that in which I had been about a week before, and was awayfortwodays. A man fully dressed at this season of the year wears two coats, a thick outer one and an inner one made of thin fawnskin. Natkusiak on this occasion was wearing only the thin fawnskin one, and we were therefore consider ably worried about him; but on the third morning he came home all safe and smiling, saying that he had had the longest and best sleep of the winter. He had been about four miles away from camp, in a little snow hut, the floor of which was not over five feet in diameter and the roof of which was less than four feet high. 

During this time we had good success, not only with caribou but also in the trapping of foxes, the skins of which were valuable both commercially and for scientific purposes. As always at this season of the year, and during other seasons whenever the caribou are poor, we preferred the meat of the foxes to that of the caribou. I find a note in my diary to the effect that we ate all the foxes caught during this time, except one which we found dead from disease, apparently, and there is a complaint set down to the effect that although the skin was in good condition, the flesh was too lean for eating.

Protein . The protein burned in the metabolism of a healthy individual from day to day depends chiefly on the protein supplied by the diet . Muscular exercise has little effect upon it , since that is dependent upon carbohydrate or fat, with a preference for the former. Even in the early days of fasting the protein metabolism changes but little from that in health. With a diet rich in carbohydrate and fat and low in protein the protein metabolism is easily brought to less than 50 grams per day, but with an excess of protein in the diet it may rise to 150 or 200 grams. A liver well stored with glycogen protects the body protein of a fasting man for a day just as carbohydrate in the diet , but on a second day fails because the glycogen is nearly exhausted. “The influence of the available supply of body fat upon the protein metabolism of fasting,” as cited by Sherman, "is shown by the following observations of Falck, on the protein metabolism of two fasting dogs -- the one lean, the other fat ." ( See Table 160. ) The fat dog was healthy thirty - five days after the lean dog died .

The question of minimal and optimal protein requirements has received considerable research attention in recent years. There is now very little disagreement among students of nutrition as to what these requirements are. On the effects of a high protein dietary, however, not only do opinions of authorities differ but the results of carefully controlled experiments show considerable variance. It is a traditional belief that a high protein intake leads to high blood pressure, arteriosclerosis or nephritis. Among physicians it has almost become a dietetic dogma to reduce or eliminate entirely the intake of meat whenever diets are prescribed. Unless proper interpretation is given to certain present-day investigations on protein metabolism, including the results of the experiment reviewed in this paper, there is danger that the dietetic pendulum will swing too far in the opposite direction.

The Nephropathic Effect in Man of a Diet High in Beef Muscle and Liver.

Author(s) : Newburgh, L. H. ;  Falcon-lesses, M. ;  Johnston, Margaret W.

Author Affiliation : Med. School, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Journal article : American Journal of Medical Sciences 1930 Vol.179 pp.305-10 ref.8

Abstract : The authors have previously shown that rats living on a diet rich in animal tissues (muscle and liver) gradually developed sclerosis of the kidney. In the present investigation a normal man, aged 32, was given a diet containing less than 100 gm. protein daily, for a preliminary period of 35 days. There was no albumen in the urine during this period and the number of urinary casts averaged 50 per hour (ADDIS gives the average figure in group of students as 87). During the next 6 months the man ate a diet containing 327 gm. of animal protein and with a total calorie value of 4, 177. Beef liver, veal round, beef tenderloin and dried beef were given, about one-quarter of the protein being liver. Only 31 per cent. of the calories of the diet represented animal protein. No clinical or subjective abnormalities appeared. There was a gradual increase in the urine albumen which reached 2 to 4 mgm. of protein per hour in the 6th month. The cast counts during the first 7 weeks were within the normal range. Afterwards the counts were definitely pathological and during the last 6 weeks the average count was 1, 283 (15 X normal average). At first the casts were hyaline; gradually more and more granular casts appeared, and during the last 6 weeks, some were cellular and the hyaline type were in the minority. After returning to a diet of his own choice, in which meat was avoided, the man's urine became normal in 10 days. A diet containing the same proportions of animal protein was found not to affect the kidney of the rat. There are a number of observations which appear to show that an exclusive meat diet is not harmful to the kidneys of man. The Eskimos are cited in this regard, but a recent survey of a number of middle-aged Eskimos shows a definitely higher degree of albuminuria than in the policy holders of a large American insurance company. Furthermore the Eskimos have presumably over many generations become adapted to their diet. The recent investigation on 2 arctic explorers (this Bulletin, 1929, v. 4, 829), showed no renal impairment with " an exclusive meat diet " for 12 months. This diet only contained 100-140 gm. protein daily and 80 per cent. of the energy was in the form of fat.
H. N. H. Green.