Protein poisoning

Protein poisoning (also referred to colloquially as rabbit starvation, mal de caribou, or fat starvation) refers to an unverified acute form of malnutrition that some have speculated may be caused by a diet deficient in fat, where excessive lean meat is consumed . The effect may have been treated as a hazard by Lewis and Clark and other frontiersmen of the western United States who lived on game.

Not to be confused with Protein toxicity.

lean Rabbit meat

There is speculation that 'Protein poisoning' was associated with eating rabbit meat, which is very lean . There is speculation that other low-fat game meats could cause the same phenomena.

The reported syndrome includes initial symptoms of diarrhea, then headache, fatigue, low blood-pressure, slow heart rate, and a vague discomfort and hunger. It is speculated that eating fat may relieve the reported syndrome.

Observations

The explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson is said to have lived for years exclusively on game meat and fish, with no ill effects. The same for his fellow explorer Dr. Karsten Anderson. As part of his promotion of meat-only diet modeled on Inuit cuisine, and to demonstrate the effects, in New York City beginning in February 1928, Stefansson and Anderson "lived and ate in the metabolism ward of Russell Sage Institute of Pathology of Bellevue Hospital, New York" for a year, with their metabolic performance closely observed, all this partly funded by the Institute of American Meat Packers. [1] Researchers hoping to replicate Stefansson's experience with rabbit starvation in the field urged him to cut the fat intake in his all-meat diet to zero. He did, and experienced a much quicker onset of diarrhea than in the field. With fat added back in, Stefansson recovered, although with a 10-day period of constipation afterwards. The study reported finding no previous medical literature examining either the effects of meat-only diets, which appear to be sustainable, or on rabbit starvation, which is fatal.

Stefansson wrote:

The groups that depend on the blubber animals are the most fortunate in the hunting way of life, for they never suffer from fat-hunger. This trouble is worst, so far as North America is concerned, among those forest Indians who depend at times on rabbits, the leanest animal in the North, and who develop the extreme fat-hunger known as rabbit-starvation. Rabbit eaters, if they have no fat from another source—beaver, moose, fish—will develop diarrhea in about a week, with headache, lassitude and vague discomfort. If there are enough rabbits, the people eat till their stomachs are distended; but no matter how much they eat they feel unsatisfied. Some think a man will die sooner if he eats continually of fat-free meat than if he eats nothing, but this is a belief on which sufficient evidence for a decision has not been gathered in the North. Deaths from rabbit-starvation, or from the eating of other skinny meat, are rare; for everyone understands the principle, and any possible preventive steps are naturally taken.[2]

A World War II-era Arctic survival booklet issued by the Flight Control Command of the United States Army Air Forces included this emphatic warning: "Because of the importance of fats, under no conditions limit yourself to a meat diet of rabbit just because they happen to be plentiful in the region where you are forced down. A continued diet of rabbit will produce rabbit starvation -- diarrhea will begin in about a week and if the diet is continued DEATH MAY RESULT."[3]

In Into the Wild (1996), Jon Krakauer conjectured that Chris McCandless might have suffered from rabbit starvation.

See also

• Country food/Inuit diet, the traditional diet of the Inuit and First Nations
• Kwashiorkor – Disease resulting from sufficient caloric intake with very low protein content
• Marasmus – Disease caused by inadequate caloric intake
• No-carbohydrate diet
• Protein toxicity – damage caused by buildup of protein metabolic waste products in the bloodstream
• Proteopathy – damage caused by misfolded proteins

References

1. McClellan WS, Du Bois EF (February 13, 1930). "Clinical Calorimetry: XLV. Prolonged Meat Diets With A Study Of Kidney Function And Ketosis" (PDF). J. Biol. Chem. 87 (3): 651–668. Retrieved 2020-07-25.
2. "Not by Bread Alone", Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Publisher, Macmillan, 1946
3. Jungle, Desert, and Arctic Emergencies Booklet. Flight Control Command Safety Education Division of the United States Army Air Forces. 1 January 1941. p. 116,119. Retrieved 27 July 2020.

Further reading

• Speth, John D. (2010). "The Other Side of Protein". The Paleoanthropology and Archaeology of Big-Game Hunting. Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology. pp. 45–85. doi:10.1007/978-1-4419-6733-6_4. ISBN 978-1-4419-6732-9.