Myth: Meat has no vitamin C.
Before I go any further, let’s apply common sense. The only two mammals that cannot produce their own vitamin C are humans and guinea pigs. So if other animals make vitamin C, where does it go? Does it just go “poof” when they die? I’m not saying it doesn’t, but I was not under the impression that vitamin C is a particularly volatile compound. I mean, vitamin C supplements don’t come with labels warning us to keep them refrigerated or out of light.
I’m about to cook up some chicken livers, and out of curiosity I visited the USDA food database to see how they stack up nutritionally. It turns out 100 g (about 3 1/2 oz.) of cooked chicken liver has 28 mg of vitamin C.
The same amount of cooked lamb kidney has 12 mg. Sweetbreads (I’m afraid you’ll have to search under “veal thymus” to find these in the USDA database) have 39 mg, over half the recommended daily value. Even beef tongue has a couple of milligrams.
The old “meat has no vitamin C chestnut” surely means, “the ubiquitous muscle meats that Americans eat to the exclusion of all else have no vitamin C.”
Please note that this data comes from the ultra-mainstream USDA, not from some crazy wacko like me who really believes that Vilhjalmur Stefansson actually lived for a year on nothing but meat and didn’t get scurvy. (Stefansson was a fascinating guy; check out this reprint of his lengthy 1935 account in Harper’s of his time among the Eskimo.)
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Thanks for posting on this. I could easily be an Eskimo. That is, I could be happy eating an ‘all meat’ diet. It’s amazing how many people start telling you how unhealthy that is. Where were those same folks when I was scarfing down donuts like there’s no tomorrow? Pass the Rib Eye please!
Ron, aka The Former Donut Junkie
Comment by Ron — March 12, 2008 @ 12:30 am
I’ve have to give vitamin c supplements to my guinea pig. Plus, plus she gets a slice of orange three or four times a week! Sometimes, I think she gets more vitamin c than I do.
Comment by Migraine Chick — March 12, 2008 @ 6:48 am
Hi Dianne,
The other aspect of vit C is the competition between it and glucose for uptake from gut in to circulation and from the circulation in to cells. Stefansson was LC all of the time he was at Bellevue or with the Eskimo. RDA of 60ish mg may be an overestimate of our need under these circumstances.
Re the guinea pigs, a similar thing may apply. In the wild GPs eat grass and that’s it. Well, plus their own droppings. Hind gut fermenters like this essentially live on volatile fatty acids from cellulose fermentation and never put glucose in to their small intestine. Once you add grain to their diet I’d guess the C requirement would rocket. They get fantastic cystic ovaries too.
Peter
Comment by Peter — March 12, 2008 @ 7:25 am
Nice post, I didn’t realize liver and kidney have vitamin C. One of the things Weston Price observed was that the adrenals are rich in C, and some American Indians would traditionally use them to treat scurvy (which they called a “white man’s disease” due to settlers’ lack of understanding of it).
I knew something had to be up, otherwise why wouldn’t Inuit get scurvy??
Comment by Sasquatch — March 12, 2008 @ 3:35 pm
Thanks for your comments, everyone. Peter, I suspected that there might be some sort of increased need for dietary vitamin C in higher-carb diets; it’s fascinating to read about a possible mechanism. I remember back in 2002 when I first tried LC, my doctor gave me a long list of bad things that would happen to me on Atkins. I don’t remember them all, but the two that stuck in my mind were:
1. You’ll get constipated.
2. You’ll get cracks around your mouth from lack of vitamin C.
The latter has never happened (and it’s hard to see how it could, since I am married to someone for whom Green Peppers are their own Food Group). As for the former, if “you’ll get constipated” is a synonym for “you’ll no longer have diarrhea,” then yes, I guess I’m constipated. Sorry to those of you for whom that’s TMI.
Comment by psipsina — March 12, 2008 @ 4:41 pm
There are all sorts of good things in other parts besides muscle meat. Liver is high in iron, etc.
Good post!
Comment by Matt Metzgar — March 13, 2008 @ 4:05 pm