South Pole diet

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Javi - 25 Apr 2006 22:48 GMT

Reading about Amundsen's expedition, I've found out that the daily
rations were:
Men:

* Biscuits (40 biscuits): 380 g (13.4 ounces)
* Men's pemmican: 350 g (12.34 ounces)
* Chocolate: 40 g (1.4 ounces)
* Milk powder: 60 g (2.1 ounces)

Dogs:

* Dogs' pemmican: 500 g (1.1 pounds)

They were on this diet for 99 days, while driving sledges through 1860
miles.

I wonder, how adecuate was this diet? Approximately, how many calories
did they ingest daily? I cannont find info on the kind of biscuits and
pemmican they ate, but I think that there are ways of guesstimate,
aren't they?
Also, the men did not get scurvy; where was the C vitamin, maybe in the
pemmican?

--
Javi

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monty1945@lycos.com - 26 Apr 2006 04:12 GMT

If they boiled an animal down to make pemmican and it was a healthy
animal this is probably decent food, but the powdered milk would be too
rich in oxidized cholesterol, and the chocolate may have been made with
it too. No way to know what was in the biscuit, aside from some sort
of flour and probably a lot of sugar. Remember that if they were
healthy to begin with, the body can deal with a lousy diet for a while,
but it's not necessarily something you want to do for many years.

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Mr. Natural-Health - 26 Apr 2006 13:11 GMT

> Remember that if they were
> healthy to begin with, the body can deal with a lousy diet for a while,
> but it's not necessarily something you want to do for many years.

Yeah! Monty is speaking from experience.

Monty started out sick. And, has followed a Pacific Coconut Oil
vegetable free diet for many years. Now, he is just mentally
deficient.

You have my condolences, Monty.

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TC - 26 Apr 2006 15:54 GMT

> If they boiled an animal down to make pemmican and it was a healthy
> animal this is probably decent food,

Pemmican is basically buffalo or beef jerky (smoked and/or dried meat)
pounded to a pulp and mixed with loads of added fat and some dried and
pounded berries. All dependent on availability and season. No boiling
involved.

This mixture, pretty much by itself, helped open up the entire Canadian
Central, North and West regions by nourishing the Coureurs de Bois, the
frenchmen who paddled large 10 or 12 person canoes up and down every
river in central and western Canada to trade for furs. No scurvy was
ever reported by these people who were on the road for much of the year
when the rivers were not frozen.

TC

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monty1945@lycos.com - 27 Apr 2006 05:06 GMT

I know that some early settlers boiled down an entire animal and cut
the pieces up as a sort of "energy bar," but I don't remember the name
they called this. I though it was what some called pemmican. The good
thing about boiling the animal down is that the amino acid profile is
not skewered, as it is for those who only eat muscle meats - you also
don't oxidize the cholesterol and unsaturated fatty acids.

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