Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by knodi123 on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @08:21AM
(#20029312)
> You can withhold external vitamin C from a mouse for years and you'll never see scurvy.
Withholding vitamin C from a mouse's diet for a few years results in a 99% mortality rate. Although it's the same for the control group.
Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by leoc on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @02:00AM
(#20027580)
https://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm which has been submitted here previously is an (as far as I know) great telling of that story, a real Science Is Hard parable.
Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by L_226 on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @02:15AM
(#20027621)
A cocktail that I quite enjoy is the gimlet [0], it apparently was possibly invented to encourage sailors to drink lime juice.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimlet_(cocktail)#Etymology
Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by leonroy on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @06:22AM
(#20028732)
Reminds me of how the British stationed in 19th century India used to use quinine to ward off malaria. Apparently in its raw form it's incredibly bitter so the soldiers started to mix it with water and sugar and voila - tonic water was born.
Some bright spark added gin and the rest is history...
Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by matwood on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @06:58AM
(#20028881)
Close, but it's really the gin and tonic that was born out of getting sailors to drink quinine in the tonic water:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gin_and_tonic#History
And yes, having taken quinine pills for malaria it is very bitter and unpleasant.
Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by village-idiot on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @08:39AM
(#20029416)
It’s bitter because it’s actually quite poisonous, and your tongue is warming you about that. Dave Arnold’s excellent Liquid Intelligence has a section on making your own tonic with pure quinine powder, and he admonishes the reader to mix with a blender, because an ubcombined chunk of pure quinine could actually hospitalize someone if it ended up in their drink.
Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by lostlogin on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @02:51PM
(#20033127)
Tonic water made with actual quinine rather than the synthetic stuff is great. It seems preferable to the pills, though I suspect you’d have to drink a lot.
Edit: The WHO suggest treating severe drug resistant malaria with 500mg of quinine orally every 8 hours. A 1 litre bottle of tonic water should not contain more than 83mg according to the FDA. Drinking 6 litres every 8 hours is a bit much. https://apps.who.int/medicinedocs/en/d/Jh2922e/2.5.2.html#Jh...
https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFR...
Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by matwood on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @03:34PM
(#20033511)
I prefer my mixed drinks with tonic over any other mixer. As you note, off the shelf tonic has very little quinine nowadays. When I had to take the pills I was headed to an area with a known malaria risk.
Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by nradov on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @08:47AM
(#20029459)
In general the Royal Navy added lime juice to whichever alcohol they issued to sailors as daily rations. Usually it was rum but could be other booze if the rum ran out. Officers would watch to ensure each man drank his dose instead of trading it away.
Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by onetimemanytime on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @02:22AM
(#20027653)
>>A cocktail that I quite enjoy is the gimlet [0], it apparently was possibly invented to encourage sailors to drink lime juice.
...things people do to make sure they don't get scurvy ;)
Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by taejo on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @03:37AM
(#20028026)
But it's often made with Rose's Lime Juice, a concentrate, which AFAICT contains no vitamin C.
Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by hyperpallium on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @04:34AM
(#20028265)
And for both scurvy and beriberi, the cure was already known, but ignored because not scientific. From leoc's excellent link:
> But in the second half of the nineteenth century, the cure for scurvy was lost.
What other folklore do we ignore at our peril? One is organ meats.
Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by nicolas_t on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @05:42AM
(#20028559)
What about organ meats? That's piqued my interest
Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by village-idiot on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @08:41AM
(#20029432)
I in particular am interested in the vitamin K2, which comes almost exclusively from organ meats. If I had to bet on one nutrient that’ll get the “duh you should’ve been eating X” in a century or two, it’d be K2.
Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by ableal on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @09:51AM
(#20029965)
Thanks for the heads up. Clicky: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_K2
Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by hyperpallium on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @06:18AM
(#20028718)
\piqued. Very high nutritional density, but these days everyone prefers lean muscle meat, and are put off by organ meats (sadly, myself included). People used to eat them routinely, e.g.: lambs fry, steak and kidney pie, lamb's brains, tripe (lungs), heart.
Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by leadingthenet on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @07:36AM
(#20029066)
Tripe isn't lung, but stomach.
As an aside: if you ever visit the Balkans (including Hungary and Romania), definitely try Tripe Soup. It's a local delicacy and it's fantastic.
Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by dalbasal on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @07:26AM
(#20029016)
Tripe is stomach. Lung is not always consumed, but is sometimes. Scottish haggis and related scandi dishes are made from "the pluck" which means lungs, liver/fry and tongue.
Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by ghaff on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @08:45AM
(#20029450)
Liver in particular used to be something of a comfort food staple in at least parts of the US. I'd encourage people to use fresh veal liver if available rather than the frozen beef liver that may be in the back of a freezer in a supermarket somewhere.
I also like veal kidneys and sweetbreads but rarely see them.
Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by hombre_fatal on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @11:24AM
(#20031051)
One way to try sweetbread is to see if your local Mexican market with a food court has "mollejas" tacos.
Otherwise I have no idea how the average American will encounter it. Seems super old timey.
I also love buying those large packs of chicken hearts and browning/carmelizing them in a pan.
Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by ghaff on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @12:29PM
(#20031681)
Every now and then you'll see them on a restaurant menu and you can sometimes get them from a butcher (although TBH they're probably more prep work than is worth it for me). But, yeah, pretty hard to come by.
Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by Spooky23 on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @09:10AM
(#20029610)
I’d argue that the health of the sailors, who were in a sense the lowest of the low was not a concern for a long time. Ships were disgusting — you could smell a military ship coming.
As early as Vasco de Gama people were aware of the power of citrus to stop scurvy — they may not have known why, but they were aware.
With the British, there was an ROI to consider as the supply of sailors were tight, and they had attrition due to things like malaria as well.
Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by Marazan on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @04:09AM
(#20028162)
Ironically limes have less vitamin C content than lemons so don't do as well at combating scurvy.
The British used limes as they had easier/controlled access to them than lemons.
Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by iguy on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @04:16AM
(#20028186)
Worse than this: they switched from lemons to limes, assuming that they were equivalent (and cheaper). And then came to doubt the theory that citrus prevented scurvy as some pre-modern pre-scientific relic.
Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by logfromblammo on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @10:27AM
(#20030377)
Even more ironically, sargassum seaweed floats on the ocean, and is higher in vitamin C than citrus fruit.
Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by cafard on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @09:19AM
(#20029683)
It seems to me that one of the early French expeditions to Canada was saved by the local showing them to make a drink with evergreen needles.
Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by alkonaut on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @03:11AM
(#20027904)
Was there no source of Vitamin C that was cheaper, less perishable, and more easily available in Northern Europe in all seasons, than citrus? I don't know how exotic lemons were at the time, but I'd guess loading up on lots of citrus in a Northern European port could be rather expensive?
Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by barry-cotter on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @03:34AM
(#20028013)
Sauerkraut. Any kind of fermented vegetable would do but you really need something with relatively high vitamin c content and it’s really easy to destroy.
Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by chewz on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @04:59AM
(#20028378)
Fermented cucumbers are used in winter as source of vitamine C all the way from river Oder to Kunming in China. As are other pickles like betrot.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickled_cucumber
In warmer climate like Mediteranian children were given wine in winter for that reason.
Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by hvidgaard on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @03:28AM
(#20027982)
For Northern Europe at that time I would think that kale would be the best source. You can harvest fresh kale for most of the year. No idea how the vitamin c holds up when you dry it. I'm unsure if sea buckthorn was growing in Northern Europe at that time, but if it was it would be a near perfect source, save for the trouble of picking them. Today you could eat Rosehip too, but that plant is so invasive that it needs to be seriously kept at bay.
Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by nitwit005 on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @04:35AM
(#20028269)
Remember that, without understanding the chemistry, running an experiment was difficult. Aside from the expense, I doubt people would be enthused about doing trials of alternative foods when people would get scurvy if the food turned out not to work as well.
Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by JumpCrisscross on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @06:50AM
(#20028842)
> without understanding the chemistry, running an experiment was difficult
Also, without the scientific method, the concept of an experiment could look to an outsider like recklessness (or buffoonery).
Re:Eating Too Much Rice Almost Doomed Japan's Imperial Navy
by jhellan on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @10:02AM
(#20030074)
Scurvygrass (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlearia_officinalis)
Kept many people alive who had been marooned over the winter in Svalbard and other places in the Arctic. Also grows in cooler climates in Europe
Imagine somebody told you you could prevent some terrible and frequently fatal disease, that's spread worldwide, by eating limes. And this was already well within the age of formalized science and medicine. This was also further confounded by the fact that the vitamin content of things such as lemon juice degrades over time in storage, and even more rapidly in certain types of storage. And so some scientific experiments to test its effectiveness were inadvertently hamstringing themselves. It's made even more fun by the fact that humans need external sources of vitamin c while some common lab animals such as mice and rats do not - and internally make their own. You can withhold external vitamin C from a mouse for years and you'll never see scurvy.
Its ironic that I think this particular tale has slowly been lost to many in society, even though we have so many direct references to it. For instance the slang for a Brit as a limey came from the fact that the British Navy was the first to start dosing their sailors with lime, with tremendously positive affects to show for it. Maybe the biggest one is vitamin C itself. Vitamin C is now called ascorbic acid. But when it was first discovered it was known as hexuronic acid. So huge was the effect of scurvy it was renamed for its discovered anti-scorbutic (against scurvy) effect. Ascorbic was just a shortening of anti-scorbutic. And this happened as recently as the 1930s!