I have read a book by Gary Taubes, entitled "Why We Get Fat and What to do About it." In it he advocates for a low carb diet and it makes perfect sense to me. But he makes a statement that goes against my other beliefs on Vit C. Could someone help me digest the following from his book:

"Without carbohydrates in the diet, there's every indication that we would get all the Vit C we ever needed from animal products. This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective as well, since any human populations that lived far enough from the equator to see lengthy winters would have gone months, if not years, at a time during icd ages, for instance - without eating anything but what they could hunt. The idea that they required orange juice or fresh vegetables to get their requisite Vit C every day seems absurd. This would also explain why isolated hunter-gatherer populations that ate virtually no carbohydrates and certainly no green vegetables or fruits still thrived."

This makes sense to me. Our ancestors certainly did not have access to Pauling levels of Vit C in their past. So why do we need it now.

Thanks in advance

Thanks! I just needed help fitting the two things together in my mind.

The word Eskimo, if I remember correctly, means "eaters of raw meat". The raw meat had vitamin C. Weston Price told a story of how he was told they avoid scurvy by dividing the raw adrenal gland of a moose among the family members.

Eyeballs would also work, as well as brains.

I am convinced that carbs in the diet push vitamin C demand higher. Therefore, it is not just a question of substituting low vitamin C carb sources with higher vitamin C animal sources. Carbohydrate metabolism increases consumption of oxygen causing tissue hypoxia, which in turn causes oxidative stress requiring additional antioxidants.

The source of our carbs is a big part of the problem with extreme levels of sucrose in the modern American diet. The advent of food processing has probably increased our vitamin C demand greatly. At the same time, our modern housing and couch potato culture causes poorer oxygenation so the carbs consumed are poorly metabolized.

I am intrigued by the Weston Price/Nourishing Traditions concepts. If we soak our grains and limit our sweeteners, with more fruits and veggies, that is all good. I have no experience with the raw meat idea, although the moose adrenal glands sounds like a marvelous innovation for the "flesh eaters"! But it seems plausible that consuming live enzymes in these various forms may also contribute something to lessening our oxidative load.

Ron

I recently read a book advocating a low carb diet (Gary Taubes, Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It) and have been on it for four days. Everything in the book rings true to me. I'm not sure what others on a Vit C forum think about it but I'm a believer. I really feel that high carb intake is the root of the health woes we are now seeing.

I am on low carb too for a year or so. So far, no negatives, only positives.

Keep in mind that both high carb and hi fat diet require hi c. IN case of high fat, we need it to prevent cholesterol build up and fatty meal endotoxemia.