Why we need vitamins

[repoman]

I am curious about the long term trial and error diets that extreme northern people from Iceland, all the way around the earth to the Inuits ate to have enough vitamin d and other vitamins that are hard to get at such high latitudes.

Over thousands of years the foods and preparation methods must have built up. Methods that make more vitamins or help make them more adsorbable. This traditional food must be very useful still.

Fermentation is a huge one for sure. As an example, Japanese natto is massively packed with a form of vitamin K2 but that is not that northern.

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/9-foods-high-in-vitamin-d#3.-Cod-liver-oil

Spruce tips are a source of vitamin C. I have heard that Capt. Cook learned this from the natives.Some here brew beer with it.

https://fungi.com/blogs/articles/place-mushrooms-in-sunlight-to-get-your-vitamin-d

Cool, but not extremely precise article about vitamin D2 production from mushroom exposed to UVB or sunlight (I assume most produced when sun is above 50 degrees from the horizon). Not sure what a good balance of D2/D3 should be. So maybe having tons of these sun dried mushrooms will throw things out of wack.

But did folk cultures sun dry mushrooms for taste and preservation and slowly notice increased health from eating them? The problem with that is it takes a while (but less time than D3) for D2 to go up or down so not a sharp signal for health effects.

Thinking of doing the same on a window ledge, but outside of the UVB blocking glass.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I am curious about the long term trial and error diets that extreme northern people from Iceland, all the way around the earth to the Inuits ate to have enough vitamin d and other vitamins that are hard to get at such high latitudes.

Over thousands of years the foods and preparation methods must have built up. Methods that make more vitamins or help make them more adsorbable. This traditional food must be very useful still.

Fermentation is a huge one for sure. As an example, Japanese natto is massively packed with a form of vitamin K2 but that is not that northern.

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/9-foods-high-in-vitamin-d#3.-Cod-liver-oil

Spruce tips are a source of vitamin C. I have heard that Capt. Cook learned this from the natives.Some here brew beer with it.

For vitamin c they can also eat liver. But sure, they have to be creative.

The Greenland Vikings died out because of malnutrition, after surviving there for 300 years. It's a tricky business.

 

[bleubird]

I am curious about the long term trial and error diets that extreme northern people from Iceland, all the way around the earth to the Inuits ate to have enough vitamin d and other vitamins that are hard to get at such high latitudes.

Over thousands of years the foods and preparation methods must have built up. Methods that make more vitamins or help make them more adsorbable. This traditional food must be very useful still.

Fermentation is a huge one for sure. As an example, Japanese natto is massively packed with a form of vitamin K2 but that is not that northern.

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/9-foods-high-in-vitamin-d#3.-Cod-liver-oil

Spruce tips are a source of vitamin C. I have heard that Capt. Cook learned this from the natives.Some here brew beer with it.

For vitamin c they can also eat liver. But sure, they have to be creative.

The Greenland Vikings died out because of malnutrition, after surviving there for 300 years. It's a tricky business.

I heard they would not eat the Inuit diet,salmon and seal.Is this true?

 

[DrZoidberg]

For vitamin c they can also eat liver. But sure, they have to be creative.

The Greenland Vikings died out because of malnutrition, after surviving there for 300 years. It's a tricky business.

I heard they would not eat the Inuit diet,salmon and seal.Is this true?

They did eat seal. And lots of walrus. But yeah, for whatever bizarre reason they refused to eat fish. Which is something their close relatives and family back in Scandinavia didn't do. Vikings mostly ate fish. Fish and rye porridge. Nobody knows why the Greenland Vikings didn't eat fish. Instead their protein mostly came from sheep and cows, which back in Scandinavia was rare luxury food. Animals not really suited for the arctic climate. But for the Greenland Vikings it was their staple diet. Completely unsustainable on Greenland. The soils are very sensitive. The first thing they did was to chop down all the trees for boats and firewood. The trees grew too slowly to have a chance to replenish. Which caused erosion. The sheep and cows prevented any chance of replenishing the soils. The Vikings had done exactly the same thing on Iceland just a couple of generations before, and something the Icelanders had developed extensive practices to successfully counter. It was something the Greenland Vikings would have known. So it's unclear why the Greenland Vikings ignored this and did something they would have known would fuck up their environment. The Greenland Vikings came from Iceland and where in continual communication with them all the time. At any point they could have reversed their idiotic policies. But didn't.

They also created unnecessary conflict with the Inuits. While the Greenland Vikings were the first humans on Greenland. The Inuits settled further north. They were an extension of the Canadian Inuit population. They weren't intruding on each other at all. They ate different foods. They could have cheerfully gotten along and traded peacefully. But for whatever reason the Greenland Vikings randomly attacked and killed Inuits foolish enough to come close to them to try to make friends. There's no records of the Inuits being aggressive. When the Inuits did do a full scale attack to finally rid themselves of their annoying Viking neighbours. They found houses void of human life. Just houses with emaciated frozen corpses. None of the Vikings left for Scandinavia before it was too late.

A lot of the Greenland Vikings behavior is odd. Seemingly knowingly self-destructive. But there's more questions than answers. We know very little of the politics of the place.

 

[repoman]

Just pepper in a few minutes of non sunscreened skin exposure to mid day sun a 2-3 days a week. Sun above 50 degrees from the horizon.

Seriously? This is Queensland. The midday sun will flay the skin off your bones given half a chance. It would take true dedication, or an incredibly reclusive lifestyle, to achieve Vitamin D deficiency here. Getting skin cancer, on the other hand, is extraordinarily easy.

The official advice here is to avoid unprotected sun exposure as far as possible. This advice recognises that incidental exposure for Queenslanders is almost invariably more than adequate to maintain adequate Vitamin D levels all year round.

“Queensland has a melanoma incidence rate of 71 cases per 100,000 people (for the years 2009-2013), vastly exceeding rates in all other jurisdictions nationally and internationally,” Prof Dunn said

https://cancerqld.org.au/news/queensland-still-the-skin-cancer-capital-of-the-world/

Just found out about the details of ozone and the sun mostly regarding UVB. It makes a massive difference. The northern and southern hemisperes are more different than I had guessed. Seattlle privilege, perhaps?

https://uvb.nrel.colostate.edu/UVB/publications/UV-Primer.pdf



https://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/NH.html









One positive is that in areas with low DU (Dobson Units) you can quickly get the right kind of sliced mushrooms to build up vitamin D2.

 

[lpetrich]

• Nutritional Requirements of Pigs - Management and Nutrition - Merck Veterinary Manual
• Nutritional Requirements and Related Diseases of Small Animals - Management and Nutrition - Merck Veterinary Manual
• Dog Nutrition: Essential Nutrients for Health and Feeding Basics
• Cat Nutrition: Guide to Cat Food Nutrients | PetMD
• 2. Nutrient Requirements of Chickens | Nutrient Requirements of Poultry: Ninth Revised Edition, 1994 | The National Academies Press
• Protein and amino acid requirements of fishes - PubMed
• Understanding Fish Nutrition, Feeds, and Feeding
• Priciples_of_Nutrition.pdf
• Nutritional Requirements of Axenically Cultured Drosophila Melanogaster Adults | Journal of Experimental Biology | The Company of Biologists - lab fruit fly
• The Quantitative Nutritional Requirements of Drosophila melanogaster - J_Exp_Biol-1956-SANG-45-72-with-cover-page-v2.pdf - lab fruit fly
• The nutritional requirements of Caenorhabditis elegans - lab nematode

Pigs, dogs, cats, chickens, fish:
Essential amino acids, omega-6 (omega 3) fatty acids, vitamins A, D, E, K, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B7, B9, B12, (choline)
Cats: taurine
Fish: vitamin C, inositol

Of the essential fatty acids, I usually find omega-6 ones listed, and only sometimes omega-3 ones. Also, choline is sometimes listed as a vitamin, sometimes not.

Lab fruit flies: essential amino acids, cholesterol, vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B7, B9, choline

Lab nematodes: essential amino acids, cholesterol, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B7, B9, B12, heme

The B vitamins:
B1: thiamine, B2: riboflavin, B3: niacin, B5: pantothenic acid, B6: pyridoxine, B7: biotin, B9: folic acid, B12: cobalamin

 

[lpetrich]

So all of Bilateria needs the 10 essential amino acids and all 9 of the B vitamins.

Bony vertebrates also need essential fatty acids and vitamins A, D, E, and K.

Neurospora crassa - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics - "Neurospora grows at a prodigious rate – the mycelium advances at ∼4 mm h−1 in a reasonably warm (e.g., 32 °C) environment if given some sugar, simple nutrients, and one vitamin (biotin)."

 

[lpetrich]

Neurospora crassa: red bread mold -- another model system.