Why does eating staple foods reduce the demand for vitamin C? In fact, this has to do with a certain type of "lousy receptor."
Vitamin C is a powerful antioxidant and an essential substance for the formation of collagen.
Collagen, in turn, is the main component of the body’s connective tissue, which is indispensable for the structure and support within the body, including blood vessels.
Therefore, when there is a lack of vitamin C, just a little external pressure can cause blood to seep out of the blood vessel walls, resulting in bleeding, which is scurvy.
Once scurvy is contracted, one may experience symptoms such as bleeding gums, loose teeth, wounds that are difficult to heal, and joint pain.
The absorption of glucose and vitamin C actually has a "competitive relationship."
In the 1970s, Professor John T., an honorary professor at the University of Washington, put forward his glucose-ascorbic acid antagonism theory, also known as the GAA theory. This theory suggests that increased blood glucose levels can hinder vitamin C from entering cells and exerting its effects.
This is because glucose and vitamin C share similar chemical components, and they enter cells through the same "Glut-1 receptor."
Compared to vitamin C, the Glut-1 receptor prefers glucose, which means that, given the opportunity to "compete," it will choose sugar over vitamin C.
Bi Fang explained at length and finally put it in layman’s terms, "In other words, this receptor is quite vain, it’ll kick the less attractive option to the curb if something better comes along."
[Got it, lousy receptor!]
[Putting facts aside, isn’t there anything wrong with vitamin C?]
[Exactly!]
The main source of glucose is carbohydrates, so without the intake of carbohydrates, naturally, the demand for vitamin C isn’t high. Seafarers are prone to scurvy, primarily because they eat too much black bread.
With this in mind, Bi Fang took another big bite of fish meat, savored it, and spat out a fishbone.
The taste of turf had long been pushed out of Bi Fang’s memory, like something removed from the palace of memories, frozen with liquid nitrogen, and turned into a fine powder with a blowtorch.
That stuff was truly a painful memory, the taste of earthy dirt mixed with the dryness of dead grass, and the texture like chunks of ice were far from the current greasy deliciousness, invigorating every cell in the body in a moment of low metabolism, and getting them back to work.
River delicacies tend to have a muddy fishy taste, especially when eaten raw, but in Bi Fang’s mouth at that moment, it became an exceptionally rare treat.
At least, it was much better than the Inuit people’s traditional food, kiviak.
With that thought, Bi Fang added a clarification.
"Actually, what I just described wasn’t entirely accurate; the Inuit don’t just eat raw meat, they eat more of a fermented raw meat without any treatment, which is a natural fermented food called kiviak, also known as ’pickled puffin.’"
"High-latitude ethnic groups, due to the scarcity of food, particularly the lack of vitamin sources like green vegetables, have a similar custom of eating raw meat. One reason is the shortage of fuel, and the other is to supplement vitamins. But raw meat is not easy to preserve, especially in summer, so more often, they eat fermented raw meat."
For the Inuit people, living on Greenland isn’t easy; otherwise, there wouldn’t be cases of people being frozen to death inside ice houses.
Therefore, every spring and summer, they go out hunting to collect enough food to last the entire winter. This is a necessary process; without it, one is very likely to freeze to death during winter.
No one will come to help you, because most people are struggling just to maintain their own survival. They are not unwilling, but rather they lack the spare capacity to help. Even if they do have the capacity, how long can they provide help?
Greenland’s icy and snowy conditions are indeed conducive to food preservation, but in summer, temperatures can sometimes rise above freezing. It’s okay to leave food out for a week, but any longer and it will inevitably rot, hence the need for artificial fermentation.
Fermentation and rotting are two distinct processes. The former is the process where beneficial bacteria utilize organic matter, which when consumed, is beneficial to the human body, and can even make the food more nutritious. The latter, however, is when harmful bacteria proliferate, rendering the food inedible.
"Take, for example, the renowned traditional Swedish delicacy of surströmming. It is made from lightly rotten and fermented herring," he said.
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"The Inuit people’s kiviak is a bit more rugged. The method to prepare this food is very complex and takes a long time to complete. Definitely not something I could produce within the span of one hundred days I am spending on survival," Bi Fang explained.
"To put it simply, the method involves not processing the puffin’s body at all. You don’t pluck the feathers or remove the innards. The carcasses are placed directly into the seal’s body, submerged in the digestive fluids of the seal’s stomach, and after being sewn up, sealed with the seal’s blubber," he continued.
"Then the seal is buried in the permafrost layer, left to ferment for two to three years before being dug up. After cutting open the seal’s belly, the puffins are retrieved and can be directly consumed."
From a preparation perspective, it is still raw meat because it has not been subjected to any high heat to cause protein denaturation.
"As feathers do not ferment, they still maintain the original shape of the puffin, and one can hardly see any change. One can only imagine what the final product is like.
[Holy shit, is this something that people eat?]
[That’s so hardcore...]
[Bought a can of surströmming once, that flavor, unforgettable to this day]
Seeing the barrage of comments in the live stream, Bi Fang chuckled.
"There are actually two ways to eat it. The first one involves pulling off the bird’s tail and sucking out the fermented and decomposed innards through the bird’s anal opening, which is said to taste similar to bran and natto, along with the taste of the combined fermented mixture," he said.
"The second method is to spread the contents from the bird’s stomach onto grilled meat and eat it that way."
With the development of human history, the custom of eating cooked meat has taken root among the Inuit people, and they also now have sources of fresh vegetables. Thus, opportunities to get vitamins from raw meat have lessened, and they use kiviak as a seasoning spread on grilled meat.
At this point, everyone was astonished.
They thought that surströmming was already the ultimate, but who knew there was even more extreme food out there?
And the eating methods are so bold!
[Unprocessed, that means there’s feces...]
[Birds have a different digestive system from other animals; they defecate as soon as they have to, so it might not be too bad]
[That’s too much for me, I feel like vomiting already]
[I’m also eating right now, wuwuwu]
Shuiyou found it hard to believe that humans would eat such food, but for the Inuit people, this was a rare delicacy that could provide the severely lacking vitamins in the Arctic region.
It was a forced adaptation of humans to their living environment, and expecting it to be tasty was indeed impossible.
Bi Fang hadn’t tried surströmming before and imagined that it definitely wouldn’t taste good. He wasn’t daring enough to try it either.
His sense of smell was far more sensitive than the average person’s, and he feared that he might pass out if he caught a whiff of it.