What is "caribou starvation" aka "rabbit starvation" that affects humans?

looney_tunes

It is a form of acute malnutrition caused by excess consumption of any lean meat (specifically rabbit) coupled with a lack of other sources of nutrients. Symptoms include diarrhea, headache, lassitude, a vague discomfort and hunger that can only be satisfied by consumption of fat or carbohydrates. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_starvation Sep 12 08, 2:59 AM

queproblema

I'd like a reference for the term "caribou starvation." Except when the caribou themselves are starving, they have much more fat than a rabbit. I've eaten both. "...wild male ruminants like elk and caribou carry a large slab of back fat, weighing as much as 40 to 50 pounds." http://backacrosstheline.blogspot.com/2007/09/rabbit-starvation-syndrome.html Sep 12 08, 8:38 AM

zbeckabee

I'm not finding a link -- But, I have heard it referred to as Caribou Malaise or Caribou Hunger. Caribou and Venison are BOTH very lean meats. "The groups that depend on the blubber animals are the most fortunate in the hunting way of life," wrote Stefansson, "for they never suffer from fat-hunger. This trouble is worst, so far as North America is concerned, among those forest Indians who depend at times on rabbits, the leanest animal in the North, and who develop the extreme fat-hunger known as rabbit-starvation." "The symptoms that result from a diet of lean meat are practically those of starvation. The caribou on which we had to live had marrow in their bones that was as blood, and in most of them no fat was discernible even behind the eyes or in the tongue." http://www.apinchofhealth.com/resources/lowcarb/lean-protein-stefansson.html Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who spent many years living with the Eskimos and Indians of Northern Canada, reports that wild male ruminants like elk and caribou carry a large slab of back fat, weighing as much as 40 to 50 pounds. The Indians and Eskimo hunted older male animals preferentially because they wanted this back slab fat, as well as the highly saturated fat found around the kidneys. Other groups used blubber from sea mammals like seal and walrus. http://www.medbio.info/Horn/Time%201-2/vilhjalmur_stefansson1.htm http://www.arctic-caribou.com/faq.html Sep 13 08, 7:22 PM