Beef Eaters

Lean beef, fat beef, beef tongue, liver, brain, marrow: that is what two men ate and it is all they ate: for 21 days, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, famed Arctic explorer; for 57 days, his friend and erstwhile companion, Karsten Anderson, whose present business is orange growing. Last week, the trial done, Dr. Stefansson went straight to Fairfield, Conn., where after a dinner of beef tongue by choice, he testimonialed: "Before the experiment I felt lackadaisical on getting up in the morning but now I feel like jumping out of bed and getting right to work."

The explorers served as experimental laboratory animals in the interests of science. Not a new diet for them, but under new circumstances they lived during these periods in the Bellevue Hospital subject to daily tests (TIME, March 12). Every afternoon they took a walk with a member of the hospital staff; more strenuous exercise was found in running two and a half miles in Central Park.

Since 1913 the Russell Sage Institute of Pathology has been studying the effects of different diets. Messrs. Stefansson and Anderson were particularly good subjects because during Arctic adventures Stefans son lived about seven years on meat alone, while Anderson ate nothing else for over a year. There was no danger of the imaginary headaches or indigestion that might beset beef-eating beginners. Both men lost a little weight at the start and then trained back to the pink.

Much stress has been laid by the press on the fact that Stefansson and Anderson did not develop scurvy. There was no reason why they should develop scurvy, beri beri, or chilblains. All three vitamins, A, B and C, are present in small amounts in fresh lean meat; liver contains more of them. Other foodstuffs contain even more, it is true, but if the men were allowed all they wanted to eat, they would get enough of the essential vitamins in the beef products to satisfy. The real interest in such an experiment lies in the effect of a meat diet on the kidneys, on the blood pressure, on the heat production of the body, on the millions of bacteria that multiply in the intestines. A diet of lean meat only was tried but had to be given up because of digestive upsets. Was this be cause of too great an accumulation of putrefactive bacteria in the intestine? Only a study of the intestinal conditions during this period will tell, and they have not yet been published.