Protein poisoning/ja

赤身のうさぎ肉

タンパク質中毒（口語ではウサギ飢餓、マル・ド・カリブー、脂肪飢餓とも呼ばれる、 または脂肪飢餓）とは、脂肪と炭水化物が欠乏した食事によって引き起こされる栄養失調の急性型であり、生物学的に利用可能なカロリーのほとんどすべてが赤身肉に含まれるタンパク質に由来する。この概念は古人類学、特に最終氷期最盛期と高緯度地域における古代人の食事の調査の文脈で議論される。

ウサギの飢餓"という用語は、ウサギの肉が脂肪が非常に少なく、そのほとんどが骨格筋タンパク質から消化されたアミノ酸に由来するカロリーであるため、それを単独で摂取するとタンパク質中毒を引き起こす可能性があることから生まれている。報告された症状には初期の吐き気や疲労、その後の下痢、最終的には死亡が含まれる。

観察

アッピアヌスのローマ史、第一巻、第六巻：スペイン戦争、第九章、223ページで、著者は紀元前約150年に都市インテルカティアを包囲している間に、多数のローマ兵が主にウサギを食べてひどい下痢で死んだことを記している：

... ローマ陣営は異様な恐怖に包まれた。兵士たちは、見張りと睡眠不足のため、そしてこの国の慣れない食べ物のために病気になった。ワインも塩も酢も油もなく、小麦と大麦、そして塩なしで煮た大量の鹿肉とウサギの肉で生活していた。

The explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson is said to have lived for years exclusively on game meat and fish, with no ill effects. The same is true for his fellow explorer Karsten Anderson. As part of his promotion of meat-only diet modeled on Inuit cuisine, and to demonstrate the effects, in New York City beginning in February 1928, Stefansson and Anderson "lived and ate in the metabolism ward of Russell Sage Institute of Pathology of Bellevue Hospital, New York" for a year, with their metabolic performance closely observed, all this partly funded by the Institute of American Meat Packers. Researchers hoping to replicate Stefansson's experience with rabbit starvation in the field urged him to cut the fat intake in his all-meat diet to zero. He did, and experienced a much quicker onset of diarrhea than in the field. With fat added back in, Stefansson recovered, although with a 10-day period of constipation afterwards. The study reported finding no previous medical literature examining either the effects of meat-only diets, which appear to be sustainable, or on rabbit starvation, which is fatal.

Stefansson wrote:

The groups that depend on the blubber animals are the most fortunate in the hunting way of life, 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. Rabbit eaters, if they have no fat from another source—beaver, moose, fish—will develop diarrhea in about a week, with headache, lassitude and vague discomfort. If there are enough rabbits, the people eat till their stomachs are distended; but no matter how much they eat they feel unsatisfied. Some think a man will die sooner if he eats continually of fat-free meat than if he eats nothing, but this is a belief on which sufficient evidence for a decision has not been gathered in the North. Deaths from rabbit-starvation, or from the eating of other skinny meat, are rare; for everyone understands the principle, and any possible preventive steps are naturally taken.

A World War II-era Arctic survival booklet issued by the Flight Control Command of the United States Army Air Forces included this emphatic warning: "Because of the importance of fats, under no conditions limit yourself to a meat diet of rabbit just because they happen to be plentiful in the region where you are forced down. A continued diet of rabbit will produce rabbit starvation -- diarrhea will begin in about a week and if the diet is continued DEATH MAY RESULT."

Physiology

The U.S. and Canadian Dietary Reference Intake review for protein mentions "rabbit starvation", but concluded that there was not sufficient evidence by 2005 to establish a tolerable upper intake level, i.e., an upper limit for how much protein can be safely consumed.

According to Bilsborough and Mann in 2006, protein intake is mainly restricted by the urea cycle, but deriving more than 35% of energy needs from protein leads to health problems. They suggested an upper limit of 25% or 2-2.5 g/kg, "corresponding to 176 g protein per day for an 80 kg individual", but stated that humans can theoretically use much larger amounts than this for energy. For arctic hunter-gatherers, the amount can seasonally increase to 45%.

See also

• Atkins diet
• Carnivore Diet - Meat based diet
• Country food / Inuit diet – Traditional diet of the Inuit and First Nations
• Christopher McCandless - an assumed protein poisoning victim
• Dukan Diet
• Kwashiorkor – Disease resulting from sufficient caloric intake with very low protein content
• Low-carbohydrate diet
• Marasmus – Disease caused by inadequate caloric intake
• Montignac diet
• Protein Power
• Protein toxicity – Damage caused by buildup of protein metabolic waste products in the bloodstream
• Proteopathy – Damage caused by misfolded proteins
• Scarsdale diet
• Stillman diet
• Sugar Busters!
• Zone diet

Further reading

• Speth, John D. (2010). "The Other Side of Protein". The Paleoanthropology and Archaeology of Big-Game Hunting. Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology. pp. 45–85. doi:10.1007/978-1-4419-6733-6_4. ISBN 978-1-4419-6732-9.