Vit. A Poisoning from Liver - Only in the Arctic!

[Guest guest]

Found a very informative article about vitamin A poisoning. Take a

look at the tables here and compare the IU per gram of liver of the

species listed. Here are some of them:

Vit A IU per gram of food:

Ox liver 550

Cod liver oil 600

Halibut liver oil 30,000

Vit A IU per gram of liver:

Man 575

Antarctic huskies 10,570

Polar bear 24,000-35,000

In a university nutrition class I took and elsewhere, the story of the

(Ant)arctic explorers who ate the livers of their sled dogs and/or

polar bears and died from vitamin A poisoning is oft-repeated. But

it's clear to me that it's no risk at all unless you're eating the

liver of an article carnivore. Yet no one mentions that; the

implication is that if you eat beef liver and/or CLO daily you're be

risking death, LOL.

The article mentions that " Vitamin A originates in marine algae, and

then passes up the food chain to reach the large carnivorous animals.

Toxic levels of Vitamin A may accumulate in the livers of a wide range

of creatures such as Polar bears, seals, porpoises, dolphins, sharks,

whales, Arctic foxes and huskies. " So they normally have massive

amounts of vitamin A in their livers, but I wonder what the vitamin D

content of the livers of these animals is, knowing that the two

vitamins are antagonists and inhibit/limit the absorption of each

other. Anyway, I thought it was interesting.

The article is here:

http://prof_anil_aggrawal.tripod.com/poiso032.html

Good background on toxicity:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_A#Vitamin_A_overdose_.28Toxicity.29