Scurvy is a disease that likely conjures up images of sickly sailors from hundreds of years ago, but doctors in Canada are being warned to look out for the condition now, as a result of growing food insecurity.
A report published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) details the case study of a 65-year-old woman diagnosed with scurvy at a Toronto hospital last year.
The authors say the case points to the need for physicians to consider the possibility of scurvy, particularly among patients at higher risk for nutrient deficiencies, including people with low socioeconomic status and isolated older adults.
“This isn’t the first case of scurvy that I’ve seen in my career so far,” said Dr. Sally Engelhart, the study’s lead author and an internal medicine specialist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto.
It’s not a problem of food insecurity
It’s a problem of nutritious food quality insecurity
I know many of my family members who almost live on mac and cheese in a box and feed their kids sugar bombs for breakfast … one cousin of mine exclusively fed their kid nothing but chicken nuggets and fries (because thats all the kid wanted to eat) - (then they had to treat the kid at ten years of age for conditions with their gall bladder) … another distant relative fed their kid tons of junk food and by the time the kid was 18, he had runaway diabetes and he died just recently at 40 years of age of heart disease.
These are the kinds of problems caused by a society where we drive all the wealth to a few dozen people at the expense of making the lives of everyone else as miserable as possible. The wealthy attain their wealth by selling us a cheaper degraded food supply that makes them more money while also making us all unwell. The wealthy also make money on our unhealthy lifestyles by selling us the same drugs that are supposed to help our diabetes, heart disease and weight issues
I don’t buy fast food any more because it scares me … its basically investing in your own early death by eating small amounts of poison over a long period of time.
Broccoli is a good source of vitamin C, per weight it’s better than oranges. Frozen broccoli is pretty accessible and easy to add to many foods.
I use the stems for soup and eat the florets raw or in food or sauces.
I wish we did a better job educating kids on nutrition, I know very little about it except the odd article I read.
This may be an outrageous thought process, but I genuinely wonder if the comparative wealth of the 60s and 70s kids contributed significantly to the loss of knowledge on how to make decently nutritious food for cheap.
My parents were well off, mostly as a result of being born when they were. My mum tried to cook but never really had to contend with how to get by with the odd bits of food, ends of vegetables, etc. Now that it’s 2024, I’m finding that my grandmother’s old recipes are supremely more practical than my mother’s recipes because they don’t rely on having only the premium meats and only the best parts of the vegetables. I wonder how much cultural and culinary knowledge was diminished as a result of a generation or two of high food waste.
That could be part of it.
My grandmother grew up in a poor town during the depression and she considered it a cardinal sin to throw out “edible” food. My mom grew up poor too and she cooks much the same way, but she’s okay with throwing things out. Mom taught my brothers and I the basics, but I never really needed to cook much until I moved out.
I got a lot of experience with less common foods growing up — recipes like pig-feet ragout and recycling leftovers and trimmings and stems into soup or stew or casseroles all the time. A lot of those older recipes that my mom and grandma made are lost to me though. I should really ask my mom for more of them.
I’d love a movement to revive the old ways of cooking in accessible ways.
I think another issues is I can make a great tasting and highly nutritious soup from spare veggies and broth in half an hour, but making broth at home (from essentially waste materials) takes hours to brown+boil+sieve. It’s easier to just pick up a costco club pack of chicken/beef broth.
That’s certainly true.
I’ve been making my own broth recently and while its low effort it’s definitely kinda slow. Every so often I’ll get a costco rotisserie chicken and when it’s done, use the carcass for broth. It always gives good results, but ultimately those costco broths are reasonably cost efficient and much more time efficient.
I definitely am trying to increase my flexibility in terms of what I can cook with to cut down on food waste.
I do the exact same thing with the Costco rotisserie chickens, they’re a good buy.
I need to make more of a routine out of making and freezing broth. It’s something you can do while watching a movie or two.
Ham bones make a great soup base as well. And depending on where you shop beef bones are good too.
My easy soup is a bag of frozen veggies, yams, broth, spaghetti sauce ('cause it has spices already in it) and whatever meat I have available. Spices depend on meat used, ie: garlic and ginger, peanut butter (for a play on West African peanut soup), or a few tablespoons of spicy salsa.
Home made pea soup with a ham bone is my all time favourite soup, but I don’t have ham very often. I always joked with my mom that the uglier the pea soup is in the fridge, the better it will taste when you reheat it.
My easy soup is to pick 4-6 items from: mushrooms, carrots, leeks or onion, broccoli stems or fennel, and frozen peas. I add soy sauce to the broth for an umami flavour. I don’t ever have anything measured, but I do taste and sample a lot along the way.
I like to sauté my mushrooms with garlic in a pan, cook off the moisture, then add soy sauce and spices and let that simmer for a while. I don’t know if it makes a difference, but I like to think it infuses the mushrooms with more flavour.
I’ll try throwing in some salsa next time. My mom always put tomatoes in her soup and they were good, maybe it’ll turn out similarly.
Yep, a friend had me over once around lunch time. They offered lunch, we opened the cupboards. I kid you not, 3 full cupboards of KD mac and cheese. Me, coming from parents who drilled into me the importance of a varied diet, was astounded that people lived like this.
Same here … when I was a teen one of my friends in high school offered me to go to his house for lunch one day. I didn’t think anything of it and expected a decent meal, even just KD which everyone thought was normal.
He put a piece of plain white bread on a plate, heated a can of gravy and poured a bit of it over the bread … that was lunch for him … and a can of coke to go with it.
A generation ago, my family and friends (we’re all indigenous), many of the older people died of cancers related to intestine, gastro, bowel … they were all average weight but many died of these terrible cancers because they all ate a lot of canned and processed foods. Generations now are all overweight and suffering from diabetes and heart disease.
Shit that is terrible.
In 1970 I was one of the three recorded cases of scurvy in Canada. I was young poor and very often hungry. The doctor I finally saw was incredulous. I was the first case of scurvy he had ever seen. He gave me a prescription and told me to go buy some oranges. I told him I had no money for either so he bought me the prescription and the oranges out of his own pocket. I have been forever thankful.
The story of scurvy is wild. It keeps getting cured and then reappears. Crazy that’s it’s coming back again.
Considering some people diets I would have expected it to be an issue sooner, however so much food is fortified with extra vitamins I feel you have to try HARD to avoid vitamin C / have a super narrow diet.
Or be poor, or live in a food desert, or live in remote regions where a bag of oranges can run $50 or more.
I think you are missing my point, SO many packaged foods have vitamin C added it seems hard to actually avoid it.
Packaged foods are also very expensive. I haven’t purchased packaged food for years because I am poor and have to find different foods to get the nutrition I need.
The packaged foods was more a comment on peoples bad habits. As for actively buying food and getting Vitamin C What about frozen from concentrate? It is about $1.29-3.00 per can and that makes close to 2L of juice. There is also frozen Broccoli and many other frozen fruits that keep well and normally are not very expensive.
My fixed income is just over $16k per year. I’ve had to downsize from a house to a bachelor appt to a bedroom, so now have limited access to refrigerator and freezer space. But at least I live in a city where I have access to somewhat resonably-priced food. The same cannot be said for those living in small towns or remote regions where prices can be double (or more) of city prices.
I’m sure that our ideas of what is not very expensive are very different.
If you or any other poor person is looking for an affordable and tasty source of C, it’s easy to ferment cabbage into sauerkraut with little more than some repurposed containers from recycling bins, optionally some plastic wrap, and some salt. Fresh sauerkraut tastes amazing and is loaded with vitamin C. Most other vegetables that you can get your hands on for cheap or free also work in a pinch.
It’s pizza pops all the way down
I had to double check but yes 0%, then it might depend what you drink with it.
The First Nations combated scurvy by making a tea from pine tree needles.
Just an FYI for anyone who is also food poor and at risk.
You can also make rose hip tea. One rose hip has more vitamin C than an orange.
