# Any chance of bullshyte story being true? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 18, 2021, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-chance-of-bullshyte-story-being-true/938194 "2021-03-18T16:39:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2021, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-chance-of-bullshyte-story-being-true/938194/21 "2021-03-18T23:08:14Z")
> [@Dr\_Paprika](#): > > _One child with a severe vitamin D deficiency even drank cod liver oil of his own volition until he was cured._ > > The discovery of vitamins is pretty recent. Maybe there even was a blood test for vitamin D in the 1930s but even if so, I doubt it was done on these children. Fish oil tastes pretty bad and the only place I have seen it consumed in buffets was in Iceland. And if they discovered a young child with a “severe” vitamin D deficiency wouldn’t they want to start treating that right away and not wait around to see if he went for the fish oil? ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2021, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-chance-of-bullshyte-story-being-true/938194/22 "2021-03-18T23:11:32Z")
Another aspect of being BS. It was a study conducted in a Canadian orphanage in the 1930s (@solost posts a pretty thorough debunking of it further up, though it did happen, we have no data from the experiment, only the authors description of what happened). Would the modern assumption that everyone involved had enough calories in their diet and choosing the high-sugar option was the “wrong” one, hold? My parents were raised in immediate post-war Britain, and they still gave out sugar (or the more scientific sounding “glucose”) pills to treat illness (something that lasted to my childhood 40 years later). Not for as a placebo (though I’m sure there was an element of that by the time I was exposed to it), but because it was a reasonable chance that a sick child wasn’t getting enough calories to fight the infection successfully. ---
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2021, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-chance-of-bullshyte-story-being-true/938194/23 "2021-03-18T23:51:47Z")
> [@Dr\_Paprika](#): > > Most pregnant women are most deficient in iron. However, they rarely eat airplanes, like that guy in Guinness. An iron airplane? ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2021, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-chance-of-bullshyte-story-being-true/938194/24 "2021-03-18T23:58:24Z")
But she was never tested, you don’t even know if she was low on potassium, and so it’s all unfalsifiable. > [@lobotomyboy63](#): > > In our house we would have had…potatoes and bananas (only) from that list Being that bananas have many times the amount of potassium of celery, it seems a reach. The whole point of this thread is do people just naturally eat what their bodies need? All we have are anecdotes, but there are plenty more anecdotes that counteract those anecdotes. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-chance-of-bullshyte-story-being-true/938194/25 "2021-03-19T01:33:22Z")
Good sources of iron include mussels, liver, sardines, beef and airplanes - which also are an excellent source of aluminium and composites. Last time I checked, airplanes contained significant steel. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-chance-of-bullshyte-story-being-true/938194/26 "2021-03-19T01:36:16Z")
I have heard of a number of (somewhat older) kids whose ideal diets were largely composed of nuggets, cheesed macaroni, hot dogs, sugary snacks and peanut butter. I hope the next iteration of this study includes these foods. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-chance-of-bullshyte-story-being-true/938194/27 "2021-03-19T01:57:37Z")
I think I must have a bacon deficiency. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-chance-of-bullshyte-story-being-true/938194/28 "2021-03-19T02:02:58Z")
Here’s another link to the story. I knew it happened in an orphanage, but not that it allegedly lasted for 4 1/2 years! It doesn’t help that according to this link, none of the original charts, etc. are extant. > **[Clara M. Davis and the wisdom of letting children choose their own diets](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1626509/)** I’m guessing that the child who allegedly drank cod liver oil had rickets, and gave that up when their bones strengthened. ---
**Author:** ![lobotomyboy63](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobotomyboy63/32/2900_2.png) [@lobotomyboy63](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lobotomyboy63)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-chance-of-bullshyte-story-being-true/938194/29 "2021-03-19T02:35:12Z")
> [@needscoffee](#): > > But she was never tested, you don’t even know if she was low on potassium, and so it’s all unfalsifiable. I don’t know if she was or wasn’t, but she died in 2017. > [@needscoffee](#): > > Being that bananas have many times the amount of potassium of celery, it seems a reach. I’m not sure I follow. I’m not implying that she thought she might be low on potassium so she went to the kitchen, found celery, said, “This will help!” etc. Rather, she ate some one day and kept going back for more. She couldn’t figure out why she kept craving it after she’d already eaten bowls of it. So she asked the doctor. And we didn’t always have bananas, especially during a cold winter but I don’t remember in this particular instance. > [@needscoffee](#): > > The whole point of this thread is do people just naturally eat what their bodies need? All we have are anecdotes, but there are plenty more anecdotes that counteract those anecdotes. You mentioned pregnancy cravings earlier…not sure if you thought she was pregnant when this happened, but she wasn’t. Sure. The doctor might have looked at her chart, realized what medication she was taking, and if it lowered potassium, he connected the dots. I don’t know if they have to do a blood test for potassium deficiency. She told him any other symptoms she was experiencing, I guess, and since he was an experienced medical doctor I assume he knew what he was talking about. Even though it seemed to work, there’s also the potential for placebo effect of course. ---
**Author:** ![kitap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b9e5f3/32.png) [@kitap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kitap)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-chance-of-bullshyte-story-being-true/938194/30 "2021-03-19T03:17:23Z")
Some people really don’t have sweet tooths: I have a friend who doesn’t. The only sweet things she likes are Coca-Cola - for the flavor, not the sugar - and vanilla ice cream, in a once a year kind of way. She eats lots of veggies but almost never fruit unless she is using Li hung mui powder on it. No interest in chocolate, candy or baked goods. I guess if you tested a toddler with her preferences they’d naturally go for the veggies and meat options. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-chance-of-bullshyte-story-being-true/938194/31 "2021-03-19T03:22:51Z")
No child would ever willingly consume castor oil if there was any other food around. Has anyone here ever smelt that stuff? There’s a reason Mary Poppins gave it with a spoonful of sugar, but TBH I’m not sure that’d make it go down much more easily. > [@Melbourne](#): > > I told my mom/doctor that I _liked_ chewing on the points of my shirt collar. She told me that I had pica, and prescribed iron supplements. I stopped chewing on my clothes. Yes; cravings can indicate a deficiency in some vital vitamin or mineral, but it’s not necessarily a logical one. I craved ice when I was pregnant, and once I was prescribed iron, the desire receded. It still comes up pretty frequently - the more I crave ice, the lower in iron I tend to be. It’s a known symptom of iron deficiency. But ice doesn’t contain iron. The body is just trying to get something it isn’t getting, especially if your diet is healthy enough that it should be providing enough iron, really, but something’s stopping it from being used by your body efficiently, eg pregnancy, endometriosis, rheumatoid arthritis. (I currently have the latter two so know about those). Maybe lobotomyboy’s mother told her doctor she was craving celery and he was wise enough to know that cravings often mean a deficiency in something, and it turned out to be potassium. Or maybe it turned up in a regular blood test and that coincided with the pregnancy progressing and the craving going. ---
**Author:** ![Zyada](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zyada/32/3028_2.png) [@Zyada](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zyada)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-chance-of-bullshyte-story-being-true/938194/32 "2021-03-19T04:06:35Z")
If anything is going on, it’s learned behavior, which happens at a subconscious level. Eat the celery, feel better, lizard brain wants more celery. The downside is that this can happen with things that are bad for you, like caffeine and sugar ---
**Author:** ![Zyada](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zyada/32/3028_2.png) [@Zyada](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zyada)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-chance-of-bullshyte-story-being-true/938194/33 "2021-03-19T04:40:04Z")
The same mechanism might explain cod liver boy. He almost certainly got dosed before the study, and muscle pain is one of the symptoms of rickets. So he may have had a learned response and when given free access to the code liver oil, managed to get enough to reverse the course of the disease. What this doesn’t explain is why iron stopped the craving for ice and potassium stopped the craving for celery. ---
**Author:** ![Stego](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stego/32/7118_2.png) [@Stego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stego)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-chance-of-bullshyte-story-being-true/938194/34 "2021-03-19T07:05:29Z")
Our child is almost 3 and, if let alone, he would eat only bread. We try a montessori approach in which we offer a (limited) amount of options and he is free to decide what to eat or not to eat and in what amount, but if there is bread around he would preferably eat only that and ignore anything else. I speculate that he is some kind of mutant that can synthesize all other nutrients from gluten and carbs. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 7:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-chance-of-bullshyte-story-being-true/938194/35 "2021-03-19T07:49:28Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > I craved ice when I was pregnant, and once I was prescribed iron, the desire receded. Once I realized my mother was going to make me consume iron supplement drops, the desire to chew on my collar points receded 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![FairyChatMom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fairychatmom/32/21906_2.png) [@FairyChatMom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FairyChatMom)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-chance-of-bullshyte-story-being-true/938194/36 "2021-03-19T12:10:50Z")
My granddaughter is nearly 3 and the kid loves veggies, especially green beans and “teeny tiny trees” (broccoli.) My daughter made an effort to minimize candies and pastries and emphasize fruits and veggies, and so far, that seems to be what the kid prefers. Not that she turns her nose up at ice cream or cupcakes, but she’ll happily accept a snack of oranges or berries. So, anecdotally, I think it’s more of a learned behavior. Similarly, when I was a kid, sweets were a reward, and the notion of self-reward when I had my own money to spend led to a life-long battle with my weight. Even at my advanced age, knowing better and actually liking many fruits and veggies, I still will take chocolate, even if I don’t really crave it. I’m sure there’s something twisted in my head… ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-chance-of-bullshyte-story-being-true/938194/37 "2021-03-19T14:18:34Z")
Wow! One aspect of this that changes my opinion of the researcher completely: > Davis convinced unmarried teenage mothers and widows who could no longer support their families to place their infants in what amounted to an eating-experiment orphanage set up in Chicago. WTF! I realize running medical experiments on children in a orphanage would be unacceptable now but was the norm back then, but that seems another level of messed up. Convincing mothers to put their kids in a orphanage just to do your dumb experiment (which you then fail to publish any of the data for anyway). That’s awful, even by the standards of 1930s science. ---
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-chance-of-bullshyte-story-being-true/938194/38 "2021-03-19T16:29:19Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > No child would ever willingly consume castor oil if there was any other food around. Has anyone here ever smelt that stuff? There’s a reason Mary Poppins gave it with a spoonful of sugar, but TBH I’m not sure that’d make it go down much more easily. Is castor oil any worst tasting then aspirin, because there have been a lot of kids chowing down on a whole bottle of aspirin and needing their stomachs pumped. . ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-chance-of-bullshyte-story-being-true/938194/39 "2021-03-19T17:12:07Z")
Childrens orange flavored aspirin, methinks. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-chance-of-bullshyte-story-being-true/938194/40 "2021-03-19T21:32:26Z")
Aspirin is, of course, no longer recommended for children due to rare side effects. Putting kids in an orphanage to feed them raw beef is pretty messed up. But is hardly the only ethical issue of September 1939, when the CMAJ published this interesting but highly flawed shyte show. FWIW, the synopsis by McKenna claimed the toddlers were fed “their choice of ice cream, spinach and many other foods” for a month in whatever quantities they wanted. These do not seem to be the foods offered. And after 4 years of feeding, one is no longer a toddler. I wouldn’t necessarily expect accurate reportage for an anecdote. The fact the study even exists is both interesting, surprising and disturbing. The paucity of data suggests the study was poorly done and even given its questionable ethics the conclusions seem forced. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-chance-of-bullshyte-story-being-true/938194.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-chance-of-bullshyte-story-being-true/938194.md?page=3)