Thingie I noticed at lunch today: I’ve had virtually no vitamin C since arriving at college, after frequently snacking on oranges for years at home. Will my body cut in and start making me desire oranges before I get scurvy, or do I need to eat them on my own?
You need to get them on your own.
People go years and decades w/ deficiencies in many nutrients, most notably Calcium.
Some vitamins are in trace amounts in alot of foods, so you almost have to avoid certain foods to be truly deprived, or the impact of the deficiency isn’t so great.
Just think of calcium as a big example though. It’s one that is easy to avoid w/out much effort, and it’s impact on bone related problems is generally accepted as true.
Are you sure you are truly vitamin c deficient? You might be surprised to find vitamin c in a number of foods you eat. Maybe not the optimal amount, but enough.
A shortage of vitamin C leading to scurvy is not technically starvation but mineral deficience or perhaps malnutrition.
The body has an extraordinary ability to know what nutrients it is lacking and where to find them. This is, famously, especially pronounced in some women during pregnancy, and I have also come across cases of iron-deficient children developing a taste for drinking ink. The children were unaware that they were iron-deficient, or that the ink was iron-rich.
However I would not assume that this is an infallible mechanism. It is not uncommon for people with adequate resources and a wide choice of suitable foods to become malnourished, for example by choosing to live largely off potato chips and beer. Calcium deficiency is common in older age; there is no evidence that the calcium deficient develop a craving for any of the wide variety of foods which contain calcium.
So, no, eat the oranges and don’t wait to develop a desire to eat oranges.
PS: Scurvy takes a while to develop. Assuming you only got to college around Labor Day you aren’t in any immediate danger.
Scurvy isn’t much of a danger as long as you have fresh food. The reason all those explorers died was because they ate hardtack and dried/salted meat. Fresh meat has vitamin C (humans are rare in our inability to synthesize it). It’s often been noted that, in trying for the South Pole, Scott failed and Amundsen succeeded in part because Amundsen was willing to eat his sled dogs as he went, preventing the scurvy that afflicted Scott’s team.
Many years ago I read about an experiment in which babies were allowed to choose their own food from a wide variety of choices. Supposedly, babies who were short of vitamin A or D would even choose cod-liver oil, which has a truly disgusting smell but lots of vitamin A and D.
I doubt if the average adult is that in tune with his body.
You probably are getting more vitamin C than you realize, in potatoes for instance, but you would probably be better off to get even more, from oranges or other citrus fruit.
Well, our bodies DO send us signals to get more Vitamin C. That’s what a human’s “sweet tooth” is SUPPOSED to do! Thousands of years ago, when a human craved something sweet, he ate a piece of fruit. So, in those days, our bodily craving sent us in the right direction, and got us to do something that would give us needed vitamins.
Problem is, we humans were too smart for our own good. We learned to process and refine sugar. Which means we can and do get to satisfy our urgings for sweets without eating anything that gives us vitamins! When we get the urge for something sweet, we don’t reach for an orange or a banana (as our ancestors would have), we eat a candy bar or a scoop of ice cream.
So, don’t blame your body for not telling you what it needs! It’s TRYING to tell you! You’re just misinterpreting!
Have you been eating pizza? Spaghetti? Salads with tomatoes on them?
Tomatoes are loaded with vitamin C. I became convinced in college that pizza is really a perfect balanced meal, if you order with lots of veggies.
It appears that the situation was not as dire as my mother made it out to be. Hmm. Does the fact that I’ve been craving fattening foods lots and sweet foods barely mean that I’m getting enough vitamin C? I do eat salads, pasta, and pizza fairly frequently.
People have been living in many places where there wasn’t any orange for milleniums and survived. Oranges aren’t by far the only food containing vitamin C.