Vilhjalmur Stefansson

He wrote several books and expedition documents about his travels.

My Life with the Eskimo (1913)

The Friendly Arctic; The story of five years in Polar Regions (1921)

Hunters of the Great North. (1922)

Not by Bread Alone. (1946); this was enlarged and republished as "The Fat of the Land." (1960)

Stefansson was subjected to ridicule and was an obvious a target to be picked off.

Social norms make this new knowledge unacceptable. We choose what we think is important. We often ignore things we should notice.

Note that at the same time at John Hopkins and in the Mayo Clinic other researchers were exploring the medical use of ketosis.

John Hopkins stopped their work about 1928, after drugs to treat epilepsy were developed..

Vilhjalmur Stefansson's Arctic expeditions

From 1905 to 1918 Vilhjalmur Stefansson on various Arctic expeditions spent more than 9 years living entirely on Intuit diets.

He was treated with disbelief. The new science of biochemistry produced many new graduates who thought they has discovered remarkable things about human nutrition, including the importance of vegetables.

In 1928 researchers at Bellevue Medical Center tried to prove that a man can't be healthy living on animal products alone.

Stefansson and a friend, Karsten Andersen, lived, confined to the Bellevue Medical Center, on a 75% fat diet, for a year. (Stefansson's health improved.)

Stefansson thought the experiment was a great success, but the attitude of the researchers, doctors and the public astounded him.

For the researchers, their experiment failed. The result was SILENCE.