Scurvy killed at least two million sailors, are you prepped?

If a prairie living Canuck were to include a potato and half a cup of brussel sprouts, or cabbage to her daily diet, vitamin C deficiency would never be an issue. Bell peppers are chock a block full of C as well. Only one would need a hot house to keep them going here.

Bell peppers are chock a block full of C as well. Only one would need a hot house to keep them going here.

I have grown them over in the winter many times.
Those that I want to bring in for winter are planted in pots right off the bat from seedlings. When brought in they are about 1 1/2 to 2 feet tall and covered in blossoms.
I had great success in growing them inside under shop lights, so I do it most every year. They continued to produce blossoms and peppers.

Try a couple of plants for a test you may be surprised. 🙂

Bell peppers are chock a block full of C as well. Only one would need a hot house to keep them going here.

I have grown them over in the winter many times.
Those that I want to bring in for winter are planted in pots right off the bat from seedlings. When brought in they are about 1 1/2 to 2 feet tall and covered in blossoms.
I had great success in growing them inside under shop lights, so I do it most every year. They continued to produce blossoms and peppers.

Try a couple of plants for a test you may be surprised. 🙂

Thanks a lot! Please send a photo.

Antsy

you can make tea whit pine branch and it provide you more vitamin-c than you need

Thanks a lot! Please send a photo.

Antsy

You're welcome. 🙂

All I can find is from the first year I did it. Not the best but you can see small peppers started from the blossoms.
I should have added: these were grown in a 6 inch pot as a test to see how they would do in the house, the next year I went to a bigger pot twice the size.

As a survivalist, I would like to contribute my thoughts to this discussion.

Prepping for adequate Vitamin C shouldn't be a concern. Our hard-earned cash should be spent on other things. You can get your family's entire year's requirement of vitamin C within 1-2 blocks of your house, almost anywhere in Canada, by simply harvesting dandelion greens or steeping pine needles. Gram for gram, dandelion leaves are almost identical to oranges in their vitamin C content, but contain much higher concentrations of iron, calcium, vitamin B6, magnesium and protein. The younger the leaves, the less bitter. Give it a try. 🙂 In fact, you'll even get the same amount of calories by weight, if you compare dandelions and oranges.

As a survivalist, I would like to contribute my thoughts to this discussion.

And those are good thoughts, RT. 🙂

However I don't grow in winter time for V-C.

I love to snip off a pepper and munch on it like an apple. With a few feet of snow on the ground that will be stickin around for many months that's not gonna happen for a long time in the garden.
The store peppers....well lets just say... yuck and not mention the horrible price of them. 😉
I also grow leaf lettuce thru the winter inside.
I should also add I feed a lot of that lettuce to the chickens in winter when all greens are not available to them.

Plus variety will be good in SHTF times.

Naval vessels started to carry and serve stewed tomatoes to fight scurvy. It is the reason that most Navy ships still serve stewed tomatoes today. It is a Naval tradition and they are affectionately called "red lead"

GM1

I buy dried lemons from middle eastern stores (to put in rice and soups, etc) ...now that I have a dehydrator I will be trying lemon peel as well. I usually put lemon in my water all the time so I always have a big bottle of lemon juice in my frig so I think i'd be set for a while before starting with pine needle tea 🙂

If you are fortunate enough to live near a source of white birch, the bark contains vitamin C along with a bunch of other stuff that isn't poison. I'd be willing to swallow some less than wonderful tea to avoid scurvy. I much prefer wild rose hips and have a ton of ornamental (but edible) crab apples in my yard.

I think the sailor scurvy problem is because it's hard to pull vitamin C out of the ocean. If the winds were not kind or the hold wasn't sufficiently stocked with limes (where do you think the 'Limey" moniker came from?) the scurvy problem would show up. Lemon pepper (great on fish) and Mrs. Dash both contain lemon zest and as a result vitamin C.

In closing, unless your bug out plans involve ocean travel, I don't think vitamin C is much of a problem to procure. It doesn't have to be perfect, just available.

Sauerkraut was one of the original scurvy remedies and has a host of other benefits. It's ridiculously easy to make, lasts many months and should be in every preppers pantry.
You can debate the benefits of supplements but real kraut is a proven health enhancer in many studies. Not the pasteurized store bought stuff mind you, the stuff you make at home.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sauerkraut

Many health benefits have been claimed for sauerkraut.

It is extremely high in vitamins C, B, and K;[18] the fermentation process increases the bioavailability of nutrients rendering sauerkraut even more nutritious than the original cabbage.[19] It is also low in calories and high in calcium and magnesium, and it is a very good source of dietary fiber, folate, iron, potassium, copper and manganese.[18]

If unpasteurized and uncooked, sauerkraut also contains live lactobacilli and beneficial microbes and is rich in enzymes. The fiber and supply of probiotics improve digestion and promote the growth of healthy bowel flora, protecting against many diseases of the digestive tract.[19][20]

Sauerkraut has been used in Europe for centuries to treat stomach ulcers, and its effectiveness for soothing the digestive tract has been well established by numerous studies.[21]

During the American Civil War, the physician John Jay Terrell (1829–1922)[22][23] was able to successfully reduce the death rate from disease among prisoners of war; he attributed this to the practice of feeding his patients raw sauerkraut.[24]

Sauerkraut is a time-honored folk remedy for canker sores. It is used by rinsing the mouth with sauerkraut juice for about 30 seconds several times a day, or by placing a wad of sauerkraut against the affected area for a minute or so before chewing and swallowing the kraut.[25]

The October 23, 2002 issue of the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry reported that Finnish researchers found the isothiocyanates produced in sauerkraut fermentation inhibit the growth of cancer cells in test tube and animal studies.[26] A Polish study in 2010 concluded that "... induction of the key detoxifying enzymes by cabbage juices, particularly sauerkraut, may be responsible for their chemopreventive activity demonstrated by epidemiological studies and in animal models".[27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34]

Sauerkraut is high in the antioxidants lutein and zeaxanthin, both associated with preserving ocular health.[35]

In order to enjoy optimal health benefits from eating cabbage, one must eat raw, unpasteurized cabbage. This comment does not match the reference or apply to the health benefits of sauerkraut[

When talking about vitamin C in a SHTF scenario, this is when knowledge of wild foraging and food growing skills comes in. In a true SHTF situation, the citrus fruit isn't going to be rolling in on the trucks anymore. You have to know local sources of it. Rose hips are one. They are chalk FULL of vit C, more than citrus. Parsley is also loaded with it and also has a greater concentration than citrus. These are the things people need to know when the SHTF. Food, water, and supplies are great in the short term, but in the long term it is the skills that will save lives.

Agreed 100 % ! If we are talking about TRUE SHTF then it will be for long term. There are too many fragile systems that we are all too dependent on. We need to have stored preps for sure. But also seeds to grow food, and the knowledge to do that. The knowledge of edible and medicinal plants is extremely important. How about snares and trapping. We are going to need a lot of skills in order to survive well. If the plan is to just hunt for your supper with a gun, you are going to get real thin real fast.

I may have missed this as I was skimming but don't the inuit people get their vitamin C largely by consuming raw liver etc? Not too many fruit trees, roses or birch trees up there, yet they survive. I should rub the belly of the google and confirm this...

I may have missed this as I was skimming but don't the inuit people get their vitamin C largely by consuming raw liver etc? Not too many fruit trees, roses or birch trees up there, yet they survive. I should rub the belly of the google and confirm this...

Yah. I was on that on the first page. Inuit's and unintended vegetarians.

"Im no nutritionist but you will get V-C from pretty much every fruit and veggie. As I suspect there will end up being a lot of unintended vegetarians suddenly realising their little garden plot is the only source of reliable food, V-C might not be a problem. There is still about 50 squashes left in the pantry. Now this gets a bit tricky for the Inuit up north that relied almost entirely on meat. They got their V-C through animal Livers. This was pretty normal for hunting tribes. When an animal was hunted, every one was pretty under nourished so as soon as the animal was killed, they would immediately cut out the liver and it would be eaten before anything else got done.
Worst case scenario, living underground off your stores in a nuclear waist land...brings you right back to beans. Sprouting them and most other seed provides , guess what? V-C."

Im not much of a vegi guy but I am even less of a liver guy. I consume the lesser of two evils. Gag me with a filtering organ

Sorry, three evils. Pine needles and the appealing taist of turpentine 😆 yum

Of course, the Inuit also ate the partially digested lichens that we cant digest on our own...strait from the caribous stomach. Double yum. That makes even Sauerkraut seem appealing. Ill stick with the occasional carrot... when no one is looking.

ok, OK, lol, having lived and worked in the artic, on both side, in NWT and four years in Iqaluit.. I have a good idea of how spruce/pine needles are and can be used in cooking, and its top of the line!. Liver is good raw, you slice it thin/ small and then let freeze and then swallow like a pill, very easy to take, but most of them also picked and dried berries that were made into winter tea that also had vit c in it .

Basic's for how to rock those spruce greens..

Canadian Mock Capers with fresh young Spruce tips. So very easy, pick your picks, remove any of the coverings, wash and dry them and fill your jars with them

Note: The first time I made Mock Spruce Tip Caper was in Yellowknife in 1999, while I worked at “the office”, we made our own Northern Capers, they were used with the char we made..

In a pan mix your vineger with salt and peppercorns, heat till salt is desolved, then pour over the tips in a glass jar, cover and allow to pickle for at least two months before use in the fridge.

Spruce Tip Salt
1/2 cup coarse salt
1/2 cup roughly chopped spruce tips

or

Spruce Tip Sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup roughly chopped spruce tips.

Finely grind the tips, mix with the salt, it will be quite damp to start with, just let it dry, break up any lumps and keep in glass jar.

Spruce Tip Mayo

Makes 1 cup mayonnaise
.1 cup mayonnaise (homemade or store-bought)
1/4 cup minced spruce tips
2 tsp. sugar and lemon or lime juice

Spruce Tip Syrup or Make it into Jelly by adding in pectin.
2 cups sugar
2 cups water
2 cups roughly chopped spruce tips.

Simmer for 30 min and then strain and then bring back to a full boil, put the boiling syrup in clean hot jars and then process in hot water bath for 15 min for long term storage

Now lets get to some fun..

Farmgal’s Rhubarb/Spruce Tip Jam (it was inspired by a Finnish Drink, I had in Finland when I visited in 2004)
◾5 cups of chopped Rhubarb
◾1 cup of very finely chopped cleaned Spruce tips
◾1/2 cup of fresh apple mint leaves-Finely diced.
◾3 more cups of sugar
◾1/4 cup of lemon juice

if you want to hide the tips more, Blend the spruce and apple mint leaves with one cup of sugar for ease of doing so, then add everything into a pot and bring to a slow boiling simmer. Now you have a choice, you can use pecton if you want, or you can slow simmer the rhubarb till it thick enough on its own, like a good rhubarb butter, and then hot pack it into clean hot jars and process for 15 min for storage. Its rhubarb which to me only gets better with cooking, so I like my old fashioned slow simmer into almost a butter but still jam. Remember to skim your foam off but don’t throw it out, just save it and use fresh on toast. Now don’t let this one fool you folks, it may seem a little odd on the mix but its truly a delightful jam, Give this one a try, you won’t be sorry you did so! This is total favorite to go with rye toast in the morning.

Green thumb print cookies

◾1/2 cup of soften butter or margine
◾1 cup of spruce sugar -Plus reserve 2 tbsp for topping
◾2 large eggs
◾1 tsp of cinnamon
◾1/2 tsp of ginger
◾1/2 tsp of salt
◾1 tsp of baking powder
◾3 cups of flour
Mix in order, then roll into ball or flatten and then press a hollow in the middle of the cookie, fill either with spruce sugar, or rhubarb/spruce jam and bake for 12 to 14 min at 350.

Spruce Stew with Bannack topping, this dish is enough of a hit that I have seen teen boys lick the spoons on this one

So in either the oven or the crock pot, place your pd of prepared stewing meat (You could brown but for this dish, I choose not to) along with two large onions roughly diced, and 2 cups of Spruce Tip Bear or Spruce Syrup over the meat and allow to cook till tender but not folk fall apart tender, in my case about two hours at 350, at which point, I cut up two very large carrots, 4 large potatoes, 1/2 a cup of diced turnip. I seasoned with salt, pepper, turmaic, keens mustard, garlic powder and, an a pinch of allspice

All those are washed, peeled, and cut into bite size peices, and then I used another full cup of the spruce tip beer to just cover the veggies and the meat and back into the over till the veggies are cooked and the meat is now fork tender, the sauce is rich, full bodied and just lightly spicy..

At this point, make a single batch of Baking Powder Bisquits aka Bannock.. or then could be topped with a layer of whipped mashed with top.. or you could do a nice light layer of puff pastry.. If you are using the Bannock, then roll out or flatten down to about a two inch start and lay over the top, leaving a edge around the outside the baking dish, place the whole stew back into the oven and bake until golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean in the middle.

Spruce tips are awesome, and something I look forward to each tip season, the older needles are your local mock rosemary