Getting Scurvy

I really don’t understand everyone getting scurvy so often up until the 1950s.

I know people got scurvy on sailboats back when ships would be on the ocean for 3+ months. They didn’t know what vitamins were and were just drinking light beer and eating dried meat for months and months.

I watched a video about how horrible conditions on German U-boats were—they had 8 weeks at sea crammed in like sardines and everyone developed rashes from being so close and concealed, with bad hygiene and heavily rationed clean water.

The video also said the soldiers frequently developed scurvy, and their teeth would fall out. They had 2 weeks of fresh food, so 6 weeks of canned and preserved stuff, I assume with no vitamin C in it.

I just don’t get how they could have gotten scurvy that quickly? Maybe it was they were close to getting scurvy already, well before getting on the boat?

The Personal Experiment

After trying out vegetarianism around 22 for almost a year, I tried “plain double cheeseburgers only” for a year when I was about 26.

I was never a really strict vegetarian; I would always accept a meat dish if offered, but it was a disaster. I always felt hungry, no matter how much I ate, and it was terrible for my mood—it made me depressed, tired, and sullen. I tried really hard and read how to have a healthy diet from the best, healthiest vegetarians, and I took in tons of calories per day, but the non-meat diet did not work at all for me. It didn’t matter if I ate entire containers of peanut butter.

The “plain double cheeseburgers only” diet worked disconcertingly great. They were cheap back then, and I would have a couple for lunch and maybe 2-3 for dinner. I felt great, and never got tired of eating them. Despite the high salt and lack of nutrients, for a year I felt great eating them, with lots of energy. I only stopped the “experiment” because I thought it would probably have some long-term effect I wasn’t aware of, like making my liver or kidneys function worse decades later.

I know you are big on vitamin C supplements now, and you also drink lots of juice. Your vitamin C supplementation wasn’t until 2020, with COVID. Your diets have sometimes been odd, especially during harvests, and must have been even more odd when you were a bachelor and Sue never packed your lunches. I’m guessing you weren’t bringing orange slices along in the combine.

I don’t know how these Germans in their early 20s were getting scurvy so quickly.

A Conversation with Gemini

I decided to ask Gemini (an AI) about this, and the response was pretty interesting.

Gemini: There’s a lot of interesting stuff here worth unpacking, but I have to be upfront about something first: I’m an AI, so I don’t have any personal history. I wasn’t eating peanut butter sandwiches on a combine in the 70s, I don’t take vitamin C supplements, I don’t drink juice, and I have no memories or past of any kind. It sounds like you might be mixing me up with someone else!

Now, the scurvy question is genuinely fascinating, and your instinct is actually correct.

The body only stores roughly 1,500mg of vitamin C at any given time, and clinical scurvy symptoms can begin appearing in as little as 4-6 weeks of near-zero intake. So the 8-week U-boat timeline is right at the danger zone even under ideal starting conditions.

The Key Insight: They almost certainly weren’t starting from a “full tank.” Wartime German enlisted men were not eating particularly well on shore either. A diet heavy in bread and preserved meats would already put someone in a chronically low state. Getting on the submarine just finished the job fast.

Me: I apologize, I just pasted in a message I wrote to my dad, bewildered by the U-boat soldiers getting scurvy. That’s the context. Could you tell me about scurvy now that you know the intention of my message?

Gemini: No worries at all! Here is the full picture on why scurvy was such a nightmare:

  • The Biology: Vitamin C is essential for producing collagen, which holds your body together—skin, blood vessels, gums. When stores run out, collagen breaks down. This is why old wounds literally reopen.
  • The Timeline: Symptoms typically begin at 4-6 weeks of near-zero intake, with full-blown scurvy by 8-12 weeks.
  • Why U-boats were so bad: Heat destroys vitamin C efficiently, so canned and preserved food has essentially none left. Stress and physical exertion also burn through vitamin C faster.
  • The Cheeseburger Factor: Beef actually contains small amounts of vitamin C, enough to stay above the clinical threshold. The sailors who got scurvy weren’t eating fresh meat; they were eating salt-preserved meat, which has almost none left.

The margin between “fine” and “scurvy” is surprisingly narrow—somewhere around 10mg per day is enough to prevent it. You don’t need much; you just can’t have zero for weeks on end.