SC - about salt

[Decker, Terry D.]

>>Tibetan dish of tsampa (sp?) which is barley meal, tea, and yak 
>>butter.
>> ... and how they get enough
>>calories to live at such high altitudes and harsh conditions.  

>Thanks for the quotes!  It's amazing stuff isn't it?   I'm curious - how do 
>they get enough calories?  Do they eat a lot of fats?  (Guessing)
>
>Elysant

>From the book _Nomads of Western Tibet_ again:

"The Pala nomads reap livestock products to provide the food they need to
survice.  But their diet is highly unusual in that they consume vastly
different diets during winter and summer, eat no fruits and virtually no
vegetables.  Nor do they utilize all the potential foods aroud them.  For
example, they do not eat fish or fowl, even though many live beside lakes
teeming with fish and migratory ducks and geese.  They do not eat
carnivores or rabbits or the abundant wild ass, which they classify as a
horse because of its non-cloven hoof.  They explain this simply as due to
their cultural heritage--that drokba [nomadic pastoralists] do not eat
these foods." (114)

"Nomads eat two or three meals a day...In summer, supper is often tsamba
and animal fat, and perhaps some dried rasish.  In winter, the evening meal
is usually a substantial stew with lots of meat and tsamba or boiled flour
dumplings.  The nomads explain that the heavy stew helps keep them warm
during the bitterly cold winter nights, and there is some scientific
evidence from the Andes that such stews are actually effective." (114)

"Just 15 foods plus tea compromise virtually the entire nomad diet.  These
are dairy products (yogurt, milk, cream, cheese, butttermilk and whey),
meat products (animal fat, blood and meat including organ meat), barley
(tsamba), wheat flour, rice, cooking oil and very rarely dried radish and
dried cabbage." (115)

"Men eat twice as many calories as women during the summer and fall and
about 40% more during winter...Calorie intakes were two to four times
higher in winter than summer.  This is primarily due to a huge increase in
the consumption of animal fat and meat after the late fall slaughter." (115)

There is lots more info on caloric intakes in the book, but I was unable to
find out just how many calories were consumed.  Adults eat an estimated 175
pounds of tsamba yearly. The nomads raise sheep, goats and yak, and only
slaughter animals once a year (November/December), by the way.  Apparently
the meat freezes solid and stays good until June.  The average number of
sheep/goats killed for meat is 4.4 per person.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Ilyana Barsova (Yana)  ***mka Jennifer D. Miller
jdmiller2 at students.wisc.edu *** http://www.sit.wisc.edu/~jdmiller2 
Slavic Interest Group http://vms.www.uwplatt.edu/~goldschp/slavic.html
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