MEAT a good source of vitamin C?

[Guest guest]

In correspondence on another list, Ray Peat said that all meat is a

decent source of dehydroascorbate, which is the oxidized, more

lipid-soluble form, of vitamin C, the presence of which is not

reflected in assays testing for the reduced, water-soluble form,

ascorbate. Presumably this is only the case in raw or rare meats, as

vitamin C is, to my understanding, heat-labile.

He also provided several studies showing the adsorption of

dehdyroascorbate into cells to be much greater than the adsorption of

ascorbate into cells. Dehydroascorbate is then rapidly converted into

ascorbate inside the cell. So obtaining a dietary source of

dehydroascorbate would be a much more effective way to increase

intracellular ascorbate than obtaining a dietary source of ascorbate

itself.

So the take-away, somewhat baffling point, would appear to be that raw

or rare meats are as good or possibly a better source of vitamin C

than most fruits and vegetables!

I've so far been unable to find an analysis of *amounts* of

dehydroascorbate in foods. It could be that a serving of meat has

just a few mg, but with much more effective delivery.

But any case this is a shocker to my long-held paradigm in which

vitamin C was essentially a plant-associated nutrient.

Chris