Factoid Friday!

Introducing Factoid Friday! I am a lover of the "weekly feature" on blogs. As reader, it gives you something to look forward to. As the blogger, it keeps me motivated and on top of things. With Choice Good Wednesdays and now Factoid Friday, you know that I'll be updating at least twice a week!

Now, just so you are clear, I need to let you in on a little-known fact. Factoid can mean two things. I think most know that it can be "a briefly stated and usually trivial fact." But that, my friends is the secondary definition. Want to know the first? According to Merriam-Webster Online, it is this, "an invented fact believed to be true because of its appearance in print." Fascinating, isn't it? (Well, you may not think so, but I certainly do.) A word that has two definitions diametrically opposite one another. No wonder English is such a difficult language to learn.

The part I love is that using the word factoid gives me the flexibility to either let you in on an amazing/interesting/bizarre bit of trivia OR reveal the error in a commonly-held belief. The latter being oh-so-common since the onset of the World Wide Web.

So for today's factoid...

Many of you know that people throughout the ages have eaten the liver of various animals and deemed it quite healthy. Now, I know the veggies (and many omnivores) out there are squirming, but bear with me. (You'll get that emphasis/horrible pun in a moment.) Liver is very high in iron, vitamin A, vitamin D and the B vitamins. It is also high in a butt-load of other nutrients including, suprisingly enough, vitamin C! That's all well and good, but here's the kicker.

Fish oil is very high in vitamin A, right? Well, since Polar Bears eat a diet full of fish-predators, their livers have such a concentration of vitamin A that they are toxic to humans! The Eskimos, Inuit and other high-latitude Natives eat the other parts but leave the liver.

So next time you are stranded in the Arctic wilderness and kill a polar bear in order to keep from being eaten, you can eat everything but, please, leave the liver alone! After all your hard work defeating that 1500lb white-furred bohemoth, you don't want to go and poison yourself by eating his liver, do you?

So, remember me when you get the cash for the movie rights to your polar bear survival story...because I saved your stinking life!

And that, my friends, is a factoid.