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It goes to show that the human body can get used to an "ultra low-carb diet". And there is no need for a study to prove it.
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The extroardinary thing was that people didn't suffer from scurvy and the other deficiency diseases.
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I beg to differ...
It's not particularly extraordinaory. The reason they didn't was not because they became adapted to an ultra low carb diet, but because they adapted their diet to ensure that it contained the necessary nutrients.
The inuit who for a significant proportions of the year had little access to plant material ate not only raw whale blubber known as "mattak", but they also ate raw fish eggs, caribou liver, and seal liver. This is why they didn't get scurvy.
link below is an extract which examined vitamin C content of traditional foods
ScienceDirect - Journal of Food Composition and Analysis : Vitamin C in Inuit Traditional Food and Women's Diets
Organ meats as they are called are rarely eaten now. We get significant amounts of our vitamins from vegetables. I mean, never mind raw fat and fish eggs, when was the last time anyone actually ate any liver?
The criticism that ketogenic diets may lack essential nutrients is currently unanswered - no long term study has evaluated whether the typical western style ketogenic diet would be safe in the long term.
The only study I found looking at safety for long term ketogenic diets was done on children with epilepsy. This study rather than looking purely at whether the diet worked also looked at possible side effects. It is a poor quality study in the sense that there was no randomisation nor where there any controls, and it wasn't even a prospective study, so it is hard to draw firm conclusions.
However, the researchers noted that at the start of the study 10 out the 28 children were at less than 10th percentile for height, which rose to 23 out of 28 children at the latest follow up. This is highly suggestive that the ketogenic diet was nutritionally deficient.
The researchers concluded that the diet worked, but...
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Efficacy and overall tolerability for children are maintained after prolonged use of the ketogenic diet. However, side effects, such as slowed growth, kidney stones, and fractures, should be monitored closely.
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Long-term use of the ketogenic diet in the treatme...[Dev Med Child Neurol. 2006] - PubMed Result
which leaves me with my original assertion -
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The potential risk for a long term ketogenic diet is nutritrional deficiency
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