GCBC Reference Check ~ Part VI of ? ~ The Massa

With full attribution to Stephan Guyenet:

Northern Cameroon, 1980s.  The Massas tribe (also spelled Massa) is known for its overfeeding ritual called Guru Walla, which Taubes describes in GCBC:

The Massa tribe of northern Cameroon fattens their males using both milk and a porridge made from sorghum, a corn-like grain that provides sweet syrup from the stalk. One man gained seventy-five pounds on a ceremonial binge. The average weight gain tends to be fifteen to twenty pounds using milk and porridge.  The Massa are cattle herders and their staple diet is primarily milk. This fattening comes about by the addition of carbohydrates (sorghum) almost exclusively.

Taubes states here that the typical diet is "primarily milk", therefore by inference, low in carbohydrate.  Let's follow his reference and see what it says.  It leads to a freely accessible paper by Drs. Igor de Garine and Georgius J.A. Koppert titled "Guru Fattening Sessions Among the Massa" (30).  The Massas indeed herd cattle, but "their main use is not as food."  The typical diet (not during overfeeding) is described as containing 516 grams of carbohydrate per day, and only 32 grams of fat (Table VIII).  The typical diet is 81% carbohydrate, and primarily based on sorghum, according to Taubes's own reference.  This account is consistent with other freely accessible references in respected peer-reviewed journals (31).  These people are lean on their typical high-carbohydrate fare until they deliberately overconsume a mixture of sorghum and milk.

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Yet another instance of Taubes' references not saying that which he claims.  I'm beginning to see a pattern here.