I read once that a person could survive indefinitely on potatoes and milk.
It’s true. Add oats and eggs, and they can thrive.
I know this is Lemmy and all, but, uh, beans.
You can survive off any single food item for some non-zero amount of time. Nothing we know of can allow you to survive forever. The question is always: how long?
Long enough to die of something other than a nutritional deficiency.
Cyanide
potatoes. indefinitely.
Breastmilk should be enough. Just difficult to source.
With enough body fat, sprinkle in a bit of electrolyte and maybe vitamins and that’s all you need.
I remember reading of a supervised case like that, many months of not a year. I couldn’t find it with a quick search.
Peanut butter, jelly, bread.
But if I’m doing it healthy, then add eggs, spinach, blueberries, yogurt.
My mum said when she had no money she lived off eggs, rice, spring onions (which you can just continuously regrow from the bulb) and dried fish.
I don’t know the nutritional facts of this meal, but it worked for her.
If you switch out the fish for chicken or something like spam or corned beef, and add onions and garlic, that’ll do me.
What was the joke again…
“Humans can survive off a diet consisting of potatoes and butter, as demonstrated by a years long case study commonly known as Ireland”
Something along those lines.
Think it’s important to point out that they didn’t do that by choice.
If you could only have one food, potatoes would be a good choice.
yikes, scurvy much?
try brocolli and eggs
Potatoes are A ok against scurvy (unlike eggs alone who can come along for the ride though, because hash brown and fried eggs, yum)
- Rice
- Beans
end of list
B12?
–Edit–
And on closer look also (at least) fatty acids, calcium and iodine.
You’re missing a bunch of micro nutrients which would cause problems over time with this. It has all the calories and protein you need though.
Add in some fat from somewhere like cooking oil, and a handful of vegetables like onions, carrots, etc. and you’d last a fairly normal human lifespan.
Vegetables often contain oil, the problem is getting omega-3’s, which our bodies can’t make.
In the sea, it’s algae who’re producing it: then krill, then squid/fish/etc eat them…
some plants make it, some don’t…
olives are good, olive-oil, etc…
but anybody who’s eating squash is getting omega-6’s or 9’s, even though it seems non-intuitive.
Any particular type of beans? Red? Black? Lentils?
Does the type of rice matter?
I’m intrigued by this possibility.
Afaik pretty much any kind of cereal with any kind of legume provide the essential amino acids needed by the body. Both of them have protein, but not the full set of amino acids that the body requires in a certain proportion.
Idk about vitamins, though.
Does the type of rice matter?
Yes; make sure it’s whole grain. White rice is essentially junk food, with most of its fiber, vitamins & minerals stripped in the de-hulling process.
I have a sack of white rice to eat through… I don’t really know what to do with it all. My partner got it from work. Would rather basmati rice really.
You might mix it with non-junk food rice. Shortgrain-brown might have a similar-enough cooking time that they can be mixed together. I’m hazy on that, as I stopped eating rice years ago, replacing it with steel-cut oats.
Or, who knows… maybe you could donate the sack to a food bank?
Cool - thank you! That makes sense. I know there are so many types of rice, so I’ll do some research too.
Potato
I’ve often heard repeated that a human can live on water, potatoes, and salted butter basically indefinitely.
Not sure how true, but seems plausible.
Before the 1840s, Irish farmers lived on.potatoes and milk, with the odd herring in winter when milk was harder to come by. Not a pleasant diet, and you’re buggered if the potato harvest fails, but definitely doable.
“beriberi” is malnutrition: it means literally “i cannot”.
You become … not very able to do what you need to do, to survive, on this kind of diet, fairly quickly.
Egg-bread & scrambled-eggs ( with a multivitamin every other day ) can get you FAR, ultra-cheap ( if you ever need to get through a month on nearly-nothing ).
( obviously this isn’t long-term, this is short-term-survival stuff )
add-in carrots, if you can.
A bit of broccoli makes a BIG difference in one’s health.
Do what you can to get some omega-3’s into you: our bodies can’t make them, & if our bodies have to make omega-6’s & omega-9’s, apparently they just run mitochondria backwards, to do it.
Even a tablespoon of olive-oil / day will help your body keep functioning.
Listen, taco bell has maybe 10-15 ingredients and has an infinite menu item…
Well, not rabbit, anyway.
Does Soylent count as 1 item?
god I miss Soylent. Cooking/eating is a huge burden for me (depressed and lazy) so I drank the heck out of Soylent when I was in the US. Now in Japan the only thing close is Calorie Mate and it’s not nearly as good/nutritious. :(
I’m in the US and have only ever had Huel. It’s an amazing product so I’d recommend that if it’s available there (the company started in the UK so it’s not US-centric at least).
I think it might be available on Amazon here, I’ll check it out! Thanks~
