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Just watch survival shows like Alone or Life Below Zero, the fact that people ate things in their environment to survive, and that the things that didn't kill t
by dpflan 3y ago
Just watch survival shows like Alone or Life Below Zero, the fact that people ate things in their environment to survive, and that the things that didn't kill them and helped them survive were continued...is not news, it should actually be considered more an ongoing assumption that they did versus astonishment that they did. Nevertheless, aside from that slight rant, it is good to see scientific techniques and analysis used and those practices honed and more knowledge built about how humans have existed and lived.
- efields 3y agoWe have a small specialty cut flower farm and also grow plants for fun. I like to take people around and just start eating all the herbs and leaves and berries and bits, off of all sorts of plants. "That's edible?" "How hungry are you?"
- Dowwie 3y agoIgor Limansky, from Alone Season 9, didn't do well living off of just seaweed. He grew very weak and developed heart palpitations from malnutrition. Including seaweed in one's diet may have worked for people but living exclusively on seaweed seems to have problems.
- dpflan 3y agoYes...living off of just seaweeds seems...like a pretty bad idea and incomplete nutrition. In Alone participants are constrained to a specific plot of land -- I'll assume if Igor could go to other locations he could have augmented his diet and improved his living situation (not kept to that boggy area) like a good hunter-gatherer.
- wongarsu 3y agoMy understanding is that there are very few foods that are fine to live off of exclusively, especially vegetarian ones. Potatoes are the most famous example where it is possible, but even there it only works if you eat both white potatoes and sweet potatoes, which come from quite different plants from different taxonomic families.
- exogenousdata 3y agoAcorns come pretty close. Protein, carbohydrates, and fats, as well as calcium, phosphorus, potassium & niacin. Just leech those tannins!!
- Tor3 3y agoFrom what I've understood from one particular (very early) experiment of living on just potatoes for a year is that it worked because (for some reason) the participants had, or developed, a particular gut microbiome which could transform some of the potato starch to additional nutrients which their bodies could then use.