[QUOTE=Telemark]
Not if the food poisoning kills you.
But the point is that it takes energy to catch flies, and provides you with very little nourishment. That energy is better off conserved or used for other purposes.
[/Quote]
I don’t disagree. I’m trying (and apparently failing) to state that, if the choices are
A) Imminent death due to starvation
or
B) Chance of survival paired with chance of dieing sooner, nastier than starvation
I’m going with B. Yes, I ignored the energy gained/used issue but if you see my first post I was initially responding to someone who said - don’t eat for unsanitary reasons with the reply that the “eat anything” option vs “dieing for sure” option had an obvious choice.
I have read (although I forget where) that animals who are sick or weak are less likely to eat unknown foods than animals who are healthy, even though it would appear that they “have to risk” eating the novel food because they can’t get normal food as easily as before.
The reason appears to be that healthy animals have reserves of energy and are better able to recover from accidental poisoning and food-borne illness, hence their greater willingness to take risks. But animals close to the edge of their strength might perish from a few days of food-borne illness, or be unable to muster the energy to evade predators, or succumb to poisoning. They tend to be markedly conservative in what they eat during periods of weakness.
This may have some bearing on human behavior. Certainly it’s one possible answer to “why wouldn’t you eat even disgusting things when starving?”
Which might help, or might not. Drinking your own urine or drinking seawater are well-known desperation tactics to attempt to stave off death by thirst. Drinking seawater is not going to help, and is in fact going to make things worse. Drinking your own urine is also likely to be counterproductive if you are dehydrated.
No, food poisoning can kill you faster than starvation can.
If you get diarrhea, which is a common symptom of food poisoning, you’re going to lose water and nutrients faster than you otherwise would.
If you have the energy to catch and eat flies, you are not in imminent danger of dying from starvation. People who are close to dying will lose fine motor control, the gross motor control, then become extremely lethargic, and eventually lapse into unconsciousness. Catching flies to eat (which is unlikely to give you any useful nutrition) isn’t going to be an option if you are that bad off. Getting sick will kill you much quicker.
I don’t think I’ve seen a bigger case of “notgettingititis” in years.
Dude-you would spend more energy catching the flies than you would gain by eating them, which means that you would starve to death faster following your diet plan.
I haven’t heard of people who were starving trying to catch and eat flies. I have heard of them trying to eat things like leather, grass, or dirt. Try for plant matter or inanimate objects before you try catching insects, if you’re starving. You might even find some dirt-dwelling insects, which would probably be easier to catch than flying ones.
It’s not easy to catch flies even if you’re healthy and have a flyswatter. Flies have evolved a lot of tricks to get away from humans and animals that are trying to catch or kill them. You’d probably be better off trying to eat something that isn’t so good at getting away.
It’s extremely rare for people to die of outright “I just don’t have any food” starvation. Outside of emergency situations, that doesn’t really happen. What does happen is that you (and, if you are starving, you are likely a child under five years old) eat an inadequate diet over the course of months or years. This probably means you are eating mostly grains boiled into a porridge, with very little access to protein, fats or vegetables. This long, persistent malnutrition hinders your development and weakens your immune system. You are already vulnerable to infectious diseases, especially those that cause diarrhea, malaria and pneumonia. Any kind of shock, like a reduction in calories, is going to make it almost certain you will get sick, and your body isn’t going to have what it takes to fight these infections. All of these illnesses suppress the appetite, as does weakness, making the problem even worse. It will be hunger that kills you, but it’s disease that causes the final blow.
So a handful of flies isn’t going to do much. People, especially children, need balanced, regular, healthy meals on a regular basis in order not to get sick. Even if you could convince mothers to feed flies to their babies, the tiny bit of protein wouldn’t do much of anything to make anything better.
That said, insects are a part of the diet in plenty of places- flying termites are outright delicious.
If anyone’s interested, there are about three calories in a fly, which is pretty good, pound for pound. And I’m not aware of a whole lot of insect-borne diseases that can survive the oral route. I’m sure there are some, but I do think the fear of being poisoned by eating them is a little overblown. I’d call it a risk, but not a huge one.
Correct. My biggest mistake was that I strayed from discussing “only flies as a food source”. I strayed from the topic. I was attempting to point out that, if your reason for not eating something while starving was due to it’s “nastiness” then maybe you miss an opportunity to survive.
Read my first post. Read ALL of my posts. In no way did I promote trying to catch and eat flies. I never have. I only questioned the argument that starving was a better choice than eating a “nasty” food source.
Had gunnergoz stated that you shouldn’t eat flies because they were black, and had I pointed out that not eating something because it was black was an invalid reason would you still criticize me for “nongettingtitus” since flies are hard to catch?
You miss-diagnosed my “nongettingtitus”.
I had a bad case of “badlyexplainingtitus” compounded by “slightlyofftopicus”.
Flies are very hard to catch, have you ever tried to catch even one? The idea that a starving person will be able to gather enough flies from those crawling on his skin to sustain himself is absurd. It would take far more energy than it would be worth.
I just wanted to add one more post and be the zillionth person to state the fricken obvious that the reason starving Africans don’t eat flies is that the effort to nutrition ratio is too high.
Many Africans who live in appalling unsanitary conditions would also make a conscientious effort to avoid them because they are icky.
