Well, there’s nasty and then there’s nasty. I agree that it would be ridiculous to starve to death rather than eat dog meat, or flying termites, or whatever “nasty” food is regularly (safely) consumed by people somewhere. But if by “nasty” you mean literally rotten or probably containing contamination from fecal material - if you mean you might get food poisoning (gastroenteritis) from it - then no, it would NOT be smarter to eat the rotten food than go without, even if that rotten food was a burger and fries.
If your goal is to lengthen your life, it’s a stupid move to eat spoiled food, because you’ll die of dehydration and electrolyte imbalance from vomiting and diarrhea sooner than you’ll die of malnutrition/dehydration if you don’t eat at all. If your goal is to reduce your suffering in your last moments, it’s a stupid move to eat spoiled food, because you’re likely to be puking your guts out while you shoot diarrhea out the other end, rather than getting gradually weaker and spacier and dying in your sleep. If your goal is to have a last moment of hedonism as you enjoy the aroma and slimy texture of your rotten burger before the dry heaves set in…um…ew. Not worth it in my book.
What, exactly, is your experience with “starving Africans?”
You are wrong on basically every sentence in this.
Hungry people are rarely outright starving, but suffer from malnutrition that puts them at increased risk of falling ill. They probably aren’t thinking “Oh god I’m going to die if I don’t eat right now.” They are thinking “Man, I wish I had a little more for lunch, and I think I feel a flu coming on.”
Their future is not hopeless- famines are a rare event that you will probably only see once in your lifetime. Usually we are talking about a few months where there is a gap in what food is available. Most people are hoping to get through this really bad period and get on with their lives. Think of something like the London Blitz- were people thinking “Ack, my life is hopeless, I should just lay down and die?” Of course not. They were thinking “Man, I hope this shitty thing ends so I can get back to school/figure out where my loved ones are/get married/buy a nice new pair of shoes/whatever everyday things they are looking forward to.” It’s the same thing. People expect the famine to pass and life to get back on track.
People eat specific insects because it’s part of their whole schema of food, much like we eat cows but not rats. Areas that eat bugs aren’t just wildly casting about for protein even more than the French are when they eat escargots.
Furthermore, outside of the urban slums (which I can’t vouch for), living conditions are not particularly unsanitary or uncomfortable. African village housing can be rustic, but comfortable in it’s way. In West Africa, at least, living space is focused on breezy outdoor patios perfect for chatting with neighbors while watching the kids play, lounging around with the family listening to the evening radio show, and rolling out bedding to sleep in the cool night breeze. There are separate toilet and bathing areas, with the toilet not much different than an outhouse.
Now if we are talking about a refugee situation, things are a bit different. The trip between wherever you came from and the refugee camp is usually pretty miserable. But refugee camps are built up to certain standards, and you can expect to have a non-horrific situation once things settle down.
“Starving Africans” are not just some sort of pit of misery. They are normal people caught in a bad situation and hoping to make it through, not much different than, say, an American hurricane evacuee.
You’re saying that if they just wait it out some sort of African FEMA comes by and saves them?
And in those places where Africans are starving (and yes, that would probably be a refuge camp instead of your typical village) the sanitary conditions are pristine?
People die of hunger, but not typically from starving to death. Nobody even really estimates the number of people who directly starve to death, because that only really happens on any scale in concentration camps, political pogroms and other really anomalous situations.
The real issue is childhood mortality due to malnourishment that leads to increased risk of disease, often due to a lack of micro-nutritents rather than a situation of raw calories. That’s what people mean when they talk about starving people.
Indeed, I was just in a class on refugee camp management, and they ran some numbers that in many cases, cleaning up the water is a better first priority than food. it takes time to reverse the chronic malnourishment that kids come into camps with and some percentage of kids are likely to get sick before you can get them healthy, but if you can keep them from getting that illness (via dirty water or whatever- which can be fast and cheap to manage), you can keep them alive pretty much as well as increasing their caloric intake.
One of the cheapest, easiest, most incredibly magic interventions you can do in a situation with extreme poverty is give out vitamin A. A single shelf stable pill costing $.02 given every four to six months reduces overall childhood mortality by 23%. One of the big things it does is cuts diarrhea, which is the top way a malnourished kid is likely to die. Again, a handful of flies can’t fix this.
Addressing starvation is a matter of therapeutic feeding with a fortified high calorie, easy to eat and sweet concoction (sick kids have small appetites, so you gotta give them sweets), vaccination, and water sanitation. It’s not a matter of getting in a couple extra calories no matter what. If you don’t want to die of malnutrition you need a steady, nutrient rich diet and protection from things like flyborn fecal-oral diseases.
And yes, people are looking for the African equivalent of FEMA to tide them over until the emergency passes- usually international NGOs. various UN agencies, neighboring governments and African military forces. When the midwest gets a crop failure, American don’t start dropping like flies. Africans don’t really feel compelled to die because of a bad harvest either. We have international organization that are set up precisely to address food emergencies, and with decades of experience behind them, they do fairly well. When emergencies hit, people tend to migrate to areas where these basic emergency services are available- including but not limited to refugee camps.
Camps vary in what they can provide, but most major NGOs, governments and agencies use the Sphere Standards, which is a set of minimum standards outlining how to manage refugee situations. USAID also has it’s field operations manual, which covers similar ground. The standards include technical guidelines on how many calories to provide and how, how much water people need (the magic number is 15 liters a day), what a minimal shelter situation is (people like plast sheeting, and it’s cheap and easy to transport in emergencies), what vaccinations need to be given, etc. Sphere is aspirational, and no organization has the capability to follow it to the letter, but it’s what everyone is working together towards. Often different agencies will run different parts of camp operations (UNICEF, for example, is generally in charge of coordinating water) so the standards help them harmonize their efforts.
So outside of the migration itself and the initial confusion of setting up camps, most refugees are not living in pristine conditions, but they do generally have access to basic healthcare, some education, food rations and water. It’s not someplace you’d want to hang out forever, but it’s not roasting in your own feces either.
I quote** even sven** from upthread, using strikeouts to add edits: 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 [del]flies[/del] lice 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 [del]flies[/del] lice 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.
'Cause I swear…