# How well can you survive on 1 meal a week plus water? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 14, 2017, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-well-can-you-survive-on-1-meal-a-week-plus-water/779816 "2017-02-14T14:49:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2017, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-well-can-you-survive-on-1-meal-a-week-plus-water/779816/21 "2017-02-15T13:02:43Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Surely the person would die within weeks or months. > > […] People need constant meals. So one way or another, the subject in Doperstan will die pretty soon. Would /probably/ die pretty soon. Let’s say you could achieve Auschwitz levels of nutrition, say 10,000 calories per week. People died in vast numbers: but some survived several years ???. And you could get a much better diet. And if a typical person on a water -only starvation diet can last 3-10 weeks, perhaps a person with weekly meals could do a bit better? As suggested above, The problem is that perhaps on a weekly eating schedule, you couldn’t eat more than a couple of hundred calories at a time. But if with correct diet you can reduce protein-burning, even that would help you last longer??? PS: Now we’ve establashed that once-a-week probably isn’t enough, but it looks like Doperstan could save money just by eliminating weekend rosters: no food Saturday and Sunday. That would push most people into starvation once a week, but perhaps not seriously. Do we know anyone who’s done that for very long? ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2017, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-well-can-you-survive-on-1-meal-a-week-plus-water/779816/22 "2017-02-15T15:55:13Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > It’s also common for the ‘flu’ to mess up your sense of smell & taste, enough that you don’t get the normal reactions that trigger your appetite – you don’t get that wonderful smell of food cooking, and nothing seems to have much taste – so your normal appetite is suppressed. Oh, very much so. A couple of times I tried to eat more than the bowl of soup but the lack of taste of the food also turned me off to eating more. The soup was sustainable because it was “comfort food,” went down easily and the steamy smell managed to penetrate just enough into my nose. But it was still a struggle to eat. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2017, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-well-can-you-survive-on-1-meal-a-week-plus-water/779816/23 "2017-02-15T19:48:12Z")
> [@Melbourne](#): > > Would /probably/ die pretty soon. Let’s say you could achieve Auschwitz levels of nutrition, say 10,000 calories per week. People died in vast numbers: but some survived several years ???. > ? Mostly (besides those who were murdered) it was disease- true, if they have been food and conditions, the disease might not have killed so many. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2017, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-well-can-you-survive-on-1-meal-a-week-plus-water/779816/24 "2017-02-15T22:49:05Z")
> [@guitario](#): > > Nobody can eat 21000 calories in one sitting/day. You’d need the most amount of calories in the smallest mass possible; or in other words… something like 30 Big Macs in a day? > > The digestive system actually prefers less meals. Our typical ‘eat little and often’ approach to dieting, or the ‘3 meals a day’ mantra is basically not allowing our digestive system a chance to recover - it’s always working. > > If we could theoretically consume enough calories and nutrients a week via one meal, our shits would pass through without fuss and the smell would be undetectable. > > fasting, or going the majority of the day without eating is a way to prevent/mange IBS and other such illnesses. [Joey Chesnut](http://www.eater.com/2016/7/5/12096856/nathans-hot-dog-eating-contest-2016-record) ate 19,600 calories during the nathans hot dog eating contest. However he is one of the worst’s best competitive eaters, so he isn’t really representative of what a normal person could do. ---
**Author:** ![Weisshund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ba8739/32.png) [@Weisshund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weisshund)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2017, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-well-can-you-survive-on-1-meal-a-week-plus-water/779816/25 "2017-02-17T00:03:15Z")
> [@Mr\_Shine](#): > > Let’s imagine the country of Doperstan has decided that the cost of providing the food to the prisons is not expensive, but the labour necessary to serve the prisoners is. As such, the chief of prisons decrees that from now on prisoners will get 1 meal a week, may not take food back to their cells, but may eat their fill whilst in the dining area. > > How likely is a life sentence prisoner likely to survive/keep healthy assuming that for a 3 hour period every Tuesday afternoon (s)he has the ability to eat whatever (s)he wants from a good selection of meats, fruits, breads, grains, vegetables etc. but the rest of the week can only consume water? This is likely to happen for the rest of their life. They will probably live longer than an Auschwitz inmate, at least some of them. Like already mentioned, the human body, at least the modern one, does not do well storing much beyond fat from gorge eating, their bodies are going to start ripping apart bone and muscle to get the things they are missing. And the 3 hours does not make much difference, you can only put so much in the average body in a given amount of time, not counting the professional hot dog gobbler. Even if they survive that, they wont be healthy, and if this is for life, well their life just got a lot shorter. They would fare a huge amount better if that same amount of food was evenly spread out through the week. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-well-can-you-survive-on-1-meal-a-week-plus-water/779816.md?page=1)