I was reading Cecil’s column on living on bread alone.
I wanted to see if he addressed the fact that since the quote is quite old that trying it with modern bread is not a fair comparison. He doesn’t try to come up with a bread from that ancient period - which presumably would have mixed whole grains and less salt.
Searching for grain nutrition reinforces his statements that cereals do not have enough Vitamin C, A or D. The comparison charts I found don’t even list those vitamins so I guess they are too small to be of any use. Oh, well.
But I came across a curious thing (to me anyway). The Bible never says that man cannot live on bread alone. It states that man doesn’t live on bread alone but by every word that proceed out of the mouth of God (original translation) or that Man shall not live on bread alone… (King James).
To me that seems to be an admonishment to “don’t do that - you have to include God”, not that it can’t be done.
You could live for approximately 3 days on bread alone. Then you’d die from lack of water. Or, if you include air…you could live on bread alone for around 3 minutes, maybe 5 at most before dying. Any way you slice it, so to speak, you can’t live on bread alone.
As to what the bible says, you are probably right, but that wasn’t the question Cecil was trying to answer there. Plus, tongue in cheek…
I’ll concede the part with the air, but concerning water, in Bavaria beer is considered liquid bread, and you can merrily live on that alone for a very long time. Or so a friend of a friend told somebody.
I would also want to know what the original languages meant. My WAG is that it was referring to bread in an inclusive way. Like, all food, since the meaning was that one should include God in their day.
Even if you assume Cecil’s 35% water figure (with low sodium), I seriously doubt you could live on only bread without anything to drink for very long. Perhaps you could draw it out a week, or maybe even several, but I think you are going to die from lack of water before you need to worry about vitamin and mineral deficiencies.
Regarding the OP’s final point, I am not a Biblical scholar but it seems to me that Deuteronomy 8:3 is not using “bread” in the literal sense, but as a metonym for “food”. It’s not saying “man needs more kinds of food beyond merely bread”; rather it’s saying “man needs more than food, specifically he needs to obey the word of God.” In fact, the Living Bible translation doesn’t mention “bread” at all, and renders the passage as “He did it to help you realize that food isn’t everything, and that real life comes by obeying every command of God.”
The previous post is of course correct - I never thought of the “man cannot live by bread alone” as anything but a statement that we need faith to survive (I disagree in the religious sense, but agree that humans need more than physical nourishment - some combination of aspirations, love, human contact, being needed, etc. is essential to our wellbeing).
But on the literal issue of bread as nourishment, Cornell Bread is pretty good. It was developed by a scientist at Cornell who noted that people in mental institutions often subsisted primarily on white bread, so he wanted to create a white flour bread that had more nutrition. The basic additions are wheat germ, milk powder, and soy flour.
And Matthew 4:4, in Greek, by a writer familiar with Hebrew ἄρτος,n {ar’-tos}
food composed of flour mixed with water and baked 1a) the Israelites made it in the form of an oblong or round cake, as thick as one’s thumb, and as large as a plate or platter hence it was not to be cut but broken 1b) loaves were consecrated to the Lord 1c) of the bread used at the love-feasts and at the Lord’s Table 2) food of any kind https://www.greekbible.com/
Ancient and medieval societies also incorporated pulses/legumes into a lot of their coarse wholemeal breads, which expanded the range of nutrients somewhat.
