The US Department of Agriculture has stated that “a diet of whole milk and potatoes would supply almost all of the food elements necessary for the maintenance of the human body.”
The potato itself is 99.9% fat free, and yet it is a nutrient dense food. It is an important dietary staple in over 130 countries.
I’ve run across statements that you can get enough nutrition from potatoes if you eat enough of 'em, the downside is when whole societies depend almost exclusively on it…as Ireland did up to 1840.
There won’t be any restaurant that will be cheaper than preparing your own food (unless you include something like the soup kitches run by the Salvation Army). Restaurant food is more costly because (rather obviously) you’re paying them for the trouble of preparing it and keeping the place open and running.
I wouldn’t be surprised. I know my biochem textbook has a line in there somewhere about vitamin C and how you can get a large amount of the vitamin C required just from potatoes. Not because potatoes have a huge amount of vitamin C, but because as a society we generally eat so many of them.
Rudyard Kipling wrote of a point in his life when he began to be salable but before the checques arrived, when he lived for a period on bangers (sausage) and mashed, which are cheap and apparently tasty until you get sick of them. I suspect you would get sick of a McDonald’s single-product diet within a couple of days.
It may be that a diet of beans-and-rice, or potatoes-and-milk, or equivalents, with a variety of trimmings (vegs/fruits in season, cheese or meat as a flavoring added) would not cloy as soon. WAG w/some minor personal experience.
According to Bigger Secrets by William Poundstone, a man lived for seven years on a diet of Twinkies and Cutty Sark. No mention of what ended that diet, however.
I read in a Peg Backen book that you could live on a pound of whole wheat flour, an ounce of lard, a cabbage leaf and a carrot a day. Of course, I always ask the same question at times like this:
combat online is a website written by an ex-British Army guy who seems a bit too obsessed with cooking nowadays.
It all depends on how long you’re going to survive on your new diet, but as you said, if dietary supplements are included then all you really need is calories and a little protein.
If you are hungry in an inhabited area, the most energy efficient way to gather good is to go and raid somebody's larder. The skill lies in taking the right things when you raid the larder. Number one priority is fat. Fat gives 9,000 calories per kilogram. That means half a kilo per day will keep a man doing heavy physical work.
Tinned tomatoes on the other hand, while an invaluable kitchen product, only produce 160 calories per kilogram. So thirty kilos a day should keep you going (and they would!).
Sugar has half the calories of fat, but is a lot more palatable and digestible than fat. However as a long term diet it can get boring.
Flour gives 3500 calories per kilo and about 10% protein. Dried beans, peas, lentils etc give about 3,000 calories and 25% protein.
But before you start worrying about protein levels, cholesterol, vitamins, free radicals and all that crap, think how long you are going to need to survive before you can get back to civilisation and a few pints. If it's less than six months before that badly needed pint, the only relevant factor is calories.
When raiding the larder, take fat, sugar, flour, lentils and salt. Salt has no calorific value but is a useful preservative and flavour enhancer. You are also more likely to suffer from salt deficiency than from an excess.
I knew a guy who practically lived on McDonalds French Fries and coke. He was alive but he wasn’t the healthiest looking or sanest acting dude I have ever met. In fact he looked a lot like a cold french frie - kinda pale, greasy, thin and limp. I guess you are what you eat.
