They did try this at NASA in the seventies, creating a three-times-a-day meal that was a totally balanced meal for an adult male. My dad tried the concoction - he said it tasted like “a soggy, lardy, cornflake bar”. The astronauts refused even to countenance eating this when on missions.
1 Some sort of fish
2 Beans.
3 Bananas next.
3 Milk next.
Finding perfect nutrition in a MIX of foods is hard, let alone from one food.
Protein has to be in there, but then again, we need some vitamin C. Well, how long can you be free of calcium intake?
I think sailors learned the hard way from packing one kind of food and succumbing to diseases related to vitamin or nutrient deficiencies when they took just meat, for example.
I’ll bet, based on the diets of some carnivores (bears) that a certain type of fish just might win out in this debate. Hi fat, hi protein, with enough vitamins to fend off deficiencies.
partly_warmer says
The giant panda’s diet is 99% bamboo, and koala’s is 99% eucalyptus leaves. (ok, I made up the numbers, but the fact remains that thier diets are basically on e item.
Inuit (a/k/a Eskimo) eat most of the animal–IIRC the liver has lots of vitamins
wasnt there a Cecil column about consuming only blood?
Brian
What’s that porridge that’s made by the aid organizations for refugees, etc? Corn meal, cooking oil, and other stuff?
I’ve also read that a mixture of beans & rice is just about perfect for long-term nutrition (the black/kidney type of beans, not green/string beans).
-B
It can’t be milk. What other creature besides humans drink milk of another species? I guess it’s OK if all you want to do is get fat.
Someone posed this question to Marilyn vos Savant a few weeks ago and she said dog food. But I think dog food had more than one ingredient–if you’re going to allow that, then you might as well go with pizza.
Well, blood really isn’t ideal. First of all, you would run into problems with iron toxicosis. Blood would be toxic if you tried to live on it exclusively, due to the large amount of iron in it. Animals that live on blood have developed mechanisms to limit iron absorption. Also, it’s very low concentration. You would have to drink an awful lot of it because it’s mostly water.
Most anyone can do pretty well on a diet of rice and beans, but the problem is the need to get certain amino acids that are usually only found in animal sources, or are not well balanced in plant sources.
I doubt that any one single food is ideal. No single vegetable has all of the vitamins and enough protein, and no high protein source also has all of the necessary vitamins.
Purina makes a Hi-Pro Monkey Chow - everything a primate (as well as, I suppose, a human) needs. It’s used in zoos and research facilities.
I’d vote for some variety of coldwater sea fish–eaten whole. Bones, liver, etc. That’ll give you lots of calcium, essential fatty acids, protein, plus vitamins and minerals (inlcuding iodine and sodium).
Re: the all-meat diet of seafarers and explorers:
These diets sucked b/c the meat was preserved. As successful polar explorers learned (but failed ones were too proud to), you eat your sled dogs as you go if you don’t want to die of scurvy.
toadspittle, thanks for the clarification about scurvey.
My image of grizzlies grabbing Salmon and eating them whole is what I referred to as my leading candidate for “most complete food”. I would certainly imagine that one needs to get down to eating organs of another animal to get the most complete profile of nutrition…like the liver.
Fish is still my lead candidate for “most complete food”
How about a gallon or so of beer a day?
Kibble.
the correct answer boys and girls is chili.
chili was invented just for this purpose, when cowboys were out on the range for weeks at a time. of course beans are the staple of chili so many other answers that said beans are close.
a black comic has a habit of going on hunger strikes for political reason and he once went about six months on only fruit juice (he said).
but if i had to exist on one food, it would be chili. wendy’s chili would be just fine, hahaha…
Kibble, chili, etc. …
They don’t grow on trees! I think we’re talking about one food that doesn’t need added ingredients (i.e., milk, not milk poured on cereal; beans, not beans with beef and tomatoes and peppers added to them…).
Just to reiterate the OP.
I think we are going after one food source, whereas chili is a concoction of bits and pieces.
Actually I once heard (but damned if I remember from whom) that yams are the worlds most perfect food. That was their specific phrasing, claiming that yams contained every nutirent you would need and enough calories to get by with.
I do not know for certain if this is true but it has stuck around in my head as one of those interesting “facts”.
Easy.
Plankton.
when i go to wendy’s and order chili that is “one” food source, hahaha…
Main Entry: food
Pronunciation: 'füd
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English fode, from Old English fOda; akin to Old High German fuotar food, fodder, Latin panis bread, pascere to feed
Date: before 12th century
Usage: often attributive
1 a : material consisting essentially of protein, carbohydrate, and fat used in the body of an organism to sustain growth, repair, and vital processes and to furnish energy; also : such food together with supplementary substances (as minerals, vitamins, and condiments) b : inorganic substances absorbed by plants in gaseous form or in water solution
2 : nutriment in solid form
3 : something that nourishes, sustains, or supplies
- food.less /-l&s/ adjective
- food.less.ness noun
this covers a hell of a lot of ground…i have also heard that about yams (can’t stand them unless they are covered with marshmallow)