Ok. Yes, but no. The panda eats at least 10 species of bamboo.
I think we’re getting into semantics, here. If a panda eats 100 different things that human beings all call “bamboo”, is bamboo a perfect food? What if we called the 100 different bamboos by 100 different names? Would bamboo stop being a “perfect” food?
This, by the way, is exactly why i said in my first post that this is a dim question brought on by “health food” addlepate mentality. (No offense intended to the original question, which was legitimate.) What possible difference does it make whether something we call X contains all the nutrients we need?
So if bubble gum isn’t a perfect food, supposing I add blood, plankton, and Flintstones vitamins to it and call it “Superfood”? Has anything been proved?
Maybe, if we are to proceed with this topic, we should clarify just why we’re searching for one single food source. Even bears, who were brought up earlier, well grizzlies and black bears anyway, are not carnivores. They are, like humans, omnivores and will eat just about anything. Those who have had their campsite raided in the middle of the night will attest to this. The Panda eats 100 varieties of bamboo? Can we then include all varieties of legume? Or all varieties of fish? Or a mixture of lima bean chili with tuna and banana? Mmmm, sounds gooooood!
The potato - I think Muad’Dib is right on with the yam too, which always seems to me to be a sweet potato (I know it’s not).
The Irish potato famine was so devastating because the potato was so effective at providing an almost all the nutrients you would need. Add a glass of buttermilk and I think it would be complete.
Scope out the book What If? Vol 2. There is a chapter there on what would have happened if the conquistadors did not encounter potatos and bring them back to Europe. Very interesting.