learn how to eat simply so you dont need much to survive

reply to post by rapunzel222


A good thread. Well done.

Too many don't realise how little food it is possible to live on. If you are overweight, you need more food to support your body, as the extra weight requires more energy for the body to function.

We are programmed to eat when a mechanical device tells us to. And if we are hungry, we "need" something to eat. Not want. "Need".

If we don't eat once hungry, the body starts burning fat supplies to convert to energy. Many toxins are stored in the body's fatty tissue, so they are released once this fat starts to burn, leading to headaches, nausia etc. So we feel "sick" because we "need" something to eat.

A healthy body can function quite well for several days with no food, but they don't want you to know that. They want you to consume.

It's a clever plan. Make the population become saturated with toxins, then if we cut off their food supply, they'll be too ill to cause problems...

Originally posted by rapunzel222
the less types of food you need to eat to survive and the more simply you can do it , the better your chances.

people need to realize they can actually survive on very little. you really only need vegetables; fruit; nuts; seeds; beans/chickpeas/lentils/soyabeens/corn; grains like rice/brown rice/other grains. and maybe some eggs/fish a couple of times a week if that. and water. (you dont in fact need much meat to survive. or indeed , any; if you eat eggs - maybe fish. also lots of vegetarians live in india and they are fine).

once you realise this; it means you can pretty much grow what you need to survive; and dont have to depend on supermarkets etc. you can keep chickens for eggs; and practise your fishing. or have a dam/lake.

Ok so explain to me why nearly every single primitive tribe holds meat as a very important resource, our ancient ancestors feasted off of it. Oh year sure they had vegetables and grains a plenty but meat was most certainly a massive part of the diet. Especially in cold climates.

Explain to me how you are going to grow enough food, on your own to supply all of your needs without proper equipment? I mean it's all got to be grown in a summer, everything you'll need whereas wild animals look after themselves and can be harvested at will.

Sorry but i wonder, have you ever spent a month or two in the woods without food? Have you worked on a farm, a traditional one?

Guessing no to both those answers.

I agree however that people eat to much. This is easily evidenced by the tons of obese and over weight people and the general appearance of most people. Most men seemt o have a slab of fat hanging on their guts (the first palce it generally goes in men). I suppose they are just doing what their genes tell them to, our ancestors that ate tons when they could were often successful.

Originally posted by NuclearPaul


A healthy body can function quite well for several days with no food, but they don't want you to know that. They want you to consume.

It can? Have you tried doing bushcraft without food? I experimented and i can tell you that by the second day you really start to feel that exhaustion. If you were just sitting around doing nothing then i guess it wouldn't be as bad but chopping wood, building a shelter, setting traps, carrying firewood etc etc require so many calories that you have usually exhausted your glycogen supplies within the first day if you haven't eaten. Then you're burning fat and protein for energy and that really can cause headaches and nausea, not because of the toxins stored in fat as you say but because burning fat alone produces toxins called ketones.

Since two years I only consume cheese, a great variety of vegetables, much water and natural orange or banana juice. Since then I haven't eaten any meat, eggs or fish, and noticed great changes in my overall life. I feel more fit and healthy, are able to concentrate better, and don't get ill as easily as before. So not only in survival situations its recommendable to reduce consumption.

[edit on 7-11-2009 by Clairaudience]

Originally posted by ImaginaryReality1984

Originally posted by rapunzel222
the less types of food you need to eat to survive and the more simply you can do it , the better your chances.

people need to realize they can actually survive on very little. you really only need vegetables; fruit; nuts; seeds; beans/chickpeas/lentils/soyabeens/corn; grains like rice/brown rice/other grains. and maybe some eggs/fish a couple of times a week if that. and water. (you dont in fact need much meat to survive. or indeed , any; if you eat eggs - maybe fish. also lots of vegetarians live in india and they are fine).

once you realise this; it means you can pretty much grow what you need to survive; and dont have to depend on supermarkets etc. you can keep chickens for eggs; and practise your fishing. or have a dam/lake.

Ok so explain to me why nearly every single primitive tribe holds meat as a very important resource, our ancient ancestors feasted off of it. Oh year sure they had vegetables and grains a plenty but meat was most certainly a massive part of the diet. Especially in cold climates.

Explain to me how you are going to grow enough food, on your own to supply all of your needs without proper equipment? I mean it's all got to be grown in a summer, everything you'll need whereas wild animals look after themselves and can be harvested at will.

Sorry but i wonder, have you ever spent a month or two in the woods without food? Have you worked on a farm, a traditional one?

Guessing no to both those answers.

I agree however that people eat to much. This is easily evidenced by the tons of obese and over weight people and the general appearance of most people. Most men seemt o have a slab of fat hanging on their guts (the first palce it generally goes in men). I suppose they are just doing what their genes tell them to, our ancestors that ate tons when they could were often successful.

Re: the history of meat. i suspect the mainstream view of this is a little off. If you go back to the ancient greeks, plato wrote about a society that eats a lot of meat and noted that such a society would need a lot of doctors becuz it would be full of unhealthy people. Everyone agreed with him as if this was common knowledge at the time. Also in the ancient greek olympics athletes were put on a strict vegetarian diet before the games becauz it was thought this would make them fitter.
(Ethiopians are usually pretty thin, and pretty good distance runners if you think about it. the best in the world actually. and they probly have a fairly vegetarian diet perhaps?)

Also in regard to hunter gatherer societies, which i think you are alluding to; the thing is - most of the bones we find are thousands of years old we're talking. so naturally the large bones of large animals killed survive. Yes sure, they did need to kill large animals, not just for food but for materials to make stuff out of - and skins to keep warm etc. But the frequency at which they did this is difficult to reconstruct. As only the bones of large animals may survive, we may be getting the wrong picture of ancient diet. They probably gathered a lot of plant foods, grains, seeds, berries as well; but these things have not survived the thousands of years to come down to us. So we get this idea that all they did was hunt animals. If you look at modern day hunter gatherers like the australian aborigines, a large part of their daily diet is vegetarian. They could count on this food, where as killing an animal was probably a less frequent occurrence, the hunt might fail, and the animal had to be shared between a whole tribe so everyone got a small portion. Plant foods play a very important role in Aboriginal diet, like yams as a staple. Also, being very active and physically demanding lifestyle, the probably small amounts of meat they did eat were worked off. And they would probably more frequently catch WHITE meat - ie. goanna, fish, shellfhish, birds, (ie.e small stuff), than they would catch RED meat, which is bigger game like kangaroos etc. And as ive said, RED meat is the stuff you have to watch as its linked to inflammation which is linked to cancer. as dairy is too. And the aborigines didnt eat dairy. or much sugar (honey was a rare luxury that they would walk miles to get at certain times of the year).

Also, dont forget many asian societies and indian ones that have LONG traditions of vegetarian or mostly vegetarian diets. Western society isnt the be all and end all. Prior to adoption of western dietary practices these countries all had low cancer rates ; very low. Breast cancer became known as 'rich women's disease' in china because only women who could afford a western diet rich in red meat (and probably who started eating dairy which they didnt usually eat) were observed to get the disease.

In cold climates, yes eskimos eat a lot of meat. Its probably not so bad for them to do it as they burn a LOT of energy in the cold and with their active lifestyle. Also they lived in a pure environment probly free of carcinogens or things that INITIATE cancer. I am only saying that once cancer is STARTED/INITIATED, certain types of food can cause it to grow or not grow, as discussed in my other thread. I dont think the eskimo diet is representative of most societies on earth. It was out of necessity, as nothing else wud grow; i dont think its the ideal health wise specially if you arent that active, or without the cold to burn energy. Not sure what their sources of green are. I know lapplanders ate the stomach contents of reindeer or other animals i think to get green stuff their bodies needed...

You could grow food in summer and STORE it for winter - dry it and so on; pickle it; like people have been doing and solving this problem for thousands of years. Years ago, all families preserved foods and grew their own foods. Coles is a relatively new phenomenon. And now we have freezers, even better.

No where did i say you cudnt catch fish or shellfish or birds if you want. i did say you can survive without it probly if you eat eggs, which you can also forage for; and nuts/seeds/beans /mushrooms/even tree bark etc.

Also i am advocating growing and storing this stuff. i.e. being PREPARED. and i while i think a vegie garden is a good start, if you're storing food for winter etc it is more work but still worth it i think. I was trying to make the point that we dont need hot chocolate, marshmallows, jellybeans, and complicated food to survive (in fact its unhealthy). We can SURVIVE on simple foods; and on very little. so if you're storing food and growing it to be prepared, dont waste time on stuff that has low nutritional content or is unnecessary to survive on.

But if you're talking about surviving out in the wilderness with no prepariation, its a different matter. I think the skills you need to do this are very high. Perhaps we need to ask indigenous people how they managed it. they have generations of experience and will probably survive when no one else does. If you're desperate, of course you'll eat whatever you can catch. But maybe the more you know about food in the local environment, the more stuff you'll realize you can eat which may be largely plant type foods and easier to obtain than meat. I maintain, that you CAN survive on this type of food, if you can get it; and that people dont generally need as much food as they think they do.

Look how thin everyone was in the 70s compared to now. when we cant survive without a frappacino, Maccas and fries.

you can grow food indoors, its called hydroponics, basicly , use small pebles in shallow trays,with water covering up pebles.need lots of light though.

Originally posted by madokie
you can grow food indoors, its called hydroponics, basicly , use small pebles in shallow trays,with water covering up pebles.need lots of light though.

Indeed you can, all you need is seeds and a little research on what you can grow and how fast you can grow it.

reply to post by rapunzel222


I reckon I could survive purely on fish and broccoli if I needed to. I still need to start growing some broccoli.

We definitely want to eat our curry though, kids. Turmeric is anti-oxidant and anti-cancer, from what I've read. Garlic is a great boost to the immune system, and can be a general purpose antifungal/antibacterial as well.

Veggies are necessary, but you also want a full spice rack. Spices serve two purposes.

a] By providing you with a certain amount of taste variation, they can make maintaining dietary discipline easier. If you get bored with similar foods all the time, use some different spices, and you've got a different meal, in terms of how it tastes, which will help keep boredom away.

b] Herbs and spices are medicines, as already mentioned. I would consider herbalism to be a very useful survival skill.