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That depends on what you choose to gather. Most greens require little or no processing. I can pick a salad from a spring basewood in minutes. Its nothing to pick lambs quarters, curly doc etc. If you find a good patch of wild parsnip, you can have quite a haul.
Equipment is another factor that can transform an impractical food source into a very practical one. Apples are a good example. With a food strainer, I can quickly puree and dry it.
Lambs quarters/goosefoot was actually a domesticated crop planted and harvested by native Americans of the eastern wood lands especially prior to the introduction of Eurasian crops in the 17th century. About half of the eastern woodland complex crops were abandoned when central American crops were introduced around 1000 AD (corn, beans, squash) simply because the central American crops offered higher yields per acre with less fertilizer inputs and less manpower inputs but goosefoot made the grade and continued to be planted as a crop by frontier farmers into the 19th century.
There is the problem of cross pollination with wild varieties of goosefoot (which can mean second generation crops have less desirable traits like a more bitter taste) but goose foot does have the advantages of being highly disease resistant, not requiring fertilizers, and growing extremely abundantly in most of North America. Heirloom varieties taste and produce much better than wild varieties (as with any crop) and the stuff literally grows like the weed it is so it is an excellent gardening choice especially if someone doesn't want to put too much effort into their garden. Most Americans have never tasted it and the few that have usually have tried wild ones which are much more bitter in flavor but I'd found people can be tricked into trying (and find they actually like it) when you slip some into their garden salad.
It's best chopped up medium fine and harvested young plus you'll get a much more favorable result from using an old heirloom variety instead of going out and harvesting the wild stuff. We're talking night and day when it comes to taste. The best one I've found for my area is California Goosefoot.
If someone wants to be an ethical vegan or vegetarian, I can understand that desire. However, this is a self-sufficiency and preparedness forum, not a "bash-the-chicken-eaters" forum.
So... in the interest of keeping the forum ON-TOPIC... what special needs do people with limited diets need to take to survive a SHTF situation?
Situation 1 - Stores closed for a week due to storm or other natural disaster.
Situation 2 - Extended (3 month) situation - lack of income, family issues, whatever.
Situation 3 - Major problem. Ummm, destruction of a nuke plant on the coast of Kalifornia contaminating much of the commercially grown organic foods for a year or more. Something along those lines or worse.
Situation 1: Anyone can go a week without food.
Situation 2: Eating as a vegetarian, particularly a vegan, is extraordinarily cheap. Try it for a couple of months. You'll buy the best of the best and spend less than you do now.
Situation 3: Silly. But why are you conflating ethical vegetarians and vegans with the health food bunch?
Quote:
Originally Posted by harry chickpea
In special diets, there are other possible problems as well, what of people who must have insulin or thyroid medication, or other medications? With insurance requiring monthly refills, does that mean at month two, people start dying?
They may die. But people are dying everyday now because they can't get drugs to cure cancer as well as many other diseases.
Quote:
Originally Posted by harry chickpea
Again, I've no problem with the idea of ethical vegans or vegetarians, but since this is a SURVIVAL and SELF-SUFFICIENCY forum, and not a soap box for animal rights, I would hope that those posters have something CONSTRUCTIVE to add.
You sound as if you have a big problem with people who don't eat meat.
Rest assured that there are vegans with guns. Inasmuch as they don't need hunting arms and they have small food budgets they have plenty of money for man-killing goodies.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gwynedd1
B12 is an issue correct?
In that case fermented vegetables should provide a decent source.
I have recently fermented and have been enjoying a combination of fermented purslane and lambs quarters. "Weeds" are usually available.
The ancient Athenians never seem to have had a problem as many people lived past seventy. They had little or no meat because they lived in rather barren country and were too far from the sea to receive fish.
If B12 is necessary why not use the current source, human urine from portable toilets?
Quote:
Originally Posted by lifelongMOgal
That said, survivalism may require that those with chosen lifestyle diets who were not able to become self-sufficient abandon their druthers for the reality of eating to survive.
You've certainly changed your tune since the cannibal thread. What's the difference between roast toddler and roast lamb?
If someone wants to be an ethical vegan or vegetarian, I can understand that desire. However, this is a self-sufficiency and preparedness forum, not a "bash-the-chicken-eaters" forum.
I thought it was the "mat loverZ" forum! Dang it!
Quote:
Originally Posted by harry chickpea
Situation 1 - Stores closed for a week due to storm or other natural disaster.
Situation 2 - Extended (3 month) situation - lack of income, family issues, whatever.
Situation 3 - Major problem. Ummm, destruction of a nuke plant on the coast of Kalifornia contaminating much of the commercially grown organic foods for a year or more. Something along those lines or worse.
Well, I will tell you this: if plant life is gone, animal life will sure be gone. If you needed explanation of this, well....
Quote:
Originally Posted by harry chickpea
In special diets, there are other possible problems as well, what of people who must have insulin or thyroid medication, or other medications? With insurance requiring monthly refills, does that mean at month two, people start dying?
What does it mean for carnivorous humans today if they don't have money for their insulin or any other life-maintaining medications? What makes the vegan/vegetarian crowd so special in this situation?
Quote:
Originally Posted by harry chickpea
Again, I've no problem with the idea of ethical vegans or vegetarians
............You've certainly changed your tune since the cannibal thread. What's the difference between roast toddler and roast lamb?
No, my tune has not changed. If you cannot tell the difference between roasting another human being and roasting livestock bred and raised for human consumption then you have some serious problems.
Lambs quarters/goosefoot was actually a domesticated crop planted and harvested by native Americans of the eastern wood lands especially prior to the introduction of Eurasian crops in the 17th century. About half of the eastern woodland complex crops were abandoned when central American crops were introduced around 1000 AD (corn, beans, squash) simply because the central American crops offered higher yields per acre with less fertilizer inputs and less manpower inputs but goosefoot made the grade and continued to be planted as a crop by frontier farmers into the 19th century.
There is the problem of cross pollination with wild varieties of goosefoot (which can mean second generation crops have less desirable traits like a more bitter taste) but goose foot does have the advantages of being highly disease resistant, not requiring fertilizers, and growing extremely abundantly in most of North America. Heirloom varieties taste and produce much better than wild varieties (as with any crop) and the stuff literally grows like the weed it is so it is an excellent gardening choice especially if someone doesn't want to put too much effort into their garden. Most Americans have never tasted it and the few that have usually have tried wild ones which are much more bitter in flavor but I'd found people can be tricked into trying (and find they actually like it) when you slip some into their garden salad.
It's best chopped up medium fine and harvested young plus you'll get a much more favorable result from using an old heirloom variety instead of going out and harvesting the wild stuff. We're talking night and day when it comes to taste. The best one I've found for my area is California Goosefoot.
The flavor of my wild stuff is pretty good to me especially when steamed for about 60 seconds. I mixed about a packed quart worth with an eual amount of another weed/crop purslane and fermented it in a brine for about 3 days. I have been eating it out of my refrigerator. What I do with the lambs quarters is top pick the tender parts.
The ancient Athenians never seem to have had a problem as many people lived past seventy. They had little or no meat because they lived in rather barren country and were too far from the sea to receive fish.
I would not make that comparison. In India many vegans were doing just fine until they tried to keep said same diet in Britain. They were not getting enough B12 because the British grain was kept too pure and did not have termite eggs and the like. You cannot even look grain for grain because modern grains have changed, and again no doubt because of different storage conditions people used to eat sprouted grain which increases proteins and decreases starch.
Nice Athenian reference though. I use them all the time in my economic examples when comparing them to resource rich Peloponnese .
Some people will argue that it was not the religious nonsense (rain follows the plow) but the rotten business of trying to get more people to settle the (last) frontier. See, by the dust bowl of 1920s and 30s, most good land had been settled and the incoming stream of immigrants wanted to find land for themselves. The government (and quite a few corrupt land speculators) was quite happy to propagate the "rain behind the plow" nonsense in order to get people to settle places like the Texas Panhandle, for example. In fact a few towns like Dalhart, TX were based on a scam that portrayed the city as a thriving town with tree lined streets and water fountains (this is how it was sold to people in Europe and East USA). When people got off the train, it was a dust covered, crap hole. Anyways, the two land speculators connected to the scam ended up in jail but a lot of others did not.
You can read a lot more about what happened to the Panhandle, all the greed connected to ripping out all the grass and replacing it with wheat etc. in a very good book called "The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl". It's actually a great lesson in how human stupidity, greed and kick-the-can-down-the-road attitude can lead to disaster.
Kinda like today. Too bad we did not learn anything from it.
Finally, a lot of people have a romantic idea of our country's history. Hard working pioneers, honest men shaking hands to seal a deal (no paper contract necessary), fair-and-square attitude etc. In reality it was a merciless ongoing bloody place motivated by basic greed for land and money. Speculators, pyramid schemes, land fraud, other fraud, force, murder, it was all fair game and most of the wealth was built on it.
OD
I can't argue a thing. In the economics forum I keep trying to point out that the gilded age and the robber barons were all and one. The early progressive movements were quite necessary if all but forgotten today(Henry George and Veblen etc). Now we operate under the false dichotomy of a faux form of capitalism(which does not distinguish between stored labor and natural resources) vs faux Marxism that has nothing to do with Socialism.
The ancient Athenians never seem to have had a problem as many people lived past seventy. They had little or no meat because they lived in rather barren country and were too far from the sea to receive fish.
If B12 is necessary why not use the current source, human urine from portable toilets?
The Athenians also ate goat cheese, and honey which blows "ethical vegan" away, not to mention the rare instances of thrush, swallow, magpie, hare, goat, lamb and beef. While their diet was pretty austere and according to Flaceliere in "Pericles" incredibly bland (predominantly barley) it seemed to work for them.
On B12 I'm on the fence on Vitamins, a couple of years ago I had a full health screen and my doc advised me to stop taking as many supplements because they were just getting flushed down the pan, I think as a modern society we've gotten a little hung up on micronutrients as a savior from everything from the common cold to cancer.
Meanwhile back to Athenian diets, they did eat bread, and there are forms of yeast that yield bioavailable B12 (and it's possible that one of these was endemic to Athenian bread making) so that was probably the vector that they received the bulk of their B12 nutrition from unless they were eating goat cheese by the barrel load, or goats milk nutrition has changed significantly from the days of Attica according to current FDA nutrition they would need 100oz per day.
Some good points about ancient diets, many also included locusts and other insects as well. Locusts are even kosher for the ancient Hebrew diet, and are a good source of protein, however, they must be cooked as grasshopper and locust can carry tapeworm.
One problem in looking at how ancient people lived and their diet ie: the vegitarian angle, is that they were cultivating crops of grains as the primary source of their daily bread.
Those crops only come once a year, and take a lot of land, equipment, work and water to raise. As we are seeing this year with the drought, environmental considerations can effect the amount you produce.
That is one reason I harp on a diverse diet so that if one source fails, you have the option of others.
If you are in an area with a lot of wild edibles you can gather, excellent. The area I am in we only have a short window during the spring/summer/early fall when we have that opportunity. Can't do much when there are several feet of snow on the ground and the dirt is frozen.
We have a short growing season, usually about 90 days we can count on between frosts, so if you don't have a greenhouse you can't grow many vegetables or fruits that have a longer growing period.
There are alot of roots and berries that can be gathered in season, and you will probably be able to harvest a bear at the same time as they compete for those crops.
Fish, game birds and wild game are abundant here if you know how to hunt for them or capture them, and there are large herds of cattle, hogs and sheep as well as chickens and ducks raised domestically that might go feral if their owners couldn't care for them.
The Indians that lived in this area and survived were heavily meat eaters with only a little bit of wild fruits and vegetables as there is just a limited amount available and only during a short period of time.
They didn't cultivate any agricultural products as they were nomadic and followed the herds for food.
East of the Mississipi or on the west coast the conditions are different and you can grow plants for food most of the year in places.
In my area, we don't have that option so meat is the nutrient and calorie rich food that keeps you going if you are trying to live off the land.
Some good points about ancient diets, many also included locusts and other insects as well. Locusts are even kosher for the ancient Hebrew diet, and are a good source of protein, however, they must be cooked as grasshopper and locust can carry tapeworm.
One problem in looking at how ancient people lived and their diet ie: the vegitarian angle, is that they were cultivating crops of grains as the primary source of their daily bread.
Those crops only come once a year, and take a lot of land, equipment, work and water to raise. As we are seeing this year with the drought, environmental considerations can effect the amount you produce.
That is one reason I harp on a diverse diet so that if one source fails, you have the option of others.
If you are in an area with a lot of wild edibles you can gather, excellent. The area I am in we only have a short window during the spring/summer/early fall when we have that opportunity. Can't do much when there are several feet of snow on the ground and the dirt is frozen.
We have a short growing season, usually about 90 days we can count on between frosts, so if you don't have a greenhouse you can't grow many vegetables or fruits that have a longer growing period.
There are alot of roots and berries that can be gathered in season, and you will probably be able to harvest a bear at the same time as they compete for those crops.
Fish, game birds and wild game are abundant here if you know how to hunt for them or capture them, and there are large herds of cattle, hogs and sheep as well as chickens and ducks raised domestically that might go feral if their owners couldn't care for them.
The Indians that lived in this area and survived were heavily meat eaters with only a little bit of wild fruits and vegetables as there is just a limited amount available and only during a short period of time.
They didn't cultivate any agricultural products as they were nomadic and followed the herds for food.
East of the Mississipi or on the west coast the conditions are different and you can grow plants for food most of the year in places.
In my area, we don't have that option so meat is the nutrient and calorie rich food that keeps you going if you are trying to live off the land.
I know that for the rest of my life I will have to point out as you did that the plant diet for human consumption energy conversion is advantageous only in arable lands. In scrub and taiga, animal food was the only thing calorie dense enough to sustain humans. The reason is simple. Ruminants can process cellulose which is pretty abundant. If you choose to live far north without imports and live as a vegan, you will die.
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uncalled for!
