7 Days to Diet

[Old Crow]

Do you think you could survive for a week in real life on the foods and drinks we can cook in-game?

[Riamus]

19 minutes ago, Old Crow said:

Do you think you could survive for a week in real life on the foods and drinks we can cook in-game?

Considering you can grill meat and boil water, sure.  Would I want to survive on some other other food in the game?  It depends.  Some of the foods are normal (Spaghetti) and some don't sound appetizing.  But yes, I could... as long as it isn't all radiated.

[minisith]

A lot of Americans are overweight and do not know realistic diets.  This game is not body builders or sports, but survival which you can go a long ways with less food then people realizes.

[theFlu]

A week? Survive?

I mean, we're all well-enough-todo to own a computer and free time to play games on it. All of us would survive without food for a week, and for half of us, it'd be the healthiest we've eaten for decades.

 

For a year? Yeh. There's plenty of people living on essentially bacon&eggs and grilled meats; while I stray by adding tons of coffee and chocolate, I can't really pretend like those are giving me some essential nutrients - so, myself included.

[Vampirenostra]

meat stew? all year long - no worries, you will survive and be a much healthier person

[warmer]

I have fasted for 5 days without any food and just water. So yes, it's easy to do.

[minisith]

Actually fasting can give you more energy.

[Maharin]

12 hours ago, Riamus said:

Considering you can grill meat and boil water, sure.  Would I want to survive on some other other food in the game?  It depends.  Some of the foods are normal (Spaghetti) and some don't sound appetizing.  But yes, I could... as long as it isn't all radiated.

 

But could you kill and process the live critters and make food out of them?

[theFlu]

1 hour ago, Maharin said:

But could you kill and process the live critters and make food out of them?

Tell me "you've lived next door to a supermarket your whole life" without saying "supermarket"...

 

Butchers are people too, and they're butchering critters for about 7 billion people to feed on daily; anyone learning the skill upon necessity shouldn't be all that surprising.

[Maharin]

2 hours ago, theFlu said:

Tell me "you've lived next door to a supermarket your whole life" without saying "supermarket"...

 

Butchers are people too, and they're butchering critters for about 7 billion people to feed on daily; anyone learning the skill upon necessity shouldn't be all that surprising.

 

You might be surprised how many people would have an issue doing one or more of the steps involved.  Killing the live animal.  Gutting it.  Skinning it.  And unless you plan on putting the whole thing on a spit over a fire you'll also have to cut it up into smaller pieces.  Not everyone is cut out for life in an apocalypse, pun intended. 

[Riamus]

4 hours ago, Maharin said:

 

But could you kill and process the live critters and make food out of them?

Sure.  Though I'd probably not try to do it with melee weapons like you can do in the game unless it's a boar or something that will attack you.  And I'd have to work on my aim with a bow as I haven't used a bow in decades.  But traps or firearms would be easy enough.  And if fishing was an option (fish not being radiated), that would also be very easy.  Otherwise, it's not hard to live off a garden.

 

As far as the processing part... maybe I'm not a professional at butchering and gutting animals, but you don't need to be.  Maybe you lose out on some meat by not cutting as closely to the bone as possible or whatever but unlike this game, a single deer, if you can preserve it, can last you a long time even if you don't do a great job preparing it.

Edited June 8 by Riamus (see edit history)

[theFlu]

10 hours ago, Maharin said:

You might be surprised how many people would have an issue doing one or more of the steps involved.

Oh yeh, I wouldn't be that surprised, us squishy westeners have plenty of people who think food originates in the grocery store. But unlike the vegans assume, hunger is a good teacher, and the skill required is something every generation of ancestral human has solved, as evidenced by our continuing existence.

 

Now, Some People would absolutely need a head start - a stockpile of food and a teacher; but I'm rather convinced more than 99% of us would eventually be willing and able to chop up a moose. Obvious disabilities and age-related frailty omitted.

[Spiked_Coffee]

On 6/7/2024 at 9:58 PM, Riamus said:

As far as the processing part... maybe I'm not a professional at butchering and gutting animals, but you don't need to be.  Maybe you lose out on some meat by not cutting as closely to the bone as possible or whatever but unlike this game, a single deer, if you can preserve it, can last you a long time even if you don't do a great job preparing it.

I'm as far removed from processing an animal as can be. My understanding is that with animals there are certain organs and places you cannot cut / puncture or you ruin the meat. I'm sure others know more about what I think I know. "Just don't cut the <blank> organ", "I don't know what a <blank> organ looks like to not cut it!"

[Rotor]

Well hopefully you can google it before the world goes dark :).

[theFlu]

1 hour ago, Spiked_Coffee said:

My understanding is that with animals there are certain organs and places you cannot cut / puncture or you ruin the meat.

That's .. pufferfish. Toxic glands with strong enough content to actually mess you up. For the general purpose animal, just remove the intestines, everything from throat to @%$#... they're happily bound together for the most part. You can process most of that to be edible too, that's how the sausage is made (literally), but it might take some practical knowledge.

[Rotor]

 

[Riamus]

5 hours ago, Spiked_Coffee said:

I'm as far removed from processing an animal as can be. My understanding is that with animals there are certain organs and places you cannot cut / puncture or you ruin the meat. I'm sure others know more about what I think I know. "Just don't cut the <blank> organ", "I don't know what a <blank> organ looks like to not cut it!"

As mentioned, your standard animals that you'd find in the wild are pretty easy to process if you don't mind losing some meat to bad cutting ability or lack of knowledge.  Cut of the skin/hide if you don't want it on there when cooking, remove the guts.  Cook.  Pretty basic, really.  Without knowledge of what you're doing, you could lose 25-50% of the meat but that wouldn't prevent you from surviving as long as there are animals around.  The harder part is actually killing one.  Now, of course, if you puncture the intestines and then don't properly clean and cook the meat that is covered by the stuff inside, you could get yourself sick.  But that should be easy to figure out.

[Old Crow]

Yeah I might need to impose more rules lol.. I didn't think far enough into this idea. XD

[Vaeliorin]

On 6/10/2024 at 4:24 PM, Riamus said:

As mentioned, your standard animals that you'd find in the wild are pretty easy to process if you don't mind losing some meat to bad cutting ability or lack of knowledge.  Cut of the skin/hide if you don't want it on there when cooking, remove the guts.  Cook.  Pretty basic, really.  Without knowledge of what you're doing, you could lose 25-50% of the meat but that wouldn't prevent you from surviving as long as there are animals around.  The harder part is actually killing one.  Now, of course, if you puncture the intestines and then don't properly clean and cook the meat that is covered by the stuff inside, you could get yourself sick.  But that should be easy to figure out.

You should probably make sure to bleed your kill too, if you want the meat to last a decent amount of time.

[Riamus]

3 hours ago, Vaeliorin said:

You should probably make sure to bleed your kill too, if you want the meat to last a decent amount of time.

Yeah, if you plan to store it.

[Professor-Pip]

On 6/7/2024 at 1:31 AM, Old Crow said:

Do you think you could survive for a week in real life on the foods and drinks we can cook in-game?

For a week, sure. Longer...maybe not. We don't have any actual citrus in the game and I don't know how much Vitamin C there is in Red or Goldenrod tea. Scurvy could become a serious issue. Maybe if you found enough vitamins and took them regularly you could keep it at bay. I also feel like there's a lack of green vegetables in the game for a healthy diet, but I expect you could survive for a while on the game's diet.

[Javabean867]

1 hour ago, Professor-Pip said:

For a week, sure. Longer...maybe not. We don't have any actual citrus in the game and I don't know how much Vitamin C there is in Red or Goldenrod tea. Scurvy could become a serious issue. Maybe if you found enough vitamins and took them regularly you could keep it at bay. I also feel like there's a lack of green vegetables in the game for a healthy diet, but I expect you could survive for a while on the game's diet.

Potatoes supposedly have a lot of vitamin c.

[theFlu]

1 hour ago, Professor-Pip said:

We don't have any actual citrus in the game and I don't know how much Vitamin C there is in

There's sufficient Vit C just straight up in fresh meat. Not exactly surprising, given that any animal has to have sufficient vitamin C to function itself. For scurvy, in historic times, fresh meat was actually considered a cure for it. Ship crews lived off of ship biscuits, essentially a bread that was baked multiple times to give it a good "shelf life", destroying any fragile nutrients in the process. The freshest thing the sailors had, was the bugs on the bread...

 

There's plenty enough of long term (decade and over and some even multiples) carnivores out there by now to confidently say that humans don't really need a single vegetable, ever.

Edited June 17 by theFlu (see edit history)

[Professor-Pip]

I wasn't aware Potatoes and Fresh Meat were a sufficient source of Vitamin C! Now I do. But with such a limited diet, I still wonder if there's enough variety to give you enough of the necessary vitamins to stave off deficiencies. But maybe in canned goods and the in-game vitamins. Not a nutritionist. 

Edited Tuesday at 10:07 PM by Professor-Pip (see edit history)

[Riamus]

35 minutes ago, Professor-Pip said:

I wasn't aware Potatoes and Fresh Meat were a sufficient source of Vitamin C! Now I do. But with such a limited diet, I still wonder if there's enough variety to give you enough of the necessary vitamins to stave off deficiencies. But maybe in canned goods and the in-game vitamins. Not a nutritionist. 

Most people would be far healthier living off the fresh meat and vegetables in the game than they are living off the processed food most of us eat every day. 😁