Health and Diet Scottish Recipes Ferret for Ferrets


[pf] ... as frugal with food as David ...
by David MacClement
28 November 2000 23:01 UTC

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At 11:46 28/11/2000 -0800, Sharon Flesher wrote:
>This is a thread I would like to see pursued. How much 
>discomfort, inconvenience, lifestyle adjustment, etc., are each of 
>us willing to undertake to retard climate change or save species?
> ...
>The point was that real environmental preservation will require us 
>to make radical, difficult lifestyle changes ...
> ... I would like to pick a few things from that list
> that I'm not currently doing and resolve to do it. I've committed to 
> reduce my daily food intake. I have more
>than a few calories to spare in my diet!
> I'm inspired by David MacC's example. I don't know that 
>I will be as frugal with food as David, but ...
>

· There are two requirements before anyone even consider trying to eat as
little as me; and the specific "cabbage" diet is a third factor.

· The main one is that I do virtually nothing. I sit still almost all day,
either at this computer (e-mailing, or building up my Environmental Report:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030611012006/http://davd.tripod.com/GrRR-0010_titles-lastHalf.html#top  ), or reading
(science fiction, if that makes any difference) while someone else is on
the computer.
  Once a week I carry the family shopping on my back, and two or three
times a week I walk for an hour or two, usually with my wife. And of course
there's putting the washed clothes on the outside line. But no house-cleaning.

· The second main reason not to consider eating-as-little-as-me as an
option (for most of you) is that I'm old. 64. My homeothermic system
(keeping my body temperature constant by releasing the energy in food) no
longer works as well as it did even 5 - 10 years ago. So I let myself get
chilled (temperatures inside the house are not much different from outside)
during the winter, thus not needing as much food as in earlier years.
  (I'm currently eating only 2 slices of bread per meal with the
expectation that dropping from 3 per meal would force my body to use up the
fat I put on for the winter, but it's not noticeably happening, 4 weeks
after I started "reducing". Perhaps the still-large amount of cabbage
provides significant energy, but I doubt it.)

· _If_ anyone wanted to try living on as little food as possible, I don't
recommend just cutting out certain foods from your present regime. They
might be supplying just enough of some particular nutrient that you don't
suffer a deficiency disease. See a nutritionist's comments at the bottom of
my:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030611012006/http://www.emucities.com/emu/misc/davd/dsmenu.html
   What I _can_ say is that my 8 years of living on the same 10 items, and
now being healthier than I used to be (and plenty of energy; I run places
now, when I couldn't before) proves that for a sedentary older male (e.g.
watch the iron absorption: take Vit C), my specific diet supplies all you
need. Adding other food items to that would be no problem, and possibly of
benefit; Dr Birkbeck advised more fruit. He said (in Feb 1996) :-
   "Overall, then, it appears to be a monotonous and marginally adequate 
  diet for an older adult man. ...
    All this however supposes that one lives on essential nutrients alone.
  We now accept that foods, especially plant foods, contain a large number
  of protective factors which, while not strictly essential nutrients, are
  important for optimum health and avoidance of disease. Apart from the 
  beta-carotene in the carrots, and the indoles in the cabbage, your diet
  is singularly lacking in these substances due to an absence of
  other fruit, vegetables or legumes."

David.
(David MacClement) davd@ihug.co.nz