Healthy farms?

[vassock]

How do you guys farm in a sustainable way? I have some buckwheat which makes me the flour I need for flatbread, a good staple. However, I also want to end my reliance on multivitamins.

What is your assortment of seeds?

Where do you get the seeds?

When do you plant the seeds?

[X-PLODE]

Farming isn’t balanced so it’s not a source of reliable food.

And flatbread(6) sucks compared to hardtack(20).

Get some salt, dehydrate a fruit and veggie, craft that blended herb/italian salt and craft hardtack in batches of 400 for a fraction of the original salt.
They last a really long time.

Go forage some wild veggies and pine nuts to make sandwiches, turn eggs into powdered eggs and always keep an eye out for acorns to make meal/starch/flour.

As for planting, plant buckwheat/oats/pumpkins/cattails/beets and anything else you might want.

Start planting as soon as you find stuff while using liquid fertilizer and hope it matures before winter comes.

Meat and Wild Vegetables are all you need to keep from getting sick so no need for vitamins.

Pemmican is the best meat, after that comes smoked meat and then the different aspics.

[vassock]

So there is no way around eating meat or vitamins?

[deoxy]

So there is no way around eating meat or vitamins?

Healthy vegatarianism is a recent achievement by humanity, and it involves plants from many places in the world that grow in different environments, so in an apocalypse situation, yeah, being healthy involves meat (at least fish).

[Coolthulhu]

Healthy vegatarianism is a recent achievement by humanity, and it involves plants from many places in the world that grow in different environments

It’s totally possible to get a balanced diet with just plants from Europe (or South America, south Asia, Africa), just involves some extra knowledge.

That isn’t represented in game, because the vitamin system isn’t anywhere near finished.
One of the things that aren’t in it is penalties - the messages about missing microelements are just messages.

[vassock]

So my brittle bones and scurvy conditions will never harm me in any way? I can just ignore them?

[Coolthulhu]

Yes.

They probably won’t do anything until nutrition gets sane.

[deoxy]

[quote=“deoxy, post:4, topic:12294”]Healthy vegatarianism is a recent achievement by humanity, and it involves plants from many places in the world that grow in different environments

It’s totally possible to get a balanced diet with just plants from Europe (or South America, south Asia, Africa), just involves some extra knowledge.[/quote]

By historical standards (meaning, “You won’t die from it”), sure. By modern standards of healthy? No. As human beings have gotten wealthy and prosperous enough to add meat to their diet (the normal diet of the average person), they have, without exception*, gotten taller and healthier, all over the globe. Well, at least until we got so wealthy and prosperous that we became too fat from not having all the food we could want (including LOTS of sugar) and not needing to be physically active.

*Well, some people groups, especially island people groups, already had plenty of meat in their diet (usually fish), so THOSE groups didn’t improve, but they were already doing pretty well.

[Findulidas]

Yeah b12 deficiency is probably the hardest one. You basically wont get enough unless you eat meat or drink milk. Few algae might have higher amounts but that is it. The deficiency isnt lethal but can easily cause a myriad of problems. Without vitamins containing it you would get deficiency as a vegan. Many vegans irl do.

[Coolthulhu]

By historical standards (meaning, “You won’t die from it”), sure. By modern standards of healthy? No.

Totally possible, just requires knowledge of nutrition that wasn’t available back then.
“But x isn’t available in adequate quantities from plant sources” is in 90% of cases a myth (proteins, zinc, iron, calcium). B12 is a mixed bag due to conflicting reports (availability, absorption, gut bacteria etc.). Vitamin D is rare in plant sources, but even in those who consume vitamin D fortified foods, most of it is produced in the skin when exposed to sun.

Medieval understanding of nutrition was pretty horrible. For example, hypothesis that a peasant eating like a noble will get sick because a nobleman’s diet is not meant for peasant stomach.
With modern knowledge of nutrition, that allowed a vegan dog to live 27 years (named Bramble. 5th place in Guinness World Records for oldest dog), the idea that humans can’t get top tier nutrition without consuming animal products or importing expensive plants from the other side of the world is at best just ignorance, but more often than not also an excuse for own shortcomings.

[Pantalion]

Healthy vegetarianism has existed for millennia in the East, where by chance they also happen to have introduced B12 into fermented soy foods (the player could do this themselves, were soya beans, and fermentation thereof, introduced, though frankly the method of contaminating their soya bean fermentation is best left without thinking too hard on it).

Also worth noting that these same locations have experienced statistical height increases over time without an accompanying shift in diet, while the United States has experienced a recent downturn in average height, arguably because a high meat junkfood diet does not lend itself to a healthy childhood. Meat and fish are helpful in attaining a balanced diet, they are by no means required.

[MarkJerue]

Vegetarians are prevalent in India, have been prevalent for millennia, and are not dying in massive numbers.

Example from Wikipedia on India:

According to the 2006 Hindu-CNN-IBN State of the Nation Survey, 31% of Indians are ‘vegetarian’, while another 9% also consume eggs (ovo-vegetarian). Among the various communities, vegetarianism was most common among the Lingayat, Vaishnav Community, Jain community and then Brahmins at 55%, and less frequent among Muslims (3%) and residents of coastal states. Other surveys cited by FAO and USDA estimate 40% of the Indian population as being vegetarian. These surveys indicate that even Indians who do eat meat, do so infrequently, with less than 30% consuming it regularly, although the reasons are mainly cultural. In states where vegetarianism is more common, milk consumption is higher and is associated with lactase persistence. This allows people to continue consuming milk into adulthood and obtain proteins that are substituted for meat, fish and eggs in other areas. An official survey conducted by Government of India, with a sample size of 8858 and the census frame as 2011, indicated India’s vegetarian population to be 28-29% of the total population. Compared to a similar survey done almost a decade earlier, India’s vegetarian population has increased.

[deoxy]

[quote=“MarkJerue, post:12, topic:12294”]Vegetarians are prevalent in India, have been prevalent for millennia, and are not dying in massive numbers.

Example from Wikipedia on India:

According to the 2006 Hindu-CNN-IBN State of the Nation Survey, 31% of Indians are ‘vegetarian’, while another 9% also consume eggs (ovo-vegetarian). Among the various communities, vegetarianism was most common among the Lingayat, Vaishnav Community, Jain community and then Brahmins at 55%, and less frequent among Muslims (3%) and residents of coastal states. Other surveys cited by FAO and USDA estimate 40% of the Indian population as being vegetarian. These surveys indicate that even Indians who do eat meat, do so infrequently, with less than 30% consuming it regularly, although the reasons are mainly cultural. In states where vegetarianism is more common, milk consumption is higher and is associated with lactase persistence. This allows people to continue consuming milk into adulthood and obtain proteins that are substituted for meat, fish and eggs in other areas. An official survey conducted by Government of India, with a sample size of 8858 and the census frame as 2011, indicated India’s vegetarian population to be 28-29% of the total population. Compared to a similar survey done almost a decade earlier, India’s vegetarian population has increased.[/quote]

I didn’t think milk counted as vegetarian - that would help considerably, if people are including that. The nutrition in milk of all kinds if quite good.

That said, you’re not arguing that historic vegetarian diet would fit the modern definition of “healthy”, only that it’s possible to live on it (which I explicitly agreed with).

[Findulidas]

A read a bit more about b12 since Im a medical laboratory scientist.

Basically if you ferment food to get b12 you are not dealing with a sure way to get b12. In fact many of the bacteria seems to somehow reduce the uptake through some interferance. This means that if you wanted to get b12 in cataclysm dda you would have to somehow collect bacterial specimens of the exact type you wanted. Then somehow conduct a long term experiment, most likely using blood samples from your own body, in order to confirm that it is indeed a bacteria that increases b12 uptake. Or that it has high enough amounts.

This all sounds really unreasonable to me.

When it comes to seaweed you really need to eat a huge amount of seaweed per day in order to get enough b12 from it. Enough to cause elevated levels of other chemicals which are unhealthy for us.

Mushrooms do not have enough b12 levels.

Foods fermented or grown in cow dung does not have high enough levels. Getting enough cows and keeping them alive is probably difficult in cataclysm dda as well.

Really eating fortified foods or supplements seems to be the only reasonable way.

[Soyweiser]

I didn’t think milk counted as vegetarian - that would help considerably, if people are including that. The nutrition in milk of all kinds if quite good.

Milk counts as vegetarian. As do eggs. It is vegan that doesn’t eat eggs nor milk.

Lot of vegetarians also eat fish.

And according to some research, 40%(*) of vegetarians say they are vegetarians, but eat meat regularly enough.

*: I’m doubting I’m remembering this statistic correctly, but it was pretty high.

[Valpo]

Vegetarians eating meat regulary? Would it be a falacy to say that they are no true Vegetarians then?

[Soyweiser]

Vegetarians eating meat regulary? Would it be a falacy to say that they are no true Vegetarians then?

Regular was once a month. Or something.

And it was about vegetarians, not vegans. The latter tend to be a bit more strict.

Yes that is a fallacy.

Imho it just goes to show that a lot of vegetarians are not fundamentalists. That they are fine with straying from their diet every once in a while. Seems pretty normal to me.

[deoxy]

[quote=“Valpo, post:16, topic:12294”]Vegetarians eating meat regulary? Would it be a falacy to say that they are no true Vegetarians then?

Regular was once a month. Or something.

And it was about vegetarians, not vegans. The latter tend to be a bit more strict.

Yes that is a fallacy.

Imho it just goes to show that a lot of vegetarians are not fundamentalists. That they are fine with straying from their diet every once in a while. Seems pretty normal to me.[/quote]

From a nutritional point of view, it doesn’t take much meat to make a difference. Once a month would probably be too little in the long term, but once a week wouldn’t.

[Valpo]

Well people can call themselves what they want. But I wouldn t call someone who eats meat a vegetarian. I would just say that he rarely eats meat.

Why would one want to muddy up those words? Talking gets increasingly hard that way.

[Pantalion]

Vegetarians eating meat regulary? Would it be a falacy to say that they are no true Vegetarians then?

Not a fallacy at all. Vegetarianism is “The practice of abstaining from the consumption of meat (red meat, poultry, seafood, and the flesh of any other animal).”

If you do not abstain from the consumption of meat, you are not a vegetarian. If you do not abstain from eating dairy products, you are not a vegan.

If you do not abstain from lighting substances on fire and inhaling the byproducts, you are not a non-smoker.

This is much the same as saying “No true Scotsman is not born of Scottish parents, in a country that is not Scotland, while not living in Scotland”. Going on vacation in Edinburgh once a month does not a Scotsman make.

A read a bit more about b12 since Im a medical laboratory scientist.

There’s already a source of bacteria available in the game: Offal. B12 producing bacteria are concentrated in the guts of animals, particularly high order predators.

While it’s pushing the boundaries of “non-meat” sources, if one were to assume the player maintains a culture from one butchered animal then the remaining supply can be largely abstracted in the name of smooth play (and so that the player does not need to constantly muck around in animal faeces).