Minimal intake to live healthily

October 9, 2005 9:21 AM

What is the minimum amount of food intake you could live on healthily?

I was thinking along the lines that there are all sorts of supplements available such as vitamins, fibre, etc. Could someone live healthily with a minimal intake of 'real' food, and get by with such supplements?

I ask not for any real reason apart from pure curiosity.

posted by viama to Health & Fitness (13 answers total)

One danger of living on supplements is that at present, our nutrition understanding is somewhat crude. There are trace chemicals and micronutrients in our foods whose effects may not have yet been identified. Also, some nutrients are not as readily absorbed in supplement form as they are in organic form.
posted by Miko at 9:27 AM on October 9, 2005

Look up 'transhumanism' in Google and you'll find plenty of people who are heavily into finding the answer to this question.

Personally, I think they are insane.
posted by Kickstart70 at 9:32 AM on October 9, 2005

Most important is calories. Starving will hurt your health way faster than any kind of vitamin deficiency. Can you get your entire calorie need from something like a protein powder?
posted by smackfu at 10:03 AM on October 9, 2005

It depends on your definition of "healthy." Calorie restriction practitioners who believe (possibly correctly) that lowering your metabolism by eating less will dramatically increase your lifespan can eat as little as 1200 calories a day and stay fairly healthy, but they look pretty gaunt and it's not the body's optimal state. So you can go pretty low and stay healthy in a medical sense, but in the "healthy young (wo)man" sense of a well-functioning body and looking good you pretty much have to eat your maintenence calories.
posted by abcde at 10:18 AM on October 9, 2005

To 'live healthily', you have to consume as many calories each day as you burn. Less, and you will start losing fat or muscle mass.
posted by driveler at 10:19 AM on October 9, 2005

Go paleolithic, i.e. eat only meat, fish, fruit, non-starchy veg and nuts. You eat less, but since it isn't padded out with starch, the nutrient level is much higher than in a standard diet. Then observe your reactions and energy levels and tweak accordingly - everyone's different and ultimately nobody else can tell you what you need to eat to thrive.
posted by zadcat at 10:35 AM on October 9, 2005

There's also the whole fiber issue. If you rely only on very calorie- and nutrient-rich foods, you're likely to get blocked up pretty quickly. You do need a certain amount of bulk for optimum gut function.
posted by LittleMissCranky at 1:20 PM on October 9, 2005

There's also the whole fiber issue.

That's what kale is for.
posted by tangerine at 1:57 PM on October 9, 2005

um...a lot of nutrient-rich foods are loaded with fiber, and kale is indeed one of many among them.
posted by bingo at 6:23 PM on October 9, 2005

Paleo people ate grains.
posted by Miko at 6:50 PM on October 9, 2005

Best answer: Elsie Widdowson was a British dietician concerned exactly with your question, due to the need to investigate rationing during World War II. To demonstrate the results of her research, she ate nothing but cabbage, bread and potatoes for two or three years during the early 1940s, suffering no ill effects whatsoever. She died only recently at the ripe old age of 94.
posted by randomstriker at 2:50 AM on October 10, 2005

I'd also consider the work of Ancel Keys to be somewhat definitive in this area. He did an experiment during World War II at the University of Michigan with consciencious objectors, where he measured the effects of "semi-starvation" on his volunteers. I think the extreme his experiment went to crosses a bit below the "live healthily" line you mention (unless you consider this healthy), but it's still fascinating and relevant.

The results were published in a set of books called "The Biology of Human Starvation" but I don't think it's available online. Here's an article that has a few paragraphs about the experiment. I know I've read online somewhere information about what they were eating and approximately how many calories he considered semi-starvation. It was more than I was expecting, I think - like 1500 or something.

He was a big proponent of the so-called "Mediterranean Diet" and if we're using old age as a metric for one's credibility the guy lived to 100.

I think he was also the first person to link choleterol intake and smoking with heart disease.
posted by mragreeable at 7:54 AM on October 10, 2005

Elsie Widdowson was a British dietician concerned exactly with your question, due to the need to investigate rationing during World War II. To demonstrate the results of her research, she ate nothing but cabbage, bread and potatoes for two or three years during the early 1940s, suffering no ill effects whatsoever. She died only recently at the ripe old age of 94.

Link?

Also, who determined there were no ill effects? What effects were they testing for?
posted by Miko at 8:11 AM on October 10, 2005