Living Off The Land: Delusions and Misconceptions About Hunting and Gathering

[teonanacatl]

A nice article attached below that for me lays out one of the significant problems people would face with living off the land or when placed in a survival situation. In todays world a lowcarb diet or even a carnivore diet are very much in vogue, carry that into the wilderness and you are in deep shit. TV perpetuates the myth that one only needs a handful of berries or a rabbit or two to survive, survive yes but you will loose weight and muscle growing weaker till you die. Ive done quite a bit of research around this topic and the offal of an animal provides significant sources of vitamins and minerals not to a mention high % fat on even the leanest of animals, for example the liver is a great source of vit and minerals and lungs are high in vit c. Rabbit starvation is a very real phenomenon and ketosis is something one would want to avoid in a survival situation. Anyway enough ranting here is the article.

http://woodtrekker.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/living-off-land-delusions-and.html

[Halcyon Daze]

I drop about 15kg every time I go to PNG where the traditional diet is definitely ketogenic, (meat, greens, and sweet potatoes which are surprisingly low in carbs!) plus the combo of exercise from all the hiking up and down mountains. - Not a fatty to be seen up in them there hills LOL.

By the way, a high fat ketogenic diet will still cause you to put on weight if you're not working it off.

Edited April 2, 2014 by Halcyon Daze

[teonanacatl]

Here is a great experiment- would only have liked to have seen the protein level at an adequate level.

http://www.madsciencemuseum.com/msm/pl/great_starvation_experiment

[teonanacatl]

Looking at nutrition data, 3000cal is pretty significant. To get ~3000cal one would need to eat just under 3kg of cooked rice/day, which works out at just under 1kg raw. I guess this is why farming became so popular

Did you go into ketosis? My experience of PNG was plenty of carbs so no ketosis.

Lean people are up shits creek faster then larger people, though a lean person requires less carbs to maintain their weight.

[theuserformallyknownasd00d]

Keep posting those links guys, great reading! I'm just starting my own large scale vegie patch and plan to eat nothing than what I grow come spring, some great data there to keep in mind, looks like I'll have to change my approach slightly. Thanks again for the links

[teonanacatl]

Note: Damn stupid non SI units: 1 Cal (note the capital) is ~4kJ, apparently a cal is a different unit (1 cal= ~4J) and happens to be the one Im most use to. So just to clarify we are talking 3000 Cal = 12500kJ.

That article was mainly focused on "survival situations". Though it really is an eye opener to just how use to calorie dense foods we are in todays world! Around me the easiest source of pure carbs is yams, basically Id need to eat ~2.5kg of yams/day to get ~3000 Cal, or 5kg of nonda plums (I dread to ever have to eat that many!). Now I know the land immediately around my house cannot sustain that sort of harvest for one person.

A more realistic diet is 1kg of meat and 1kg of yam/day with a good load of pandanus or terminalia seeds supplemented.

Keeping in mind that 3000Cal is for a decent bit of exercise, so one could probably cut that to ~2000Cal on a lazy day (1.6kg of yams).

Something to keep in mind is Rabbit starvation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_starvation

I had heard about it before, apparently it was a real problem for the pioneers who ate meat heavy diets. So one is risking rabbit starvation when they eat 1kg+ of lean meat with no carb or fat inputs. No doubt this could be higher with a bit of time for the body to adjust. Daily protein requirements for amino acids are about 55g.

So in such a "survival situation" one should eat the offal first, then the meat. With the offal being quite high in vitamins and minerals there is less chance of malnutrition also. Supplementation with some greens would set you on a good path!

In terms of surviving off the land in a farming situ if one wants to grow all their own carbs (for me its cassava) then you'll need 1.2-1.8kg/day depending on how much work (1800-3000 Cal). Id estimate I get 5-6kg/ plant and my rotation is designed for me to eat one plant/ week. Meat is easy to get so the rest of my RDI is composed of fish, pig, beef etc with other bits and pieces. If I had the room I could quite easily double my cassava production.

Here is a nice paper looking at plant based vs meat based diets: http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/78/3/660S.full.pdf+html

The conclusion being that plant based diets need .4ha, animal based diets need .5ha/ person to provide all the food requirements. This is utilising the current world production so I sure an intensive garden could be made to produce more from a smaller amount of land. Re the animal based diet- for me animals allow you to store energy in the form of a living animal and you can convert poor feed sources into quality feed sources. For me farming takes care of the basic carbs, hunting and fishing gives me quality protein and Im left craving fruit and veg. I use aibika as a highly nutritious green for vit and minerals.

If you want to search for the nutrition of foods here is a great site- http://nutritiondata.self.com

It also allows you to search for complimentary foods to get all your amino acids etc.

Edited April 2, 2014 by teonanacatl

[teonanacatl]

Ill go out tomorrow and see what I can harvest This is the time of plenty up Cape York, plenty yams, polynesian arrowroot (Tacca leontopetaloides), water lilly bulbs and native ginger all of which starch can be obtained from.

Edited April 2, 2014 by teonanacatl

[waterboy 2.0]

I've know of a case of rabbit starvation down here in my lifetime......cold don't help at all in that situation at all

There is also some debate that Chrisopher McCandless (of Into The Wild "fame") was also suffering this, leading to some very dangerous decisions.

[teonanacatl]

The exact point made in this article- http://foragersharvest.com/into-the-wild-and-other-poisonous-plant-fables/

He was definitely not eating enough food to sustain himself.

[Halcyon Daze]

Did you go into ketosis? My experience of PNG was plenty of carbs so no ketosis.

Yeah, I've been on keto diets before and know when I'm in ketosis by my increase in energy, lack of hunger and fairly rapid weight loss.

Those keto strips from the chemist are pretty cool when they change colour. Not very expensive either.

Australian Aborigines stayed on the move as did the animals they hunted. Kangas are pretty bloody lean too. Musta been BLOODY HARD WORK!

Oily fish have a lot of energy value and are low carb. Think of the way bears fatten themselves up on Salmon before hibernation. They eat a lot though, and often resort to only eating the heads as that's where the good stuff is.

Funny but I just saw salmon heads for sale today in Woolies, -almost interested in trying them now

and I rarely enter the stores of those bastards too

Damn those evil bastards.

Edited April 2, 2014 by Halcyon Daze

[Seldom]

very interesting, thanks for posting

[Alice]

Very interesting indeed, thanks!

[ThunderIdeal]

A nice article attached below that for me lays out one of the significant problems people would face with living off the land or when placed in a survival situation. In todays world a lowcarb diet or even a carnivore diet are very much in vogue, carry that into the wilderness and you are in deep shit. TV perpetuates the myth that one only needs a handful of berries or a rabbit or two to survive, survive yes but you will loose weight and muscle growing weaker till you die. Ive done quite a bit of research around this topic and the offal of an animal provides significant sources of vitamins and minerals not to a mention high % fat on even the leanest of animals, for example the liver is a great source of vit and minerals and lungs are high in vit c. Rabbit starvation is a very real phenomenon and ketosis is something one would want to avoid in a survival situation. Anyway enough ranting here is the article.

http://woodtrekker.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/living-off-land-delusions-and.html

i don't quite understand why this criticism is aimed at low-carb and/or carnivore diets, and to be fair they're not exactly in vogue compared to, say, a typical australian diet.

if anything, and your posts illustrate this, going into a survival situation EXPECTING nature to provide the high-carb diet you are used to is absolutely folly, because she won't. low carb means high fat, the way that most hunter gatherers throughout history have probably done it, and that can mean things like organs, seafood and fatty cuts of meat.

on a sidenote, i think survival would be easier around coconuts, until you fall trying to cut some down that is. a bounty of fat, minerals and hydration with a little glucose for good measure.

[teonanacatl]

No criticism aimed at those diets, just poorly worded.

Problem with looking for fat in wild animals is that lots of them are lean buggers (speaking of aus) and eating just lean meat can cause rabbit starvation- eat the offal first is your best bet!

Coconuts are the shit!

[woodwoman]

When I think of Hunter/Gatherer, I think Neanderthol, something less than man!

When I Think Of Humans I think of a Permaculture Paradise where gardens were marked out and individually maintained.

Devine nutrition can be found in ones garden alone, not so much in aimless wandering.

This wandering started when families were forcefully removed from their Motherlands.

Motherland= a place of abundance set up for the child by his parents before birth, to take care of his every need, forever..

eg. When we Eat a berry we pass out the seeds, so where ever we lived (more permanently)could only naturally grow more and more abundant.

Perfection maybe- by moving only around your own territory, the energy requirements are reduced and the abundance is increased.

There is proof in all countrys that this was the case and there is also proof of travel and congregations afar where couples could meet and seeds and produce could be swapped..

Hunter/ Gatherer is a myth, invented to make sure we never return to our motherland.

[Dreamwalker.]

As part Neanderthal or Neandertal I find being termed as less than man a little offensive

We were a Nobel and highly intelligent/creative race, who were very much a part of our garden until the sapians came and raped and had us for dinner....primitives...

[greenwoman]

If anyone is interested, Bill Gammage wrote a book called 'The biggest estate on earth: How Aborigines made Australia' which, despite the contemporary belief that Aboriginal peoples did not farm the land, shows that they not only farmed it, they farmed far more efficiently than any white culture has done, and that they farmed on a massive scale in a way that worked with the land, not dominating in and making it sick like today's monocultures do. Evidence of manipulating waterways in order to maximize on eel populations, water-bird populations and edible aquatic-tubers is just one example.

Imagine that... abundant food, a comfortable home, good friends and family, and all you had to do was a bit of gardening! No sucky 40hr/wk jobs etc

Edited July 6, 2014 by greenwoman

[Dreamwalker.]

I've never read the book GW...................but wherever humans go death follows.........consider all those magnificent giants that disappeared as soon as people arrived to their lands.............& I've noticed with ever new migration more species disappear........... Maori caused the extinction of many species ...then came the Europeans and another wave of extinctions......Now NZ shellfish are under siege from Asian migrants, who remove them from the beaches in bucket fulls (if only they would learn to eat ozzy possum.... (giveaway 1 billion OZ possums, silver & greys...buyer must collect)...........The OZ Aboriginals used fire as a farming implement, not only did they hunt the giants to extinction but they changed the habit in such a way as to favour euc's...fire trees..........who's leaf have allochemical properties, favouring their symbiotic fungi, and killing competitors, and so causing the extinction of many plants and animals that depended on them,

I like the victorian romanticism of the noble savage...but I feel its a myth........though that's not to say they weren't without great wisdom............sadly there is never enough wisdom to go around.........

[greenwoman]

I agree, DW, that wherever humans go we alter the environment on mass scales, but I doubt that we were/are the only species to do so. I do, however, think that the environmental degradation caused by the European's invasion of Aus is by far great then any that the Original peoples instigated. I would really love to live in a place where I am not considered a bum if I do not have a 40hr/wk job, or walk down the street barefoot (not in shops though - their floors are disgusting), or require to enslave myself to the bank in order to 'buy' a home (outrageous! everyone deserves a home!), or be abused by police for breaking a VERY important law such as 'you must wear a bike helmet' or 'you must not grow that plant'. F()ck today's society. I do not agree to a 'government' who supposedly works FOR the people to insult me by decreeing that I do not know what is best for myself and the well-being of my fellow tribe. Sorry, I won't get started on a rant....

Regarding the OP, I agree that there are many misconceptions regarding living off the land, and that it would take a small community (or tribe) working together to make it viable. I think that planting nutrient/fat dense trees like candlenuts (which have 473 calories per hundred grams) and bunya nuts (only 200 cal/100g but are 40% carbs by weight) etc now, would make foraging in our local environments more sustainable in the future.

[Dreamwalker.]

A kindred spirit.......GW.......takes a lot of effort for me not to rant (mostly I fail).....such an insane world we find ourselves in.......we have access to a world of amazing plants...even the desert can be a highly productive garden...........

[teonanacatl]

A big difference between aboriginal inhabitation of Australia and european inhabitation was population numbers. Impacts are less when there is less people, simple as that. Humans are not innately more evil than any other animal, we are just tool makers that have progressed to some pretty epic tools. If you ask my dogs if they could get rid of all fleas would they, they would say yes without caring about what ecological problems that would have down the line.

The aboriginals did farm, on a broad scale and it did affect the environment! They still had low food security and honestly it would have been a plain lifestyle, remember aboriginals had about three options to cook things, in the coals, in ground oven, or not at all. People dont realise how nutrient dense our foods are these days, even just using oil when cooking.

Ive got a great book written in the early 1900's up here in Cape York, it was written by a man who started a copra plantation here and used aboriginal labour (paid) to help him. He was as far as Ive read a fair and honest man who treated others well. He isnt an anthropologist but his account of the aboriginal lifestyle and things he saw is in a way better then that of an anthropologist. A few things of note are that before he had much of an influence on their lifestyle (after a year or two of working for him they chose to settle rather than be nomadic so they could have food security) he said their days consisted of sleeping, finding something to eat, cooking it if need be (animals were thrown whole on the fire hair guts and all and everything was eaten), if still hungry finding more, sleeping, get up when hungry and get something else, dance and sing a few nights of the week and generally gossip lots. He also give an interesting account of when he first introduces them to boiling food in water, and everything they then boiled all their food for a while after that and took anything that one could use to boil things in. In the end he taught them to farm, something they much preferred over their nomadic lifestyle, they then chose to formed one of the only aboriginal settlements that was done without without white intervention.

[teonanacatl]

A much fairer and more realistic statement is " Death follows change in an ecosystem", whether that be from humans, weather, new predators etc.

One more thing, oil, coal, nuclear power etc are not evil, we are just using them above their sustainability levels. With a much reduced population we could burn as many tyres as we wanted. The problem is people dont have a clue what the real price of food, clothing, water, electricity etc are, the real prices for everything needs to fairly represent their true values, but that doesnt make much economic sense. Try and do everything yourself, live without them and you will realise the true value of these things. We have plenty of resources, people just need to learn to use them efficiently.

[Laila]

Ive got a great book written in the early 1900's up here in Cape York, it was written by a man who started a copra plantation here and used aboriginal labour (paid) to help him.

Sounds like a good read. Am guessing it's probs hard to find being local but regardless.

Title/ author?

[teonanacatl]

Here it is, doubt there is any copyright issues anymore. He also goes to Arnhem land on a sailing holiday and the aborigines there are quick to want to trade but they want opium and reluctantly take tobacco when they realise he has no opium

The god without a job is pretty funny :D

Jack McLarens My Crowded Solitude.pdf

Jack McLarens My Crowded Solitude.pdf

Jack McLarens My Crowded Solitude.pdf

[Planthunter]

Yeah, I've been on keto diets before and know when I'm in ketosis by my increase in energy, lack of hunger and fairly rapid weight loss.

Those keto strips from the chemist are pretty cool when they change colour. Not very expensive either.

Australian Aborigines stayed on the move as did the animals they hunted. Kangas are pretty bloody lean too. Musta been BLOODY HARD WORK!

Oily fish have a lot of energy value and are low carb. Think of the way bears fatten themselves up on Salmon before hibernation. They eat a lot though, and often resort to only eating the heads as that's where the good stuff is.

Funny but I just saw salmon heads for sale today in Woolies, -almost interested in trying them now

and I rarely enter the stores of those bastards too

Damn those evil bastards.

The Pacific Islanders over here in Kiwi Land cook fish heads in coconut milk and all sorts of nice recipes. The other day I had a huge salmon head cooked in coconut milk. Absolutely lovely. It was a meal and a half