We are constantly bombarded with the benefits of a varied diet, but what if you were forced to survive on just one food source? What single food would keep you alive for the longest, and what are the nutritional considerations?
It’s a common saying that man cannot live on bread alone, and there’s truth to it. A diet of only bread would lead to scurvy within a month due to a lack of vitamin C. A balanced and varied diet ensures we obtain essential nutrients, vitamins, and minerals. Fad diets often restrict certain food groups, but even they usually maintain enough variety to provide reasonable nutrition. So, in the hypothetical scenario where you could only consume one food, are some options more nutritionally complete than others? Could you survive solely on potatoes, bananas, or avocados?
Unsurprisingly, meat and most fruits and vegetables are poor choices. Meat lacks fiber and essential vitamins and nutrients. Fruits and vegetables provide vitamins, but they lack sufficient fat and protein, even in large quantities. While the body doesn’t require excessive amounts to survive, omitting essential nutrients is dangerous.
Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson documented “rabbit starvation” among northern Canadian populations. This condition occurs when individuals consume only lean meat like rabbit, resulting in diarrhea, headaches, fatigue, and discomfort within a week. To avoid malnutrition and potential death, consuming fat is essential. Jon Krakauer’s book, “Into the Wild,” initially suggested that Chris McCandless, the free spirit, died from rabbit starvation. Consuming nearly all calories from protein and almost none from fat or carbohydrates can overwhelm the liver’s processing capabilities.
Surprisingly, potatoes are a more viable option than many might think. Dietician Jennie Jackson from Glasgow Caledonian University highlighted Andrew Taylor’s experiment of eating only potatoes for a year to lose weight and adopt healthier habits.
Potatoes stand out due to their unusually high protein content for a starchy food, including a diverse range of amino acids. However, even consuming 3kg (6.6lbs) of potatoes daily would only provide about two-thirds of the recommended protein intake for someone of Taylor’s size. Potatoes also lack sufficient fat. While Taylor included sweet potatoes, providing vitamins A and E, iron, and calcium, Jackson noted that B vitamins, zinc, and other minerals would be deficient. Despite these limitations, Taylor completed his year-long experiment relatively unscathed and experienced significant weight loss.
Potatoes have appeared in similar nutritional discussions before. A reader once asked The Straight Dope if one could survive on only potatoes and milk. The columnist Cecil Adams claimed that potatoes and milk could provide most necessary nutrients, except for molybdenum, which could be obtained by adding a bit of oatmeal to the diet.
Jackson humorously remarked that this combination resembles the Scottish diet from a century ago: potatoes, milk, oatmeal, and some kale.
However, nutritional content is not the only obstacle to a single-food diet. Humans possess mechanisms to avoid such scenarios, primarily sensory-specific satiety. The more you eat of a particular food, the less appealing it becomes. Jackson calls this the “pudding scenario,” where one feels full after a meal but can still manage to eat dessert. The risk of consuming the same food day after day is that it becomes difficult to consume enough to sustain oneself. (Imagine eating three kilos of avocado daily!)
Furthermore, relying solely on meeting vitamin, mineral, and calorie requirements in a single-item diet may not be sufficient for optimal health. Early 20th-century nutritional research involved depriving rats of specific nutrients to observe the resulting health effects. This approach revealed the existence of vitamins and identified which nutrients were essential for short-term survival in rats.
However, this reductive approach may not capture the long-term health benefits of a varied diet. Epidemiological studies have demonstrated that diets with a variety of vegetables are healthier than those with only a few, though the exact reasons remain unclear.
For example, a diet lacking green vegetables may increase the risk of developing cancer later in life. Jackson points out that it’s difficult to pinpoint which foods cause which specific effects. While it’s possible to determine macronutrient needs, one may still be missing crucial elements.
In conclusion, while potatoes offer a relatively complete nutritional profile compared to many other single foods, relying on any single food source for survival is likely to lead to illness and, of course, boredom. A varied diet remains crucial for long-term health and well-being. Cutting down your daily diet to just one ingredient might save time and hassle, but it’d be a quick way to get ill as well as bored.
