General Chat

Is there anybody on here who knows quite a lot about nutrition?

I am wondering about the Great Famine and the affect it might have had locally.

What would be the result of living totally on fish and seaweed for a long time?

I suspect a few vitamin !s would be missing but a generally heathy existance, if a bit boring .Perhaps rickets fron lack of Vit C?

But there would be no carbohydrate and a lot of iodine I would think. A famine would be brought about by cold weather.

Could you keep warm enough to function without carbs?

If you look at inuits they live on basics and consume a lot of fat which gives them energy, I dont think you have to have carbs as in bread potsto.
Fish oil is good for you..

Just googled fish only diet and the question remains why dont eskimos get scurvy ??

Eskimoes don't cook their fish.This,I believe is what destroys the Vitamin C.

If the local population was relying on the sea for it's food it would have no access to blubber or,indeed,any kind of fat.

I was watching a program about a remote scottish Island where they lived solely on the gulls and their eggs which they scaled the cliffs for, the men had developed broad feet from their climbing in bare feet.
I guess it a case of addapting to whatever diet is available.

You would get your vitimins from seaweed, plus any that the fish absorbs from plantlife that they eat, I think you would be quite healthy on such a diet so long as you could vary the fish you eat, ie shellfish ect.

There are people in the world who survive on mostly rice,and seem ok.

Probably end up with "Gills"**M**.

That island was St Kilda.alot of their problems stemmed from gawping visitors who came to patronize and throw money.

I would think that a diet solely of the products of the sea (whoops didn't mean that pun!) would have too much iodine and maybe too little calcium as well as the previously mentioned lack of carbs.

It was the beginning of the little ice age.Nothing would be very productive so there would be no recourse to honey or even plant rhizomes for starch.

What I am really wondering is whether the coastal areas would have an advantage over those inland in time of famine.

I have always been used to eating fish as a child. We would have it at home twice a week because dad didn't eat meat, ( a bad stepmother in childhood). But now, because of bad digestion problems, I am beginning to eat it more again. However, I could not give up what meat I do eat. I think you have to strike a balance, and have a variety of meat and fish, aswell as potato,bread, pasta and rice in your diet
Julia in Derbyshire

Aren't we lucky to be living in the developed world in the twenty-first century where we can choose?

I'm trying to sus out how it would be if we had no choice,or how it was for those who had none.

It is lack of vitamin D not C that causes rickets.

It seems the weather was really dreadful so the vitamin D situation would probably have been a bit dire.

Is rickets a disease of growing bones or can you develope it when you have stopped growing?

Lack of vitamin c causes scurvy, not rickets, hence sailors needing fresh fruit etc

Lizx