What was the joke again…
“Humans can survive off a diet consisting of potatoes and butter, as demonstrated by a years long case study commonly known as Ireland”
Something along those lines.
this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2026
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Think it's important to point out that they didn't do that by choice.
If you could only have one food, potatoes would be a good choice.
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Pizza. Endless variety.
- Rice
- Beans
end of list
You're missing a bunch of micro nutrients which would cause problems over time with this. It has all the calories and protein you need though.
Add in some fat from somewhere like cooking oil, and a handful of vegetables like onions, carrots, etc. and you'd last a fairly normal human lifespan.
Vegetables often contain oil, the problem is getting omega-3's, which our bodies can't make.
In the sea, it's algae who're producing it: then krill, then squid/fish/etc eat them..
some plants make it, some don't..
olives are good, olive-oil, etc..
but anybody who's eating squash is getting omega-6's or 9's, even though it seems non-intuitive.
B12?
--Edit--
And on closer look also (at least) fatty acids, calcium and iodine.
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I know this is Lemmy and all, but, uh, beans.
Potato
I've often heard repeated that a human can live on water, potatoes, and salted butter basically indefinitely.
Not sure how true, but seems plausible.
"beriberi" is malnutrition: it means literally "i cannot".
You become .. not very able to do what you need to do, to survive, on this kind of diet, fairly quickly.
Before the 1840s, Irish farmers lived on.potatoes and milk, with the odd herring in winter when milk was harder to come by. Not a pleasant diet, and you're buggered if the potato harvest fails, but definitely doable.
Listen, taco bell has maybe 10-15 ingredients and has an infinite menu item…
Does Soylent count as 1 item?
god I miss Soylent. Cooking/eating is a huge burden for me (depressed and lazy) so I drank the heck out of Soylent when I was in the US. Now in Japan the only thing close is Calorie Mate and it's not nearly as good/nutritious. :(
Not to be all “The safest way to ski is not to go skiing”, but throwing together a meal can be a way to exercise some agency during low days. Even if the food itself isn’t very healthy, the process can be good for you.
I’ll soak some beans overnight and be forced to boil them the next day. The steps are individually low effort and spaced apart (and you can cook beans with zero onions etc if you want) and at the end you can find yourself sitting in front of a hot bowl of good ass beans and feel hey that was good for me.
Hell, beans out of a can and tomato out of a can over rice out of a pouch can feel like you at least did something, you know? Delivery is relatively cheap where I live and getting into a cycle of being dependent on mass produced food really didn’t help me feel like I had a lot of control over what was happening in my life.
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Eggs chicken rice mixed greens broccoli
Alls I know is it isn’t ichiban noodles. I ate those for 3 straight weeks and almost lost my nails and hair.
Nutrition is really important yo. Eat your veggies and balance your fibre and protein.
Egg-bread & scrambled-eggs ( with a multivitamin every other day ) can get you FAR, ultra-cheap ( if you ever need to get through a month on nearly-nothing ).
( obviously this isn't long-term, this is short-term-survival stuff )
add-in carrots, if you can.
A bit of broccoli makes a BIG difference in one's health.
Do what you can to get some omega-3's into you: our bodies can't make them, & if our bodies have to make omega-6's & omega-9's, apparently they just run mitochondria backwards, to do it.
Even a tablespoon of olive-oil / day will help your body keep functioning.
I read once that a person could survive indefinitely on potatoes and milk.
For real, steak.
Its the ultimate elimination diet
Beef is very nutrient dense and contains all the nutrients a human needs
The carnivore diet is a thing, and it is just: beef, water and salt.
Most people who do this, do branch out after a while and add eggs, fish, liver etc
I'd be worried about purines. A diet of pure steak would likely lead to an insane case of gout, which is a buildup of uric acid crystals in your joints... which ranks pretty high on the list of excruciatingly painful things you can be diagnosed with.
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As long as you're okay with being the least climate-friendly and probably having cancer by the age of 50. People need fibre.
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Gasoline has all the calories you need to survive for the rest of your life.
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My mum said when she had no money she lived off eggs, rice, spring onions (which you can just continuously regrow from the bulb) and dried fish.
I don't know the nutritional facts of this meal, but it worked for her.
If you switch out the fish for chicken or something like spam or corned beef, and add onions and garlic, that'll do me.
Eggs and potatoes?
I don't have the expertise to answer the question, but I'm sad that so many answers here are jokes, or five word answers that aren't at all helpful :-(
Was really interested in this and hoped there'd be some knowledgeable people out there to educate us on this stuff!
With enough body fat, sprinkle in a bit of electrolyte and maybe vitamins and that's all you need.
I remember reading of a supervised case like that, many months of not a year. I couldn't find it with a quick search.
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