Intro

I’ve often wondered what the lowest cost survival food would be. Is it potatoes? Oats? Bread? Peanut butter?

Having recently been set about on my own without any financial help and minimal income (a long story), I decided to give some of these thoughts corporeal form.

Some examples of people asking this very question:

• What’s the whole foods equivalent of Soylent? | Reddit
• Cheapest nutritionally complete diet | Yahoo Answers
• What’s the simplest, cheapest yet most complete diet available? | Ask MetaFilter

Considerations

The most important single measure of “nutritionally complete” should be total energy. You can survive months or even years without obvious symptoms of any mineral or vitamin deficiency. Whereas an energy deficit is noticed within a few days if not sooner. Probably the most important and noticeable deficiency after that would be the first vitamin ever discovered: Vitamin C.

If you are truly starving, most places have social programs in place to help. Soup kitchens and even free food at social events or seminars can probably sustain an individual indefinitely.

I will not be considering alternative food sources such as grains intended for animal feed. For reference: oat horse feed is about 1/3 the price of oat human feed.

Traditional staple foods will most likely comprise the largest single portion of any diet. Wheat, rice, potatoes, legumes, corn are likely candidates.

Prior Art

Diy Soylent

A diy version of the popular “Soylent” meal replacement. All recipes are mixed dry and portioned out on a daily basis for later mixing with wet ingredients. They are optimized for portability, storability, and nutrition. Some are low cost as well, but often require large upfront purchases.

Most of these foods rely on a multivitamin to meet a significant portion of the vitamins and minerals (almost always Kirkland Signature Daily Multi). This just won’t work long term. As an example, magnesium oxide is the most common magnesium source for cheap multivitamins (it’s what Kirkland uses). The oxide is popular because of its high Mg density and cost. Unfortunately, magnesium oxide is barely absorbed in humans. Quite possibly not at all (Walker et al. 2003). If you rely solely on magnesium oxide supplements, you will be deficient in no time. Many other vitamins and minerals suffer from similar issues (e.g. vitamin K1 vs K2). To their credit, many DIY soylent recipe creators add additional vitamins and minerals to counter this. Some of them, however, are obviously not nutritionists.

Anyway… The cheapest recipes come in around $2 per day for 2000kcal. For my energy requirements that would be about $2.70. For one particular recipe Bret’s Soylent, Kirkland Signature Multi supplies more than half of the %DV of 12 vitamins/minerals. Not exactly a recipe for health.

Ready to use therapeutic foods

Commonly deployed to alleviate starvation in poor countries as a relief food. Optimized for minimal weight, storability, and cost.

• Plumpy-Nut
  • peanut butter, oil, dry milk, sugar
• F-100/F-75
  • dry milk, oil
  • can be cereal instead of milk based
• K-mix 2
  • 3 parts calcium caseinate, 5 parts dry milk, 10 parts sugar
  • 100g K-Mix 2 + 60g oil + 1 liter of water
• Citadel Spread
  • peanut butter, oil, sugar, dry milk
  • bacon grease or nut oils can be used
• Nutribun
  • wheat flour, dry milk, soy flour, iodized salt
  • made into a loaf
  • other locally sources ingredients can be added for fortification (e.g. bananas)

Pemmican

An emergency food often used by hikers and doomsday preppers. Optimized for high energy and storability.

Work Log

26 Feb 2018

• Plumpy Nut: $1.87 per day
  • 1.75c peanut butter($1.58)
  • 1/4c nonfat, dry milk ($0.29)
  • lacks significant amounts of vitamins A, C, D, K, and some B-vitamins
  • meal replacement powders are not all that much more expensive than dry milk and contain a lot more vitamins
  • Omega 3:6 ratio is a little worrying (175:1)

As a reference: USDA Food Plans: Cost of Food Report. The lowest cost “Thrifty Plan” for a male adult is $6.14 per day. Highlights from the diet (per week):

• 10.75 lbs of lowfat milk
• 6.79 lbs vegetables (including:
  • 1.24 lbs dark green
  • 1.87 canned and dry beans
  • 2.70 lbs “other vegetables”
• 6.65 lbs fruit
• 2.82 lbs bread/rice/pasta
• 2.48 lbs potatoes
• 2.55 lbs chicken/turkey

Consult the report and the MyPlate website for more details. The total amount consumed is 39.86 lbs of food per week. The results for women are fairly similar.

Interesting that the USDA couldn’t meet their own standards for Vitamin E or potassium.

It was not possible for most market baskets to meet the RDA for vitamin E nor the AI for potassium; a solution could not be obtained.

Sodium levels were similarly modified so that the plan allowed for no more than the average intake and not the recommended intake.

Bibliography