• southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    edit-2
    4 days ago

    We lack the right bacteria to break down the majority of it. So it amounts to fiber and little else. It isn’t zero available nutrients, but in terms of calories and sustenance, there’s just not enough available to our system to extend time before starvation enough to notice

    Edit: That’s the thumbnail version. It’s a more complicated no, but I figure the details would be boring as fuck baggage because it’s all “we don’t have X

  • OfCourseNot@fedia.io
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    3 days ago

    You’d survive longer just fasting. As others have commented you won’t get almost any calories from it, but your body will still waste some energy trying to digest it which would amount to a net negative.

  • supersquirrel@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    3 days ago

    I think it is kind of mean of you to talk about this like your mom isn’t getting along fine in her pasture.

  • Em Adespoton@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    3 days ago

    Are you allowed to supplement it with cow dung?

    Because that will be necessary to get the bacteria needed to digest it. But cows also have to ruminate in order to get enough nutrients from grass to survive; you’d have to have grass and cow poop smoothies to get any nutritional benefits from it.

    • m4xie@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      3 days ago

      There’s too many of those, can you please specify? Do you mean the famine of Bengal, the Irish Potato Famine, the Boer War, or one of the other ones?

      • DeepDown@leminal.space
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        3 days ago

        Ooh. Good opportunity to hit me with the “you have no idea how little that narrows it down”.

        It was the potato one though. Grass stains on an Irelander’s lips became a signifier of when a person was a few days from dying. That may have happened to others but Ireland has a particular cultural memory of that little misery

      • rumschlumpel@feddit.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        3 days ago

        If you’re literally just eating green grass, you’re going to starve right away. I think it takes like 2-3 months to actually die when you don’t get any calouries, but from what I know it’s not pretty …

        • bizarroland@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          3 days ago

          Most modern people would die in less than 40 days without eating anything.

          Maybe a bit longer if they took vitamin supplements.

          I’m sure the grass would extend that time by couple of days if they would consistently eat grass.

          But…

          Grass doesn’t taste very good, it’s not pleasant to eat, and even if you did have good tasting pleasant to eat food, if it was the only food you were allowed to eat until just before you die from malnutrition you’d go bonkers.

        • tal@lemmy.today
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          3 days ago

          I think it takes like 2-3 months to actually die when you don’t get any calouries

          There’s a guy in Scotland who went for over a year with essentially no caloric intake.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Barbieri's_fast

          Angus Barbieri (1938 or 1939 – 7 September 1990) was a Scottish man who fasted for 382 days,[2] from 14 June 1965 to 30 June 1966.

          For 382 days, from 14 June 1965 through 30 June 1966, he consumed only vitamins, electrolytes, an unspecified amount of yeast (a source of all essential amino acids) and zero-calorie beverages such as tea, coffee, and sparkling water, although he occasionally added milk and/or sugar to the beverages, especially during the final weeks of the fast.

          After 1 year and 26 days without food, Angus Barbieri ate his first solid meal at 10 AM on 11 July 1966: a boiled egg and a slice of buttered bread.[5] He said to the gathered newspaper reporters and photographers, “I have forgotten what food tasted like … It went down OK. I feel a bit full but I thoroughly enjoyed it.”[4]

          That being said, he had a lot of body fat on him going into the thing, which he lost; it was his body consuming that fat that provided the calories.

          Barbieri went from almost 33 stone / 456 pounds (207 kg) to 13 stone / 180 pounds (82 kg), losing 20 stone / 276 pounds (125 kg)

          Most people aren’t going to have enough fat to go for over a year.

  • e0qdk@reddthat.com
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    4 days ago

    Wheat is a grass, so… yes? You can live on just wheat products (and water) for a fair while, but it’s not nutritionally complete by itself – so you’ll get some sort of nutritional deficiency eventually if that’s all you eat.

    • rumschlumpel@feddit.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      4 days ago

      some sort of nutritional deficiency

      Vitamin C is probably the most important one, considering that it was a common issue for age-of-sail sailors - after a couple of weeks at sea, they mostly had hard (probably whole wheat) bread, preserved meat, probably some preserved vegetables that got their vitamin c cooked out of them, water and usually some sort of alcoholic drink, and scorbut is AFAIK the most common nutritional deficiency issue they developed.

      • e0qdk@reddthat.com
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        4 days ago

        Yeah, I figure scurvy is probably most likely followed by some sort of issue with not enough fat, but I’m not a doctor.

  • exaybachae@startrek.website
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    3 days ago

    If you mean true grass, prolly not.

    But there are typically handfulls of edible plants in any wild field and most yards.

    So, pesticide poisoning aside, you could survive for some time eating greens and and roots scrounged from pretty much wherever.