Soy Phytoestrogens, or Why I Don't Eat "Staples"

[sky]

https://youtu.be/OAPgUn_R95c

In the conclusion at 37:00, it states that three sisters crop system can support thirteen persons per hectare.

This is about 8300 square feet per person.

[cmonkey]

FWIW, I'd rather sacrifice a few years of potential lifespan to feel happy/blissful after each meal than optimize for healthy/longevity or a well-defined six-pack if so be it. Individual mileage may vary.

This is essentially my thought as well. I'm not eating fast food every day but I'm not afraid to have a pizza delivered a few times a year either. 95% healthy, 5% fun. Our diet looks astonishingly like the list jacob put up.

Eating earthworms/red worms? Gotta be the strangest conversation I've seen on here yet.

[ThisDinosaur]

The question of "what is being optimized" is an appropriate one, because I'm essentially overthinking multiple parameters.

I started with the assertion that food costs can be reduced significantly by buying bulk supplies of storable staples. I considered that the cost of a protein source is likely related to the area of land required to produce it, thus plant proteins should be more efficient use of land than animal protein. So I started wondering how difficult it would be to just grow the food myself (since I'd be getting the majority of my calories from a single food anyway, I shouldn't need a deep, multicrop permaculture education.) I found the idea of growing enough food for my family in a relatively small backyard garden very appealing. Beans and legumes have the highest total protein content of any plant food, but I couldn't avoid the phytoestrogen debate, and ultimately decided that its not the way to go. Spinach has more protein per calorie than any plant food I could find,(more than some animal sources) so that was appealing for a different reason, but it doesn't store well and is less season/climate hardy than other crops.

So, I decided to outsource this thought experiment to this community. How do you optimize the parameters of the ideal food: easily grown, easily stored, dense with protein and multiple micronutrients? There may very well be no such food.

Some species are like pandas; they can only live on one food. Some species are like rats; they eat whatever is available. Humans appear to be in that second group.

[sky]

Is your goal to grow all your food?

Because given a similar situation, my goal would be to grow food that has nutritional benefits from being eaten freshly picked (greens) and food that is expensive and has high vitamin levels (fruits such as raspberries). I would buy cheap staples that can be stored easily.

[ThisDinosaur]

sky, its true that it would be more economical to buy the cheap staples and grow the expensive exotic stuff to sell to others. I suppose the progression of my thought on this topic has lead me to some conflicting requirements.

This forum leans heavily on the idea of self sufficiency, and small scale sustainable permaculture fits squarely into that role. More so than relying on the currently low food prices continuing past the industrial agriculture era. I enjoy pizza and fried chicken tremendously, but I find working toward a more efficent life style more fulfilling.

So, jacob, while saving some small fraction of my budget on food probably would have far less of an impact on my finances than, say, focusing on my housing situation, the challenging of meeting our only *actual* need without depending on an income source, seems worthwhile to me.

Also, without this conversation, why else would I ever look up the nutritional content of earthworms?

[jacob]

Financially speaking 100% self-sufficiency in any one area is almost never worthwhile. As a hobby, sure, why not. IMHO, generating your own food supply is certainly more useful [in a sense] than building your own toaster from scratch.

[heyhey]

I've never seen Okinawan/Hawaiian purple sweet potatoes here (UK) so I was looking up the nutritional content of the orange kind. It seems it's different, and in particular, the orange kind has huge amounts of vitamin A/beta-carotene which the purple doesn't, and less of the things that might protect against cancer etc which the purple ones have. There still seems to be debate on whether excess vitamin A from food sources is bad for us (excess synthetic vitamin A can be).

I used to be able to buy white-fleshed sweet potatoes--might check a few Asian stores to see if they still have them, but they didn't keep as well as the orange ones so they may have lost the demand battle.

This is interesting if you trust Wikipedia (but note the figures for wheat are not for flour but for the whole wheat grain, which few people eat--I don't think you'd get that much protein in whole wheat flour, and certainly not in white).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_pot ... od_staples

[ThisDinosaur]

@Jacob- I like to envision myself homesteading in a Mad Max type world, with steampunk/Robinson Crusoe -like homebuilt technology. That seems unlikely to come to pass for a number of reasons. But its this fantasy that motivates my interest in homegrown food, homebuilding, DIY projects, solar thermal power, etc. I used to work part time with home builders before and during college, and sometimes volunteer with Habitat for Humanity. I did this because I thought if I knew enough about how to build a house from the ground up, I could fix anything that ever broke in my own home without hiring somebody. Since I never followed those pursuits beyond the novice level, very little of it has stuck with me. Nevertheless, I think investing some time into considering how you would sustain yourself in the absence of civilization is a good way to figure out how much or little you actually need from other people. Your posts about peak oil sometimes trigger these thoughts:-)

@heyhey- Hypervitaminosis A is a very real condition. Its usually associated with eating animal Liver. The classic story is about arctic explorers coming down with it after eating a polar bear liver.

wrt wheat flour; in researching this topic, I came across several lists relating protein/dollar. They were often inconsistent, likely because of different time/place/economic conditions for the people compiling the data, but this one says wheat flour was the least expensive protein AND calorie source they could find.

http://www.andhigherstill.com/2013/06/t ... -food.html

$1 of Wheat Flour = 163g of protein and 6000 Calories !

[JasonR]

o

[Ego]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/14 ... v-i-n-hive

Mealworms and bangs.
2:30 shows how life is better with worms.
It worked for Fry, it can work for you.

What a great idea! I want to make a DIY version.

[EMJ]

What about meat quality and adrenaline?
Seems like there are many reasons not to eat stressed animals.

[heyhey]

@heyhey- Hypervitaminosis A is a very real condition. Its usually associated with eating animal Liver. The classic story is about arctic explorers coming down with it after eating a polar bear liver.

You're right. I wasn't clear. I meant I think there is still debate about whether you can get too much from beta-carotene i.e. plant food sources. Retinol from animal food sources is definitely dangerous in excess.

[Ego]

https://munchies.vice.com/en/articles/i ... g-you-man-

IPAs Are Giving You Man Boobs

Not many people know this, but those hops in your favorite IPA are actually wonderful medicine for insomnia and menopause, thanks to their high phytoestrogen content. These same phytoestrogens, however, might be less desirable for men, as indicated by the common condition known among brewers as Brewer’s Droop.

Yes, you read that right: Hops are giving men man boobs.

[7Wannabe5]

Oh, a little bit of man boobs is okay,so long as they blend in proportionally with the pectoral muscles. I, personally, find the droopy wrinkly chicken skin on a skeleton look more off-putting. Us old folk got to keep some flesh on the bone. YMMV.

[Lucky C]

Chicken and eggs are great protein sources that seem relatively inexpensive vs other animal products, so that's what I eat for most of my protein. But how do they compare with beans?

Black beans are about 600 Cal per pound, and I'm choosing them to compare due to their high protein content. I don't buy them dry (yet) but found some bulk prices at about 65c per pound for big tubs. If 1 lb. dry makes about 3 lb. cooked, that's about $0.36 for 1000 Cal. Of course canned beans would be much more, > $1 per 1000 Cal at my grocery store's prices.

I can get dark meat chicken for $1 per pound, about 800 Cal = $1.25 for 1000 Cal. Eggs are about 700 Cal per pound and prices have been varying lately but average about 75c per pound = $1.07.

So let's say we're trying to choose between 1 lb. per day of beans vs. chicken and eggs per person. That's roughly 80c per person per day or $292 per year. We're talking about potentially $10k per person needing to be saved for a 3% withdrawal rate, so it's not a trivial amount, especially if you have a lot of mouths to feed.

With that in mind I will certainly be stocking up on a few years' worth of bulk black beans, once I have a house or an apartment with more pantry space anyway.
In addition, I plan to:
- Grow fresh veggies with at least some protein content
- Grow hazelnut trees (15g protein per 100g serving)
- Raise chickens for fresh eggs
- Aquaponics system for fish & veggies, or try fishing if there's a nearby lake or pond
- Buy venison during deer hunting season if it's available locally
- Maybe catch the occasional squirrel or woodchuck
- Visit family weekly, where they are sure to serve generous portions of meat
- Buy poultry, dairy, peanut butter, etc. from the grocery store, but be able to get enough protein from only the sources above if needed - should be doable given the variety of sources above and the fact that we really don't need to eat tons of protein to be healthy

[BRUTE]

to be honest, brute doesn't quite get the obsession with protein. bodybuilders, sure. regular humans?

[enigmaT120]

Hazelnuts are great. If only the squirrels and Stellar Jays didn't eat all of mine off the tree before they're even ripe....

How long do dry beans keep before they just won't cook down? Sometimes it seems like they stay hard no matter how long you cook them. Does pressure cooking fix that?

[theanimal]

I'm in the same boat as brute. With the way most people talk about protein, if they didn't have it you'd think they die or shrivel up.

[vexed87]

Sometimes it seems like they stay hard no matter how long you cook them. Does pressure cooking fix that?

Yes PCs significantly reduce the cooking time, also, you may need to extend the soaking period. If stored correctly, beans can last for decades. The older the beans, the longer your cooking time.

[vexed87]

6% of calories need to come from protein if your goal is maintaining current muscle mass and staying healthy, if building muscle aim for slightly more, >9% should be sufficient. As you will have guessed, getting 9% from your diet can be easily achieved with beans, see vegan body builders.

Regarding Phytoestrogens;
https://www.reddit.com/r/vegan/wiki/faq ... oid_soy.3F