Basic Nutrition

I would like to say ahead of time that I do not claim to understand or know 100% of how the human body works, but I believe I have a decent enough understanding to write this article.   As with anything you read on the internet you should always research the facts so you know for sure what is correct and what is not.  If you notice something I have written is incorrect, please contact me so I may correct it.

We as humans need a wide amount of things to keep us going.  Generally, all of this we get from what we eat and drink.  We need to take in enough calories to supply us with energy for the day.  We need amino acids for synthesizing protein.  We need fatty acid for the diffusion of oxygen in the blood stream, as well as the production of hemoglobin.  Lastly we need vitamins and minerals.  Vitamins and minerals boost the immune system, support normal growth and development, and help cells and organs do their jobs.  Unfortunately, most of us do not get everything we need and sometimes we get way more than we should(i.e. calories.)  In a survival situation, finding everything your body needs will be a thousand times harder than how it is now.  Right now you can drive over to your local grocery and buy anything you want.  But that grocery store won't always be available.  This article won't go into explaining every vitamin or mineral, just some helpful information on getting a few of the previously stated things when your supplies are running low or gone.

WARNING: DO NOT EAT ANY WILD PLANT UNLESS YOU ARE 100% CERTAIN THAT YOU KNOW WHAT IT IS, ITS POISONOUS LOOK-ALIKES AND THE PROPER WAY TO PREPARE IT.  I AM ONLY GIVING EXAMPLES WITH A BRIEF DESCRIPTION.  PLEASE RESEARCH THE PLANTS IVE LISTED AND IF POSSIBLE BUY A WILD EDIBLE FIELD GUIDE.

Calories are found in everything we consume, somethings have far greater calories than others.  Nuts are packed full of calories as well as vitamins, minerals, and heart healthy fats and fibers.  This leads us to my first example, Acorns.  The acorn, or oak nut, is the nut of the oaks and their close relatives.  Before you say that they are poisonous lets take a closer look.  Acorns served an important role in early human history and were a source of food for many cultures around the world.  For instance, the poorer Ancient Greeks would eat acorns in their food and in the Jōmon period of Japan, acorns were harvested, peeled and soaked in natural or artificial ponds for several days to remove tannins, then processed to make acorn cakes.  Once they have been soaked and the tannins removed they can be consumed, in many different ways.  Please research on the correct way to soak Acorns, this is very important! After they are processed they can be eaten whole, added to a trail mix or used in pemmican, ground up into a flour for making bread(bannock!) and much more.  Animal fats are also packed with calories, but I will be writing an entire article on trapping and the like, so I will avoid using that as an example.

Now lets move to amino acids.  Nearly every food, with the exception of fruits, sugars and fats and oils, has enough protein to supply our necessary amino acids if we eat enough of it to get our day's worth of calories.  In order from highest protein count to lowest is beef, chicken, fish, pork, eggs and dairy, beans, and finally nuts and seeds.  We will skip the first two, beef and chicken as they will generally only be found on a farm and go directly to fish.  The good thing about fish is that they also take care of our fatty acid requirements, as they are packed full of them!

Fish are relatively easy to catch, and sometimes require little effort.  Its safe to assume you live by or close to a water source that has fish life.  If not, you can go on to the next section. There are numerous pocket fishing kits one may buy on the internet, which should be placed in your survival kit.  I myself also keep a rod or two in the trunk of my vehicle.  Fish, just like other foods can be prepared in numerous ways.  But the most important thing is that they are cleaned and gutted then cooked!  You may have enjoyed sushi at a local restaurant but in a survival situation eating a raw fish could make you sick.  There are a lot of videos on YouTube on how to process and cook a fish in a survival setting.  Just search for "bushcraft cooking fish."

This leads us to vitamins and minerals.  This may seem like the hardest thing to find in a survival situation but actually its not that bad.  I will give you a few examples that are quite common in North America.  Again I would like to stress you research all the plants I use as examples.

Dandelions are found on all continents and have been gathered since prehistory, but the varieties cultivated for consumption are mainly native to Eurasia. A perennial plant, its leaves will grow back if the taproot is left intact. To make leaves more palatable, they are often blanched to remove bitterness. Dandelion leaves and buds have been a part of traditional Sephardic, Chinese and Korean cuisine. In the north-eastern United States, dandelion is cultivated and eaten in salad.  Seeing as it is so common I thought it deserved a place in this article.  The dandelion has traces of nearly every vitamin and mineral you need!  Its root can also be used for making coffee.

While not as abundant in vitamins and minerals as the Dandelion, clovers are a valuable survival food.  The fresh plants have been used for centuries as additives to salads and other meals consisting of leafy vegetables.  They are not easy for humans to digest raw, however, but this is easily fixed by boiling the harvested plants for 5–10 minutes. Dried flowerheads and seedpods can also be ground up into a nutritious flour and mixed with other foods, or can be steeped into a tisane. White clover flour is sometimes sprinkled onto cooked foods such as boiled rice.  When used in soups, the leaves are often harvested before the plant flowers. The roots are also edible, although they are most often cooked firsthand.

How many of you have pine trees near your home or even on your property?  To many they are just a tree, but they are a good survival resource. The soft, moist, white inner bark (cambium) found clinging to the woody outer bark is edible and very high in vitamins A and C. It can be eaten raw in slices as a snack or dried and ground up into a powder for use as a thickener in stews, soups, and other foods,  The needles can be brewed and used for tea, although with a very acquired taste.  

I hope this article has given you some information that you may find useful.  I also hope you take the time to research everything you've read.  I barely touched on these examples, and there is a lot more you should know about them before using them in a survival situation.  I recommend if you live in North America, to buy "Edible Wild Plants: A North American Field Guide."  It has many color pictures of different wild edibles and their poisonous look-alikes.  It also explains how to process and prepare them for consumption.  Stay frosty.