
The WWI Starch Solution for Denmark (2012) - fpoling
https://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2012nl/jul/lessons.htm
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dmos62
> "Our principal foods were bran bread, barley porridge, potatoes, greens,
> milk and some butter. Pork production was very low; hence the farmers ate
> all the pork they raised, and the people of the cities and towns got little
> or no pork. Beef was so costly that only the rich could afford to buy it in
> sufficient amount.”

This makes sense, as opposed to what the meat industry is currently[0]. It
encourages deforestation for growing feed (and to a lesser extent grazing) and
requires significantly more energy to produce, process and store than cereals
or most edible things. Yet, often meat in a supermarket is as cheap as the
economically (in the holistic sense of the word) cheap products.

The way I see it, this phenomena is caused by oil prices not accounting for
the inevitable running out of oil[1]. The way we are going right now, you'd
say we have a source of unending nourishment[2].

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_p...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_production)
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil#Discoveries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil#Discoveries)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornucopian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornucopian)

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continuational
Isn't oil just getting more and more expensive to find and extract? We won't
"run out" of it, it'll just become too expensive to use as fuel eventually.

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douche
Yet oil is cheaper now than it was ten years ago, in raw dollars (before even
factoring for inflation). The technology to extract oil keeps getting better.

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thebooktocome
There is a finite amount of oil in the world.

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credit_guy
There is a finite amount of everything in the world. What's special about oil?

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dingdingdang
Brilliant macro-structural/societal breakdown of why we should consume less
animal protein.

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GraceTapatito
Why less? No animal protein consumption is necessary for optimal human health
at all.

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dingdingdang
Prohibition seldomly succeeds. But yes, I would not mind it dropping to zero
if alternatives are 100% doable (glycoproteins contained in beans needs LOTS
of processing before they stop affecting gastrointestinal health (many
indigenous tribes have ways to threat pulses that work but we tend to ignore
the problem completely from industrial perspective) and things like soy has
oestrogenic properties which can be bad news in the long run). Quorn is a
"new" protein which has better profile than soy and relatively little
allergenic potential.

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maxlybbert
In the 1990s, the USDA food pyramid recommended people base their diet on
breads and starchy foods (note the base of the original food pyramid). Over
the last twenty years, they have backed away from this recommendation. While
most Americans eat too much meat, it turns out that eating too much starch
isn't an improvement. The current USA recommendation appears to be "eat more
fruits and vegetables" ( choosemyplate.gov ).

But since this recommendation came with a change in the graphic used (from a
rainbow pyramid to a plate) people focused on the graphic and missed the new
dietary advice.

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smcl
It's kinda apples and oranges here though. The USA of 1990-2017 (and beyond)
is overall wealthy and doesn't really need to think about its citizens
starving. WW1 Denmark had slightly different set of health issues.

I don't think this is being presented as a sort of solution to any health
issues the USA might have

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maxlybbert
You have a point. I just didn't want anybody reading this and thinking "I
should eat like that." Modern nutritionists say that a high starch diet isn't
a good idea.

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smcl
Ahh I see - it's a good point so worth making anyway

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smcl
(your point i meant!)

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Nomentatus
Great article. I've read a different figure for blockage deaths in Germany in
WWI. After factoring in the notion that most deaths from malnutrition end with
a disease that healthy people could fight off, the figure was 11 million,
believe it or not. In part because nutrition was badly understood (the shrewd
Mikkel Hindhede aside), and many popular erzatz foods were unhealthy or not
food at all.

The same is true of Vietnam War American prisoners, they actually had longer
lifespans than average (whereas the truly starved prisoners from WWII Hong
Kong had much shorter lives.) This may in part because the Vietnamese prison
did not include artificial light, however.

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tcj_phx
This is from [2012]...

When I was in teh college, I certainly didn't get enough protein, on account
of my unconventional diet. I later figured out that protein deficiency was
certainly the cause of the oddly-clear urine I experienced during those years.

This article does have a good point about the wastefulness of growing grain
crops for animal feed. Pigs and chickens are better fed kitchen scraps and
spoiled fruit/food. Cattle are better grazed on hillsides that are not
suitable for mechanical agriculture.

I think potatoes are much better starches for humans to eat than grains.

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geon
> When I was in teh college, I certainly didn't get enough protein

Did you try? Or were you just ignorantly eating ramen every day?

Getting enough protein shouldnt be hard, even on a tiny budget, if you just
know what you are doing.

> I think potatoes are much better starches for humans to eat than grains.

Thats what tfa said.

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louprado
> "Our principal foods were bran bread, barley porridge, potatoes, greens,
> milk and some butter

Nearly every Dane lives within an hour walk from the ocean and even from the
center of the country you are only 70km to the ocean. How is fish not _the_
principal food, especially during war time.

This omission is so glaring that it undermines the credibility of the article.

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throwaway2048
The north sea was a warzone, fishing ships were highly likely to be attacked
and sunk.

The entire reason there was a food shortage was that the allies were attacking
any ships leaving/approaching the european mainland. Thats what a blocade IS.

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dmh2000
if the worst drought in 1/2 a century occurred in 2012, then why is that a
trend upward if a worse one was in 1962?

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briandear
Please add (2012) to the title.

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polotics
Well, the article focusses on 1917... Was still interesting and valuable
though.

