> >> --370 pounds of wheat flour
> >> --57 cans of evaporated milk
> >> --111 pounds of cabbage
> >> --25 pounds of spinach
> >> --285 pounds of dried navy beans.
> >
> >I'm just curious -- without salt or oil or yeast, what are we supposed to
> >be doing with the wheat flour?
> >
> >Michael
>
> As Michael P. said, this is the solution to a linear programming
> problem, not a list of ingredients for a diet. The point is that it
> does so well at providing a bunch of nutrients in such an...
> unappetizing form.
Well fair enough, but if it's not edible, it's not really a solution to the problem. People can't eat raw flour anymore than they can eat metals to fulfill their mineral requirements.
The funny thing is, as an ex-veggie (very ex-), I can tell you that this actually would be appetizing if you had the aforementioned butter, salt, yeast and some onions. Home-made whole wheat bread, navy bean soup (thickened with onions sauted in butter and coated in flour) and spinach or cabbage with butter and salt are a very hearty meal on a cold day in New York.
Not that I'd want to eat it every day, mind you. But my point is that, if you accept that the minimum diet has to be edible to count as a diet, you could solve this problem with a diet that was just as cheap but actually appetizing (and more nutritious, and offering more variety -- it is no cheaper to keep having one kind of bean, or to always depend on bread rather some days on rice or corn or corn flour). It would be all be painfully dull very soon, of course. But not immediately, as with this one, which changes the complexion of the question of desire slightly. It becomes one of boredom and variety rather than of a human inability to enjoy the minimum such that we'd rather starve. That premise has been smuggled in -- of course we are unwilling to eat the inedible.
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com
I wondered why it was that I had been so enchanted by this place when I was five years old. Were childhoods so boring back then? I knew my own little boy, if driven to this place, would drop to the ground and start hyperventilating at the discovery that he had spent a day and a half sealed in a car only to come and see a bunch of boring log cabins. And looking at it now, I couldn't have blamed him. I mused for a few moments on the question of which was worse, to lead a life so boring that you are easily enchanted or a life so full of stimulus that you are easily bored.
-- Bill Bryson, _The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America __________________________________________________________________________