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Comment by pilom | Hacker News Reader

Where you will run into problems is food. B/c you only want to spend 1 hour a day on involuntary tasks, you'll have to buy food. Regardless of how efficiently you buy, your 10k wont last very long that way.

If you are a little skilled and live in the right area, you can get food from hunting/trapping but you're still looking at significantly more than 1 hour a day. Farming is right out.

To live that life you really have to be willing to work a little harder or spend a little more. No Minority Report ending, sorry.

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If you are willing to live on rice it's about $200 a year for 2000 kcal per day. This is at supermarket prices, if you were willing to buy by the tonne I'm sure it's much less, just buy a futures contract and bring your truck to the delivery point.

Serious question, not joking - wouldn't you die, literally die, without any protein, fat, or micronutrients?

Yes, he would suffer serious malnutrition. However, he could supplement with one or two other cheap bulk crops (whole wheat, corn, and/or beans). Still, it would be efficient to raise small grass-eating animals for food, such as rabbit or even guinea pigs. Grass and weeds are abundant and free, far cheaper than meat.

Trace elements and minerals are fairly easy to get. Many of those same weeds you can feed to rabbits are chock-full of all kinds of good nutrition. A book on edible plants is recommended reading. Lichens and wild mushrooms (tread carefully!) are great sources of such nutrients.

For $10, you can buy a 50-pound bag of mineral supplement for livestock (chelated, highly bioavailble raw minerals -- pretty much mined from old lake/ocean beds and ground to a powder) that should last one person most of a lifetime. Much cheaper than a case of One A Day or Centrum tablets.

using animal mineral supplement is interesting , But what about minimal and maximal concentrations needed for humans , vs animals ? do you of an animal mineral product, with mineral levels that are proportionate to human minerals ? do you know someone who uses this idea ?

http://www.redmondnatural.com/redmond-natural-conditioner.ht...

We use this stuff for our animals. On occasion, I will fill a couple of gel caps with the stuff and take some myself.

I take the glowing testimonials with a grain of salt (ha!), but the stuff seems to have a good reputation. Most ranchers tend to neglect their herds (likely more out of ignorance than malice), so I'm not surprised to hear that adding this supplement would yield huge improvement. Anecdotal accounts on various forums have been positive.

For all I know, this stuff could kill me in the long run, so don't come blaming me if it kills you should you try it. Consult your physician, dietitian, lawyer and all that standard disclaimer stuff.

Is it true that a supplement of eggs would be enough to cover all nutritional requirements?

I don't know what the long-term health effects of it would be, but I have it on good authority that dry dog food is capable of sustaining human life, if eaten as a "breakfast cereal" with powder-based milk.

Supposedly the cheapest stuff tastes best, since it doesn't have the flavoring or meat byproducts in it that dogs find palatable. It's basically just raw carbohydrates, fat, and protein; I think corn and soy based, mostly.

As a kid I often ate both wet and dry dog food, it's basically tasteless if, as you say, it's not the premium brands. I'd go with the dry stuff if I had to do it again.

The premium bands seems to want to make it smell acceptable to humans but it just tastes horrible. I suspect it's the smell that makes it taste so bad.

BTW I didn't need to eat the dog food, I just did it. I also ate quite a lot of mud from the back garden. I had a great childhood :)

Is there enough nutrition in (brown, i assume) rice to do this?

No, brown rice isn't a complete protein, you need to add beans or tofu and maybe some micronutrients from greens that grow pretty easily. Consider reading a book on nutrition for vegetarians--malnutrition can creep up on you and cause some bad long term health problems.

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