Baked Beans for survival

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mrcharly

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Jan 25, 2011
3,257
44
North Yorkshire, UK
The OP said 'survival situation'; one of the common problems in 'survival situations' is lack of clean water. You can carry all the dehydrated food you like, but if you can't get water, it's pretty much useless.

Baked beans are only low in energy density if you ignore the water content. Water is more important than food for survival, so I reckon you can't really go wrong with baked beans.
 

robin wood

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Oct 29, 2007
3,054
1
derbyshire
www.robin-wood.co.uk
The OP said 'survival situation'; one of the common problems in 'survival situations' is lack of clean water. You can carry all the dehydrated food you like, but if you can't get water, it's pretty much useless.

Baked beans are only low in energy density if you ignore the water content. Water is more important than food for survival, so I reckon you can't really go wrong with baked beans.

Problem is with most "survival situation" foods is because they taste good you ate em long before things got desperate. I once met a guy who had done many many long trips on ice in Greenland and Norway who carried tinned catfood. Has all you need and you won't eat it until you really need it.
 

John Fenna

Lifetime Member & Maker
Oct 7, 2006
23,106
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Pembrokeshire
I am sure I ate dogfood in Hungary (by mistake!) it was not too bad with BBQ relish!
I understand that dogfood has to be fit for human consumption (in the UK ) but catfood does not ...though I may have this wrong.....
Pretty grim if you have to eat this stuff - so a good choice for survival rations I say!
 

Gagnrad

Forager
Jul 2, 2010
108
0
South East
The OP said 'survival situation'; one of the common problems in 'survival situations' is lack of clean water. You can carry all the dehydrated food you like, but if you can't get water, it's pretty much useless.

Baked beans are only low in energy density if you ignore the water content. Water is more important than food for survival, so I reckon you can't really go wrong with baked beans.

There are probably worse options, but in the long run you wouldn't be in a very good state if you couldn't get fresh food.

One major problem is that beans wouldn't supply all the amino acids you need. Cultures that lack abundant sources of meat and must needs fulfil some of their protein needs from plant sources combine different sources. In parts of the Americas they made shift with the "three sisters"—squash, maize, and beans. Baked beans on toast (which is what people often do eat in practice) would be better—but then you'd need to store (or make) bread, so your storage needs go up.

Canned beans are also very low in fat. They'd work out to about 3% fat, 20% protein, 76% carbs. Humans can probably tolerate a fair range of variation in macronutrients, but this is very low in fat. Ancestral diets in the Stone Age (i.e., almost all of our biological past) were probably around 65% fat, 15% protein, 20% carbs; we're a long way from that on beans. On around 3% fat you wouldn't be getting what you need for biological processes and would probably start having seizures after awhile.

Here's what the nutrient profile of 8 oz. of canned beans looks like:

beans.png


It's not too bad in some ways, but you have to take into account that not every nutrient that's present there is necessarily in a bio-available form. Worse, notice that the vitamin C content is so low as not even to register. There's also no vitamin D and the vitamin A content is negligible: those two are very important nutrients, and you really don't want to go short of those. Vitamin D is unusual in that you can synthesize it in your skin from sunlight. (A form of cholesterol contained in skin (“7-dehydrocholesterol”) is converted into the precursor of Vitamin D, called “cholecalciferol”.) But, well, it had better be the right time of year and the ability to do that drops off with age. Of course, you'd get some A, D (and K as well) from good quality butter from grass-fed animals, so if you put that on the toast ... but now you have to store butter as well as the bread and the beans.

I'll also note in passing that the beans are not supplying you with vitamin B12. That's a highly important nutrient:

Vitamin B12 deficiency can potentially cause severe and irreversible damage, especially to the brain and nervous system. These symptoms of neuronal damage may not reverse after correction of hematological abnormalities, and the chance of complete reversal decreases with the length of time the neurological symptoms have been present.

Link

The beans would probably be filling in an emergency, but if they were all you had you'd better be setting some snares or something before very long.
 

Melonfish

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Jan 8, 2009
2,460
1
Warrington, UK
I am sure I ate dogfood in Hungary (by mistake!) it was not too bad with BBQ relish!
I understand that dogfood has to be fit for human consumption (in the UK ) but catfood does not ...though I may have this wrong.....
Pretty grim if you have to eat this stuff - so a good choice for survival rations I say!

i have accidentally eaten cat food before, i'm not talking a whole can whilst drunk but obviously off a finger i thought was clean.
horrible stuff.
never tried dog food but it doesn't smell too bad. dog biscuits are good tho, charcoal ones are a bit odd but overall tasty.
 

John Fenna

Lifetime Member & Maker
Oct 7, 2006
23,106
2,833
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Pembrokeshire
i have accidentally eaten cat food before, i'm not talking a whole can whilst drunk but obviously off a finger i thought was clean.
horrible stuff.
never tried dog food but it doesn't smell too bad. dog biscuits are good tho, charcoal ones are a bit odd but overall tasty.
Ohhhhhh!
Spillers shapes - ate those as kids - great taste , great crunch - but the charcoal ones were a bit gritty in texture :)
Perhaps this is why I like "biscuits brown so much....
 

_mark_

Settler
May 3, 2010
537
0
Google Earth
cold rice pudding out of the tin is probably one of the best things in the world that does not involve consenting adults......... it is probably illegal somewhere as it is so nice!

If you like rice pudding try Rachel's Organic Divine Rice! Amazing!
 

santaman2000

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Jan 15, 2011
16,909
1,114
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Florida
There are probably worse options, but in the long run you wouldn't be in a very good state if you couldn't get fresh food.

One major problem is that beans wouldn't supply all the amino acids you need...Canned beans are also very low in fat. They'd work out to about 3% fat, 20% protein, 76% carbs. Humans can probably tolerate a fair range of variation in macronutrients, but this is very low in fat...

True about the amino acids, that's why as I said many Caribbean cultures diet relies heavily on beans and rice in combination. The idea of the low fat however is one of the benefits of beans. I'm not sure how our dietary authorities differ but over here the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of fat is miniscule; in fact the actual wording for RDA of fat is, "sparingly". Generally 3% caloric intake from fat would be probably double or more the recommended amounts. I think there might be a confusion between recommended fat intake (which should be sparing) and recommended "body fat" levels which for optimum health should be maintained at about 12%-17% IIRC.

As to the other vitamin and mineral deficiencies I think we would really need to set a time limit on our hypothetical survival situation. A few days? A week or two? Perhaps a month or more? At what point does it cease to be "survival" and become a new way of life? For most people who begin the ordeal in good or fair health I don't think there would be to many long term effects from deficiencies lasting only a month or two. After that yes you would definitely show signs of declining overall heath.
 
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John Fenna

Lifetime Member & Maker
Oct 7, 2006
23,106
2,833
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Pembrokeshire
If I remember correctly the survivors of the Andean aircrash who survived on human flesh were in great shape except for lacking in some trace elements....
So survive on Human Beans and a tub of multi vits and minerals?
 

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