rabbit starvation

[C_Claycomb]

so, my question is, if eating rabbits in a long term situation, and ensuring you have your greens too, would adding tallow to the pot at least mitigate or even negate the lack of fats issue

Yes, adding tallow would help. However, one or two survival candles woudn't help you a great deal.

I think that part of the problem that other folk might be having in answering you is that this hypothetical situation is so specialised as to be unrealistic.

Lets re-cap.

You are in the UK, not the far north of Canada anyway, and since it is not the far north everything is not covered in snow so you can get green food. However for some reason can't get any carbohydrates from roots or tubers. You are going to be stuck there for several months without rescue or re-supply. There is an almost unlimited number of rabbits which you can catch and while you planned ahead far enough to be washed up with a huge supply of tallow candles and snare wire, you decided to leave the more palatable and nutritionally useful and easy to obtain stuff like lard, butter, marge, vegetable oil and flour behind.

As "what if" situations go it is hard to fathom.

Clearly you have given this a lot of thought, but you have made comments which run counter to what I have read about "rabbit starvation". For instance you say that people starve while appearing and feeling well fed whereas I have read that it is just the opposite, that protein poisoning is characterised by a lack of feeling well fed, despite consuming ever increasing quantities of protein.

Also, that while there are issues with lack of vitamins and minerals, these are no different from those you would experience if you were to eat any other type of food to the exclusion of all others. For instance, you would encounter problems if you ate nothing but salad leaves. This deficiency of unballanced diets is not specifically tied to the consumption of protein.

The reason that eating some fat can help with holding off protein poisoning is that fat contains a lot of calories and you are no longer forcing your body to try to get its whole daily requirement by processing protein.

Have you looked at liver function and the use of ATP? This is the key factor in rabbit starvation, and explains why people die faster than mere starvation would explain.

 

[demographic]

Surely if you are eating lots of meat and virtually no carbohydrates its pretty much the Atkins diet?

Don't you need some amount of carbohydrate to be able to process it properly?

 

[wattsy]

as far as i'm aware rabbit starvation occurs when you eat nothing but rabbit because they don't have the necessary vitamins and minerals to sustain human life on their own. as long as you eat something with them you'll be fine

 

[Miyagi]

My Grandparents, who brought us up in the 60's/70's etc., considered a rabbit a very lean meat. As far as they were concerned it wasn't to be relied on, but used only as part of our varied diet, maybe once a week.

No matter what meat we had on the table (rabbit, squirrel, pigeon, squab crow, bacon, chicken, beef, trout etc) it was always supplemented by bread, vegetables and potatoes - and sometimes pastry.

We were lucky as we started each meal with soup and finished with a pudding of some sort.

AFAIK a rabbit has trouble getting all the goodness from the greens that it digests and as a consequence re-eats its own expelled pellets. Although squirrel too is a lean meat I don't think it suffers from this problem.

 

[crazydave]

a squirrel has a completely different diet though. living predominantly on grass I imagine a rabbit has enough keeping itself healthy without storing a vitamin surplus to keep a predator healthy.

another factor in the rabbit starvation is what the men concerned ate normally during the rest of the year. a predominantly meat diet will have been the norm so while appearing healthy they were probably borderline on vitamin deficiencies lacking regular fruit and veg.

it took the royal navy a long time to get the hang of feeding its men a dictated diet that was healthy enough to prevent scurvy. even then meat and carbs took precendent along with alcohol. when food ran short and they were reduced to just biscuit the flux ansd scurvy soon appeared with any 'proper illness' running rife through the ship in short order.

 

[jonajuna]

I am sure you would do better nutritionally eating a bit of rendered fat with your rabbit, I am sure carrying a load of limes would help too as would picking a few greens. It just seems a bizarre question to ask. Could you post a link to the "well documented" cases of pre Victorian explorers trying to survive on a primarily rabbit diet I had thought the requirements of a balanced diet were worked out long before that.

tallow is rendered fat, hence my "logic2 of suggesting that tallow added would prevent the fatty acid defienciency

Thinking about it, you cant starve to death by just eating rabbit. You may, over a long period develop a deficeincy of certain minerals/fats. but thats not starvation as i see it.

its the term for the syndrome rather than actual starvation, the suggestion is that it cause death if not remedied with other fats/minerals

Yes, adding tallow would help. However, one or two survival candles woudn't help you a great deal.

I think that part of the problem that other folk might be having in answering you is that this hypothetical situation is so specialised as to be unrealistic.

its a question that was all, i like to know things, yes an unlikely event, but just say i did crash my light aircraft and only found rabbits to eat, im supplementing with some basic greens and some tubers... still missing out on those fats though... but i have tallow, maybe im an international tallow candle mogul?

its a question i was wanting to find out the answer to, does it have to be a likely situation?

Clearly you have given this a lot of thought, but you have made comments which run counter to what I have read about "rabbit starvation". For instance you say that people starve while appearing and feeling well fed whereas I have read that it is just the opposite, that protein poisoning is characterised by a lack of feeling well fed, despite consuming ever increasing quantities of protein.

thanks, your comments here enabled me to look deeper and yes, you do feel pretty carp with it i have learnt a little more than i knew before

Also, that while there are issues with lack of vitamins and minerals, these are no different from those you would experience if you were to eat any other type of food to the exclusion of all others. For instance, you would encounter problems if you ate nothing but salad leaves. This deficiency of unballanced diets is not specifically tied to the consumption of protein.

for sure never thought otherwise, the syndrome with bunnies is seemingly quicker

Have you looked at liver function and the use of ATP? This is the key factor in rabbit starvation, and explains why people die faster than mere starvation would explain.

yes, im aware of the role of ATP in amino biotransformation, hadnt looked to it in this context though

so i have and found the links below which answer towwards my question and from what you said and my understanding of the nutritional values of tallow, i've learnt a bit more and i guess all that i will in this thread


my apologies for asking an "unrealistic" and "bizarre" question but many thanks to those contributing to the answers and suggesting other avenues of research, from which i have unearthed these 2 documents, if you find the info useful, im glad, the thread wasnt watsed

http://www.medbio.info/Horn/PDF files/rabbit starvation.pdf

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/12/myth-of-high-protein-diet.html

anyone for a group buy on tallow candles?

knowledge is power (Sir Francis Bacon)

there is no such thing as a stupid question (a stupid person?)

Knowledge is the key to survival, the real beauty of that is that it doesn't weigh anything. (Ray Mears)

 

[Toddy]

Would you not maybe be better putting on weight before a trip that might leave you stranded enough that the need to eat candles became a life or death action ?
Better the fat on you than in something so hard to eat or digest I'd have thought

Just an idea.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[jonajuna]

Would you not maybe be better putting on weight before a trip that might leave you stranded enough that the need to eat candles became a life or death action ?
Better the fat on you than in something so hard to eat or digest I'd have thought

Just an idea.

cheers,
Toddy

indeed, carb laoding is nice if you can plan for the event

however, those sorts of things are not foreseeable really? do you wake up in the morning and think, "im going to crash my car today!" or go to bed thinking, "my house will burn down tonight with me in it"?

no, none of us do, but we all still put on seat belts in the car and have smoke detectors "just in case"

it was a question, i have tallow candles and wondered if they would go any distance to prevent the rabbit problem, if the situation, as unlikely as it is, presented itself

i think the thread is dead now really, no?

oh and i wouldnt want to be carrying all that spare tyre, its only a light aircraft after all

 

[phill_ue]

I have heard that if you eat the whole of the rabbit then the effects are lessened or negated. This means you need to eat the brains, offal and toe nails too! I understand it is something to do with a protein rich diet alone, and something to do with the liver, production of ammonia and all sorts of other technical mumbo jumbo. Personally, in order to not have to learn stuff that you can bore somebody at a tea party with (!) I stick to the old adage of a little bit of everything in moderation!

 

[Toddy]

Y'know? I'm *really* glad I'm veggie

cheers,
M

 

[jonajuna]

I have heard that if you eat the whole of the rabbit then the effects are lessened or negated. This means you need to eat the brains, offal and toe nails too!

i had heard of this too, including cooking the animal unskinned so that the small amount of subcutaneous fat that exists, is kept.

asked this question on my recent course (the trainer amongst many skills is a butcher of domestic and wild meat) he didnt know the answer but did suggest that it would be pretty disgustingly flavoured! although saying that, i have read before about the technique for burning off fur rather than skinning, didnt make reference to bunnies though as far as i can recall

Toddy, i respect all veggie's choice to be so, even helped our young (8/9 at time) son to venture into the dietary choice. we had to call a day on it though as despite buying every kind of healthy vegetable matter we could find, (my wife would prefer to be veggie too, but due to his inability to do it properly and my daughters and mine preference for flesh, she has given up) he wouldnt eat enough varied foods to be healthy without the proteins, aminos etc to be found so much easier in meat.

but...... for me, i like meat, so much that i am endeavouring to eat every type of (not endangered, so no polar bears! or cruel forms (fois grais) animal i can

odd ambition, but a tasty one (didnt think that much of croc though)

 

[Toddy]

I reared two healthy sons vegetarian, their choice, no forcing from either parent. HWMBLT likes his dead stuff

Son1, well he was at school but not by much, so five or six, stated, "I don't need to eat meat to live, do I ?", and that was pretty much it.
Masses of choice, loads of healthy, natural foods. He's thirty now and still vegetarian. A diet heavy on meat is actually very limited.

Each to their own; becoming vegan, now that was hard. Damn, but I miss good strong slow ripened Scottish cheddar
Sod's law. I don't miss the pain.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Cael Nu Mara]

Y'know? I'm *really* glad I'm veggie

cheers,
M

HOW CAN YOU NOT EAT BACON ?!?!?!?!! :O







Sam

 

[jonajuna]

lol on the cheddar, couldnt eat cheese if my life depended on it, well not unless it is on a pizza of course

my son really doesn't like the concept of eating dead animal, even now (and we really did try to enable his choice, but chips, rice and baked beans dont really cut it! we must have bought every kind of pulse there ever has been and ever will be! lol) we have to "process" his meat beyond any semblance of something once living.

i dont go much on cows milk (after meat 9in which i include fish) its only dairy left isnt it?) due to a vegan friends extolling the nasty virtues of mastitus and thus puss! much prefer soya.. though of course with that you have the issue of the claim that there isnt a single non GM soya bean left on the planet

 

[Toddy]

HOW CAN YOU NOT EAT BACON ?!?!?!?!! :O


The idea is so gross, let's just not go there.
HWMBLT gets an occasional lunch of bacon rolls, or as is known chez Craig, Deadpig buns
It's a great way for me to diet The smell totally kills my appetite.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Cael Nu Mara]

Ill just stick to eating things I grow, hunt or farm. I dont even know what a soya bean is! But then again where Im from anything thats runs on electricity is somewhere between witchcraft and politics. And can someone tell me what the hell a congestion charge is?!

You dont even like the smell?!


Sam

 

[BOD]

I have heard that if you eat the whole of the rabbit then the effects are lessened or negated. This means you need to eat the brains, offal and toe nails too! I understand it is something to do with a protein rich diet alone, and something to do with the liver, production of ammonia and all sorts of other technical mumbo jumbo. Personally, in order to not have to learn stuff that you can bore somebody at a tea party with (!) I stick to the old adage of a little bit of everything in moderation!

Spot on. You see indigenous people toss the whole animal - fur, feathers and all - not gutted onto the fire.

Its more to do with our way of preparation than the intrinsic food value of rabbit.

If you look at Vilhalmur Steffansson's writing on the subject based on years with the Inuit you will see that sailors who ate only the "choice' cuts cooked fared less well than those who ate the native way - everything and often raw

One of our members did a lot of research on protein poisoning with a university in the UK. Basically there is a limit to how much protein can be turned into carbohydrate without building up toxic amounts of ammonia as i recall.

 

[C_Claycomb]

Dang, BOD got to it before I did.

That http://www.medbio.info/Horn/PDF files/rabbit starvation.pdf article is excellent. Good find!!! The only thing is doesn't do, which our member did, is connect the effect of a rabbit rich diet with a recognised symptom of liver damage seen in hospitals.

My recollection is that the liver doesn't convert protein to glucose sequentially, it doesn't do a bit, then go back and do a bit more. It will use all available ATP to get all available protein as far through the process as possible, then stall when it runs out of ATP. It can/does stall at a point where it has produced ammonia, hence people getting weaker faster than could be explained by low callorie intake alone.

 

[crazydave]

interesting on the vegetarian children as it takes a lot more care than with an adult or you risk adhd and other behavioural and physical issues that dont come to light till they are a bit older.

it became a fad when I was at school in the early 80's and a lot of the girls didnt know how to diet properly or use multivitamins so suffered accordingly. the body has to finish growing before you start messing about with it. I served with a guy who gave up meat and fags in the same evening and I've never seen a spottier poorly skinned person since even compared to voluntary work with homeless.

the worst thing in my view is a parent forcing or cadjoling a child into an unnatural lifestyle choice. I've come accross no end of kids whose mum lists them a vegetarian yet they demand a decent burger. I'd stick the kids in care if the parent refused to be educated about such issues, especially if they them selves were allready afflicted with aspergers or similar.

 

[Toddy]

Two perfectly heathy kids. Not one single health issue right through. Tell a lie, the youngest had glue ears for a bit, but it's so common round here they call it Lanarkshire glue ears at the Doctor's.
Both considered extra high IQ, and no ADHD or whatever.

Frankly there's a heck of a lot of mince ('scuse the pun ) talked about vegetarian diets. They're a damned sight healthier than most kids get these day. Any limited diet is likely to be a problem. The only things my kids didn't eat were cow, pig, hen or fish or their assorted varieties. They did eat an enormous range of everything else. Eggs were a bit of a nono, never could quite understand why anyone would want to eat one and cochineal was one of those, "These are *what* ????"

Different folks, different likes. Plenty of choice and variety in our modern world

cheers,
Toddy

p.s. Sorry Jonajuna, we've kind of hijacked your thread.