Will these foods provide sufficient nutrition?
A few of my previous questions have mentioned that the colonists to this world will be scrambling to get whatever foods they can grow, because the planet's fauna is largely nonexistent (There's sea life, but not much else) and the flora offers little to no nutrition due to different biology.
With that in mind, I want to make sure the foods I do provide my people don't have them dieing of malnutrition.
Keep the following assumptions in mind. They are firm and any changes to them are outside of the scope of this question:
- Growing sufficient quantity is not an issue.
- Genetic Diversity is not an issue.
- Sustainability is not an issue.
- Native flora/fauna can provide calories, but no nutrition.
- The list of items is complete and embodies the entirety of the food types available.
- Source is not an isssue.
- Foods not listed are not available (See below, though).
Now, for the list of foods available, and some uses I've found for them. In no particular order:
- Barley: Can be ground into a gluten-containing flour to make breads and similar items. Also can be used for some alcoholic brewing such as beer, and is used in some soups and stews.
- Flax: Flax is a super-useful plant, capable of being used to make Flax Milk, a milk substitute, and can replace eggs in many recipes. It can also be used for making vegetable oil, and flaxseed sprouts can be eaten and are slightly spicy. Linseed Meal (The byproduct of making oil) is also a good food for rabbits. Flax is also useful for a variety of non-food products. Flax flour can also be used to compliment barley flour and/or corn flour, but isn't gluten-containing.
- Corn: Aside from regular corn and, potentially, popcorn, Corn can be used to make cornmeal, corn flour, corn starch, corn syrup, and corn sugar. On this world, there will be breeds of corn selected for sugar content, as sugarcane or sugar beets are not available.
- Lemons: Lemons are used in turning Flax Milk (And, in reality, other non-dairy "Milks") into cream, butter, and the like. Lemons have also been used with baking soda, before baking powder was invented.
- Coffee: Coffee can be cooked into things, but I'm really not sure what.
- Green, Red, some spicy peppers
- Tomatoes
- Cucumbers
- Radishes
- Green Beans
- Lettuce
- Peaches
- Potatoes
- Dill
- Fennel
- Sesame
- Rabbit meat
- Snake Meat
- Mouse meat (Although, admittedly, mice do not provide much meat...)
- Various types of yeast (Bread yeast, beer yeast, etc)
Can these foods provide enough nutrition to sustain people appropriately? If the answer is "No" I would like to know what is missing, and if you're feeling inspired, a food that would fix the deficiency while still being able to be easily grown from a seed that is stored and would possibly be on a space vessel. As a few of these items wouldn't be common items, I'm not terribly worried about realism as that can be explained by "A crewmember had a plant/seeds" etc. Any additional animals will not be considered due to other plot constraints.
0 answers
0 comment threads