The Martian movie: Matt Damon survives on potatoes

[BlueHeron]

Possible spoilers.

I haven't seen this movie yet, but I gather that Matt Damon's character, stranded on Mars, survives by growing potatoes. Slate ran an article with suggested recipes to avoid boredom:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/201 ... _make.html

Note: Damon's character has olive oil, so the recipes are not on plan.

[hazelrah]

Note: Damon's character has olive oil, so the recipes are not on plan.

Too bad. Why is it that people developing recipes cannot mention the word potato without the word oil in close proximity?


Mark

[dteresa]

As in the original experiment, he needed the olive oil if all he was eating was potatoes in order to provide more calories. The rest of us aren't stranded on Mars.

didi

[hazelrah]

As in the original experiment, he needed the olive oil if all he was eating was potatoes in order to provide more calories. The rest of us aren't stranded on Mars.

didi

I guess not. I remember being about the same size as Mars, though.

Mark

[EmmetFitzhume]

I read the book. I don't recollect Mark Watney having any olive oil. He grew potatoes and to keep them from going bad I believe his plan was to throw them outside to freeze dry in the natural martian atmosphere.

So the movie decided it needed some money from the olive oil industry?

[Risto]

Irish-born BBC talk show host Graham Norton feels the movie will do well in Ireland and calls it "one of the few cinematic celebrations of the potato": Youtube (conversation with Matt Damon and Jessica Chastain).

Damon makes a Freudian slip a few minutes later in that interview, referring to "James Bourne" when he talks about the Bourne film he's making. Then he has to joke about "Jason Bond".

[awest27]

Matt Damon played such an awful character in Interstellar that I've been turned off to seeing him in this movie, being a similar subject about space travel. But anything about potatoes will win me over!

[dailycarbs]

Not my kind of movie/actor but they played a clip on NPR. Evidently, he gets stuck there with ~400 days of rations and needs to multiply that by many times to survive until the next mission comes back. He's a botanist so it would stand to reason he's going to use his training for something like growing spuds.

[Katydid]

I've already read the book and plan to see the movie today. Stuck on Mars for years awaiting rescue and with only 6 months of NASA food and some vitamin pills, he turns a dozen potatoes brought up for Thanksgiving into nearly 2 thousand freeze dried potatoes. He uses the eyes from the original potatoes, Martian soil, reclaimed water - and his own manure for fertilizer He had no olive oil in the book.

Note: there's an actual "humanure" movement growing around the use of composting toilets.

Kate

[veg tom]

I eat potatoes to survive on earth

[Gershon]

I've already read the book and plan to see the movie today. Stuck on Mars for years awaiting rescue and with only 6 months of NASA food and some vitamin pills, he turns a dozen potatoes brought up for Thanksgiving into nearly 2 thousand freeze dried potatoes. He uses the eyes from the original potatoes, Martian soil, reclaimed water - and his own manure for fertilizer He had no olive oil in the book.

Note: there's an actual "humanure" movement growing around the use of composting toilets.

Kate

Kate,

If you are interested in learning about manure, including humanure, I suggest reading "Holy Shit" by Gene Logsdon. I'm not sure a meat and dairy eater's manure would be safe for vegetables. Personally, I use green manure in my garden and avoid the brown stuff except for one bed 50' x 3' bed of buckwheat for the bees. That is fertilized by cat manure.

After reading the book, I think I'll see how many potatoes I can grow next summer. They are easy to grow. I just buy a big bag of cheap potatoes from Walmart and plant them whole. They eventually sprout. If they are cut up, they may rot before sprouting. They can be planted in the fall and they will come up in the spring. If they get frozen, the tops die, but they keep coming back.

[MikeInFL]

In 1992, eight individuals entered the "Biosphere 2" in the Arizona desert where they lived for two years. The grew crops of bananas, papayas, sweet potatoes, beets, peanuts, lablab and cowpea beans, rice, and wheat.

They initially grew 80% of the food, and then changed to 100% when agriculture crew member Jane Poynter put the crew on a "calorie restricted, low-fat, nutrient-dense diet." The diet was nearly vegan (they consumed a little goat milk, and meat and eggs perhaps once a week) and about 50% sweet potato, and 31% of the fat they consumed was from the bananas.

"Initially, over the first six months or so, we lost between eighteen and fifty-eight pounds each. … Roy continued to assure us not to worry when we commented on our baggy pants and loose shirts because our overall health was actually improved by the combination of our diet and the superb freshness and quality of the organically grown food."

Full medical checkups found that their blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol counts dropped to healthier levels. (Mean total cholesterol decreased from 191 to 123. HDL fell from 62 to 38!)
http://boingboing.net/2011/10/19/the-biosphere-2-starvation-diet.html

They also found that the biospherians' metabolism became more efficient at extracting nutrients from their food as an adaptation to the low-calorie, high nutrient diet.

I heard on NPR that they had developed a strong sense of, in a way, eating 'yourself' recycled.

[Risto]

@MikeInFL

Thanks for that. I followed the news about Biosphere 2 at the time, but the plant-based / health aspect never occurred to me.

[Katydid]

I've already read the book and plan to see the movie today. Stuck on Mars for years awaiting rescue and with only 6 months of NASA food and some vitamin pills, he turns a dozen potatoes brought up for Thanksgiving into nearly 2 thousand freeze dried potatoes. He uses the eyes from the original potatoes, Martian soil, reclaimed water - and his own manure for fertilizer He had no olive oil in the book.

Note: there's an actual "humanure" movement growing around the use of composting toilets.

Kate

Kate,

If you are interested in learning about manure, including humanure, I suggest reading "Holy Shit" by Gene Logsdon. I'm not sure a meat and dairy eater's manure would be safe for vegetables. Personally, I use green manure in my garden and avoid the brown stuff except for one bed 50' x 3' bed of buckwheat for the bees. That is fertilized by cat manure.

After reading the book, I think I'll see how many potatoes I can grow next summer. They are easy to grow. I just buy a big bag of cheap potatoes from Walmart and plant them whole. They eventually sprout. If they are cut up, they may rot before sprouting. They can be planted in the fall and they will come up in the spring. If they get frozen, the tops die, but they keep coming back.

Thanks for the book tip. I'm actually studying this because I'm interested in the whole "off-grid" movement and have my eye on an "up north" off-grid cottage in the area where my family is buried. While the cottage has an outhouse, I'm interested an indoor composting toilets, winters being pretty hellish in Michigan. Something to dream about in the next few year until I retire

Kate

[Chile]

Kate, the definitive guide to Humanure is "The Humanure Handbook" by Joe Jenkins. Website of same name. It's a fascinating read and currently in practice by many people in the green, prepper, and/or survivalist movements. Another interesting book along the same lines is "Liquid Gold" about using urine for fertilizer. There are distinct advantages to that as it is a sterile product leaving the body and can be used immediately on well-mulched beds (nitrogen + carbon - just like in compost bins.) If I remember right, humanure takes a 2-year composting cycle to get to the safe usable stage.

I read "The Martian" as well and was impressed with the whole potato-human fertilizer cycle he put together.