Adult males ate up to 14lbs of potatoes a day

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Adult males ate up to 14lbs of potatoes a day

Postby trotskyite » Mon Sep 18, 2017 8:09 am

"Adult males ate up to 14lbs of potatoes a day..... estimated at 7million tons a year to feed the population....as monotonous as the diet was the Irish were better nourished and healthier than other populations in the rest of Europe at the time"


From a sign at the famine museum Dublin I observed yesterday 14 lbs :eek:
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Re: Adult males ate up to 14lbs of potatoes a day

Postby Branson » Mon Sep 18, 2017 8:12 am

Suppose they wore a sack on their back and carried and ate the spuds all the way until bed.
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Re: Adult males ate up to 14lbs of potatoes a day

Postby bbq » Mon Sep 18, 2017 9:47 am

https://kopisusutwo.wordpress.com/2016/03/30/every-day-was-a-holiday-the-irish-peasant-diet/ wrote:What did they eat them with? Fresh milk or buttermilk, butter, salt, perhaps some onion. Along the coasts, especially, people added seaweed or fish when they could.

Image

Chris Voigt was doing pretty good after only 60 days:

Image

Oh, Danny boy, the spuds, the spuds are calling.

Wait a minute, Frederic Weatherly should be a British songwriter and they're already plenty of meat with potatoes back then. Never mind.
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Re: Adult males ate up to 14lbs of potatoes a day

Postby Ltldogg » Mon Sep 18, 2017 10:58 am

Those results are expected :)
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Re: Adult males ate up to 14lbs of potatoes a day

Postby greentea » Mon Sep 18, 2017 4:19 pm

trotskyite wrote:"Adult males ate up to 14lbs of potatoes a day..... estimated at 7million tons a year to feed the population....as monotonous as the diet was the Irish were better nourished and healthier than other populations in the rest of Europe at the time"


From a sign at the famine museum Dublin I observed yesterday 14 lbs :eek:

I read about this in "Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent" Paperback – 2011
by John Reader
It was fascinating to read about how the potato influenced history.
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Re: Adult males ate up to 14lbs of potatoes a day

Postby Thrasymachus » Mon Sep 18, 2017 5:16 pm

Is that a maximum number for exceptionally large males and not an average? I assume most people would blow up in weight eating that much potatoes.

Wow, 14 lbs a day, that is alot of mass to get through your mouth and digest. Uggh something like that is just not for me.
Last edited by Thrasymachus on Mon Sep 18, 2017 5:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Adult males ate up to 14lbs of potatoes a day

Postby Willijan » Mon Sep 18, 2017 5:17 pm

greentea wrote:
trotskyite wrote:"Adult males ate up to 14lbs of potatoes a day..... estimated at 7million tons a year to feed the population....as monotonous as the diet was the Irish were better nourished and healthier than other populations in the rest of Europe at the time"


From a sign at the famine museum Dublin I observed yesterday 14 lbs :eek:

I read about this in "Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent" Paperback – 2011
by John Reader
It was fascinating to read about how the potato influenced history.


I also read about the history of the potato in a book called 1493: Uncoverinng the New World Columbus Created, by Charles C. Mann, which Dr. McDougall recommended in one of his videos. It is a book that gave me a much wider view and better understanding of how European exploration starting with Columbus influenced the world then and ever since. But more to the point, the author says, when discussing the diet of the European poor, that they were the best looking and healthier than those of the time with a richer diet.
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Re: Adult males ate up to 14lbs of potatoes a day

Postby BlueGene » Mon Sep 18, 2017 5:51 pm

Thrasymachus wrote:Is that a maximum number for exceptionally large males and not an average? I assume most people would blow up in weight eating that much potatoes.

Wow, 14 lbs a day, that is alot of mass to get through your mouth and digest. Uggh something like that is just not for me.


They did a lot of hard physical labor back then.
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Re: Adult males ate up to 14lbs of potatoes a day

Postby Pumpkin Pete » Mon Sep 18, 2017 6:43 pm

I read about this in "Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent" Paperback – 2011
by John Reader
It was fascinating to read about how the potato influenced history.


I concur with this so much so that I have read the book twice.
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Re: Adult males ate up to 14lbs of potatoes a day

Postby Risto » Tue Sep 19, 2017 3:37 pm

Thrasymachus wrote:Is that a maximum number for exceptionally large males and not an average? I assume most people would blow up in weight eating that much potatoes.


6400 g of potatoes is about 4900 kcal, so about double the energy spent by a mostly sedentary modern man. Nothing unusual for physical labor, or very active athletes.
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Re: Adult males ate up to 14lbs of potatoes a day

Postby Drew_ab » Tue Sep 19, 2017 7:18 pm

Risto wrote:
Thrasymachus wrote:Is that a maximum number for exceptionally large males and not an average? I assume most people would blow up in weight eating that much potatoes.


6400 g of potatoes is about 4900 kcal, so about double the energy spent by a mostly sedentary modern man. Nothing unusual for physical labor, or very active athletes.


Not to mention that about 500 of those calories would be from fibre, which are more or less not digested.

We all know that calories aren't created equal. 2000 calories of plants = much slimming than 2000 calories of animal products or processed foods. Also, excess carbohydrate calories are often burned as heat by the body. Someone may have a more scientific explanation of this, but I've read about it before from Dr. McDougall and T. Colin Campbell.

I would have done good in those times! Bring on the potatoes!
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Re: Adult males ate up to 14lbs of potatoes a day

Postby BlueGene » Wed Sep 20, 2017 2:02 pm

The caloric contribution of fiber is already calculated into the USDA and NCCM databases. 0 kcal/g for insoluble fiber and up to 2.6 kcal/gram for soluble/fermentable fiber (from the resultant short-chain fatty acids).



Image

http://www.fao.org/docrep/006/y5022e/y5022e04.htm
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Re: Adult males ate up to 14lbs of potatoes a day

Postby Dougalling » Wed Sep 20, 2017 4:18 pm

A one pounder potato every hour. :D
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Re: Adult males ate up to 14lbs of potatoes a day

Postby Vegankit » Wed Sep 20, 2017 8:12 pm

Pumpkin Pete wrote:I read about this in "Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent" Paperback – 2011
by John Reader
It was fascinating to read about how the potato influenced history.


I concur with this so much so that I have read the book twice.
I read it too - highly recommend it.

The men weren't eating all those potatoes - part of their intake was alcohol they made using the potato according to both John Reader's book and another book I read that was someones PhD dissertation.
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Re: Adult males ate up to 14lbs of potatoes a day

Postby BlueGene » Thu Sep 21, 2017 8:04 am

Vegankit wrote:
Pumpkin Pete wrote:I read about this in "Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent" Paperback – 2011
by John Reader
It was fascinating to read about how the potato influenced history.


I concur with this so much so that I have read the book twice.
I read it too - highly recommend it.

The men weren't eating all those potatoes - part of their intake was alcohol they made using the potato according to both John Reader's book and another book I read that was someones PhD dissertation.


When I first started fermenting my own sauerkraut, I thought I'd try fermenting potatoes instead of cabbage. What I ended up with was the nastiest "vodka mash" you'd ever want to taste! :eek:
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