Absolutely agree, the limiting factors are protein and fat, followed by caloric density. If you have kids, animal protein and fat are not optional in their diet, and animal fats have a better balance than plant fats, with way fewer ride-alongs:
Burra Maluca wrote:
I make muffins using ground linseed (flaxseed)
Be cautious of flaxseed. It contains four times as much phytoestroten as soy, and flaxseed is more digestible so the phytoestrogen is much more available and more readily absorbed. You can make yourself seriously hypothyroid in a hurry, and it can cause deformities in the fetus, especially males.
This is why I don't feed Diamond-manufactured dog food in my kennel (or any other containing flaxseed, but those are all rebadged Diamond). When I was using Diamond, fertility dropped from the canine norm of 87% to less than 50%, and there were always at least one or two deformed puppies in every litter, usually males. (Most spectacularly open skulls and open midlines, but also abnormal limb, mouth, and genital structure.) Stopped feeding Diamond, and the problem went away overnight.
Sesame seed is also high in phytoestrogens, but at only about 1/4th the level of soy.
Want to raise red meat that will eat pretty much anything, doesn't take up much space, and produces enough fat? Mice, or rats. Trouble is keeping the little buggers contained, and the amount of processing per pound. Chickens are easier, don't escape as easily, and can be kept in a smaller space. (I've eaten roast field mouse. Tastes like fine beef, and you can eat the bones, but what I could catch wasn't really worth the trouble. Kinda like crawdads that way. Needs to be thoroughly cooked, because of the parasite load.) Livetraps may be worth the effort, tho.
If I needed milk in a constricted environment, I'd consider goats. You can tie up a goat. (Remember you don't need just the milkers, you also occasionally need a billy or bull. Bulls are a lot of trouble.) I knew a wildlife biologist who spent a lot of years in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and he reported that there were feral goats out in the desert, in areas with zero plant life, that apparently subsisted entirely on newspaper that blew out of the cities.
There was an interesting study in Africa, where malnourished kids are a dime a dozen and tend to be pretty uniform in a given area. The study tested IQ, then provided 3 years of calorie supplements through the schools, then retested IQ. The kids who got their added calories as carbohydrates showed no improvement. The kids who got them as fat showed an improvement of 3 points. But the kids who got the same added calories as protein showed an improvement of 10 points, which is significant. (This was a large study, IIRC about 40,000 kids.)
