Anyone eat a very simple diet?

While studying indigenous cultures, I’ve noticed several that survive on very simple diets, perhaps 3-4 staple foods.  They may or may not be supplemented with in-season wild, minimally cultivated foods, or game.  I know I’d get bored with it, but I wonder how this would affect weight control. No reason to overeat when the next meal is just more of the same.  A simple staple diet may also combat “homesteaders fatigue”, which seems to be induced by running around trying to produce the food variety that we are used to in the modern world.  Thoughts?

I do wonder how simple you can get and still have the range of nutrients required for health.

Historical diet here is oats, bere barley, milk (and dairy products), kale, and fish, particularly herring. Some local roots like silverweed and pignut (before potatoes). I think it covers the basics actually surprisingly well!

Hi Nancy,

There were some studies in Great Britain during WW2. I don’t really member the specifics, but it was determined in was possible with a relatively simple  mix of foods.

About a year and a half ago, I got quite ill and had to go on a simple diet. I started out just eating bananas, homemade yogurt or kefir, honey, almonds, ham, hard-boiled or scrambled eggs, green beans, 100% pure juices and maybe one or two other items, but I can't recall. I was eating just those foods for a couple months.  After a couple months I started incorporating more foods, though all were still whole foods. Though I lost a lot of weight, I became a tiny bit deficient in certain vitamins and minerals, as I hadn't put much thought into my nutrition, just was worried about which foods would keep me cured from the horrible health issue I was having. Overall I am super glad that I cut back down to just a handful of foods, as I had never lived with a whole foods diet before. The diet, I noticed, greatly reduced inflammation that I didn't even realize I had until it was gone.  It also would make stocking a pantry a breeze as long as you did not have others in your household who were not eating that way.

John F Dean wrote:There were some studies in Great Britain during WW2. I don’t really member the specifics, but it was determined in was possible with a relatively simple  mix of foods.

Thanks for the thought - I've wondered before whether a war time ration diet, might be an interesting one to follow. I found a few interesting links:
The Guardian reports on one that looked mainly at protein (the UK imported, and still does) much meat from outside the UK. So some scientists experimented on themselves, eating just what was able to be produced in the UK:

British food production in 1938 became the basis for the experimental diet: one egg a week (a third of the pre-war consumption); a quarter of a pint of milk a day (half the pre-war consumption); a pound of meat and 4oz of fish per week, assuming trawlers would be commandeered for patrols. No butter and just 4oz of margarine. But they could eat as much potato, vegetables, and wholemeal bread as they wanted. The eight guinea pigs would follow this diet for three months.

The results were good - there were no immediate health issues the scientist felt well and able to work normally. Problems reported were that meals too longer to eat since "wholemeal bread without butter" took ages to chew, as did all the potatoes required for adequate calorie intake. Poos were 250% bigger and they had a lot of flatulence!
Apparently rationing was never quite as severe as the trial diet, but also this diet was only followed for a limited period of time, so longer term issues would be unknown. They also made extra allowances in time for pregnant women since they found issues with anaemia: from this 1942 study: 25% were deficient in protein, over 60% were deficient in Fe and vitamin A, and over 70% had severe vitamin C deficiency.
Interestingly this paper concludes that

The notion that the population was healthier than it had ever been was true but this was a relative measure, which demonstrated how poor the diet had been in pre-war times

. There was also targeted supplements of cod liver oil and vitamin fortified foods. I gather that vitamin D shortage (always in a bit short supply in Northern climes) was still an issue. From the same study:

While vitamin and mineral deficiencies are almost unknown in modern life, the rise in certain diet-related cancers, diabetes and heart disease suggest that there is much still to learn from the lessons of WW2

Nancy Reading wrote:Historical diet here is oats, bere barley, milk (and dairy products), kale, and fish, particularly herring. Some local roots like silverweed and pignut (before potatoes). I think it covers the basics actually surprisingly well!

I think this is really interesting in context of our local foraging experiment last year: https://permies.com/t/225453/Neolithic-menus

From what I know of UK foraging & growing, plus nutrition, if you were starting from a rich foraging situation & adding some gardening, you'd want to start by adding
1) a couple of locally suitable bulk carbohydrate crops e.g. cereals or storage tubers;
2) a couple of protein crops e.g. peas & beans; &
3) a couple of crops for your essential fats e.g. oil seeds.

That would exchange labour for more reliable supplies of bulk macronutrients including fibre, plus sources of some key micronutrients such as Omega 3 & 6 fatty acids, B complex vitamins if you're growing cereals (B12 from accidentally eating insects with the crop ..!!), some minerals from the legumes etc. The rest of your food, you still forage.

You could still in principle be living nomadically, with movement patterns designed to bring you to a given garden at planting & harvest times, if you have sufficiently hardy crops.  I believe there are numerous examples of surviving Indigenous foodway knowledge that are in this kind of pattern.

As for me, last Spring, I had to adopt a very simple diet as I'd been given COVID-19 in Sep 2022 & I now have Long COVID-19. The GP found my potassium was dangerously high, putting me at risk of heart attack.

You don't want to be on a simple refined diet for long, but you can get essential Omega 3 fats from rapeseed oil, some essential amino acids from refined wheat flour rounded out by a little pea flour. Luckily, after gaining 3 stone, my simple diet supported me to bring my potassium back into normal range within four months.

Given my age, I'm finding upping my consumption of homegrown peas & beans (Carlin 'maple' peas, maincrop green peas for drying as well as a vegetable, fava  beans likewise) supplemented with imported pulses, and de-emphasizing 'pale carbohydrates' for lower wholegrain bread intake (I'm growing Vitanoire purple mottled potatoes, not white body ones, for example), is helping my health. Perennial kale too!

Hi Nancy,

You jogged my memory a bit more. If my memory is correct there was a effort to put more cabbage in the diet. I suspect this was to address the Vitamin C issue.

This also adds some clarity to a WW2 story of my mother’s .  She told me how people would leave nails in a bucket of water and, after several days, drink the water.

Japanese folks have lived for centuries into old age off of staples like millet during times of war.

Part of me thinks simplicity like rice and fish combined with fermentation (pickles, soy sauce) is definitely a suitable lifelong combination.

Not me. I aim to eat as diverse a diet as I can , along with very little commercial foods. I’m not looking for dietary deficiencies, but rather a robust health. I’m in my 70s, closer to 80 now. I still farm 35 hours a week.  So…….I eat as diverse a diet as I can.

I like variety and wouldn’t limit myself like that. But growing up 90% of our dinners were beef, potatoes, green beans or corn, and milk. We had other foods for other meals though, and occasionally had something else for dinner.

I definitely eat a very simple diet and have for a long time due to severe fructan intolerance. As long as i keep to a simple diet, i feel great and my health is excellent. I use a nutrition tracker to confirm i am getting full nutrition. Currently, my diet is fermented beans and fermented millet/sorghum, with ghee. Previously i have also done a carnivore diet, based on locally raised mutton, beef, or wild venison including organ meats, and fatty fish (mackerel, saury). Worked great too. I do intermittent fasting for around 20 hours daily, so that helps me look forward ro my meals!

We have been trying to greatly simplify our diet. I may not be the person to serve as an example, as I truly love a variety of foods and there are only a few foods in the world I wouldn't at least consider trying. Our diet is definitely far from simple. With that being said, here are some thoughts:

1. I've been trying to switch to more homegrown staple foods (recommend Carol Deppe's books!) - grain corn (polenta and cornbread), winter squash, potatoes, eggs, and beans. One could probably eat potatoes every day cooked in different ways. I would also argue that tomato is a staple.

2. I still buy a few staples, such as rice. Only now instead of 4 varieties of rice, I use one. The risotto may not be authentic, but still very good. I still buy pasta, also only sticking to 2 shapes (one short and one long). I made changes to many recipes such as tabouleh (to avoid buying bulgur or any other grains I uses rarely).

3. We try to limit foods to local ones. We are still eating bananas and drinking coffee I can probably survive without bananas once/if our fruit trees really get going. We no longer eat tropical fruits.

4. I am working on updating family recipes into flexible "formulas". For instance, you can use the same general recipe for majority of greens you grow and forage (mustard greens, kale, collards, nettles, sochan, radish tops) - wilt in a little olive oil with thinly sliced garlic and add a vinegar of choice and salt once almost done; don't overcook. You can make the same general recipe (such as curry) and use what you have.

5. I have been working on downsizing the number of spices I use. I try to primarily use spices I can grow myself (coriander, chili flakes, mustard, oregano, rosemary, saffron, thyme, sage, sesame, turmeric, ginger) so that I only have to purchase peppercorns, salt, nutmeg, and cumin.

6. Eating seasonally is simple in a way, but adds variety and excitement. That way, you can gorge on whatever is in season, get tired of it, and move on to the next thing.

7. I can see how boredom could lead to weight loss to a degree. I am not sure if weight control has more to do with lack of processed foods and calorie expenditure.

8. I absolutely agree that trying to grow everything or even shopping and cooking from scratch can lead to exhaustion and stress. Off topic, but I have also simplified any healthy eating rules to essentially the following: no liquid calories, fewer meals per day/limit snacking, limit processed and fried foods, limit sugars unless there is a fruit around it.

A guy who writes things I used to keep up with challenged himself some years ago to only eat bland, simple food for a month (boiled potatoes, seitan, plain boiled veg, although he did have some cheats).
He did it as a challenge, not as a weight loss strategy or medical treatment.
It was hard, apparently. Food variety is a luxury that we seem to enjoy very much. I know I personally like as diverse a diet as possible.
https://web.bookstruck.in/book/chapter/23965

I think, if there is a high quality meat (and organs) involved, the rest can be quite simple. Growing it also may be simpler than growing veggies, most of which are high maintenance crops.

Gray Henon wrote:While studying indigenous cultures, I’ve noticed several that survive on very simple diets, perhaps 3-4 staple foods.

I find this hard to believe. Maybe in very harsh environments, but considering the indigenous knowledge of various plants and animals, which surpasses the knowledge of average "civilized" people, I think they would eat more diverse foods than "us". When a friend of mine moved to the countryside years ago, she said that if she wants to know the name of any roadside plant, she just needs to ask a local child.

My simplification is more in the way I cook it. Often I don't have the time to serve something fancy so it's just broth, in which I throw whatever grew in my garden ;) plus ingredients I buy from local farmers.

This is a great question to ponder. There's so much fuss involved with preparing food.
Personally, I'd so much rather be out working in my garden than in the kitchen. So I try to keep it simple. Smoothies, huge salads, steamed potatoes. That's the bulk of my diet in the Summer.

I'm very inspired by what Anastasia says in the Ringing Cedars of Russia - "to eat as one breathes".

Food is not meant to be a chore that distracts us from more important pursuits such as communing with God through nature and creating beauty on the earth. I'm not saying cooking is bad overall, just the main point is that we have a higher purpose here and all the mundane tasks add up to distracting us from it.
To eat as one breathes one would need an extremely diverse and abundant garden. And one would be led intuitively to which foods they were drawn to that are the exact nutrition they need at the exact time. Like walking through your garden and picking some berries or herbs to nibble as you go. Food is the freshest within the first minutes after picking then rapidly declines in nutritional value so you get the most eating it in this manner. And there's a lot more to it than just vitamins.