how to make pemmican - the ultimate survival food

Eivind Bjoerkavaag wrote:Rabbits is lean meat

Geoffrey Levens wrote:As a 25 year practitioner of Trad. Chinese Medicine and lifetime student of nutrition I have to say you would need to supplement it heavily w/ produce to get enough vitamins and minerals plus all the other micronutrients to live on it long term. Otherwise, within a very short time, few months absolute max, you would be developing a multitude of severe nutritional deficiencies.

Len Ovens wrote:

Geoffrey Levens wrote:As a 25 year practitioner of Trad. Chinese Medicine and lifetime student of nutrition I have to say you would need to supplement it heavily w/ produce to get enough vitamins and minerals plus all the other micronutrients to live on it long term. Otherwise, within a very short time, few months absolute max, you would be developing a multitude of severe nutritional deficiencies.

Tell that to the inuit, who eat nothing but meat for months at a time. The secret here is that the meat is not cooked and so many of the nutritious bits are not destroyed as they are when meat is cooked. (vitamin C being but one example).

Geoffrey Levens wrote:

Len Ovens wrote:

Geoffrey Levens wrote:As a 25 year practitioner of Trad. Chinese Medicine and lifetime student of nutrition I have to say you would need to supplement it heavily w/ produce to get enough vitamins and minerals plus all the other micronutrients to live on it long term. Otherwise, within a very short time, few months absolute max, you would be developing a multitude of severe nutritional deficiencies.

Tell that to the inuit, who eat nothing but meat for months at a time. The secret here is that the meat is not cooked and so many of the nutritious bits are not destroyed as they are when meat is cooked. (vitamin C being but one example).

They do and have well documented very high rates of cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, etc.

Len Ovens wrote:

Geoffrey Levens wrote:

Len Ovens wrote:

Geoffrey Levens wrote:As a 25 year practitioner of Trad. Chinese Medicine and lifetime student of nutrition I have to say you would need to supplement it heavily w/ produce to get enough vitamins and minerals plus all the other micronutrients to live on it long term. Otherwise, within a very short time, few months absolute max, you would be developing a multitude of severe nutritional deficiencies.

Tell that to the inuit, who eat nothing but meat for months at a time. The secret here is that the meat is not cooked and so many of the nutritious bits are not destroyed as they are when meat is cooked. (vitamin C being but one example).

They do and have well documented very high rates of cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, etc.

My wife works in a hospital... these are the same things 1st world people are dying of. Anyway, I have no wish to argue. I do think there are other things worth while eating besides meat.

Cassie Langstraat wrote:dried berries can be added as well

The ripe fruit of hackberries are less than 1/4 inch in diameter and consist of a thin, sweet skin surrounding a large, hard seed. This edible seed is rich in protein and fats, but is extremely hard. Trying to crush the seed with your teeth can easily result in a broken tooth. You are better off crushing up the berries in a mortar & pestle to make a sweet, energizing paste.

R Scott wrote:The original power bar.

I have made it, poorly. Had a friend that made it wonderful. It doesn't make you feel full if you are used to bulky high carbs meals, but it will keep you going.

Rick Howd wrote:Starting with very lean meat dried to be brittle and then powdered works best, this prevents the fat from becoming rancid.

Geoffrey Levens wrote:

Len Ovens wrote:

Geoffrey Levens wrote:As a 25 year practitioner of Trad. Chinese Medicine and lifetime student of nutrition I have to say you would need to supplement it heavily w/ produce to get enough vitamins and minerals plus all the other micronutrients to live on it long term. Otherwise, within a very short time, few months absolute max, you would be developing a multitude of severe nutritional deficiencies.

Tell that to the inuit, who eat nothing but meat for months at a time. The secret here is that the meat is not cooked and so many of the nutritious bits are not destroyed as they are when meat is cooked. (vitamin C being but one example).

They do and have well documented very high rates of cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, etc. When you live in traditional way in very harsh, survival threatening climate, and your main way of gathering food is dangerous hunting, you tend to die quite young, before the diseases can really manifest life threatening symptoms. And they did eat plants, partly fermented/digested from the stomachs of the whales, seals, etc that they killed and ate.

Chase Anderson wrote:I've read up on Pemmican over the last year or so, as well as Keto-Adaption, which is kind of the main application that this is for...specifically meaning a diet with an absence of carbohydrates. I've been working towards keto-adaption and I do feel much better and rarely get cravings for food like when I was Carb-based.

Cassie Langstraat wrote:So I came across this article about "the ultimate survival food" so I was intrigued. I will admit I had never heard of pemmican.. Also it's not the prettiest looking treat I've ever seen.

Cj Verde wrote:
I wonder how many carbs that pemmican has? You wouldn't want your survival food to knock you out of ketosis!

Len Ovens wrote:Even in ketosis, there has to be sugar in your blood or you would first not have energy to do anything and then die.

Rick Howd wrote:...isn't dry enough to powder properly anyway...Starting with very lean meat dried to be brittle and then powdered works best

Cj Verde wrote:

Chase Anderson wrote:You wouldn't want your survival food to knock you out of ketosis!

In addition to comments on this above, if you were really using it as survival food, ketosis vs carb/sugar burning would likely not be a big concern, really not even on the radar in the distance. At least so it seems to me from my comfortable, middle class perspective

Dan Boone wrote:

Cassie Langstraat wrote:dried berries can be added as well

All my life I have been seeing casual references to pemmican, typically described as a compact stable trail food made from meat, fat, and berries. I always assumed that the berries were primarily for flavoring.

And then I discovered the hackberry tree. Hackberries are sweet and delicious, but have flesh that's thin and dry and scant, surrounding a toothbreaking hard seed.

Hackberries are also often described as one of the common ingredients in pemmican, although I couldn't find a truly persuasive ethnographic source for that info in a fast search just now.

As I gnawed the scant sweetness off my hackberries, I wondered "would it really be worth the trouble to put this in pemmican?"

Then I finally saw this at Foraging Texas, and everything fell into place for me:

The ripe fruit of hackberries are less than 1/4 inch in diameter and consist of a thin, sweet skin surrounding a large, hard seed. This edible seed is rich in protein and fats, but is extremely hard. Trying to crush the seed with your teeth can easily result in a broken tooth. You are better off crushing up the berries in a mortar & pestle to make a sweet, energizing paste.

Suddenly this makes much more sense as a pemmican ingredient. It's not just for flavoring; it's a substantial component of the nutrition, adding carbohydrates and phytonutrients along with additional calorie-dense plant oils and protein.

jay wong wrote:Can pemmican be sustainable?