Would Vitamin pills be a good thing to store?

[bigpaul]

(2 February 2013, 18:50)Mortblanc Wrote:

(2 February 2013, 18:06)Skean Dhude Wrote: It is alway handy to have spare vitamins but remember people lived for thousand of years in the UK without supplimenting their food. Try and get your vitamins from natural sources. Vits don't last forever.

Yes, and life expectancy was 35 and infant mortality was above 50% in the first year and 50% of the survivors did not make it to age 10.

Practally no one made it to 30 with any of their teeth.

Buy a lifetime supply.

that was because they didnt eat the right sort of diet, they didnt have access to fresh fruit and veg.

[Scythe13]

(2 February 2013, 19:33)bigpaul Wrote: that was because they didnt eat the right sort of diet, they didnt have access to fresh fruit and veg.

Amazingly, there is no evidence for the requirement for fruit in the diet.

However, access to fresh veg was still there....but in 3-5 of the 12 months in each year. The quality of the veg was pretty low as well. Thankfully we have wonderful GM crops, pesticides, chemical fertilisers, and loads of cool science stuff (no seriously, I'm well into the whole 'frankenfood' thing! I'm all for GM and radiated crops. Argue all you want, but that's just how it is. I'm stubborn as a mule, smell like one too).

Crops would be harvested in the agrarian age (because they had farms and would have understood planting and harvesting cycles), so winter would consist of mostly meat, oats, wheat, and other stored grains. Not very big in the ol'vitamin ratio. Winter would be the main time you'd be looking to supplement, in my opinion.

The ideal thing to grow would be spinach! That's packed with sooo many vitamins (the iron level is actually wrong, the original studies of iron levels in spinach actually placed the decimal point in the wrong place, and there's 1/10th the iron that people believe. It's one of those lesser known facts of nutrition, but if you google it you'll be able to laugh at nearly all the packaging in the supermarkets haha). Even with spinach as your main vitamin and mineral provider, you'd still need to supplement with a vitamin B-complex (covering the B-Vitamin spectrum).

My BOB has a small tub of about 100 multi vit+mineral. But if you get a tub, you can add about another 40% more tablets than is already in there. As long as you get an anti oxidiser and a water absorber in there, the vitamins will last a lot longer, and you'll have much more in each pack than you initially did (better use of space).

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Probably should mention, carob is full of ALL the vitamins and minerals you need!!! It's basically chocolate, but not as sweet.

[Geordie_Rob]

Didn't eskimo's live virtually all year round on a meat diet? Not saying vits aren't important. I certainly stock them.

[bigpaul]

if we're talking about after TSHTF, which i assume we are-why would you bother hoarding vitamins otherwise-their in the shops right?, GM is probably not going to be available-unless you find out where they store the stuff! most of your vitamins come from fruit and veg, we started eating fruit cos we were hunter/gatherers and we collected any food that was available.

[Geordie_Rob]

Paul, I've got them for lean times that may happen. People have been well fed (to a certain extent) & still died through vitamin deficiency.

Just like the other preps, they're an insurance policy.

[Tarrel]

(2 February 2013, 20:20)Geordie_Rob Wrote: Paul, I've got them for lean times that may happen. People have been well fed (to a certain extent) & still died through vitamin deficiency.

Just like the other preps, they're an insurance policy.

Agreed, they're a good hedge against having to subsist on a less-than-ideal diet, at least for a while.

Not sure what their useful shelf life is.

[Scythe13]

(2 February 2013, 20:12)bigpaul Wrote: if we're talking about after TSHTF, which i assume we are-why would you bother hoarding vitamins otherwise-their in the shops right?

They're in the shops now. WTSHTF, will they still be there? Well, if you're willing to walk down after TSHTF and check it out, then by all means. But because it's not something you can guarantee, then it makes sense to stock up on it. Same as toilet paper, soap, tooth brushes, and stuff like that. Yes people are mostly dumb, but it only takes 1 person to empty the shelf....i.e. me.

(2 February 2013, 20:12)bigpaul Wrote: most of your vitamins come from fruit and veg, we started eating fruit cos we were hunter/gatherers and we collected any food that was available.

Fruit will be hard to come by. You're not going to find Florida Oranges growing by the side of the road. You're just as likely to find apples in winter as you are to find mammoths at any time of the year.

We have cultivated crops, however pathetically by modern standards for thousands of years. We actually led a very short time (relatively speaking as a race, and not just in lifespan) as pure hunter gatherers. When we lived like that, we weren't living in the colder climates we live in today. Vikings were not hunter-gatherers. Even back thousands of years, deep into living BC, society was mostly farmers and craftsmen. Go further back than ancient Greece, back to ancient China, Tibet, or places like that. We had many farms. Go back to Babylon, ancient Egypt, thousands of years BC....farmers.

The only places where hunter-gatherer communities did well were places where there was a good temperature year round. Jungles, and VERY specialised civilisations, like Australia, Arabic areas (but even they were farmers, moving their cattle through the deserts), the African bush. All places were harsh, but manageable, providing you moved around the country to places as of and where needed. Even native Americans used to move around to the areas. They'd also plant crops to come back to when they were leaving an area.

The hunter-gatherer idea is VERY hard to come by, and not possible as a long term (or even short term, a couple of years) living plan. At best I'd go with a hunter-gatherer society for 1 year. At a HUGE push, 2 years.

[bigpaul]

(3 February 2013, 00:49)Scythe13 Wrote: The hunter-gatherer idea is VERY hard to come by, and not possible as a long term (or even short term, a couple of years) living plan. At best I'd go with a hunter-gatherer society for 1 year. At a HUGE push, 2 years.

Scythe, Humans were hunter/gatherers for THOUSANDS of years, they were nomads who moved to where the food was, when one area was picked clean they moved onto the next one, the only settled in one place when they started farming. when i say fruits i dont mean oranges, mangoes or anything like that, i mean raspberries, blackberries, apples and other edible BRITISH fruit, you can even find WILD strawberries if you know what they look like.

[Scythe13]

(3 February 2013, 10:25)bigpaul Wrote:

(3 February 2013, 00:49)Scythe13 Wrote: The hunter-gatherer idea is VERY hard to come by, and not possible as a long term (or even short term, a couple of years) living plan. At best I'd go with a hunter-gatherer society for 1 year. At a HUGE push, 2 years.

Scythe, Humans were hunter/gatherers for THOUSANDS of years, they were nomads who moved to where the food was, when one area was picked clean they moved onto the next one, the only settled in one place when they started farming. when i say fruits i dont mean oranges, mangoes or anything like that, i mean raspberries, blackberries, apples and other edible BRITISH fruit, you can even find WILD strawberries if you know what they look like.

It really wasn't that long. I thought the same a while back, then did more research. Even cave men era used to help nurture certain plants for when they returned to the area. It's really cool and interesting when you get into the history of it all.

[bigpaul]

it was interesting when we moved to Glastonbury and learnt the history of the place. it called Somerset cos it was where the SUMMER people went, they moved onto the levels to hunt and fish and then moved back onto the hills in the Winter, you cant really live on The Levels in the winter, its far to foggy and damp.