falun wrote:

Hm.... From health class a long (well, long for me) time ago can't you sustain yourself with more like 1500 calories? Especially if dealing with a smallish, sedentary, techie-type?

Well, it depends on things like age, gender, size, and activity level.

According to DietOrganizer v1.3, here are some caloric requirements to maintain current weight, based on a sedentary lifestyle:

22-year-old male, 5'6" tall, 155 pounds: 1865 calories/day
25 y.o. male, 5'7", 180 lbs: 2276 calories/day
25 y.o. female, 5'7", 160 lbs: 1879 calories/day
30 y.o. male, 5'10", 180 lbs: 2281 calories/day
30 y.o. male, 6', 220 lbs: 2615 calories/day
40 y.o. female, 5'11", 200 lbs: 2365 calories/day

Most of the nutrition charts on food labels, when calculating percentages of daily nutrients, assume an average of 2000 calories/day.

I poked around to see what body sizes would maintain at 1500 cal/day, with a sedentary lifestyle. It's possible, but all (healthy) results I came up with involved either the elderly, or very very small or thin people:

60 y.o. female, 5'8, 125 lbs
20 y.o. female, 5', 95 lbs
30 y.o. male, 5', 98 lbs

So yes, you're right, 1500 cal/day would probably keep you alive, but it's generally used more as a quantity designed to help lose weight. The target of my calculations has been based on maintaining current weight, but it really all depends what you're aiming for!

Elonka :)

RE: Lunch for about $1 a day: BumbleBee Tuna

Neoteric wrote:

So here's my first recipe:
Ghetto Office Tuna Salad

Everything except the tuna in the recipe was taken from the condiments tray in my office cafeteria. That means this meal cost me a whopping: $0.44. Regular price for bumblebee is $0.69 but a quick swipe of my safeway card saved two bits.

Ingredients:
* 1 can of BumbleBee Tuna (I used the "Light in Water", but I guess "In Oil" would be just fine.)
* 3 pkts of mayonnaise
* 1 pkt of sweet relish
* 3 pkts of pepper
* 1 pkt of salt
* 1 pkt of mustard
* half a pkt of hot sauce
* as many pkts of crackers as you can steal

Okay, I typed in your recipe to my nutritional-analysis software (DietOrganizer v1.3), and here's what I came up with.

Note: I made the assumption that the tuna fish mixture would get you through about 10 saltine crackers. If you'd like me to plug in a different number, let me know.

With the tuna, the condiments, and the crackers, the nutrition comes out as:

Calories: 480 (about 25% of a typical day's calories)
Fat: 35 grams (about 82% of recommended maximum)
Protein: 15 grams
Carbohydrates: 25 grams
Saturated fat: 4.5 grams

Sodium: 1590 mg (over 50% of recommended maximum)
Cholesterol: 45 mg
Fiber: .5 grams

Eating this mixture about 4 times a day (to reach 2000 calories/day) would:

- Definitely keep you alive, though it would mean that you were eating a diet that was: 13% protein, 21% carbohydrates, and 66% fat

- Only give you 10% of daily fiber requirements

Or in other words, prepare for heart and circulatory problems if doing it on a longterm basis.

In terms of other nutrients, it's a mixed bag. You'd be getting adequate amounts of vitamin C, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Niacin, and Folate. However, there would be very little in the way of Iron, Calcium, Vitamin B6, and zero Vitamin D or B12.

Recommendations: Include a multivitamin with iron, a calcium supplement, and concentrate on getting fiber into one of the other meals. I'd also recommend switching from 3 packets of mayo, to 1 packet of light mayo, which would bring the protein/carb/fat ratios more into line: 24/42/34, though that would also reduce the calories of one batch from 480 to 260, so it would require several additional batches per day to meet calorie requirements. The next gating factor would be sodium, since at that point you'd be getting 400% of the recommended maximum. Though you might be able to find a place to swipe some salt-free crackers.

For me, to reach the "$1 per meal" goal, I'd go with protein bars. You can buy them in bulk at places like Sam's Club (or online) for about $1 each. The main minuses that I saw with the bars I checked, were that they're low on fiber, and a bit *too* low fat to be comprehensive, but you can get that taken care of by going into a nightclub and grabbing a handful of (free) peanuts. Eat the below and you're at 1922 calories/day, with protein/carb/fat ratio at 23/52/24, and all nutrients taken care of:

* 4 Protein bars per day
* .5 cup of bran cereal
* .5 cup of whole milk
* 2 ounces of peanuts, scrounged from a bar somewhere
* 2 bananas (for potassium)

Looking forward to your next recipe,

Elonka :)

Lunch for about $1 a day: BumbleBee Tuna

WHATLEY, OSCIE B.,Saturday, July 23, 2005
 . . .
Service 8 p.m., Wed., July 27, at HUTCHENS Mortuary, 675 Graham Rd., Florissant with visitation 4 to 8 pm, Wed. Interment at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery with military honors at a later date. Memorial contributions may be made to the American Cancer Society.

Oscie passed away on Saturday, from complications relating to treatment for pancreatic cancer. He was 82.

During my 15 years in St. Louis, Oscie was like a father to me. So I'd like to add some of my own words, to the other obituaries appearing about him . . .

Oscie easily fit my definition of someone who was a good man. He was gentle, good-natured, intelligent, active, always interested in learning new things, and always kind to everyone around him (even when they didn't deserve it). He was one of those individuals who I learned from, not just by listening to what he said, but by example -- seeing how he lived, and how he treated others.

Among the many accomplishments of his life:

- Three children, and over a dozen grandchildren and great-grandchildren
- Steadfast support of his son, David, as David struggled to get his company Simutronics off the ground, working from his bedroom in his parents' home
- He was an award-winning daylily hybridizer
- During World War II, he was a Navy pilot
- He had a strong and lifelong marriage to his wife, Dorothy
- He had a long and successful career in aircraft design at McDonnell Douglas
- And he contributed to the design of the St. Louis Arch

But the way I will most often remember Oscie, is in his garden. The gardens at his own home were spectacular, especially around the Fourth of July, with hundreds of his award-winning flowers blooming everywhere. Plus, there was just a nice feel to the place. It was the kind of garden where you could sit outside, among the flowers and fluttering birds and scampering rabbits, and feel at peace. A little bit of heaven on earth.

Oscie lavished care on that garden. He was often up before dawn, to inspect the buds of his latest efforts and see if they had bloomed that morning. If so, he would painstakingly collect bits of pollen by hand, acting as a human bee, moving pollen from one flower to another, in the exact system he wanted, and then carefully labeling different flowers, or wrapping them up to prevent real bees from modifying his handiwork. ;)

As his health declined, it became more and more difficult for Oscie to visit his garden each morning. Towards the end, when he was restricted to a hospital bed in his home, the bed was moved close to the window so that he could at least see the garden when he woke up in the morning. And countless volunteers visited every day, helping care both for him, and for the grounds. It was impossible to know Oscie, without being aware of his love of gardening. As we took care of the flowerbeds, it was an indication of our respect for him, as well.

If I have any kind of vision of Oscie in an afterlife, it's definitely him working in a garden somewhere, surrounded by flowers, helping things to grow.

Oscie may be gone to us on this earth, but he lives on through many visible reminders of his life's efforts. The St. Louis Arch, his flowers, and his descendants, will ensure that his legacy lives on.

Elonka

Obituary: Oscie Whatley