Another "if times get hard" idea

       Clearly some cultures and some individuals in any culture are better suited to survival than others.

            Even Derku in Vladimir Klavdievich Arseniev's book lived and survived in the bitter cold Siberian winters. So did Lewis and Clark and their men in the bitter Rocky Mountain winter when they were there. Heck they even ate 191 dogs and many horses in order to survive.  

            My opinion is mostly based on book reading, and practical experience in the Marines.

            Let me say it another way. Some people adapt better than others, usually like they don't let anything go to waste. Now that often means food, but it can mean many other things, too. Our mental attitude counts, too. Even now days I save my dryer lint for kindling, if times get hard.

            I always remember one book from decades ago. It was called "Prisoners of the Japanese". In this book, the Dutch who had lived in the East, often who grew up in the East,  survived at a better rate than others, like we Americans survived at a lesser rate. All this data was from POW's.  In my mind, I interpreted it as they were better at not letting anything, especially food, go to waste. Said another way, they would, and could, eat things most Westerners would often decline, like turn their nose up to it. And so many survived harsh conditions, often POW conditions,  better than others survived, like we Americans.

            So, I as an American, and as a Marine, suggest eating anything and everything you can when you can. Like don't waste one grain of cooked rice, for example. Or even the old joke about eating rat tails probably has origins in reality.

            This post is prompted by making a meal in my rice cooker, and throwing away things in cans that just stick to the can walls. Heck, I could have washed it out with water or broth, but instead just threw the can into the trash can. And what I threw out was food that could have benefited me in harder times.

            Even the Japanese in rural areas had "honey buckets" at one time to collect human poop, and use it for fertilizer in the farm fields. Now days, maybe that is not a good health idea, but one can use it elsewhere, like for worm beds that provide worms for catching fish we can eat.  In other words, let nothing go to waste...like to the extreme as many Americans might say.

            Anyway, this post is just an idea to add to your own bag of tricks if and when hard times might hit. It might even be reminiscent of ancestors who suffered, and survived, the Depression times, like less than a century ago. They were smart, but so are we.