Art said ..."Fat astronauts make a lot of sense. "

HA! HA! HA! HA HA!!!
Do you mind if I mail that suggestion in to NASA? Maybe I'll get some sort of cost-saving bonus, since they won't have to give those guys so much freeze-dried food.

Slightly more seriously, my main takeaway from this thread right now is to remember to put some multi-vitamins into my survival kit. You can last a long time on a restricted diet, if you've got a reasonable supply of vitamins.

And by the way - back to the original idea of this thread. When I go overseas and do volunteer work in remote villages, I often meet people who have restricted diets. For example, the Maasai people in Africa will typically eat just 2 meals a day, and have a cup of sweet tea for lunch. They also walk miles and miles every day. And it turns out that their health is excellent from doing this. We tend to be over-fed in America. We don't need a lot of the calories that we eat. Too much junk food.

Pete #2