Micronutrient Availability in Alternative Foods During Agricultural Catastrophes

David Denkenberger,Joshua Pearce

doi:10.3390/agriculture8110169

Abstract

Several catastrophes could block the sun, including asteroid/comet impact, super volcanic eruption, and nuclear war with the burning of cities (nuclear winter). Previous work has analyzed alternate food supplies (e.g., mushrooms growing on dead trees, bacteria growing on natural gas). This was shown to be technically capable of feeding everyone with macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates, and lipids) and minerals, although economics and politics remain uncertain. The present work analyzes vitamin availability in such alternative food scenarios. The vitamin content of various alternate foods is compared to the US recommended daily allowance (RDA) as well as the average requirement defined by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and insufficiencies of single food sources are discussed. Single alternate food sources are always deficient in some vitamins, and the problems associated with this are discussed. To prevent disease in an alternative food scenario a wide range of foods must be consumed, or the diet must be supplemented. Backup plans discussed include chemical synthesis of vitamins, plants grown with artificial light and growing bacteria rich in certain vitamins. Finally, insights from this analysis are provided for combating existing micronutritional deficiencies using alternative foods today.

Highlights

Agriculture and the global human civilization dependent on it relies on access to sunlight.Several global catastrophes could partially block the sun, which would result in significant reductions in agricultural output and the potential for mass human starvation
Previous work has been done on the basics of minerals [17] and this paper will focus on vitamins to begin to fill in these knowledge gaps. This preliminary study briefly summarizes the alternative food pathways and evaluates the micronutrients available to meet the percent of the US recommended daily allowance (US RDA) as well as the average requirement defined by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) with these foods and closest analogous foods when data are not available
Most benefits from micronutrients appear to come from a well-balanced diet [18], which is what should be the goal of each community in an alternative food scenario

Summary

Introduction

Agriculture and the global human civilization dependent on it relies on access to sunlight.Several global catastrophes could partially block the sun, which would result in significant reductions in agricultural output and the potential for mass human starvation. The three most probable sun-obscuring scenarios include: (1) bolide (asteroid/comet) impact, (2) a super volcanic eruption or continental basalt flows, or (3) and nuclear war with the burning of cities (nuclear winter) [1,2]. These are low probability events, they have finite non-zero probabilities [3], with the most probable being nuclear war. Two estimates based on quantitative models indicate the chance of full-scale nuclear war is ∼1% per year [4,5] This is significant as most of the nuclear powers possess

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Conclusion