Can you survive on pickles alone, for a while? - eviltoast

Almost every jar of pickles claims a serving of pickles has zero calories. Now clearly, this is incorrect and the result of exploiting some ridiculous FDA loophole, since anyone knows that cucumbers provide calories.

So let’s say you’re in a situation where you lose all access to food, but you’ve got effectively unlimited access to pickles – like, you’re trapped inside a recently abandoned pickle warehouse.

Could you conceivably eat enough pickles to survive for a month? Two months? Or would your body just shut down from all the sodium and acid?

  • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    I’d give it 3 or 4 days, if literally all you have is pickles. All that salt and vinegar will dehydrate you pretty damn good, despite all the liquid you’re ostensibly consuming.

    Even if you had fresh water present as well, I think you’d wind up with one hell of a stomachache by day 2 or 3.

    • skydivekingair@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Yeah they said only pickles, and even with the liquid in the pickles it’s so briny that unless they are also drinking additional water their kidneys would keep using more water the same way drinking salt water would cause. I took the question as only pickles and that, as you said, would only last until dehydration sets in. Now if they have unlimited fresh water I’d say until malnutrition so maybe a few weeks, a few horrible weeks. Just playing along and speculating, I am not a MD.

      • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Yeah, I think I’d rather spend my time seeing if I could use the pickle juice to corrode some component of the place that’s keeping me locked in. Fuck all that noise.

        I’d take, like, one or two jars of pickles with me when I left, though.