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?

  • Mario_Dies.wavOP
    23•1 year ago

    Would it be at least marginally better to eat the pickles, or would you be better off just fasting? Could they give you a few more days to live, at least, in hopes of rescue?

    • @Broken_Monitor
      80•1 year ago

      Are you stuck in a pickle factory? Blink twice if you’re under duress.

          • @[email protected]
            5•11 months ago

            If you are stuck right now. Go ahead and eat some pickles. Some calories and nutrition is better than completely 0. Also keep in mind that Cal stands for Kilocalories, so a pickle serving may have anywhere from 100 to 5000 calories (0-5 Cal) based on the prior numbers

            • Mario_Dies.wavOP
              4•11 months ago

              Cal stands for Kilocalories

              I forget this a lot! It seems so unintuitive. I wonder why they didn’t just go with “kcal” or some other abbreviation.

    • @Jiggle_Physics
      26•1 year ago

      if you are discussing short-term survive-ability, while waiting for rescue, then eating pickles is better than nothing. They will provide water, vitamins, electrolytes, etc. If you are discussing living off of pickles as a lifestyle, or prolonged diet option, then it isn’t enough.

      • LanternEverywhere
        20•1 year ago

        It would do the opposite of providing water, it would almost immediately decrease the amount of water available to your body.

        • snooggums
          6•11 months ago

          The pickles themselves shouldn’t be a net negative for hydration, but drinking the juice would be.

          • @thawed_caveman
            2•11 months ago

            So dry them thoroughly before eating?

            And then you DIY distill the pickle juice to get as much water and as little acid as possible

    • @[email protected]
      4•11 months ago

      They have some carbs and protein at least, and vitamins and electrolytes. The water would probably help but I’d wonder if it would be too salty.