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?
I’m pretty sure this would kill you in a short amount of time. Chubbyemu had a video on Youtube where a single, large jar of pickles was enough to nearly kill someone (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gF69voHU_ys).
til the ld50 of pickles is disappointingly low
That’s just simple electrolyte imbalance. If you’ve got working kidneys and access to water, you can extract enough calories for general functioning from pickles alone. You just have to spread out your pickle consumption. You will start to run into macronutrient and micronutrient problems fairly quickly though. How that presents itself depends on body composition, as you start to autocatabolize your muscles for spare parts. Could survive for 2 years if you’re a good meal for yourself.
The thing with pickles, is while it’s not a complete protein and it’s low in protein, it does contain some protein.