Heartbreaking substitutes

People have turned to some surprising—and often heartbreaking—substitutes when food runs out. Here are a few examples from different times and places where scarcity pushed people to get creative or simply survive:

	Clay Cookies	In Haiti, some people eat mud cookies. Women collect clay, mix it with salt, fat, and water, and then bake it in the sun. These aren’t nutritious, neither tasty, but can trick the stomach into feeling fuller.
	Grass and Leaves	In times of extreme famine, people have resorted to eating grass, leaves, or even weeds, boiling them into soups or stews. While not very nutritious on their own, they can provide small amounts of vitamins.
	Animal Bones	Bone broth has been a staple in many cuisines, but during extreme food shortages, people would boil bones repeatedly to extract the last nutrients and flavour. Some would even crush the softened bones into a paste.
	Acorns	Native American tribes and other groups have used acorns, which need to be soaked to remove toxins, as a flour or porridge base when other food was scarce.
	Insects	Many countries have insects in their diets, but in times of famine, even people who are not used to it, eat insects as a protein source. Grasshoppers, ants, and crickets are common choices.
	Sawdust Bread	In Germany, after the war, people mixed sawdust with flour to stretch their food supply. Sawdust has no nutritional value, but it made bread last longer and feel more filling.
	Tree Bark Flour	In Finland and Norway during World War II, people ground pine bark into a flour substitute to make bread. This bark bread kept them alive, though it was tough to digest.

• Which one would you eat from the list above?
• Why do you think people eat these strange things when they have no other choice?
• How would you feel if you had to eat food that didn’t taste good, just to stay alive?
• What’s the hardest thing you’ve had to eat when there was nothing else available?
• If there was no food left in your house, what would you eat or try to eat to survive?
• Is there something around your home or in nature that you could eat but don’t usually eat? Why don’t you eat it?
• What’s the strangest food you’ve ever heard of people eating out of necessity or in a time of shortage?