How difficult would it be to live without these devices?

[Magic_Hat]

How difficult would it be to live without a stove, microwave, oven, and refrigerator? Obviously man has done so for thousands of years, but I'm asking. And I'm clarifying any device meant to preserve/cool food as well as heat food. So you'd be limited to stuff like peanuts/peanut butter, cashews, bread, apples, bananas. What else? Could you get all the required nutrients?

[tyckspoon]

Sure. It just makes for a much less varied diet, because you're restricted to things that grow close enough to where you live to be harvested, delivered, and consumed before they spoil, and less controlled cooking, so you probably aren't making anything whose recipe involves steps like 'slowly cook at 225 degrees for 2 hours, if you let it get higher it'll burn.' Non-electric preservation methods make a comeback too; fermented/salted/pickled/jarred foods exist in large part because refrigeration wasn't an option for most of history.

(Note I'm assuming that 'lighting a fire' doesn't magically stop working, which means you can do hearth cooking/baking or create a basic oven out of a grill - all you need to make an oven is a source of heat and some construction that works reasonably well to trap said heat. They're not hard to make, they're just hard to make in such a fashion that they provide a well-controlled temperature for an extended period of time, especially if you don't have the luxury of having somebody check and adjust your heat source every ten minutes.)

[Magic_Hat]

(Note I'm assuming that 'lighting a fire' doesn't magically stop working, which means you can do hearth cooking/baking or create a basic oven out of a grill - all you need to make an oven is a source of heat and some construction that works reasonably well to trap said heat. They're not hard to make, they're just hard to make in such a fashion that they provide a well-controlled temperature for an extended period of time, especially if you don't have the luxury of having somebody check and adjust your heat source every ten minutes.)

Nope. Not even that. No devices or means to heat or cool food.

So what kind of diet am I looking at? I also forgot to mention honey in my first post. That stuff doesn't go bad.

Edit: OH! And raisins - the dehydrated grape. That's a good source of fiber that doesn't need to be refrigerated right?

[Peelee]

How difficult would it be to live without a stove, microwave, oven, and refrigerator? Obviously man has done so for thousands of years, but I'm asking. And I'm clarifying any device meant to preserve/cool food as well as heat food. So you'd be limited to stuff like peanuts/peanut butter, cashews, bread, apples, bananas. What else? Could you get all the required nutrients?

Nope. Not even that. No devices or means to heat or cool food.

Can't make bread without heat, so that's right out.

Amyway. Dunno why you only mentioned peanuts, cashews, apples, and bananas. Most nuts, fruits, and vegetables would be doable. Stay away from meats and animal products, at least for the most part.

So...vegetarian/vegan diet? Only difference between your hypothetical and an actual veg-diet is no cooking.

[Magic_Hat]

Can't make bread without heat, so that's right out.

But it can be bought at a store and kept in an environment without need to be cooled or heated to eat.

[Mechalich]

Nope. Not even that. No devices or means to heat or cool food.

So what kind of diet am I looking at? I also forgot to mention honey in my first post. That stuff doesn't go bad.

Edit: OH! And raisins - the dehydrated grape. That's a good source of fiber that doesn't need to be refrigerated right?

You're basically looking at some version of a Raw Food Diet. There are many of these out there, with considerable variation. These are predominantly plant based, but there are raw animal foods available, ranging from well-known items like sushi and cured meats to considerably more obscure items. It is also possible to eat animal products that are commonly cooked raw - such as eggs - though there are disease risks associated with such practices.

Note that health risks are associated with a raw food diet and careful planning (probably in consultation with a nutrition professional) is required to maintain such a diet over the long term and avoid nutrient deficiencies (trace metals in particular).

[Peelee]

But it can be bought at a store and kept in an environment without need to be cooled or heated to eat.

In that case you can add animal products in. Cold cuts, smoked fish, milk, your options are totally open so long as you don't mind going to the store frequently or eating refrigerated foods when you get home from the shopping trip.

Though I can't imagine why you'd want to have that sort of diet.

[Erloas]

You can pickle and salt a lot of different types of meats. They tend to not be good, but they will be safe to eat.

A big question would be: does it count if someone else is doing the heating or cooling, because you've implied that things bought at a store count even if they require heat, such as bread. In that case there is very few things you can't have. It just means a lot of trips to the store and potentially a lot of wasted food. My grandma lived in a small town close to the store so she would walk to the store almost every day anyway, so buying something like milk, which requires refrigeration, wouldn't be a real problem, you would just have to buy small containers. Most grocery stores, at least in the USA, have delis with them where you can get a lot of different things.

Of course if you're going to say some things in the store are ok but others aren't, that is a really hard line to enforce. Even things like nuts probably go through a heating process a lot of the time and a lot of produce is cooled while in transit so it doesn't go bad. It does depend a lot on where you live and the time of year. Very few vegetables are going to survive being shipped to Phoenix in 120F weather for instance.

[LordEntrails]

So stores have heat and refrigeration you just don't at your 'home'? Then your diet could be exactly at what it is today. All you would need to do is change your routine and go to a store every day or three.

Perhaps if you actually told use more... like are you thinking some fictional setting? Or are you wondering about living off-grid? Or on a isolated island? or...?

[Knaight]

Depends - how much time and money do you have? Not having refrigeration tends to make food a bit more expensive, not having cooking makes food significantly more expensive (several cheap staples are gone), and you'll either need to shop a lot more often or eat out a bunch. Either way there's either a time or a money cost there.

[Khedrac]

For cooling, what do you mean by "device"?

Man got on well for thousands of years without electrical refrigeration by good architecture. A decent larder won't keep food the way a 'fridge will, but it is a good start. For warmer climates you need to start digging - underground storage is usually pretty temperature constant, and relatively cool to boot. What's more, if you go underground and use straw for insulation large quantities of ice can keep for months in otherwise quite warm climates - and you can store other foods with the ice.

Next up is that there are plenty of other methods of preserving food, most use heat but not all (e.g. salting).

What pre-technology diets tend to be is boring - you eat the same stuff for long periods (food that keeps) with the occasional seasonal splurge e.g. at harvest-tide.

As others have said, if you don't allow cooking but do allow shops, we definitely need more information on your hypothetical scenario to find out what you are actually trying to do...

Note, if you want to go both pre-technical and pre-cooking, expect to spend all of your time in food gathering. With modern science we can get round the benfits of cooking to make raw diets just about viable, but cooked food has far more digestable content than raw (especially for meat, but also for many plant foods).

[Lvl 2 Expert]

For cooling, what do you mean by "device"?

Man got on well for thousands of years without electrical refrigeration by good architecture.

Since cooking over an open fire was right out, I'm guessing we're at " the demiplane of eternal tepidness" levels. No heating or cooling of any kind. Everything is 18 degrees centigrade. But plants and animals still work, it doesn't disrupt their seasonal rhythm or something like that. And we still have water, and soil, and all of human society. Whether other people can still cook and cool their food we'll leave in the middle for now, otherwise the discussion will turn towards a salmonella outbreak. But you can't buy anything they cooled or cooked.

I figure most animal products are a problem. Fresh milk is okay, and keeps for a few days, so if you live close to the cows that's an option. I'm not sure about cheese, but after the most cursory of research I think most kinds are either heated or cooled at some point in the process, but possibly not all of them. Many kinds of seafood and even beef are also eaten raw, but it's still a risk, so more of a sometimes food. Eggs are the salmonella lottery, but if you trust the source they can be eaten raw.

Salad stuffing like many vegetables (lettuce, olives, cucumber), nuts and fruit and such is going to be the staple of your diet. All as fresh as possible and when they're in season, because no cooling. That means the winters could get rough (although it would be okay if you're the only person living like this rather than it being forced on everyone). The biggest thing you're missing here is some form of grain/potatoes/rice, all of which is much better and/or less poisonous after cooking. Maybe use lots of beans? Because those are all so great when eaten raw?

It's not the best deal ever, I think I'll stay with people who have access to fire, like nearly everyone in the last million and a half years.

[Knaight]

Since cooking over an open fire was right out, I'm guessing we're at " the demiplane of eternal tepidness" levels. No heating or cooling of any kind. Everything is 18 degrees centigrade. But plants and animals still work, it doesn't disrupt their seasonal rhythm or something like that. And we still have water, and soil, and all of human society. Whether other people can still cook and cool their food we'll leave in the middle for now, otherwise the discussion will turn towards a salmonella outbreak. But you can't buy anything they cooled or cooked.

Except you clearly can, as bread was listed. I'd assume it's more of a living out of a car situation, where you can buy whatever but you're not going to have a microwave.

[Mechalich]

Except you clearly can, as bread was listed. I'd assume it's more of a living out of a car situation, where you can buy whatever but you're not going to have a microwave.

While living out of a car makes using a microwave difficult (not impossible, you need a low power unit and possibly an inverter but otherwise quite doable), it's very easy to put a camping stove in the trunk and cook off that. Or, if we're in the modern world you can bypass that entirely by purchasing various forms of 'emergency' foodstuffs such as MREs or freeze-dried foodstuffs and just use those.

[snowblizz]

Humans can and do eat raw meat so I don't see why that's off the table either.

[Peelee]

Humans can and do eat raw meat so I don't see why that's off the table either.

Because I'm assuming if "no cooling and no heating" is a thing, then carpaccio is probably off the table.

[gomipile]

I don't understand the purpose of throwing out campfires and primitive stoves.

When I read the thread title, I assumed what was meant were modern gas and electric stoves and ovens, since they share a technological era(or are at least nearby in that sense) with the other items listed.

So this thread throws out food related technology developed in the past couple centuries, fine. But it also throws out the past two million years of the ability to use fire to cook food?

I'd like to understand the point if it's not just an oblique question about the raw food diet as mentioned upthread.

In any case, back on topic. Pickled meat was mentioned above. There are many salt and lactobacillus pickled foods which don't have a cooking step in their recipe. Like kimchi and traditional sauerkraut. Just about any vegetable can be preserved this way. If you want vitamin C there are plenty of options. Dandelion roots and leaves, for instance, are quite nutritious. Potatoes can be made ready to eat using this type of fermentation based picking instead of cooking as well.

[Tvtyrant]

Because I'm assuming if "no cooling and no heating" is a thing, then carpaccio is probably off the table.

You can kill and eat the animal fresh, as long as you don't pierce the abdomenal wall you should be pretty safe. Between the anti-biotics and deworming medicines it is pretty dang safe, so I could see a movement to guinea pigs as an animal you can take home live then butcher. Poultry are out though, no way to prevent salmonella.

[OracleofWuffing]

If bread is allowed because you can buy it from a store, is there something preventing one from dining in a restaurant or ordering carry-out? I mean, yeah, travel time and money, quality issues if you can only access fast foods, but...

[caden_varn]

How difficult would it be to live without a stove, microwave, oven, and refrigerator? Obviously man has done so for thousands of years, but I'm asking. And I'm clarifying any device meant to preserve/cool food as well as heat food. So you'd be limited to stuff like peanuts/peanut butter, cashews, bread, apples, bananas. What else? Could you get all the required nutrients?

Control of fire predates H. sapiens - we had it by H. erectus, at least according to Wikipedia - so we ahven't gone for thousands of years without heating food. Not saying we can't live without it, but cooking food makes it easier to digest, giving us more nutrients & energy, which I think is viewed as pretty important for evolving our big, energy-hungry brains.

[Murk]

If bread is allowed because you can buy it from a store, is there something preventing one from dining in a restaurant or ordering carry-out? I mean, yeah, travel time and money, quality issues if you can only access fast foods, but...

Eh, you don't even need to get the dishes warm. You could just buy pre-cooked dishes at the store and put them away for at least three days. Sure, most dishes wouldn't taste as good cold, but as long as they were cooked, their nutritional value doesn't change one bit.
In the end, your diet wouldn't change, except for personal preferences. Maybe you think cold cooked chicken tastes better than cold cooked pork (or the other way around), but there's nothing stopping you from eating either.

[Peelee]

You can kill and eat the animal fresh, as long as you don't pierce the abdomenal wall you should be pretty safe. Between the anti-biotics and deworming medicines it is pretty dang safe, so I could see a movement to guinea pigs as an animal you can take home live then butcher. Poultry are out though, no way to prevent salmonella.

I was joking about pricier foods. Given that going to the store for things that did have heat or refrigeration seems acceptable, I don't think killing your own meals is necessary either.

[D+1]

How difficult would it be to live without a stove, microwave, oven, and refrigerator? Obviously man has done so for thousands of years, but I'm asking. And I'm clarifying any device meant to preserve/cool food as well as heat food. So you'd be limited to stuff like peanuts/peanut butter, cashews, bread, apples, bananas. What else? Could you get all the required nutrients?

If you can still buy heated/cooked and cooled/frozen foods at a store then ultimately only thing that changes is how close you live to a store. You simply eat meals there that you would otherwise be preparing and consuming at home. Pre-cooked and preserved foods would also be dramatically increased so that you don't have to keep going back to the store quite so often, and thus fresh foods would be reduced because you wouldn't likely have means at home to better preserve it. But you can still get all the food groups without having to bake, fry, or freeze it yourself.

And there's also simply having insulated containers. Granted, an insulated bag barely keeps your pizza warm enough for delivery, and a plastic cooler doesn't keep your soda really cold forever (less than a day) but that still stretches dramatically your ability to take hot and cold food with you for significant distances.

Oh, and if you object to the existence of "devices" with inherent thermal properties like WARM clothes or cool earthenware jugs then you're out in the great beyond speculating on the non-existence of physics. It's an interesting mental exercise to find alternatives to what we normally use today, but you still need a better definition of what is/isn't possible and why before speculation on maintaining sustenance under those limitations really holds up. You can still cook food without open flame OR electricity (solar reflection springs to mind), but unless you're speculating that all heat ceases to exist - where is the line being drawn and why?

[Brother Oni]

Because I'm assuming if "no cooling and no heating" is a thing, then carpaccio is probably off the table.

Technically speaking, we are designed to be able to eat spoilt meat - it's part of the reason why we have an acid stomach.

A modern person wouldn't be able to do straight away since they've lost the intestinal microbiome to do so safely, but with enough time and enough exposure, it's feasible to essentially teach your body to be able to eat raw and spoiled meat again.

Anecdotally, there was a researcher, Sean Ellis, who lived with a wolf pack and he stated that he ate the same diet as them, including raw meat.

[Tvtyrant]

I was joking about pricier foods. Given that going to the store for things that did have heat or refrigeration seems acceptable, I don't think killing your own meals is necessary either.

I think that would be worse. The meat has a long time to spoil at the grocery store, even refrigerated. It also comes in contact with a lot of surfaces and other meat on the way.

[Peelee]

I think that would be worse. The meat has a long time to spoil at the grocery store, even refrigerated. It also comes in contact with a lot of surfaces and other meat on the way.

The surfaces that mass-marketed beef touches and the surfaces that the boar you killed out in the woods touches are likely to be very different surfaces, I'd wager.

[Tvtyrant]

The surfaces that mass-marketed beef touches and the surfaces that the boar you killed out in the woods touches are likely to be very different surfaces, I'd wager.

My example earlier was buying animals to slaughter at home, hunted meat has to worry of worms.

Honestly though this society wouldn't be that different, just less fun. I can live without a lot of meat, I just wouldn't want to.

[Peelee]

My example earlier was buying animals to slaughter at home, hunted meat has to worry of worms.

Whoops! In that case, that's a lot of wasted money and meat, since no refrigeration is allowed.

[Tvtyrant]

You can kill and eat the animal fresh, as long as you don't pierce the abdomenal wall you should be pretty safe. Between the anti-biotics and deworming medicines it is pretty dang safe, so I could see a movement to guinea pigs as an animal you can take home live then butcher. Poultry are out though, no way to prevent salmonella.

Whoops! In that case, that's a lot of wasted money and meat, since no refrigeration is allowed.

Fish could work too of course. Live fish transported in aquariums for homemade sushi? Or maybe meat only gets eaten at restaurants that can butcher on site.

[Peelee]

Fish could work too of course. Live fish transported in aquariums for homemade sushi? Or maybe meat only gets eaten at restaurants that can butcher on site.

Given that stores can use hear to make bread, I'm assuming that this hypothetical is strictly for personal use only in an otherwise unaffected world.

Though I did also miss that Guinea pig bit. Sorry!