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defenyesterday at 9:44 PM2 repliesview on HN

Historically speaking is that "enough food to keep someone alive for a year" or "the amount of rice one person eats in a year"?


Replies

henryfjordanyesterday at 9:55 PM

There's 1655 calories in a pound of uncooked rice, so with 330lbs you are sitting at ~1500 calories a day for a whole year.

You wouldn't starve to death, but you'd absolutely want to supplement (both for more calories and probably for vitamins). But also you'd be eating that rice every single day pretty much, how else are you getting through that much rice?

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itishappyyesterday at 10:34 PM

I interpret as the latter:

> As a rule of thumb, one koku was considered a sufficient quantity of rice to feed one person for one year.

I assume "sufficient rice" means it needs to be supplemented, and this is supported by the footnote as well:

> Apparently 1.8 koku (1 koku and 8 to) was actually required for nourishment by a man each year, according to the conventional wisdom documented in a "home code" (kakun [ja]) of a certain merchant family in the Edo period.