What's the hypothesis there? Were they just shitting out the extra starch without digesting it? Due to conservation of energy the calories can't just vanish.

It doesn't seem physically possible for most adult men to consume 13 pounds of potatoes a day. I'm a large man and I think I'd burst or vomit before choking down that much, regardless of how hard I'd been working. Most likely that number is just wrong.

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astura 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>it doesn't seem physically possible for most adult men to consume 13 pounds of potatoes a day. I'm a large man and I think I'd burst or vomit before choking down that much,

Presumably you aren't doing hard manual labor every day.

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nradov 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Not every day now, but I've done enough hard manual labor to know that it wouldn't allow me to eat 13 pounds of potatoes. Seriously no one was eating that much on as regular basis.

	▲	codeableconcept 9 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		If your diet is 90% potatoes and you do hard manual labor all day, you would absolutely need about 7 pounds of potatoes (2500 calories). I don’t think 13 pounds seems that crazy. I have sat down at a meal and eaten 3 pounds of potatoes before.

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carabiner 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Hypothesis is that the irishmen were doing hard physical labor that required a high caloric intake. PCT thru-hikers consume 4,000-4,500 calories per day (at least I did) while staying thin. According to inter-net, 13 lb of potatoes has about 4,500 calories. Apparently US civil war soldiers expended 3-4k per day.