Eating rabbit meat is more popular than ever as they are fairly easy to raise and most importantly they are cheap to feed. Rabbit meat tends to be jam-packed with protein, vitamins, and minerals, although it has very little fat content. Eating rabbits from time to time could be a good source of protein, although due to its low-fat content you can not survive only by eating rabbit meat as sooner or later you will develop protein poisoning.
A lot of homesteaders and off gridders raise rabbits for their meat, generally speaking, these homesteaders raise other livestock as well like chickens, ducks, and so on. A lot of people who want to have a healthier diet will start eating rabbit meat as it has lean meat and very little fat content. Over the past couple of decades, we have all been told that fat is unhealthy, but the truth is that the human body needs fat in order to function properly.
One of the many functions of fat in the human body is to absorb vitamins, basically, there are two types of vitamins water-soluble and fat-soluble vitamins. Vater soluble vitamins need only water to be digested and used by the body, these are Vitamin C and Vitamin B’s for the most part. Fat-soluble vitamins need fat in order to be used by our body, these vitamins are vitamin A, vitamin K, vitamin D, and vitamin E.
If you would only eat rabbit meat for a couple of days or weeks, then your body will not be able to absorb the fat-soluble vitamins as the rabbit meat contains almost no fat. Even if you would take multivitamins your body would still not be able to absorb them efficiently due to the lack of fat. Another plentiful source of food ar pigeons, for more information, check out my recent article Can you eat city pigeons? ( Pigeon Eggs? ).
Eating rabbit meat can cause protein poisoning
By far one of the biggest dangers of eating rabbit meat is protein poisoning. Protein poisoning is also called rabbit starvation, and this happens when a person only eats lean meat such as rabbit meat which has a lot of protein but very little fat. No matter how much rabbit meat you would eat you will only satiate your hunger for a short period of time. Protein poisoning is fairly rare to occur as most people do consume plenty of fat in order to process all the protein.
Generally speaking, surviving only on rabbit meat is impossible in the long run. The first couple of days of only eating rabbit meat won’t be a problem as the human body has plenty of stored fat which it can use in case the fat intake is low. However, after the first week of eating only rabbit meat, the human body will struggle to digest the meat and most people end up with diarrhea which will only complicate things further. Vitamins are extremely important for the human body, for more information check out my recent article Survival vitamins ( Top 13 SHTF Vitamins ).
Some rabbits carry tularemia disease
Generally speaking, most hunters know not to hunt rabbits before the first frost. Although a lot of people think this is some kind of myth, but there is actually a very good reason why you shouldn’t hunt rabbits before the first frost. Tularemia is a disease that rabbits get from infected ticks, at the first glance it is impossible to see if the rabbit is infected as they tend to look and move around like any other rabbit.
Tularemia tends to kill the infected rabbits in a matter of days, and consuming infected rabbit meat is extremely dangerous. The main reason why people should avoid hunting rabbits before the first frost is that during the summertime ticks and mites tend to thrive, but once the first frost comes the likeliness of a rabbit being infected with Tularemia is a lot lower. Even hunters who often hunt rabbits tend to wear gloves while cleaning the meat as the Tularemia can be found both in the meat and in the blood of the rabbit.
In conclusion
Although rabbit meat is fairly common in some areas and if prepared correctly it can be an extremely good meal. The problem is that the rabbit meat contains way too little fat and way too much protein, which in the long run will lead to protein positioning. In addition to this rabbits which live in a tick-infested area might be infected with Tularemia which also can infect people as well.
