Desert Survivalist

 is an achievement in Fallout: New Vegas which is awarded for successfully healing 10,000 points of damage using food.

Food Regen Explained
If consuming the food will cause your HP to be > 100%, then you only get points for the difference. For example, if you have 200 health, and your max health is 250, consuming anything that grants more than 50 HP will be wasted, as you'll only gain 50 points towards the award.

This also means that you can't "over-heal" with something that grants more HP than you currently have with the intention of adding more points towards this achievement. For example, a Wasteland Omelet grants +6/(60sec), or 360 HP total. If your current HP is 100 with a max of 250, consuming the omelet will only grant 150 points towards the achievement. If you take 50 points of damage while the omelet is healing you, common sense says this should give you an extra 50 points, but this is incorrect. You still only receive the 150 initially granted.

One other thing to note, there seems to be a limit to the amount of unique things that you can eat at once that actually take effect. After hitting that limit, you no longer gain stat adjustments/rads/FOD/points towards Desert Survivalist. If this occurs, simply wait until some of the food items "wear off," then continue consuming.

Good Locations for Food

 * William Farber inside the Terminal Building at Camp McCarran stocks a large amount of vegetables.
 * Etienne at the Westside Co-op stocks a large amount of vegetables and other food.
 * Genaro sells a variety of suspect meats inside Freeside's North Gate
 * In the refrigerator inside the McBride house there are 10 Brahmin steaks.
 * If you have the Followers Safehouse you can get as much food as you need. (Unconfirmed)


 * The Presidential Suite in the Tops Casino is stocked with fresh fruit.
 * The Boomer chefs in the mess hall and munitions storage at Nellis Air Force Base usually have a wide variety of food.