The important question is, “What Color is it?”
I looked up soylent and Niel deGrasse Tyson’s interview with the cofounder. I want try it now!
I don’t enjoy dining, but really enjoy eating. I don’t particularly like the restaurant experience, nor sitting too long. But give me something I can eat and travel at the same time, or a meal I can cook at home, or wherever, or even eat while in the car and I am so loving the eating. I even would sometimes make and eat my meal while hiking when I was ‘thru hiking’ the Appalachian Trail.
In the middle of the last century an American scientist researched the question, “what is the cheapest variety and quantity of natural foods that would provide a human with all the necessary daily nutrients?” and his results where in my high school math textbook as an example of the concept of min-maxing (for lack of a better term).
I have always wanted to track that down again.
Found this:
The diet:
Taken from the above PDF:
1/2 cup of baby formula - rice cereal (dry)
7.5 oz of baby formula - beef
4 oz of baby formula - carrots
4 oz of baby formula - green beans
8 oz of baby formula - apple sauce
2.5oz of baby formula - chicken
1 cup of orange juice
3 cups of whole milk
1.25 cups of half and half cream
2 cooked eggs
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
3 Tbsp of Karo syrup
Substitute all baby foods with their non-pulverized equivalent (e.g. raw beef instead of pulverized baby food beef).
Substitute rice with flour.
Substitute beef and chicken with 10oz of (kidney) beans.
Substitute apple sauce with apples.
Substitute half and half cream (10% fat) with 1 cup of milk, 1 tbsp of vegetable oil.
Add spinach (Mmmmm…).
Eric Haaland mentioned that cross-checking the caloric value of the substituted foods against Wolfram Alpha leaves us shy of 2200 calories–actually closer to 1934 calories. I’ve topped up the remaining 66 calories with filler (flour) to make it closer to 2000. So add 1/4 cup of flour (for $0.03).
You get:
$0.09 - 3/4 cup, or ~3.5 oz of flour at $2.24 for 5lbs (Pillsbury Best All Purpose Flour, 5 Pound: Amazon.com: Grocery & Gourmet Food)
$0.60 - 10 oz of kidney beans at $0.06/oz (Safeway Grocery Delivery)
$0.22 - 4 oz carrots at $0.88/lb (Safeway Grocery Delivery)
$0.24 - 4 oz of green beans at $0.88 for 14.5oz (Del Monte Green Beans, 14.5 oz: Amazon.com: Grocery & Gourmet Food)
$0.44 - 4 oz of spinach at $0.11/oz (Safeway Grocery Delivery)
$0.92 - 8 oz of apples at $1.83/lb (Safeway Grocery Delivery)
$0.32 - 1 cup of orange juice at $0.04/oz (Safeway Grocery Delivery)
$1.28 - 4 cups of whole milk at $0.04/oz (Safeway Grocery Delivery)
$0.33 - 2 cooked eggs at $2/dozen (Safeway Grocery Delivery)
$0.15 - 3 Tbsp vegetable oil at $0.10/oz (Crisco Pure Vegetable Oil, 128 Ounce (Pack of 4): Amazon.com: Grocery & Gourmet Food)
$0.19 - 3 Tbsp of Karo syrup at $64.96 for 4x128oz (Karo Light Corn Syrup, 128-ounce Pack of 4: Amazon.com: Grocery & Gourmet Food)
For a grand total of: $4.78/day. DELICIOUS.
Coincidentally, if you add back the chicken (at $0.20/oz or so), you actually have most of the ingredients for a chicken pot pie.
There are people who eat to live and those who live to eat. I am of the latter variety; the OP is the former.
I hate the inconvenience of eating. Got to go out, get food at the grocery or go to a restaurant, order, pay, take the time to eat it. I cannot simply sit and eat, but have to be doing something else (usually reading) while I do it.
It takes me forever to eat or drink anything. My work break is 1/2 hour, and I usually just have a snack cake or candy bar. I cannot eat a full meal in less than an hour unless I’m really hungry.
I am burdened with so many different types of allergies and food intolerances that I am actively un-adventurous about food; something that’s unfamiliar to me – particularly if it’s somehow flavorful – is liable to kill me, or at least cause problems and discomfort even though normal people would have no problems with them.
But I do enjoy cooking Chinese food with my wok (as numerous verbose posts around here will show) and in fact I do enjoy baking (mostly desserts) as well.
Overall, though, my approach to food is that it’s a form of sustenance rather than entertainment and I find it ironic that entire television networks are thriving on gluttony-as-entertainment in a world where morbid obesity and fad diets flourish side-by-side.
I just went on a cruise along the southern California coast and the first thing that caught my attention was the amazing number of elderly fat (morbidly obese) people aboard – and it seemed like at least two-thirds of those fat people were using wheelchairs or scooters or walkers for constantly flocking to the super-gourmet restaurants at meal times and to the free buffet areas between meals. My wife and I decided that, if the Cruise Experience was about gluttony and sloth on the way to a destination, we’d rather just ‘get there’ on a flight and skip the gorging.
I probably enjoy the challenge of cooking and getting all the courses of a meal to come out at the right times more than I like actually eating anything in particular.
On the other extreme, though, I remember a quote from a famous runway model who said something like, “There’s so many things I’d rather do than eat: Read a book, watch a movie, clean out the cat box…”
That was Kate Moss.
–G!