I disagree. The idea here isn’t to feed the starving on the street, the idea is to appeal to the busy professional who doesn’t want or have the time to cook and eat a full meal. He wants a full meal in a ready made package that requires no cooking and no clean up. The idea is to provide the calories and nutirients needed in as small and easy to consume a package as possible.
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Solvent Green :eek:
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Although it doesn’t have everything you need many people exist almost completely on cereals. What would they have to add to say Total to make it a balance diet?
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In one of my jobs I work with dogs. It’s a pet peeve of mine that people will buy the top premium pet food for their poodle, and allow it no people food because it’s not good for them, but cram their kids and themselves full of absolute junk.
I love this idea 
As a college student, I would definately buy it, providing it was cheap enough. I see it as being in a cereal-like form, something you would simply pour in a bowl and eat.
I have the perfect model for you guys to build on. Grape Nuts (the cereal). It’s nicely crunchy, goes great in milk, but doesn’t really taste like much of anything. But I, at least, could eat it constantly. If it wasn’t so darn expensive.
But I see a variety of forms. Who wants to carry a little baggie of cereal when they can carry a Powerbar-ish People Kibble Bar in a pocket or backpack? That could be the on-the-go form. And maybe a one-meal “potato chip bag” form, for snacking on the couch. You eat the whole bag, hey, it’s dinner!
Great thread!
I tried it once years ago on a dare. Tastes kinda like a very hard and somewhat fishy graham cracker. Not something that will ever rival ramen, I’m afraid.
That’s me! I work at the Center for Lab Animal Science at UCD. You might be able to find Monkey Chow at your local pet store, as it’s often used to feed large parrots, iguanas, and crickets as well as non-human primates. It’s sort of a brownish-yellow biscuit that is a little oily and tends to get crumbs everywhere. I’ve never tasted it, but I imagine it’s rather corn-like. I can check the ingredients on the bag, as I’m on my way over to the primate center for the PM feeding as we speak 
Peace,
~mixie
Broomstick-
I have! I worked at an exotic bird ‘store’ (nothing like PetCo etc…The woman who ran it used to be an exotics vet at the San Diego Animal park and all sorts of other good things) And part of the bird’s ‘dry bowl’ was monkey chow…many a late nights waiting for hatchlings to emerge we had MC and milk.
At that job I also ate mealworms, many varieties of fruit, raw beef, and flowers. It was an enriching experience, all right.
What about Ensure?
So, all that would have to be done is reformulate Monkey Chow a bit to customize it for human digestive systems, and morph it into tasty snack food form. That shouldn’t be much of a problem, right?
And Troy, Ensure isn’t exactly a filling meal replacement. But it is a testament to the potential for success of People Kibble, as well as proof that what we envision can be accomplished.
So… nobody here runs General Mills or Nabisco, huh?
Ellen Buchman Ewald’s Recipes for a Small Planet has quite an extensive section on loaves, from Savory Bean Loaf with Tomato Cheese Sauce to Savory Nut Cake. I haven’t tried them but they’ve got to be better than Prison Loaf.
(Ewald’s book was from back in the day when vegetarians were concerned that they’d die of protein deficiency if they didn’t combine food groups at every meal. Quite a few of the recipies feature wheat germ.)
You can make People Chow easily from easily available products.
Get store-brand corn flakes. Get Slim Fast, Ensure, or equivalent. Mix.
Nutritionally complete, cheap, tasty, plentiful food that takes moments to prepare.