Save time and money by sometimes taking nutritionally-optimized pills instead of eating food? I’d do it, probably quite often. But if I could never eat real food again, I wouldn’t be an early adopter. I’d want other people to try switching before me. Let them figure out the psychological price before I agree to pay it.
Why do the pills provide zero pleasure? If they can somehow pack a full dose of nutrition into the things, surely they have the technology to make them taste like delicious candy.
But even if they were just plain pills, I’d switch to them in a heartbeat. I can’t cook (I’m pretty sure me attempting to do so would be a violation of the Geneva convention), and the majority of my diet consists of repetitive store-bought meals that take less than five minutes to prepare and even less time to clean up. Even if I could cook I wouldn’t want to spend more time on it than that; I have better things to do with my time. So yeah, pills for me.
The only complication I can see is I have other pills that are supposed to be taken with food. How would that work out?
I wouldn’t entirely replace all meals, but I’d take a food pill in place of breakfast most mornings and keep some on hand for those days at work where I’m too busy to eat a proper lunch.
I would almost certainly replace some meals with pills if they were equally healthful, provided sufficient satiety, and at similar or lower cost to actual food (including prep time).
I don’t think I’d give up eating in general, but there are definitely times when I need to eat something quickly for fuel reasons, and having an easy nutritious pill would be way better than currently available mostly-junk options that are ready to eat immediately.
I’m sure there’s someone who would never eat food again, but if it was an all or nothing choice the pills wouldn’t be very popular.
OTOH if you get to choose to take a pill when you weren’t interested in exotic mouth-watering foods like pizza then those pills would fly off the shelf. Real food would get real cheap for a short time as people stopped eating as much of it, but once the food producers adjust to the new demand it will get more expensive and the pills will become even more popular.
Since these pills have some pretty magical properties already they should be made to magically prevent weight gain, so again, more people will eat them. If it’s a one a day pill it’s not going to be easy to decide to take a pill or eat on any one day, but if it’s a 1 pill per meal system I could see the average person eating only 1 real food meal or less per day, a lot maybe no more than 2 or 3 real food meals a week. A lot of people who didn’t grow up that way, and now forced to eat mostly pills for economic reasons are going to miss real meals though.
And if people are starving anywhere in the world with their access to food blocked by evil warlords and the like, we could just fly over and let food pills rain out of the sky.
So there are plenty of potential benefits for these imaginary pills, but the concept is very far from reality. I remember this ridiculous future speculation in the first grade in the early 60s. Sounded like a great idea to replace vegetables, but even then I still wanted to eat real fried chicken and hot dogs and grilled cheese sandwiches, and plenty of other food. Incredibly I had not yet ever tasted pizza at that time.
Can I still drink beer?
Nope. You can only take beer pills.
Hence your username!
Do the beer pills get you drunk?
I love to cook and still find it a big pain in the arse. I would gladly forego breakfast and lunch every day, and dinner most days. But I’d have to cook and eat real food often enough to keep my taste buds. Yes, they eventually go away if you don’t use them. I imagine 3-4 dinners per week would do it.
The morning pill would have to have some caffeine in it though, or else I’m washing it down with coffee.
This does a really good job explaining my concern. In order for pills to serve as my meals, in addition to providing me all of my required nutrients, they’d have to make me feel full.
Can it replace the feel as well as the taste of 15 minutes straight of delicious food? I doubt it. When you swallow a pill, you hardly even taste it.
While there are certainly foods and meals I very much enjoy, for the most part eating is a chore for me.
OTOH, I fucking hate taking pills.
What to do…
It would have to be part of my joining a spaceship crew.