What kind of diet will result in the least amount of feces?

This is just out of curiosity, I’m not really interested in really doing this, fiber is healthy blah blah blah.

Ok so what kind of diet a human being could eat and stay relatively healthy and alive would produce the least amount of fecal matter? Research reveals that at least 1/3 of feces is dead bacteria, so obviously even with a perfectly formulated liquid diet you’ll still be producing some brown stuff.

But what about a no plant, high protein diet?

Good luck!

The kind of diet you’re looking for, is called a low residue diet. People with gastro intestinal issues are often put on a low residue diet, and the early astronauts were on a low residue diet while in space for obvious reasons. As I recall, the morning of the lunch they typically had steak and eggs which are both low residue. Here is a list of foods which are low residue:

Please excuse the typo - I am using Siri. Morning of the launch not morning of the lunch.

The general term for this is “low-residue diet”.

NASA has done research into this for obvious reasons and has some example meals.

Lunch 11:30 a.m. - Meat loaf on toast? WTF?

For the 1960s, that wasn’t really an unusual meal. You can still get a meatloaf sandwich at many diners today.

There is also a variety of liquid diets that can serve the same purpose. The ones mentioned in that link are normally short-term, but a few people must be on them continuously.

Liquid protein diets for weight loss, lasting months, were once a preferred method but fell out of favor. Today you’ll see them used more often as meal replacements.

Yeah, I’m not entirely sure what’s odd about that. I mean, what else do you do with leftover meatloaf but eat it for lunch as a sandwich the next day?

what is this “leftover meatloaf” that you are talking about?

OK, if there’s no leftover meatloaf, then you’ve gotta at least make a second meatloaf for the sandwiches. :slight_smile:

So, at the risk of sounding too gross, would you get super-constipated on this sort of diet? And when you finally do go, would it be rock-hard nuggets or something?

I think Dr. Oz did a show on that, with guest star Cameron Diaz. No joke.

That I understand.

I haven’t tried it yet, but that’s a common complaint about the Soylent diet.

The intravenous kind.