My soylent experiment...cheap easy 'food'?

its_maths_not_magic

Somehow I stumbled upon a new idea on the web about food which has piqued my interest - a liquid diet called soylent (yes, after the movie). While this is not a new idea, the approach is far more modern. A company has created a powdered meal replacement that is designed to contain everything your body needs in a drink so you replace normal food with it. What is really good about this company is that they have released the recipe and encourage people to make it for themselves.

So what I have done is gone to their website, entered my details in such as gender, height, weight and whether I want to lose, maintain or gain weight. It then calculates my calories needed and you use recipes created to work out exactly what to eat when you tweek it for your own particular needs. I plan to live off this for a month to see how it goes.

Pros:
1. Cheap! I think it would cost most people around £4 or less per day. Also, the ingredients were easy to get with free next day delivery.
2. None of the annoying things associated with food prep - no grocery shopping, no lugging groceries, no cooking, not many dishes.
3. Time saved by no cooking.
4. Great for someone like me who finds the whole eating healthy thing a massive pain, I'd rather have the odd meal as a pleasure thing at a restaurant where I don't have to clean dishes.

Cons:
1. I would imagine that you would have to add proper food at least once every couple of days to keep jaw muscles, and every other physical part of eating in working order so I intend to supplement it with real food.
2. Boredom, the drinks are designed to taste as neutral as possible so I plan to add flavouring to them to stop the boredom thing.
3. We don't know what we don't know about nutrition so I might just keep an eye on general health to make sure I don't develop problems.

I'm hoping that this works because if it does, it would be awesome to save a lot of money, time and effort when it comes to the daily grind of food prep and cooking. Watch this space.

fevlo

By all means give it a go and im not saying these type of meal replacments wont work but I personally not a fan of them. They deal with the weight loss but dont re-train the mind into a more healthy lifestyle.
Over the course of 18 months I was able to loose 9.7 stone by simply using the "eat less and move more" diet and ive maintained that weight for 12 months now.

its_maths_not_magic

Thanks for the thoughts, but this is less about weight loss and more about taking away the annoying part of eating that is food planning, buying, prepping, cooking and cleaning up. : ).

KiKi

I'm sorry, but I despair at the idea that we can replace food with powder, or fruit and veg with vitamin pills and that somehow the food chain and our health won't be affected. Our bodies were designed to eat food, no matter how annoying prep may be. I prep meals once a week and then freeze them.

In addition, £4 a day doesn't sound cheap to me - I can eat three meals on less than that! And when it doesn't include things like snacks, I reckon you'll end up spending more.

I'd be interested to see what happens, but no way would I ever choose to replace food with a powdered drink, no matter what the nutrient claims are. Just eat a balanced diet and do food prep once a week. Washing a plate and a container really doesn't take that long.

shegirl

If it was a short term meal replacement diet,fine.

To intend to switch as normal 'food'is daft.You have a digestive system.Use it!

£4 a day? You can food shop for that.

shegirl

Oh and it's high carb.Another reason I wouldn't touch it!

How many calories a day does it reckon?

savingmummy

I would consult a dr before taking it up tbh!


You`ll find many things against doing this I`m sure.


My in laws went on the Cambridge diet where they had 3 shakes a day and yes they felt full, yes they lost weight BUT their dental cost went up, their breathe smelt BAD and they also lacked in vitamins and were always poorly with colds and flu EVEN through summer months.

its_maths_not_magic

shegirl wrote: »

Oh and it's high carb.Another reason I wouldn't touch it!

How many calories a day does it reckon?

You can choose a high carb, low carb, very low carb or balanced versions (and a few others I can't remember) - carbs and I don't get along so I chose a low carb version. The calorie count depends on your body size and what your goals are, but (from memory) an averaged size man who wanted to maintain weight would be on around 2200 - 2500 calories a day, women 2000 calories a day. Oh and £4 was the expensive end of the spectrum, most recipes cost $USD2 - 4 per day.

See this is where I differ, for me, food is more a pain than anything else and I personally think I'd rather eat 'real' food as a pleasurable hobby a few times a week. But that's just me. I don't know how it will go, whether I would love it or hate it, hence the experiment. If its good and my health is fine, excellent, if not, then it may be a great way of having the odd easy meal when time is tight.

themull1

its_maths_not_magic wrote: »

Thanks for the thoughts, but this is less about weight loss and more about taking away the annoying part of eating that is food planning, buying, prepping, cooking and cleaning up. : ).

I gather you don't like the pleasure or eating food then? Why not go one step further and have a tube down your nose and straight into your stomach? Pour the stuff in that way?

themull1

If its called Soylent - is it suitable for vegetarians?

IDoDoodles

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