Tired of planning meals? Try Soylent!
One perennial topic in food circles is the question of, "Why can't they just invent a food bar with 100 percent of your daily nutritional needs?" After all, we have Dog Chow, Cat Chow, Goat Chow, Monkey Chow… where's the People Chow?
(Note: One man spent a week eating nothing but Monkey Chow. It didn't go well for him. You can read his hilarious story here.)
Until recently, the best answer was Nutraloaf. This is a meatloaf-like substance which, although mushy and unappealing, does contain all of your daily nutrition. Unfortunately it is so bad that it is used as a form of punishment in prisons. If you're REALLY bad, you have to eat Nutraloaf! Thus its colloquial name, "disciplinary loaf."
A blogger named Rob claims to have solved the problem by creating a concoction of all the essential elements that the body needs in order to survive, and to have lived on it for the last 30 days. He has (tongue firmly in cheek) dubbed this substance Soylent, and it looks more like a chemistry experiment than a meal.
Soylent is a "thick, odorless beige liquid" which he describes as tasting "like a sweet, succulent, hearty meal in a glass." If you want to believe the hype, it's apparently nothing short of a magic fluid which allowed him to run faster, think better and stop pooping entirely. Personally, I have some pretty serious doubts about the veracity of this project.
Not the least of my questions being, why not just use any of the dozens of meal replacement concoctions available? You can buy giant tubs of powdered formula for adults at any grocery store, drug store, or GNC nutritional center. I mean, this is a problem that was solved a long time ago for coma patients, people whose jaws have been wired shut, people with severe medical digestion issues, and so forth.
Nevertheless… it's a pretty entertaining read, and I applaud his dedication!
Image of meal replacement shakes courtesy of Flickr/planetc1