
The Soylents of the Lambs - chipotle_coyote
http://glog.glennf.com/blog/2015/5/27/the-soylents-of-the-lambs
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koffiezet
As someone that recently started using Queal - a Soylent alternative available
in Europe, there are some things many people seem to be missing:

\- Unless you really pay attention to what you eat, you have absolutely NO
guarantee you are actually eating what your body needs by stuffing random food
in your mouth.

\- Soylent etc does not have to be the only food-source.

\- These shake meals do provide at least a lot of stuff your body needs we
already know about.

And the first point is important, I am pretty sure my diet before Queal -
which was not that long ago - was a LOT unhealthier, skipping breakfast,
eating sandwiches at work overflowing with random sauses, eating fastfood just
to get something nutricious in my body. You think mc donalds analyses every
single nutricious ingredient in their burgers to see if it might be sufficient
to what your body needs? Or Subway? Or <insert any food-chain here>? The ones
mostly paying attention to this are probably vegetarian companies, because
there it's clear they need to be careful, but that's about it. When people
claim they don't really know what your body needs, what are they complaining
about? This at least actively tries to do this, no other food does this.

And regarding what the body needs, don't underestimate your body. There are
testimonies from people that had to survive for a lont time at sea, living
mostly on raw fish suddenly craving the eyes of the fish because it contains
nutricious things your body needs too. Rob Rhinehart himself said it too in
his "How I stopped eating food" blog entry that started the Soylent adventure:

> When I was deficient of iron I felt a strong craving for red meat.

That said, I wouldn't have gone through the personal experimentation that Rob
Rhinehart went through to find out what was missing, where he missed some
basic stuff like iron, but I'm glad someone at least looked into this concept.
How it has been done, that's another matter, but right now they seem to be as
close as you can get right now.

So is it perfect? Maybe, maybe not, but for me at least, it's a huge
improvement. For me it comes down to something someone somewhere said about
soylent-like meals:

> The best meals to replace with Soylent are the meals you aren’t excited
> about.

But, since using it, I have more energy, have less trouble getting out of bed
in the morning and overall feel a lot better. This could be due to me eating
breakfast every morning now, but still it's a remarkable improvement. I still
have at least one 'normal' meal every day, which is for me is the sensible
thing to do, but I don't plan to stop using Soylent-like food at all unless I
really notice health-problems.

