Earlier this year I stumbled over the blog of Rob Rhinehart who claimed he had stopped eating food. Naturally, I got curious. I quickly discovered that he had substituted solid food with a shake. This might be nothing new to most people, but the difference with Rob’s shake is that it contained only the raw chemicals that the body needs. For example only taking ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) instead of eating an entire orange. One might think that eating one orange is better than taking a pill, or powder, but when you compile the whole list of what you need on a daily basis, as suggested by the FDA, you have to eat a lot of different foods.
Food costs money. Preparing food takes time. Bringing all this with you to school or work is nigh impossible. As a result, most people do not eat healthy at all. Nor do they eat cheap, and most food has a high carbon footprint depending on how high up in the natural hierarchy you are.
As I live in Norway, I am in a special situation food wise. It is really expensive. I use about 100-150 kr (20-30$) on food every day, and then I don’t eat healthy either. Due to having a bad food vendor at the faculty, laziness in the morning concerning preparing a whole day worth of food, no time to go shopping all different products in the image above and the low practicality of it all, I go for easy convenient solutions. That means junk food. Not even fat, salty, tasty fastfood, but pure junk. Bad taste, bad nutrional value, high price and low in satiety. Overall junk.
In sum, as a student, Rob’s solution seemed ideal to me. Put in everything the body needs, but no things it doesn’t. That gotta save time, money and space. And boy do it. And if not time, money and practical concerns are enough, following this “chemically defined diet” would result in me being way more healthy than I use to, giving me way more energy, focus and mental and physical capacity. Just what the body needs.
A quick mention, the product that Rob is now marketing, Soylent, has gathered considerable interest, partly because its link to the Charlton Heston movie, Soylent Green.
After two months of research on ingredients, bodily functions and needs, digestion, nutrition and biology, I had created my own recipe fashioned after numerous others and Rob’s original draft.
One issue that I faced that is particular for Norway is that it is illegal to import numerous vitamins into Norway. Thus I had to create my own recipe from scratch locally sourced.
The recipe is now finished. The products have arrived and I started the experiment 3 days ago. Next post will be my ingredients list, and then I’ll post my daily notes. As this blog was created 3 days after the start of the experiment, I have some catching up to do.
