Have you heard of this movement toward getting nutrition through meal replacement drinks? Months ago, my dad called me asking if I’d heard of the new complete nutrition drinks intended to replace food. A software engineer was tired of his ramen and McDonalds, searched for another easy and fast way to get better nutrition (which, really, I mean there are thousands upon thousands of ways to get in better nutrition than by subsiding on ramen and McDondalds). He went ahead to develop a “nutritionally perfect” drink to free you from the hassles, time, money, and energy expended into planning, purchasing, cooking, and eating of food. The concept is to replace all meals with these drinks. I was immediately intrigued.

Fast forward an unknown number of months when a man enters my office, plops down an empty package of one of these powders about 15 minutes prior to his nutrition consultation, and leaves. Something clicked, but it took a second to put two and two together. This was that un-food food I’d talked to my dad about. I was really excited to talk to him about it, and was frantically looking up the nutritionals and whatever else I could find about this product.

This man had been crowd-sourced into trying this meal replacement, and was studying the cultural implications of mostly removing “food” from one’s diet (I do work at a university…nudge nudge hint hint). This particular client has been surviving mostly on the nutritional supplement for about 6 months. He drinks these shakes (+ a few add-ins) 3x per day 6 days a week. He has real food the other day.

We discussed how this new diet has changed his life (I call it a diet because this is what his diet consists of, he did not start this meal replacement to lose weight). He said that his new “eating” has been so liberating! Again, I was intrigued. He no longer needs to spend time or energy planning, shopping for, preparing, cooking, and eating food. He’s saving money because this product costs about $7-9 per day (depending on how many servings you consume), and he has nearly no dishes! Just a cup and a blender.

Whoa! Prior to talking to him about this product, I scoured the internet for expert opinions, most of them questioned the absorbability of the nutrients in this shake, and the lost component of eating food and the social component of gathering around the table.

Pros:

• Save time
• Potentially saving money
• Reduce home waste
• Potentially improved diet (switching from ramen and McDonalds to a nutritionally packed shake is probably a step in the right direction)

Cons:

• Removing the pleasure associated with eating good food
• Removing the pleasure of sharing delicious food with loved ones
• Limited data to support claims
• Unknown absorbability of this nutritional concoction
• No benefits from phytochemicals in foods. There are many compounds in foods that help our bodies function, but we haven’t recognized them.

I was lucky that my friend, who is an exercise physiology PhD student, and is concurrently completing a dietetics program through the new RD pathway! She was around and we had a few minutes to chat about the implications of this before & after my consult!

There are a plethora of benefits as well as negative implications or possible negative effects from removing most food from your diet.

Again, the time saving component is major for so many people, so that’s an obvious (mostly) positive benefit. We also discussed that eating this way would significantly reduce food and household waste. I’m ALL about reducing food waste, but am still wary of the costs of this type of diet! Reducing food waste and reducing the effects of agriculture and farming could improve the environment as well, but lost jobs comes along with that I guess.

My friend and I discussed the fact that this completely processed (although the developer of this product stated that a major benefit of this type of diet was that it was healthy as opposed to the nutritionally devoid highly processed foods found everywhere, oh the irony of the broad term “processed”) product has insufficient fiber and is high in saturated fats. My client’s claim was that researchers associated with the product have found that fiber needs are lower in people who do not eat processed or animal food sources. I was unable to find that research, and know that formula fed patients have similar fiber recommendations as food-fed people.

We also wondered how effectively this mix of straight nutrients is able to be absorbed. I couldn’t find any research to support it.

• What are your thoughts on a food-free world. Or at least the option to skip “eating”
• Do you know people who would love or hate this?

Interesting reads:

http://www.medpagetoday.com/PrimaryCare/DietNutrition/46983

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/05/12/the-end-of-food

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/13/soylent-documentary_n_4266853.html