The world
population is estimated at 7.4 billion, 16%
of these people do not have enough food to lead healthy life. Approximately 3.1
million children die from hunger each year. As the world population continuously grows,
the problem of world hunger will only arise. Scientists and philanthropists constantly look for food that is cheap to produce and provides all
crucial nutrients.
Even in
industrialized countries, getting all essential nutrients can be really hard. To
prepare a balanced meal you need a lot of knowledge and time. We don’t have
much time to really think what we put in our mouths. When we are hungry we eat what’s most convenient
at the time. Very often the most convenient food is the one which isn’t
necessarily the best for our bodies. We eat tons of burgers, pizzas or other
fast food. It brings us the necessary calories, but nothing much beside it. We
still lack vitamins and other micronutrients to keep us healthy.
Source: https://soylent-production-herokuapp-com 1
A solution
to this problem might be Soylent, a cheap food alternative, available in liquid
and powered forms as beverage and a meal bar. Soylent provides all the protein,
carbohydrates, fats and micronutrients that a body needs to function properly. One
bottle of Soylent drink provides 20% of all daily nutritional requirements, not
only in calories but also in proteins, ALL micronutrients and vitamins. Because
of that, Soylent makes it incredibly easy to keep healthy and bell balanced
diet.
Soylent is
also much cheaper than traditional well balanced meals, what can help end the
world hunger or at least lower the number of deaths caused by malnutrition and
starvation. It also has a long shelf
life and it doesn’t have to be stored in the fridge, which makes it ideal for 3rd
world countries. Soylent isn’t only the company selling meal replacements, it is
also an open source idea of changing the future of food. At https://diy.soylent.com/ people share recipes for their own
homemade Soylent ideas and try to make it cheaper and more available.
The only bad
thing about Soylent is its taste (which, let’s be honest is quite important),
people describe it as leftover milk with cereals. It’s not awful but definitely
not super tasty, but maybe it will change in the future.
Sources:
Do you
think that Soylent or other meal replacements can help to end world hunger?
Would you consider changing your diet to Soylent only?
What do you think about future of food? Will our eating habits change or stay the same?
Would you consider changing your diet to Soylent only?
What do you think about future of food? Will our eating habits change or stay the same?
Comments
It would be great if it could end the world hunger, but then it should be cheap and valuable at once, which can be difficult to achieve. Because, usually, quality depnds on price.
The fear comes from us not having a thorough understanding of nutrition yet. We can design a complete diet involving foods but those foods contain chemicals that don't appear on a nutrition label. We know without some chemicals our health will dramatically suffer and Soylent provides those. But what about others? Are there things a body needs that we get through a regular diet that Soylent lacks because of its precision? Soylent at the very least appears entirely safe for replacing a meal or two. Living entirely on Soylent is something else that I'm sure the Soylent people are researching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8NCigh54jg
What's more, the price is not so rational for me, about $3 per bottle? I consider it rather normal/a little bit to expensive for daily drinking, not speaking about possibility of 3rd world to pay such price for a drink. I tried to find the volume of the packaging, but that information wasn't there - another minus.
Furthermore, I strongly believe we should have balanced diet while eating everything but it doesn't mean consuming a fully nutritious powder from plastic packaging. Liquid consisting of Soy Protein Isolate, Algal Oil, Canola Oil, Rice Starch, Oat Fiber, Coffee powder and Dutch Process Cocoa for a main course, seriously?! It makes me sick, I'm gonna eat doughnut right now...
Now, coming back to the article, I won't change my eating habits and I won't try things like soylent. I won't even support such companies - they just want to make money on people who like to experiment with food. In my opinion, the only way to save people from starving (e.g. in Africa) is to help them grow their own food plants. In that way they could become self-sufficient in terms of food supplies. This is probably the cheapest and the most effective way.
It’s really true that we don’t have time for thinking about what do we put in our mouth. It reminds me of a driver who has a gap in a fuel tank in his car and he says that he doesn’t have time to repair it because he has a long way to travel.
Soylent sounds as a great solution for some people, not all of them of course. Take dying of hunger Africans - it’d be a great solution for them. Or take a software developer who has to fix bugs for the whole night before the app official release day. It’s just a perfect solution and I hope it’ll be tastier in the future.
I personally would not change my diet to Soylent only, but I think it could be good food supplement in my diet.
If you are missing time, travelling, want to eat right and fast - maybe http://lyofood.pl is the answer for you. Many climbers, sailors are loving it - and this is known, tested type of food in many countries.
Some time ago I wrote in a comment about influence of microwaves on our food. It's controversial issue because scientists still argue. I believe the same is with soylent food. Of course, eating it for day or two is possible, but not for entire life.
On the other hand, it is better to eat something than nothing, so if it can decrease the scale of hunger I keep my fingers!
Even when you can't prepare meal by yourself there are a lot of so called "fast food" in the city that you can eat and have a balanced diet.
What will this soylent change?
It won't change a thing. People need firstly to want consume it and as Michał said if they want burgers, they gonna eat burgers.
I don't have enough information about Soylent food, that's why I can't give my opinion. But if it will help someone who suffer, it would be great.
When it comes to the sudden hunger, I agree we sometimes grab something to eat it quickly and forget about the hunger, but I think it is better to prepare yourself a lunch box or go to a cafe and get real type of food instead of the Soylent. I cannot imagine eating it as a substitute for a balanced meal... To me it just sounds too artificial and dedicated to lazy people, who do not care to eat the fresh and healthy food.
I thin that this is good. We should be more aware of what we eat. I think that we are what we eat.
On the other hand we should really do something with the world hunger and take steps to prevent it. Hopefully the solutions that will be chosen will be healthy.
To be honest, I would really like to taste it somewhere.
It's good that there are people working on "food" that can be sent to malnutritioned people (if it actual gets sent to them). I think nutrition like this could go with any kind of diet, just as a supplement. More and more people want to eat healthy but doesn't have time to cook or money to order catering.