On meal replacement powders

Hunting and gathering food has been one of the most time consuming tasks for majority of human existence.
Agriculture and Industrialisation minimized the effort for a nice dinner dramatically.
In times were time is scarce, meal replacement powders are a somewhat just logical step to this development.

Welcome to the world of meal replacement powders!

First off: What are those powders exactly?
Well, they are mix of several ingredients such as soy, oatmeal, vitamins and minerals, which should
cover your daily need for nutrients. Often they are also purely vegan or at least vegetarian.

You just need to dissolve those powders into water or milk, like a regular protein shake to have a full meal.
There are many companies, which sell such products and often you can even subscribe to those, so you will receive your weekly dosage of food.

Usually these companies have products very similiar to each other, since the basic recipe is open source.
They all derives from a product called: Soylent, which was developed by Rob Rhinehart, a software developer short on time, creating his very own solution to this problem.

These powders are normally in the price range of 6€-10€ per day. Expensive if you cook your own meals, cheap compared to eating in a restaurant.
And this brings me to the moments when those powders make the most sense: When you are traveling or on a business trip for example.
In that case, these are a cheap and also very fast way of eating and I discovered their value during my time consuming and work-filled days when I had to work in a foreign country.
When it comes to the brand, I have found JimmyJoy® to be my choice, since I live in Europe.
They usually deliver fast and their product tastes good to me, while being easy to digest.
If you want to give it a try, save some money viá this link*:
(http://i.refs.cc/YTboEn7m?smile_ref=eyJzbWlsZV9zb3VyY2UiOiJzbWlsZV91aSIsInNtaWxlX21lZGl1bSI6IiIsInNtaWxlX2NhbXBhaWduIjoicmVmZXJyYWxfcHJvZ3JhbSIsInNtaWxlX2N1c3RvbWVyX2lkIjoxNTE3NTI0OTV9)

During these days, I hardly would find a moment to eat something and the last thing you want, is getting a food poisining, because you ate at some restaurant you didn´t know.
But it´s also of great value when wandering for example, since these powders don´t need any cooling and are quite energy dense, as they come in bags of around 500 grams for a daily portion.
All you need, is a shaker and some water to prepare your meal.

My only friends, when I was working abroad

Another idea is using it for dieting and loosing weight, since it is very easy to track all your calories.
This is actually the main concept behind a lot of liquid meals, which promise you to loose weight.
A strategy that all of the so called formula diets use.

Nevertheless there is a common question, people asked me about it:
What happens to your digestive system, when consuming such products?
A concern, I faced when first using such a product a while back. After 3 days of consuming those meal replacement powders straight, I have had quite a bad time.

People describing this phenomena, are easy to find, when searching the internet on this topic.
I really don´t know what exactly caused this in my case, but as the recipes get changed quite a lot over time and also vary from company to company,
I must say, that when I tried meal replacement powders a few months later by a different company, I didn´t encounter any problems at all.
Going to the toilet was just as normal as when I was eating regular food.
I guess this was mainly due a different recipe.

So far so good, but how does it taste?
First off: Using (soy)milk gives it a better flavour than using water.
Usually vanilla, chocolate, banana provide a nice taste, the more exotic it gets, the weirder it tastes.
The neutral ones weren´t quite my cup of tea, as they are not really neutral but taste much like an odd cousin of oatmeal.
Overall such drinks can be compared mostly to protein powders in terms of taste as well as viscosity.

One may raise an eyebrow over, if this is healthy or not.
And the answer is: we don´t know, since there hadn´t been any long-term research conducted on this.
However it´s propably safe for temporarily usuage. Many people have checked their blood after a longer liquid diet of this sort and mostly nothing really got out of hand, but it is important to keep in mind, that these weren´t medical studies.
(https://jimmyjoy.com/blogs/jimmy-joy/this-guy-ate-plenny-shake-for-6-months-and-had-his-blood-tested-afterwards)
Also the recipies vary a lot from company to company, resulting in very different results of course.

Additionaly it needs to be mentioned that, we don´t fully understand what our body really needs to
stay healthy, especially when it comes to secondary metabolites and micronutrients.
I was quite astonished, when I found out chromium to be on the list of ingredients but apparently scientists think it could be needed for the human body for a while now. (https://academic.oup.com/jn/article-abstract/123/4/626/4724422?redirectedFrom=fulltext).
Another factor which comes into play, is that there are differences in vitamin requirements for each individual based on body composition, physical activity, overall fitness, age, heritage etc.
So the nutrients given in such products could not be sufficent to everyone.
One of the reasons I wouldn´t recommend to live on liquid meals alone and prefer a more versatile, more "natural" diet.

Another point that I saw mentioned very often as an disadvantage, is that, eating itself
is a social undertaking, it has been since day one. From the stone age to the present.
If you just drink a shake in like 3 minutes you can´t participate on that.
Of course this is not a problem if you are not able to, like on a business trip. But it´s a point needs addressing.

You can save on this hassle, when using meal replacement shakes.

Also often pointed out by others, is that, you start missing the taste of real meals and feel a desire to eat something "real".
From my personal experience this is mainly a problem when being in a calorie deficit. Because this will result in gravings for such things, this didn´t really happen to me, that much when I was having just enough calories through these shakes however.
But I assume this problem also occurs if you actually have free time to think about this and walk by several restaurants.

So in short, what is my opinion on meal replacement shakes?
It´s a nice for situations, where time is a big factor and quite a healthy one, compared to the alternative of Junk Food for example.
Also it´s a good idea to loose or gain weight.
Altough not a permanent solution when it comes to eating, as our knowledge regarding our nutrient requirements grows, we might see more meal replacement shakes and they grow more normal.

*This is a ref-link which provides me some income for the blog and you potentially save yourself some money.
If you think, this is a bad idea or the link is broken or whatever, let me know!