Bayesian Investor Blog

I’ve been thinking more about convenient, healthy alternatives to Soylent or MealSquares that are closer to the kind of food we’ve evolved to eat.

Here’s some food that exceeds the recommended daily intake of most vitamins and minerals with only about 1300 calories (leaving room for less healthy snacks):

• 4 bags of Brad’s Raw Chips, Indian
• 1.5 bags of Brad’s Raw Chips, Sweet Pepper
• 6 crackers, Lydia’s Green Crackers (vitamin E)
• 1 oz Atlantic oysters (B12, zinc) (one 3 oz tin every 3 days)
• 1 brazil nut (selenium)

Caveats: I’m unsure how accurately I estimated the nutrition in the processed foods (I made guesses based on the list of ingredients).

This diet has little vitamin D (which I expect to get from supplements and sun).

It’s slightly low in calcium, sodium, B12, and saturated fat. I consider it important to get more B12 from other animal sources (sardines, salmon or pastured eggs). I’m not concerned about the calcium or sodium because this diet would provide more than hunter-gathers got and because I don’t have much trouble getting more from other food. And it’s hard not to get more saturated fat from other foods I like (e.g. chocolate).

I don’t know whether it has enough iodine, so when I’m not having much fish it’s probably good to add a little seaweed (I’m careful to avoid the common kinds that have added oil that’s been subjected to questionable processing).

It has just barely 100% of vitamin E, B3, and B5 (in practice I get more of those from eggs and sweet potatoes).

It’s possibly too high in omega-3 (10+ grams?) from flax seeds in the Raw Chips (my estimate here is more uncertain than with the other nutrients).

The only convenient way to get oysters that keep well and don’t need preparation is cans of smoked oysters, and smoking seems to be an unhealthy way to process food.

Note that I chose this list without trying to make it affordable, and it ended up costing about $50 per day. I don’t plan to spend that much unless I become too busy to cook cheaper foods such as sweet potatoes, mushrooms, bean sprouts, fish, and eggs.

In practice, I’ve been relying more on Questbars for convenient food, but I’m trying to cut down on those as I eat more Brad’s Raw Chips.