I recently tried larger-than-normal methylfolate supplements. I had known that my genes caused problems with processing folate (MTHFR T/T), but hadn’t noticed any effects from supplementing at 800mcg/day.

Due to a report that several milligrams/day helped with depression, I changed from 400mcg/day to 2mg/day. I felt like my mind started working better within hours (although I haven’t seen much change in behavior). I saw a clear and large improvement in my heart rate variability starting after one day.

I’ve experimented for 5 weeks randomly altering my dose from 1 to 3 mg/day. On the week when I switched from 3 to 1 mg, my mood slowly got worse. I felt much better withing hours of switching back to 3 mg. I haven’t noticed any clear difference between 2 and 3mg.

I finally found a way to buy insects in enough quantity to satisfy my desire for nutrition from insects: World Ento, which sells dried crickets and cricket flour at a price per gram of protein comparable to seafood. (H/T Holden Karnofsky.)

According to Organic Value Recovery Solutions, crickets have impressive amounts of the nutrients I’ve found the hardest to get good amounts of. Here are examples of how much I’d get if I got my 2000 calories a day from crickets:

• B12: 20 times the RDA (more than 3 times that of eggs)
• Folate: 5 times the RDA (3 times that of eggs)
• Zinc: 9 times the RDA (5 times that of eggs)

(using data for eggs from pastured chickens).

They have plenty of fiber and good amounts of most minerals and B vitamins.

The cricket flour tastes ok in brownies, but I’ll want some other recipe for regular use.

Update 2015-01-05: ThailandUnique has a better selection of insects. My favorite so far is the Big Cricket.

Yet another soylent competitor has appeared: Ambronite.

It’s higher quality and high price than Soylent or MealSquares. It has more B12 than MealSquares even though it’s vegan.

It’s low enough in saturated fat that I probably want to add an additional source of saturated fat to my diet, but that’s a nice problem to have – I’d want to add chocolate anyway. My biggest reservation is the high level of polyunsaturated fat – if I could get a version without the walnuts I’d probably be satisfied there.

Most ingredients look like what our ancestors evolved to eat, but the first two ingredients listed are oats and rice protein.

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.

Soylent is an almost pure chemical diet, whose most natural looking ingredients are olive oil and whey protein. It provides the FDA recommended nutrients from mostly purified sources of the individual nutrients. The creator claims to have experienced improved health after adopting it (after previously eating something slightly better than a typical US diet).

This seems like a very effective way to minimize the poisons in our diet.

It’s also cheaper than most diets (he claims less than $2/day, but that seems questionable). He claims it tastes good, although eating the same thing day after day would seem a bit monotonous.

FDA recommendations are known to be suboptimal – too little vitamin D, too much calcium.

He seems confused about the fiber requirements, and is a bit reckless about his omega-6/omega-3 ratio. But these are easily improved.

He almost certainly misses some important nutrients that haven’t yet been identified, but that can be partly compensated for by adding a few low-risk foods such as salmon, seaweed, spinach, and sweet potatoes (the four S’s?).

I’m giving some thought to replacing 25-50% of my calories with something along these lines.