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August 25, 2013 9:12 PM   Subscribe

How do I get nutritionally complete food for the cheapest possible?

They're selling Soylent for $230 for a month's supply, but I can get a month's supply of TwoCal for $205-ish and Jevity 1.5 cal for $195-ish, assuming 2000 calories per day. So what's the cheapest I can get a month of a nutritionally complete food for?

This is mostly food for thought, I'm not going to go on such a diet, I was mostly curious
posted by curuinor to Food & Drink (13 answers total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
Potatoes? That's assuming about six pounds of potatoes a day. 6 X 30 = 180 pounds of potatoes, figure about a dollar a pound and a couple of bucks for butter and salt and that's about $200.
posted by tilde at 9:26 PM on August 25, 2013


You can get potatoes cheaper than that. a 50 lb sack of potatoes is $6.35 at the restaurant supply store. $20 for potatoes, $7 for butter, $1 for salt. Spend $3 for 10 lbs of carrots and $5 for 6 lbs of frozen spinach while you're at it, and you're still under $40.
posted by KathrynT at 9:38 PM on August 25, 2013 [2 favorites]


1 cup brown rice + 1 cup lentils + 1/2 cup olive oil cooked together is 2300 calories and macronutritionally balanced. Add a multivitamin/multimineral for micronutrients. I don't know the prices off the top of my head, though.
posted by Jacqueline at 9:59 PM on August 25, 2013


Response by poster: I mean an artificially formulated nutritionally complete food like Ensure, or Jevity or one of those. Something you can live on as sole-source nutrition for ten years.
posted by curuinor at 12:59 AM on August 26, 2013


Perhaps the MeFi wiki list of bachelor chow questions will be useful.
posted by zamboni at 3:16 AM on August 26, 2013 [2 favorites]




Try MFK Fisher's recipe for sludge.
posted by kestrel251 at 6:27 AM on August 26, 2013 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: I don't want recipes or anything of that nature. I was curious for how you could get artificial nutritionally complete food (so not an egg, but Jevity or TwoCal or something like that) for the cheapest possible. i was curious intellectually, because it seemed to me that Soylent's claim itself, that they could replace real food for cheap, was already borne out by the artificial nutritionally complete food out there. So no more answers with real food in them, please.
posted by curuinor at 9:24 AM on August 26, 2013


Best answer: This is what hospital clinical nutritionists figure out, for patients who have medical conditions precluding swallowing food. I don't think money actually comes into the equation, though, since these are prescribed by a physician and are paid by medical insurance. There are also IV formulations called TPN, (total parenteral nutrition) for people who actually do live on it for years, usually because they've suffered a catastrophic medical condition like having a gastrectomy and removal of most of their intestines. Again, these are prepared by special pharmacies and are custom-prescribed for the patient.

I don't think this is quite what you're asking, but DIY complete nutritional replacement is more complicated than it sounds, and can lead to things like liver damage and steep lawsuits.
posted by citygirl at 12:15 PM on August 26, 2013 [1 favorite]


Good points, citygirl.

True, KathrynT - but I wouldn't want to haul a 50 pound sack of russets home on the bus, I was going with "corner store availability".

And to citygirls' point - Mr Potato did it for 60 days, and all diets should be cleared with your physician or primary care provider, etc etc.
posted by tilde at 1:13 PM on August 26, 2013


Best answer: What's the cheapest I can get a month of a nutritionally complete food for?
[...] I'm not going to go on such a diet, I was mostly curious.


I do have first hand experience with this - my son does not eat and he's entirely tube fed - but I'm honestly not sure how seriously to take your question.

There are canned formula blends, as you point out, including versions broken down into short chain amino acids for people who have trouble digesting complex foods: Boost, Jevity, Elecare, et al. There's also so called "real food" blends, like Nestle Compleat.

We mostly use a blenderized diet - whatever you'd eat, pushed through a really high power blender (a Vitamix; others use BlendTec) so that it can be tube fed. So one possible answer to your question would be - you can get a liquified meal for whatever price you'd get a cheap meal for yourself, plus the amortized cost of a powerful blender.
posted by RedOrGreen at 1:46 PM on August 26, 2013 [1 favorite]


Stay tuned to this author; generally when ars reviews something it compares it to like products.
posted by tilde at 9:45 PM on August 26, 2013


And here is the follow up.
posted by tilde at 7:07 AM on September 5, 2013


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