The premade soylents are pretty good, and I regularly have them with a protein bar as my lunch. They’re pretty expensive in my opinion, so I try and look for them on sale, but the ease of not having to prep lunch is often worth it. I try and keep it under $2 a bottle for the 14oz ones, which still feels expensive to me, but some of the lunches I prep are around that cost, and it’s way cheaper than going out to eat (I keep a spare one at work in case I ever forget to bring lunch)

For a while I was skipping lunch or eating junk food due to work pinning me down for 80 hours a week. I wanted something fast but healthy and not expensive. Prepared meals cost too much, delivery apps only raise the price.

I had heard of soylent before and found ready-to-drink was available at Target. Not bad, but not good. Too sweet for me. After looking into these things more I eventually settled on Mana as they seemed to be the most focused on nutrition and constantly improving their product. I’ve been getting their powder by subscription ever since to replace one meal a day (usually breakfast). Comes out to less than 5 minutes and $2 a day. It’s borderline bland, which makes it easy to have fun with. Add chocolate powder, some mango juice, or leftover coffee from the French press, whatever to break out of the “I’m only eating this for sustenance” monotony.

Blend some (1/4 cup or so) oatmeal into a powder. Put in 1-2 TBS peanut butter. Then add milk/yogurt/fruit/a little vanilla/some honey whatever you want. You can make your own liquid meal replacement without all the processing in commercial options, for less money and it’ll be fresh.

If you want something fast but it doesn’t have to be drinkable, mix 2-4 TBS peanut butter and 1/2 cup or so of oatmeal in a little bowl. Microwave for like 30 seconds to a minute or so. Add a couple TBS of juice or a small handful of chocolate chips. You’ve now got a basic “energy bar” that can be eaten with a spoon. Can also function as a light desert or sweet, healthy snack.

I think stuff that’s churned out in huge quantities, packaged in plastic, shipped around and designed to be shelf stable is questionable at best. If microbes won’t even digest it (which would make it go bad) how digestible is it for people?

Oatmeal and peanut (or other nut) butter is real food and it only takes a minute or two to mix up something basically the same as one of those replacement options, but made fresh. For my basic vitamins daily, I’ll have a bowl of plain cheerios (somewhat processed but better than a pressed vitamin) and some fruit. Maybe some greens here and there. (I’ll also try to hide some marmite in something, to up my B12 as I eat very little meat or dairy.)

All of these options are super cheap.

Huel hot and savory is pretty good if you want most of the convience and nutrition profile, while still getting the “experience” of food.

I try to eat as few highly processed food as possible. Nearly all industrial meals and convenience products are packed with artificial substances to improve taste and especially optimize production cost. Most prominent water in combination with something to adjust viscosity.

Full meal replacements are the pinnacle of high processed foods IMO. You take “everything that a human needs” mix it with water and stuff it with aroma.

I got some problems with this approach:

• I’m not confident that there is really everything I need in it

• Extracting nutrition from food usually takes time, drinks are easy to process and probably release nutrition much fast (needs confirmation)

• Eating is not only about getting nutrition, chewing also triggers effects on your body

• Eating only artificial stuff destroys your taste, a lot of people are so used to highly processed stuff that they can’t even appreciate the taste of high quality food

• Take a break for eating, you can socialise with your family or coworkers and give your body time to regenerate

pea protein + soy milk + peanut butter + walnut oil + oatmeal + cocoa powder + splenda + salt

That was my go-to shake for about a year at my old job when I didn’t have time to prepare lunches.

I mix Huel shakes for lunch when I don’t have leftovers from dinner to eat. It’s healthy (I think), convenient, inexpensive, and it tastes fine.

I wish I liked them. They seem super convenient. I’ve never felt full drinking a meal instead of eating it. I think that feeling of fullness is critical for me.

Capitalism inventing a new need they can make money with. Totally useless, especially in Germany brands that sell you Milk lol, adults replacing meals with mother milk vitamin shakes

I make very easy shakes in my nutribullet which are just water, ice, oats, chia seed, protein powder with probiotics, peanut butter and some berries or a banana. I swap in some other things like hemp hearts for the chia sometimes.

Tastes great and requires little effort.

Big fan of penny shakes as an alternative to soylent.

Filling, tastes acceptable, low sugar, high fiber and protein, and costs like 1.80/serving.

KetoChow is fantastic, but expensive - I’ve tried the rest, 2 years of soylent, months of huel, sampled a few other types. KetoChow is leagues ahead in terms of flavor and nutrition profile (very low carbs, high protein)

I currently have Holfood chocolate flavor. Tastes pretty good, high in protein, not too filling. Sometimes, I’ll add in a scoop of unflavored whey to up the protein and calorie content.

I’ve had Soylent in the past, but I’ve never liked the flavour. Then at some point, they changed the formulation and it made me puke when I had it. Holfood vanilla is like a slightly more palatable version of Soylent if you like that neutral flavour.

I think they’re fine for people with health problems who need additional nutritional support but as a part of a healthy person’s diet they should play a limited role.

Obviously if you’re going to be doing something where you won’t have access to healthy food or the ability to cook then sure, take something with you. But if you have the ability to meal prep a healthy alternative and safely store it, strictly from a health perspective that will be better.

If you are going down the meal replacement route, limit both sugar and artificial sweeteners. These foods tend to be either high sugar or high in artificial sweeteners which, although approved for human consumption, may have some adverse health effects or unforseen effects on metabolism.

You also want to watch the sodium content because various forms of sodium that do not taste salty are used as preservatives. Anything with the word sodium will be some kind of salt and it can be sneaky when it’s a form of sodium that doesn’t taste salty like sodium chloride. Add up all the sodium on a label and sometimes it can be a little shocking.

Edit: personally I rarely eat meat so I use unflavored pea protein fairly regularly to ensure that I get enough protein so I just wanted to clarify that I’m not judging you by saying that this should play a limited role in your diet if possible.

I’m looking into some of them (in Canada), curious about your experiences

Not worried about calories (if anything, more might be better…)