Is Taking Meal Replacement The Future for Food?

There are some times when eating can look like a lot of work especially when you have to go buy the food from a restaurant, or you have to cook it yourself spending minutes to hours depending on the type of food being cooked. With this, you start to think if it was possible to just have a capsule that would do everything food can do, or just take protein shakes instead of food since the body requires lots of protein for building.

All of us cannot have the same views on food and there are a lot of people that currently take a whole host of different food alternatives and I am not against it provided you got the go ahead from your doctor but what do you think would happen if the entire world decided to start taking protein shakes and nutritional pills instead of cooking?

A quick one I need to elaborate on. Have you heard someone saying they are having a meal replacement? Protein shakes are not meant to replace diet, rather they are to serve as supplements to diets basically for people working out. These protein shakes lack essential vitamins needed and since it is meant for sport activities, you would expect that it contains lots of calcium compared to milk. These shakes also do not have lots of calories and they have low fat content since their job is not to boost energy.

That's that about protein shakes, so for meal replacement it is a complete ball game because its aim is to substitute meals. These products are meant to substitute for our regular meals so they are filled with calories, fat, and vitamins which is needed for everyday life activity. So, let better tilt to meal replacement instead of protein shake.

So when did we begin to envision meal replacement in our world? It goes back to the year 1893 during the World's fair in Chicago where the American Press Association asked that people should imagine what the future of humans would look like specifically the year 1993, publishing them in Newspapers. Mary Elizabeth Lease published that she saw a future where people would not have to cook, rather they would take small phial. While we have seen it in movies, why haven't we been able to do without food?

The average calorie to keep a person of age 14 active is within 2000 calories and so if we are to consider putting it into pills, then we cannot meet the required amount daily unless people will be taking excessive pills daily, and compared to pills, people would prefer food as a better alternative so instead of using pills, we started doing shakes with its first being Shapes in the 60's.

People have started taking juice as meal replacements when trying to detox the liver, lose weight, and cleans the body where juice replaces food for a limited time but this cannot carry on for long as it doesn't have all the calories the body needs.

Entrepreneur and hmm.. Scientist Rob Rhinehart decided to create a drink known as Soylent which comprises of a jam-packed number of nutrient including oat flour needed by the human body, and has been going on with it. The company has been doing fine and it looks like he is breaking new bounds. Huel is another one that has been doing well although the founders do not advise to live solely on it.

With these discoveries, we can see that we can live off meal replacement for a short period of time but then, scientists, researchers, and dieticians are concerned with the long term use of these replacement formulae. Since most of these replacements are not fully regulated, it is advisable that you see a dietician or a doctor before starting a meal replacement shake.

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^{https://310nutrition.com/blogs/health/what-are-meal-replacements-everything-you-need-to-know
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7551264/
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20120221-food-pills-a-staple-of-sci-fi
https://www.discovermagazine.com/technology/the-enduring-appeal-of-a-meal-in-a-pill
https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2024839_2024845_2024807,00.html
https://www.vice.com/en/article/history-of-juice/
https://www.rush.edu/news/truth-about-toxins
https://www.food.ee/blog/the-good-and-bad-news-about-juice-cleanses
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/yo-yo-dieting#section3
https://www.livestrong.com/article/484884-can-you-survive-with-just-protein-shakes/
https://www.inc.com/will-yakowicz/soylent-recall-dairy-free.html}

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^{Image Reference}

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^{Image 1 || Wikimedia Commons || Soylent drink
Image 2 || Wikimedia Commons || Protein shake}