14 thoughts on “Not Eating For Two Weeks”

  1. People really spend $24/day on food? And basically eat pre-packaged and/or fast food every meal of the day? If I spent $9,000 a year on food, I’d be without a home in a hurry. Then again, I also live outside of a major urban area with high costs of living for food and/or housing, and the matching high salaries, so there’s that, but I think that the author’s “original” diet, and cost, is what struck me the most of all from this experiment.

    That said, the price of the Soylent diet was still $9/day and, while simple to prepare, is still significantly more than I spend on food for myself averaged over the week, and I barely do what one would call “cooking” (a couple of scrambled eggs, cutting my own apple, and making some pasta on occasion).

    An interesting experiment, but I agree that it was too short of a trial and left too many questions unanswered.

    1. Well, he does live in Manhattan where prices are high and eats out twice a day. It wouldn’t be hard to spend $24 a day living like that or shopping at Whole Paycheck. Like you, $9 a day is more than I normally spend on food unless I’m traveling and eating out a lot. Perhaps the price will drop once production increases.

      I agree that longer trials are necessary to determine if there are any health issues. To the advocates, I say “You first. Come back in a year or two and we’ll talk. I wish you well.” I’m old enough to remember cases where diets and diet drugs ended up having serious health issues that weren’t apparent immediately.

      1. Very true, in terms of living in Manhattan, etc.

        I suppose that a large part of my shock was that people eat out two meals per day, 7 days per week, and they think that it’s somehow efficient, healthy, or cost-effective. I’d add “normal” to that list, but to them, because it is their habit, it is, in fact, “normal”.

        Boggles my frikkin’ mind, though, thinking of all of the extra things that one could purchase (or save) with that kind of money.

        Maybe I’m getting to be a curmudgeon, too, and reminiscing of the days of youthful, blissful ignorance of daily finances.

  2. It’s easier to fall into a take-out pattern when grocery shopping is a project because you don’t drive to the store.

      1. A single person can do a reasonable amount of cooking with little more than a good hot plate, toaster oven and a microwave. Been there, done that.

  3. When I first heard “liquid diet”, does this stuff, like, have enough fiber in it, if you know what I mean?

      1. Channeling the late Phil Hartmann in the SNL sketch, “Soylent Green . . . is . . pee-puhl!”

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