Text/Yan Yucheng
"To put it bluntly, this is human feed!"
I learned that I recently tried a meal replacement called Wakami meal replacement powder in order to save time, a powdered food that mixes the nutrients the body needs in proportion to its daily needs, and a friend criticized me sharply.
Friends believe that meal replacement powder deprives humans of the physical pleasure they get through eating, as well as the social pleasure of eating together, which is "anti-human". In addition, China is a country that pays attention to the quality of eating, and the existence of meal replacement powder has fundamentally rejected China's long-standing traditional food culture, which seems "deviant".
In the perception of the outside world as a "gathering place for intellectuals and elites," there are some people who disagree with my friends. They proudly put this tag on the profile bar , The Soylent user , to show that they are busy and avant-garde people.
This does not mean that all users of Zhihu recognize this food. There are also people who think the same way as my friends, who fiercely criticize the existence of this food (perhaps they do not think it is food), and even more viciously curse the "anti-human" company of Wakasa to quickly collapse, and he expressed his willingness to personally contribute 1,000 yuan to fund the boycott.
Experience reports
In the Divine Comedy, Dante placed "gluttony" in the second place of the seven deadly sins, the first being "lust."
According to the old Chinese saying, the color of food is also. So if they can be restrained, will there be a chance for man to be closer to God? When I started experimenting with replacing wakami with a meal and away from appetite, I did feel closer to God, but honestly I don't miss that experience, and some users who have experienced wakami radically feel the same way.
Brewed Wakami is a liquid food that tastes like semi-sweet and half-salted soy milk, with a slightly viscous texture but a little thinner than porridge. The reason for the thickness is that it adds dietary fiber that provides a feeling of fullness, and on the other hand, there are a lot of solid substances that need to be dissolved if the meal is served.
According to Shao Wei's suggestion, a lunch needs three, that is, a total of 150 grams of solid substances - stacked in the cup is about half a cup high, and the brewing water they give is recommended to be 750ml, which means that when brewing, it needs to be shaken vigorously to ensure that all the contents are dissolved.
The first is the problem of fullness, if the meal is just drunk, it is actually very full. User M told me that he initially felt that if the portion size of a meal was very small, he did not add an additional 1 stick according to the recommended 3 sticks. Apparently, he overestimated his "amount of food": "The first time I ate Ruo rice, I almost drank it with tears, really very supportive." ”
And then, is it delicious? Except for some insoluble matter that is slightly gnawing, it honestly tastes good, much more than expected. But the question is, if you only drink thick soy milk for three meals a day, will you have a nervous breakdown to doubt the meaning of life?
According to M, a loyal user of Wakami, after nearly three years of taste improvement, Wakami is indeed much better at present. However, the concept of meal replacement advocated by Wakami is not so new, and there is a product called Soylent abroad that has already done similar things.
Causes
"You need amino acids and lipids, not the milk itself," he said. "You need carbs, not bread." Fruits and vegetables provide essential vitamins and minerals, but they are "primarily water." Rob Rhinehart, founder of Soylent, sees the nature of eating this way.
Rob Rhinehart was originally an engineer in the United States. When starting his business, in order to save money and time, he decided to cut the "bigger thing than the sky" of eating off the schedule.
In Rob Rhinehart's view, if the human body is seen as a sophisticated machine, then food is fuel, so the nature of eating is an engineering problem.
He "de-meaningizes" eating, and then breaks down the concept of eating in the same way that engineers look at the underlying code—why don't humans take these more pure nutrients directly?
So he did.
By studying nutritional biology textbooks, the websites of the FDA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Institute of Medicine, he produced a formula that covers the proportions of nutrients that people need on a daily basis. He then purchased the raw materials for these nutrients and mixed them together in proportion to the first generation of Soylent.
Soylent was not originally intended for the general public, but was used by Rob Rhinehart for himself. Later, this thing unexpectedly won the recognition of code farmers in Silicon Valley, and then it became a hit. Coupled with a long, provocative report by the New Yorker, "Food Terminator," Soylent raised $20 million in Series A funding.
Rob Rhinehart defines Soylent as open source food. The concept of open source comes from the IT world, which means that Soylent will make the recipe public, let the public use it and modify it according to their own needs (which means that if the audience does not want to buy Soylent's product, they can also buy the raw material DIY at home according to the recipe). Soylent also modifies its formulations based on the latest research or consumer opinions to make them more in line with the real needs of the human body, a strategy they call iteration — also from the IT world.
Ruo Rice, on the other hand, almost copied the early concept of Soylent, but CEO Shao Wei said that what Ruo Rice is doing is more stringent and difficult. In his answer, we got more details about the business.
Shao Wei is an idealist, although his ideals have not been recognized much at present: "The food industry has not been overly innovative for many years, and I hope that if rice can bring about change, it will become a new food category in the future." ”
He believes that at present, traditional food manufacturers have been developing foods that are not conducive to human health, which is a kind of research and development idea that meets the fundamental starting point of human appetite pursuit, old and continuous vicious circle: the pursuit of the ultimate taste, advocating taste first, but bringing a variety of unhealthy eating habits to human beings - high sugar, high fat, high sodium, lack of dietary fiber, etc.
Innovation, on the other hand, refers to the fact that no food can truly abandon the "pursuit of the ultimate taste" and return to "health".
"What about salads?" "Salads aren't completely healthy either."
In addition to the demands about health, Shao Wei, a former code farmer, also has similar troubles as Rob Rhinehart - eating is too time-consuming. Until one day, when he poured dog food for the dog, he was suddenly hit by a thought: "Dog food is so convenient, why can't we eat like dog food?" ”
If you can accept this setting, in fact, dog food and wakami do have a logical similarity. They are all directly mixed and processed into food by forming nutrients (naturally extracted or synthesized), and their absorption is more efficient and their nutritional compatibility is more scientific than that of traditional foods.
This is also the point of anger among the opponents, who simply call it "human feed." However, Shao Wei did not care about their criticism: "To be honest, I do not reject the name of 'feed', but I prefer to call Ruo rice 'a new food based on precision nutrition ratios'." ”
The so-called precision nutrition is the characteristic that makes Shao Wei most proud of the rice. He referred to the official nutrition intake recommendation table for Chinese physique and mixed the raw materials of these nutrients under the optimal advice of nutrition experts. Then Wakami also implemented an open source approach like Soylent, and the recipe sheet was constantly optimized, tending to a perfect ultimate goal: "I hope that Wakami can achieve full nutritional coverage." ”
Regarding this statement, dietitian Gu Zhongyi also holds a reserved supportive attitude, he believes that if the meal can indeed provide the major nutrients necessary for the human body at one time, it is also reasonable and healthyer than the daily diet. But the conservative point is that if the meal can not achieve the absolute meaning of "total nutrition coverage", because there are still some trace elements that have positive significance for the human body only exist in natural food, and are still in the stage of being discovered. Therefore, Shao Wei suggested that users who eat ruo rice should eat it with vegetables and nuts to eliminate the possibility mentioned above.
Another obstacle to "achieving total nutrition coverage" is the current food safety regulations in force in China. According to the regulations, at present, some trace elements that have been clearly used are not allowed to be added to the rice, because if the rice is positioned as prepackaged food, it is currently a food production license, and it is illegal to add trace elements. If you want to complete the trace elements, you need to change the rice to a health care product category and take the health product production license. "If rice is for the widest audience, we don't want it to be a health supplement for a specific audience." Shao Wei was an unusually real person.
In addition to this, there are also concerns about the atrophy and degeneration of the digestive system caused by long-term eating of liquid food. Gu Zhongyi said that there is no need to worry too much, because there is no more argument for the existence of this phenomenon: "For healthy people, the gastrointestinal tract may not be as delicate as you think. "On the contrary, many people now have problems with overuse of their teeth and temporomandibular joints.
However, Gu Zhongyi still has reservations about long-term eating. Because everyone's physical condition is actually different, if humans as individuals eat a single food for a long time, the risk of deficiency and overdose of certain nutrients will be greatly increased. In addition, there are still many blind spots in the current nutrition research, and there is currently no more research on foods such as rice, and no more health evidence can be produced. From the point of view of the dietitian, he can only conservatively recommend the meal - a complete meal replacement is recommended for no more than three months, and it is best to test kidney function and thyroid function.
Gu Zhongyi finally told me mercilessly that products such as Ruo rice and Soylent belong to the whole intestine nutrition preparation in the clinical nutrition community, which is already a very mature technology in itself, and there is no innovation in any process or formula. If it must be said to be some kind of revolution, it may be more of an innovation in lifestyle and marketing ideas.
Eat only meal replacement powder on the third day
I felt like I had seen God
I only insisted on this behavior of eating only three meals a day for two days. The next night, I dreamed that a compassionate-looking man brought me fried chicken and cheesecake and told me to "turn back to the shore."
User K is stronger than my willpower, and he insists on eating only for a month. Later, all his senses were enhanced, and as he walked down the street, he said he could smell every restaurant and barbecue stall on the street. At the end of the month, K ate a bowl of chutney, and then he had diarrhea and collapsed on the toilet for a long time.
Shao Wei is closer to a forbidden (appetite) than we are, and there will always be a sentence at the bottom of every article on the Public Account of Ruoyan: "The satisfaction of eating a meal does not necessarily come from the taste buds, but can also be a monastic self-discipline." Putting aside these metaphysical slogans, from the perspective of health, he believes that the research and development of the food industry is almost all traps:
"It's hard for humans to get rid of appetite control, and it's harder to forget when you've eaten something delicious, especially something that's high in fat and sugar, and that's something written in our genes." Some people admire the heavy taste things, knowing that these things are unhealthy, but still can't help but try it. In order to make a profit, the merchant seizes this point, constantly producing something that satisfies our desires, and then produces new desires to induce us to consume. “
In Shao Wei's view, "human nature" is almost synonymous with desire. Fitness, going to bed early and getting up early are all anti-human habits, but they are indeed a good way of life for the body. So "anti-human" is not only not a derogatory term for him, but another form of recognition.
Loyal users of Wakasa agree with this concept. User K believes that people who eat should have strong self-control and learning ability. But according to Shao Wei and some other users, they should have another label - work obsessive-compulsive disorder.
M is the operator of an Internet company. His work is not so busy that he does not even have time to eat, but the continuity of work is very strong, if he stops working at the meal point to eat, it takes a long time to find the break point of work and then return to work. If rice provides him with a good solution, spend five minutes brewing, eating (drinking?). Drop, and then continue to work, without delay.
Shao Wei gave two clearer user portraits: people who are inconvenient to eat on time and dead homes when working due to various factors (visiting customers, traveling, on duty, etc.).
Reasons to fear meal replacements
When I announced the end of the experiment of completely replacing the meal with meal replacement powder, my friend wasted no time in sneering again, but his attitude was more than just teasing.
The ancient word prophecy has never lost its market, and in order to eliminate the anxiety caused by the uncertainty of the future, human beings will always give themselves a possible sense of security through prophecy.
The birth and popularity of Soylent points to a future that currently exists only in the fantasy of science fiction, the "cyberpunk" world. Life has been fully invaded by science and technology, the meaning of man continues to collapse in scientific and technological civilization, and human nature is obliterated by the frenzy of instrumental rationality. People have lamented the fate of Suko Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell, who became a humanoid weapon to find herself, and we don't want to become a humanoid machine that loses itself at all.
Stills from "Ultra Century Murder / Soylent Green"
Soylent's product name comes from this film
Opponents argue that if the ricemen are evil companies that stand against humanity, the motive for the frenzied boycott is to satisfy a heroic belief: "As long as you refuse to obey, you are still human." ”
Shao Wei, CEO of Wakami, is quite moderate when looking at this issue: "We currently never advocate users to completely replace the main meal with Wakami, we just want to provide a new choice." ”
However, his speculation about the future is bound to worry conservatives – the price of natural foods will become higher and higher in the future, and the price of future staple foods such as rice will become lower and lower, fully occupying the human table. For the average person, eating a natural meal becomes a luxury and ritualistic act.
This article represents only the views of the author and does not represent the position of the journal