The Recipe

After creating





Niacin my own nutrient profile and after I got hold of all the nutrient profiles of all my ingredients (especially the local masa corn flour was difficult), I was finally able to create my recipe. So, without any further ado, my recipe on diy.soylent.me . For your convenience I also copied it into the table below.

Calories

My calories are a bit low to be honest - it would probably be better to have a few hundred more. However most sources recommend widely different amounts and those almost 2100 calories should at least maintain my weight. If not gain me a bit since I am likely eating even less than that currently. The overall better nutrition and optimized absorption of soylent should also decrease the amount of calories required in my food.

Still, I'll keep this in mind and luckily it is fairly easy to observe what happens and adjust my recipe accordingly. And it gives me some wiggle-room to eat a snack or something without feeling bad ;).





Manganese, Phosphorus and Potassium





The australian medical research council recommends higher amounts than the FDA and other sources. Rob does recommend a higher dose as well though, so there might be something to it. Then again, Rob recommends very high values for most nutrients and it is difficult to find reasons for it. For now, I'll trust my research but I'll observe the situation very carefully. This doesn't just apply the micronutrients mentioned above - Rob recommends slightly higher amounts of most micronutrients than what I'll be getting. The australian medical research council is only with those mentioned above not in line with my recipe.

Improvements and Ideas for v2

Here's a list of things I am already thinking about for the next version my local People Chow:





Oat Flour

Some people have reported great success with replacing the corn masa flour with whole oat flour. This seems interesting to me, but as the masa is the main calorie-source this would likely have far reaching consequences for the rest of the recipe. Replacing just some of the masa is probably easier.

But I'll have to do some more research about the differences and advantages/disadvantages of the flours anyway. Whether or not I take offense in the "corny" taste of my People Chow will obviously heavily influence how important this is to me. I any case, trying it out won't hurt.





Omega-3 EPA and DHA

The current recipe does contain Omega 3 . But only ALA Omega 3 - which is probably still healthy but only a very small amounts of it is converted to EPA and DHA.

Caffeine

I like to drink energy drink - mostly because of the pronounced effect the mix of caffeine and other ingredients has on my body: heightened energy levels (at least temporarily) and everything else that comes with it. However, once I switch so soylent I'd like to avoid them since they contain so many unhealthy things and ridiculous amounts of nutrients I already have. On the other hand I'd still like to be able to give myself a "boost" every once in a while.

Luckily people have already experimented so it shouldn't be difficult to achieve this with a little caffeine and

L-theanine in my soylent on days I feel like I need it.



Nootropics

Nootropics is a very wide topic, if you've never heard of them this Wiki-page might help you. There is also a active and growing community on reddit surrounding them. And some people have already experimented with adding them to soylent.

I'll approach this topic with great caution and only after my body has adjusted to being completely nourished, so that I can have a proper baseline for further experiments.



Less complex ingredients

I will aim to reduce the complexity of my ingredients over time - by reducing complexity I mean reducing the amount of stuff each ingredient contains and not the amount of ingredients. The more I do this the more I can accurately control all nutrients I consume. However each step in this direction will significantly increase in difficulty and effort required.



More local bulk supplies





For the 90 day experiment I ordered many ingredients online in american shops (Amazon for example) - they are now being reshipped by shipito . This is obviously not a sustainable solution, because of the shipping fees and the effort required, if I decide to live mainly of my local People Chow for longer than my experiment. I'll have to search for local bulk suppliers in that case.

Update on my schedule

Clean my kitchen from most of my ordinary food. This will have to wait until the day before I start my experiment, but I am already working on using up all my reserves.

Plan in more detail what data I'll record and compare and what other things I should regularly do during the experiment. That topic will be covered in a future post I'll have to write as well. It will be online this or next week.

I've decided on my calorie source - now I just have to buy it, around 30kg. Which will suck because it is so heavy.

Receive the ingredients I ordered online. If TNT's estimate is to be trusted it should arrive on the 23th of July.

I am probably going to buy a proper hand-blender - it will come in handy if I need to work with the masa and it's "grittiness". Hm.... Nevermind, I will buy one if I need it.

If you check the recipe you'll quickly notice my surprisingly high amount of Niacin. The levels are so high that many profiles would flag them as poisonous. However: they are not. Or at least they shouldn't be, since the daily UL (tolerable upper intake levels) of Niacin is based on it's flushing threat and not its actual toxicity levels - adverse effects can be observed with upwards of several hundred milligrams of Niacin daily. All of this would still put me at daily levels that could cause flushing, but as I've found out there are two kinds of Niacin: nicotinic acid and nicotinamide. The acid causes flushing, however the nicotinamide is not known to do so. And since my main source of Niacin ( GNC Mega Man Sport ) contains both acid and nicotinamide I concluded it should be safe. Especially because GNC actually recommends 15g more of the powder daily than what I'll be using.EPA/DHA Omega 3 is the type that is supposed to have serious health benefits and people usually mean when they talk about Omega 3. Marine oils are likely the best and easily the most popular source to those "proper" Omega 3's. I'll likely include something similar to this cod liver oil in the future. And while I am at it I should fix my Omega 3 to Omega 6 ratio as well. But for this first try I'll leave them out - it's not like most people get them and research on the topic is still being done anyway.I am right on track with my schedule, only a few things are left to do before the experiment. Even my shipment from shipito is on time - it is currently awaiting customs clearance in London. Here's a list with the things that are left to do (this is probably more useful to me than to you...):All-in-All the 26th of July is still likely as the start of the experiment.