My low-demand, worry-free, and healthy diet
created: ; modified:I moved to the US 2 months ago and I’m pretty sure that I finally figured out food (tm). I thought my setup might be helpful to other people, so I’m sharing it here.
I find this diet very tasty and I believe it to be extremely healthy. Plus:
- It’s just $19/day.
- It requires less than 10 minutes/day for cooking and cleaning up.
- All of the meals are extremely convenient to consume at my desk while I keep working.
- I spend 0 time choosing which food to buy.
I should note that I don’t really care about food in the bigger picture and am mostly annoyed by it. Therefore I minimize annoyance as much possible. (although I love sugar to the point where I am forbidden by my wife from eating anything sweet most of the year, as I cannot control myself and gradually start eating only snickers if allowed)
So, my diet is:
- Muesli with kefir and Athletic Greens “superfood” powder for breakfast/brunch (920-1241 kcal)
- Muesli ingredients: oats, raisins, almonds, flax seeds, cashews, pumkin seeds.
- Kefir ingredients (may vary between producers slightly): pasteurized whole milk, pectin, various yeast and bacterial cultures.
- Athletic Greens ingredients: vitamins and minerals, superfood complex, dairy free probiotics, plant extracts and antioxidants, enzyme and mushroom complex. Details: https://athleticgreens.com/ingredients/en.
- MealSquares for lunch, dinner, snacks (1200-1600 kcal)
- MealSquares ingredients: whole grain oats, eggs, milk, dark chocolate chips (chocolate, sugar, cocoa butter, milkfat), whey, orange juice, rice bran, sunflower seeds, dates, sweet potatoes, apples, vegetable glycerin, chickpeas, carrots, coconut oil, extra virgin olive oil, xanthan gum, sunflower lecithin, xylitol, iodized sea salt, potassium citrate, cinnamon, aluminum free baking powder, Vitamin C (ascorbic acid), Vitamin D3, Vitamin K2, niacinamide (B3), calcium folinate, lactase, spices.
In terms of macro nutrients, this diet ends up having approximately (for 2500 kcal):
- 114 grams of fat
- 266 grams of carbs (including 34 grams of fiber)
- 125 grams of protein
Reasoning here is roughly is as follows: I love muesli with kefir for breakfast, while MealSquares seem to actually have everything one needs for proper nutrition. Just in case, since vegetables are lindy, I will add good green powder (which is probably actually healthier than normal vegetables that lose most of their nutrition after being plucked and before being eaten), to make sure that I have enough vegetables in my diet.
A Google Sheet with all of the details about exact food I eat, links, and explanations of calculations is embeded below or can be viewed here.
If you think this diet is bad or unhealthy in some way, please email me at alexey@newscience.org or leave a comment here.
FAQ/Notes are after the spreadsheet.
FAQ/Notes
Q: Why not just eat or drink Soylent?
A: Soylent drinks/bars end up costing almost exactly as much as MealSquares but with Soylent I would be worrying whether Soy Protein Isolate, Maltodextrin, and seed oils – the three main components of Soylent – are any good for me and whether simply mixing isolated ingredients and vitamins ends up missing some “unknown uknowns” of food. Three main components of MealSquares, in contrast, are whole grain oats, eggs, and milk. Also Soylent drink doesn’t feel very good while Soylent squares leave a weird aftertaste.
Q: What kitchen equipment is required?
A: I use a $19 Nicewell kitchen scale to make sure I eat 150-200 grams of muesli and 450-600 grams of kefir. I also use a $22 dry food dispenser for muesli, which makes getting muesli extremely easy. You’ll also need a fridge to store kefir and MealSquares.
Q: Why buy the super expensive Athletic Greens when there are endless “superfood” powders on Amazon for 1/3-1/2 of the price?
A: I read a lot of reviews of all kinds of other powders and I couldn’t get myself to the point where I could trust any of them 100%. Some had issues with consistency. Some were magnetic (???). Some had weird ingredients. Most tasted like shit. Since I want to minimize my worry, I figured that simply buying the most expensive powder that brags about its clean production, is specifically endorsed by Tim Ferriss as one of the very few supplements he uses, has a bunch of weird but cool-sounding shit in it that other powders do not usually have, and tastes good when I add it to my muesli while being stored in individual packets, is worth extra $50-80/month. Plus I literally no longer worry about not eating enough fruit and vegetables of course.
Q: How do you feel on this diet?
A: I really like the taste of both muesli with kefir and Athletic Greens and of MealSquares and I feel great about eating exclusively them. When I eat poorly I get bloated and constipated. No such issues with this diet.
Q: What the hell is up with kefir?
You can use milk instead of kefir, decreasing the cost per day by about $2. I prefer kefir because I like its taste better and because due to its creaminess I don’t need to worry about it spilling/splashing when I carry it around and eat (unrelated: I think that “lowfat” dairy is a scam and avoid it in favor of whole milk as much as possible).
Q: What if I’m not in the US?
MealSquares are only delivered to the US at the moment 😪 Athletic Greens have worldwide delivery. Local muesli and kefir should be available everywhere.
This is definitely unhealthy. Diet shouldn’t be a monoculture. That’s less robust. Just like crop rotation for farming, I think you would benefit from adding 2-4 more daily meals.
I do not understand this criticism.
Do you consider a diet consisting of oats, raisins, almonds, flax seeds, cashews, pumkin seeds, whole grain oats, eggs, milk, dark chocolate chips (chocolate, sugar, cocoa butter, milkfat), whey, orange juice, rice bran, sunflower seeds, dates, sweet potatoes, apples, vegetable glycerin, chickpeas, carrots, coconut oil, extra virgin olive oil, xanthan gum, sunflower lecithin, xylitol, iodized sea salt, potassium citrate, cinnamon, and a mix of dozens of plant extracts, vitamins, etc. "monoculture"?
I think by "monoculture" here, he means you eat the same thing everyday, despite that the meal itself is healthy. Our body may need different amount of each kind of nutrition, so getting the same amount of nutrition all the time may not be "healthy".
Correction: Our body may need different amount of each kind of nutrition at different time.
I tweeted at you but it probably makes more sense to post here!
I don't agree with you that a green powder is 'probably healthier than normal vegetables that lose most of their nutrition after being plucked and before being eaten'. The nutrition is definitely more likely to be lost in all the processing that's done to turn it into powder.
Also and perhaps more importantly, consuming things in powdered form completely changes how your body responds to it. A simple example can be seen in how oatmeal made from powdered oats spikes blood sugar more than that made from full-size oats.
What would worry me more though is that my body would have gone to town on everything in the powder before it reaches the lower ends of my digestive system. More and more science is coming out about the gut microbiome and how important it is, and just how little we know about it. I know you're eating kefir and getting probiotics from the powders, but there's billions of microbes in you that like to feed on a variety of things. Only getting your greens from powders seems like you're risking starving a lot of those great little bugs of the stuff they like to eat.
I'm pretty anti these kinds of powders, because we don't have any good data on how consuming them instead of whole foods might affect you in the long term.
How much choline do "eggs" in MealSquares provide? The only place where they mention it is https://mealsquares.com/pages/nutrition-facts, specifically the vitamins (vitamins B) section, but no numbers.
Choline seems important for cognition and found mostly in yolks, not abstract "eggs" (and that's exactly where MealSquares might fool you, no?) Also see https://twitter.com/St_Rev/status/1128192448054870016 and https://twitter.com/St_Rev/status/1324861242444484608
If you sum up everything from this diet then maaaybe you get to bare minimum. Man, I just really want you to stay sharp;)
Wrt staying sharp, I also commented on Omega-3 (DHA!). And, like, I get that you find the "cognitive" stuff dubious and it might just be a nothingburger for adults (kids should definitely get both choline and omega-3, the evidence is overwhelming) but the effect might just be real, at least FOR SOME PPL (think blue light effect variability, idk) so how do you know you're not one of those ppl? Yeah, I remember the tweet about you already "operating at the top of your mental capability" but who knows..
This looks pretty good, but $19 a day isn't a shoestring budget, so it better be. Someone whose diet is McDonald's and gas station chips is getting more dietary creatine than you, though. It isn't an essential nutrient, but many think it has nootropic and physical performance effects beyond muscle strength.
$19 seems expensive. Do people routinely spend more that USD $19 per day on food?
Do you live in the US? What's your food budget, how healthy is your food, and how much time do you spend cooking?
$19 is very good given the variety and the healthiness of the diet and how little it costs in time.
Yeah Alexey, I think this is well-thought out and certainly optimizes for convenience in a way that has real value! I agree with the others here, though, in that I don't think it optimizes for budget or nutrition.
For reference, I live in the DC area (fifth-highest metro for cost of living by one metric) and I try to follow Michael Pollan's three-part diet: "(1) eat real food (2) not too much (3) mostly plants." I track and categorize my expenses pretty carefully; despite eating out a couple times a week or more, I still rarely exceed $500 on food in a month.
I think if you were willing to compromise a little on the convenience axis you could probably make significant gains on nutrition and cost, but whether that's worthwhile is obviously up to you!
There's no meat?
MILK AND EGGS ARE MEAT!!!
Sources of Omega-3 (namely EPA and DHA)? Any blood work done recently to check e.g. Vit D levels?
Ah! Yes, I supplement Omega 3 and Vitamin D. Will add to the post. Thank you!
Six months in, any changes? Still feeling good?
Also, do you have a referral link for Athletic Greens, you kind of convinced me on it.
don't you get bored eating always the same stuff? any cheat meal?