[Music] food for thought pills three times a day all your nutrients all your favorite flavors feel like having Lobster for breakfast done trying to like mushrooms but you can't stand the texture problem solved meal replacement pills are the future at least that's what people have been saying for the past century so what if we got them now how would they affect our diet would we be healthier could they solve world hunger will we see them in our lifetime this is what if and here's what would happen if you could get your meals in a pill
meal pills began as a feminist ideal leading up to the 1893 Chicago World's Fair the American Press Association asked writers to predict the world of 1993 so American suffragettes Mary Elizabeth Lise described a world of synthetic food freeing women from kitchen work and other domestic chores in the decades that followed science fiction novelists playwrights filmmakers and others from different disciplines all experimented with the idea of meal replacement pills the best we've come up with so far is Soylent Soylent is a thick and creamy concoction that contains all the fat carbs proteins vitamins and minerals you
need in a day so if we can drink our meals why can't we pop them it wouldn't be hard to replace a portion of your diet with nutrient pills after all you can pick up every essential vitamin in pill form at your local grocery store or pharmacy in doing so you might think you're pretty nutritious and intelligent but you wouldn't look it you'd grow irritable depressed tired and you'd eventually die of starvation because it's not just nutrients we need to survive calories are crucial the average adult needs 2,000 calories per day to survive what does
that look like here's the breakdown for breakfast eat two eggs a slice of bread two tablespoons of peanut butter and a glass of juice for lunch how about a turkey sandwich carrots and dip a chocolate chip cookie and a glass of milk and then for dinner you could grill up some salmon out of baked potato some steamed broccoli and a cup of ice cream for dessert and if you need a snack during the day grab an apple and a granola bar and you've hit 2,000 calories so how do you fit all that into one pill
you don't you and even if that is the most concentrated source of calories you can't fit enough of it into a single pill but if you were set on subsisting on a pill only diet then you'd have to eat 450 calorie pills a day plus other vitamins to get your needed nutrients that's sort of how Soylent was invented living in San Francisco with high rent and a high grocery bill Rob Reinhart thought to economize through chemistry he found out what the body needed to survive ordered the raw ingredients mostly in powdered form tossed him in
a blender added water and mixed up a healthy hardy cocktail Reinhardt's grocery bill went from four hundred and seventy dollars a month down to $50 with a meal replacement pill we could imagine a much more efficient world and one with greater food security since future meals would be easier and cheaper to manufacture and send around the world the effects of climate change today are beginning to limit what we can grow mangos and avocados for example are among the fruits that are in decline while farms around the world are seeing fewer yields due to global warming
and increased droughts we may never get it in one pill but it's possible if not likely that full meal replacements are the way of the future and if you're afraid that all your favorite flavors will disappear if all your food came in a pill don't be researchers at the Institute of food research in Norwich England recently found a way to put multiple flavors into a single capsule and have them released one at a time at different intervals so what's the future of food fast frugal and flavorful Bon Appetit [Music] you
