What do you think of meal replacements like Soylent/JimmyJoy?

Hello,

Have you tried some meal replacements such as JimmyJoy, Huel, or Jake?
To me they look very interesting for all the times you are not motivated to cook and you end up eating some junk food. They make you save a lot of time also.

I was wondering if there is some research that testifies that they are really healthy as they claim. Do you happen to know any? My first impression is favorable, but I would like to be sure. I’ve found a lot of posts about the taste (which I don’t consider too much), but less on the actual healthiness of the product, at least reliable ones.

Thanks!
Stefano

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I am eating Ringana D-Eat. I got used to it and I‘m not hungry even though it‘s only 200kcal per meal. Contains all your body requires.

Thanks for your answer!
Where did you find information for this company? I don’t find anything online.

@kagoda was asking for a meal replacement not for weight loss shakes. (Also, almost 5CHF per meal is not quite cheap, especially if it is only 200kcal.)

About the question:

It’s just food, not magic. Soylent tries to cover your macro- and micro-nutrient needs as well a nutritional science understands it.

Most people in the world survive on really simplistic diets (rice and beans, potatoes and corn, wheat and milk, etc. and then some proteins and fresh veggies added).

If you replace 7 meals a week with Soylent, and eat some other fresh food for the other meals, I struggle to see what the big problem is.

Try it out. Maybe you’re allergic to it. Maybe you can’t stomach it. Maybe you’ll get sick of it very quickly. But you won’t starve or die of nutritional deficiencies if you apply common sense.

Yes, I mean, I found their website, but no-one else speaking about them. I’m not too confident about using a product with no reviews. Also on Trustpilot they are rated a bit mixed: RINGANA Reviews | Read Customer Service Reviews of ringana.com

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Thank you!

Yes, I had more or less the same understanding. They look good especially for replacing all the meals where you don’t have the motivation to cook something good enough.
Not sure about how they compare to a diet where you are reasonably careful about what you eat, but from how it is advertised, it should cover these cases also.

So, in your opinion, there are no particular cons to eating Soylent? Like, no suspect additive, not too many biases towards certain types of food, not too much processed food (whatever that means)?

I‘d argue it‘s quite cheap. Cheaper than fast food take away anyways.

It‘s still a meal replacement. weight loss is a side effect

No, a Kebap with 800kcal costs around 9CHF.

But kagoda didn’t ask for weight loss. If they wanted to get an adequate meal from it they’d have to consume CHF 15-20 worth of your shakes per meal.

Yes, they conform with all the food additive laws. And I also don’t know what processed food means exactly, most of the time processing makes the food more nutritionally valuable but sometimes it might be problematic (hydrogenated fats).

If i were to completely switch to Soylent I’d tried to figure out if it was sustainable. But if I only replaced <50% of my calories and otherwise consumed standard food, I wouldn’t worry too much.

I don’t think we know that much about nutrition, about what optimal nutrition could look like. But I also don’t think it’s as important as many people think (except for maintaining a healthy weight).
My parents ate bread and cheese once a day for the majority of their lives.
My grandparents ate hash browns (potatoes, salt and butter) every day when they were younger.
I wouldn’t overtthink it. Your body will tell you if something is missing or doesn’t suit you.

You don‘t need the calories though. What you need is nutrition. Most of that 800kcal is unhealthy and more than your body needs for those unhealthy parts. 200kcal better than 800kcal and cheaper as well.

No sorry, that’s just stupid.
Most people need something between 1600 and 3000kcal to maintain their weight, depending on their sex, height, age, activity level and probably some metabolic variation among people.

If you want to read up on it:
Basal metabolic rate - Wikipedia
Energy homeostasis - Wikipedia

Be polite please. I don‘t see what is stupid. Nowhere did I suggest that you eat nothing else.

You need to get the remaining 600 kcal from somewhere else.
So either you eat those 600kcal in your shakes and it costs you 20CHF.
Or you buy a small kebap and it costs you 8+5 = 13 CHF
Or you cook the rest of it, which defies the purpose of @kagoda’s request.

But I don’t want to derail this discussion further.

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For breakfast and lunch I drink a couple of Jimmy Joy Plenny shakes and eat a Huel Hot&Savoury or Jimmy Joy Plenny Pot portion on most days (in addition to a yogurt with berries and more). For dinner I typically cook something normal.

I’m not aware of proper research on the healthiness of these products. However, both Jimmy Joy and Huel seem to meet the EU dietary reference values for macro- and micronutrients. They also aim for healthy fatty acid and amino acid profiles. See e.g. The Huel Powder Formula Explained. They routinely tweak their formulas based on new research.

There are also public blood work results, e.g., A Summary - Five Weeks on a 100%-Huel Diet. While Huel powder and Jimmy Joy Plenny shakes both have a good nutritional profile, as far as I can tell (Huel may be slightly better), I wouldn’t recommend a 100% Huel or Plenny shake diet. Variety is generally healthy and there are a lot of food parts outside the usual macro- and micronutrients (e.g. phytonutrients), which may also have an effect on your health.

My GF and I occasionally use YFood as a meal replacement. In our experience (at most 1 meal per day replaced, over periods of up to two weeks) its totally fine, although I liked to eat an apple in addition because I felt it was not quite enough to sustain a workday where I time to really focus.

And at ~3 CHF/serving it’s not as cheap as our home-cooked stuff, but still in a totally acceptable range.

Unrelated to the specific brand: we like to mix and match some flavours. It gives some more variety, which some people really need.

Thanks a lot for all the answers!
I think I’ll give Huel a try, it looks the best one from the nutritional profile point of view and from what you say.

Thanks!

Thanks for the recommendation! It looks like shipping to Switzerland could be reasonable.

On that aspect, I also like Bertrand: https://bertrand.bio/
They ship for free and very fast. If your order is below CHF60, there should also be no issue with customs adding fees on top.

They have a really nice crunchy texture because of crushed almonds. Unfortunately they recently changed the flavors and they taste more synthetic now. Still pretty good though.

How do you procure those? On their website, shipping to Switzerland looks like CHF30 minimum.

Yes, shipping is fairly expensive, unfortunately. Order enough bags to keep the shipping cost per bag to a minimum.