Category Archives: culture

I’m Giving Up Cooking to Drink Soylent This Week, Here’s Why

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All natural Soylent mix

Last month, the New Yorker published a piece on Soylent, a shelf-stable powder that can be mixed with water to become a meal replacement. “The End of Food,” the headline screamed, “Has a tech entrepreneur come up with a product to replace our meals?” Unlike Slim Fast and similar products, Soylent claims to be nutritionally complete, the only thing you’ll need to eat (er, drink) for the rest of your life (which hopefully will not be shortened due to diet). Also, it was invented by a bunch of young engineers who subsequently launched a successful Kickstarter campaign to manufacture Soylent for the masses. $755,000 later, we are that much closer to a humanity that doesn’t have to think about food ever again. This despite a name that was intentionally chosen for dark humor.

My gut reaction upon hearing the Soylent story was that it was a ludicrous idea. Why would anyone want to replace all of their meals with this shake? That would take all the fun and pleasure out of eating! The more I thought about it though, the more I started to see the appeal. As someone who loves food, cooking and works in the food industry on several levels, it’s hard for me to step away from my “Good food will bring world peace and cure cancer!” bubble. But I know for many people, food is a means, not a way of living, and it requires time, expertise and effort to craft meals three times a day. If you are cramming for finals and would otherwise drink soda and grab two dollar-slices of pizza, is Soylent such a bad alternative?

Click here to jump to the FAQs/read about farts.

So, I went to the Soylent website and looked at the ingredients. It read like the elements of the periodic table: choline bitartrate, manganese sulfate, chromium chloride, and on and on. As someone who cares about understanding what goes into my body, this was not reassuring. (Yes, I realize that when I eat “real” food, these chemicals are also going into my body, but I would rather they come from recognizable foods than be artificially produced in a factory.)

Also, it was expensive. A week’s supply (21 meals) was $85. That is actually much higher than the amount I usually spend on groceries each week ($20-30). I suppose if you factored in the cost of my pantry ingredients plus the amount I spend eating out at restaurants, I spend more than $85/week on food, but even so, this seemed like a large amount to spend on a product that was widely acknowledged to taste mediocre.

But what if I could make Soylent on my own? It turns out that there is a burgeoning DIY Soylent movement, with a rich variety of recipes designed for various needs (building muscle, losing weight, women’s health, etc). So, I set out to see if I could make Soylent on my own. And lo and behold, there was a recipe online for “All Natural Soylent.” I figured that if I could source all of the ingredients from the venerable Park Slope Food Coop, then it would indicate the quality and relative “naturalness” of my finished Soylent. It would also mean significant cost savings for me compared to buying Soylent directly.

Starting tomorrow (Mon 6/16), I am going to embark on a Soylent-only diet for one week. That means no solid foods, no alcohol, no cheating (I hope). I’ve never tried restricting my diet before in any manner, so clearly going cold-turkey on Soylent for a week will be a cakewalk.

Frequently Asked Questions

Natural Soylent Ingredients

What’s in this “all-natural” Soylent?

Milk, nuts, cocoa powder, dried spices, and other odds and ends, but primarily ingredients that you would know and recognize. Part of the appeal of using this mix was that any leftover ingredients I had at the end of the week could be used in regular cooking, whereas most Soylent recipes call for things like “GNC Mega Men Sport.” I ended up substituting a packet of Emergen-C for camu camu powder, since the Food Coop didn’t carry it, but since the recipe only includes 1 g of this, I don’t feel too bad about the compromise. Here’s the full recipe for a one day/3 serving batch, designed to give you 2,000 calories/day:

  • 5 cups 1% milk, Vitamin D-fortified
  • 55 g coconut sugar (potassium)
  • 45 g cocoa powder
  • 30 g chia seeds (fiber, protein and omega-3 fatty acids)
  • 75 g sunflower seeds (thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, B6, and folate)
  • 50 g hazelnuts
  • 25 g peanuts (niacin)
  • 10 g dried spearmint (vitamin K)
  • 5 g dried basil (vitamin K)
  • 10 g soy lecithin (choline)
  • 3 g iodized salt
  • 1 g Emergen-C powder (vitamin C)
  • 1 g paprika (vitamin A)

What’s it taste like?

Honestly, it tastes all right. The dominant flavors are chocolate and mint, so it basically tastes like minty chocolate milk, which would be really appealing if I only liked chocolate more. The texture is a little gritty but tolerable. If I work on my blender technique and experiment with blending the liquids and solids in smaller batches, I think I’ll be able to get a totally smooth shake. Or, if anyone wants to lend me a Vitamix blender, I’m all ears.

No really, why are you doing this? Why are you kicking puppies and taking all the fun out of food?

Anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE to eat. Moreover, I cook frequently and do it well. So I don’t think there’s any question that I’m lacking the skills or motivation to make my own meals. However, I also REALLY love efficiency and good time management. Right now, I spend a good chunk of my time planning meals, assessing my kitchen inventory, grocery shopping, prepping and cooking food. If I freed up that time, what could I do with an extra 5-10 hours each week? That idea excites me immensely. Can you imagine what you could accomplish with that block of time?

I’m also doing this as a social and psychological experiment. What’s it like to eat the same thing every day? I certainly don’t lack for options in NYC, but there are people in developing countries who can’t afford a diverse diet. How do I explain what I’m doing to my friends, family and coworkers? I tried to block off a relatively quiet week for my Soylent diet, so that I could avoid missing out on parties, work events, etc. Of course, it didn’t work out that way, and I’ll definitely be forced to drink my Soylent while at public gatherings. But that’s fine, I’m happy to share my story, even if I come off as a bit of a kook. More importantly, I hope my experiment will inspire some radical conversations about why we eat what we eat, and why the idea of Soylent feels so repulsive and icky to people…or not.

Wait, I heard Soylent makes you burp/fart/[unmentionable effects on your gastrointestinal system] a lot?

Prolific flatulence does seem to be one of the most “dangerous” side effects of the Soylent diet. This is probably because most Americans (97%) don’t eat enough fiber. So when you suddenly start eating the proper amounts of fiber, your system may have some trouble adjusting.

I’m not too concerned about this (though maybe my coworkers should be) because I already eat tons of leafy greens and whole grains, but there’s only way to find out what happens when I’m hitting the minimum recommended fiber level…

Will Soylent be healthier than what I normally eat?

Here’s a one-week snapshot of what I usually eat. In red, I’ve marked the meals which were from restaurants or that I otherwise didn’t make and don’t truly know what went into the food. I am a firm believer that homecooked meals, where you can control exactly what goes into your food, are better for you than food made in commercial settings. (Though I also recognize that some homecooked meals, including my own, can be just as unhealthy/even tastier than restaurant meals.)

Diet Diary

As you can see, much to my chagrin there is a lot of red. This was a week where I attended several events after work, and also had leftovers from Szechuan Gourmet from when I treated my mom and aunt to dinner. So I didn’t do a ton of cooking for myself that week. Weekend mornings are also tough because I’m working as a line cook, which means I end up cramming leftover food scraps into my mouth while I work, then eat at the end of my shift around 4:30 pm.

Without running a full nutritional analysis, I have no way of knowing how healthy my normal diet is, but it’s probably a bit high in fat and not nutritionally complete.

Will I save money by drinking Soylent?

I mentioned above that I felt buying Soylent was expensive, so how does making Soylent compare in terms of cost? I ran the calculations for my version of Soylent, and it comes out to $2.01/meal, which is definitely cheaper, about half the cost of buying official Soylent. If you bought all of the ingredients on Amazon, it would be just a bit more, about $2.75/meal.

Soylent Cost

So that’s that for now. I will be posting throughout the week with updates on the Soylent experiment, whether it’s worth the time savings, cost savings or health benefits, and any other unexpected effects. Stay tuned!

Europe for a Weekend: Stockholm

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Stockholm Map
Image: designlovefest

Ever since I subscribed to The Flight Deal, there’s been a constant stream of cheap flights that drop in and tantalize me with dreams of kicking off and leaving the country on a whim. Well, I was finally in the right frame of mind when I saw direct flights from New York to Stockholm through Norwegian Air for just €282 (approximately $384). Given that I’ve paid more to get to the West Coast, going to Europe for a long weekend was sounding like a pretty good proposition.

Why such a short trip? First and foremost, I need to be back in town for culinary school. Secondly, on a trip to Japan, I met some people who regularly jetset to other countries for the weekend. It sounds crazy at first, but as they put it, the core attractions of most cities can be covered in a day, so exploring a city and nearby outskirts in a weekend is totally manageable. The caveat is that this only works if, like me, you are impervious to jetlag and run on adrenaline when you’re abroad.

I’ve never visited Scandinavia and Sweden has always held some fascination for me as a bastion of liberal thinkers with generous social welfare policies. I mean, Sweden’s Twitter account is held by a random person every week, from astronomers to lesbian truck drivers. If that’s not democracy, I don’t know what is. This week, the Twitter is being run by Irma, an expat cartoonist from Maplewood, NJ. I’ve been following her stories on what it’s like to move to Stockholm right after college and learn Swedish as a foreigner. Also, she recognized my Twitter avatar (rainbow cake batter), the first person ever to do so!

Stockholm Map
View larger map

I culled through food and design blogs and skimmed some old-fashioned travel guides to create the following color-coded map of food, shopping and attractions. It’s a little heavy on hipster coffee shops (like Cafe String, where everything is for sale, even the chair you sit on) and concept art shops (like Flux Shop, which is “an attitude, not a movement or a style”). It will be a weekend of excellent seafood, coffee and Vikings.

Nu kör vi!

Cork, Rocks and Vinegar: How (Not) to Cook an Octopus

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So you can break down a chicken, truss a duck and french a rack of lamb? Have you tried cooking an octopus?

There are some dishes which are so failure-prone that a vibrant mythology is built around how to avoid the usual pitfalls. Tenderizing octopus certainly falls into that camp. A quick Google search on the subject quickly reveals that the best way to cook a tender octopus is to vigorously beat it on some Grecian rocks. Or to cook it with wine corks in the pot. Or to add some vinegar. Or maybe the secret is to rub the octopus with grated daikon radish. Actually, scratch all that, the real key to success is to slowly dip the octopus a few seconds at a time into hot water until it acclimates to the boiling temperatures. All of these methods have their proponents, who will wholeheartedly assure you that it will work because after all, that is how their grandfather did it, and his father and his before that.

Since I lack heritage knowledge in octopus cookery, I turned to the next best option: esteemed chef and food scientist Harold McGee. In this article, he admits that his own results with octopus have been inconsistent—sometimes chewy, sometimes fibrous—and proceeds to test all of the usual methods for tenderizing octopus. The result? None of them seemed to be foolproof.
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Inside Tsukiji: Our Last Wild Urban Market

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Turret trucks careening around corners, workers unloading boxes of glistening scales and tentacles, tuna carvers wielding samurai swords. All happening while Tokyo sleeps.

Tsukiji Market holds a storied place among international visitors and chefs in Tokyo. It is the world’s largest wholesale seafood market, sprawling across 23 hectares or about 55 American football fields. Over 2,000 tons of product moves through these stalls every day, ranging from tiny anchovies and smelt to hulking tunas and cuts of whale.

In recent years, the frozen bluefin tuna auction has become a popular attraction for tourists, drawing large crowds who have sometimes been disruptive. In response, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government (TMG) banned the admittance of visitors for a while, then settled on allowing the first 120 people to view the auction from a designated area. Visitors are admitted beginning at 5 am, and people start lining up even earlier than that.

But don’t go to Tsukiji just to wait in line for the frozen tuna auction; there’s plenty of other sights and stories to learn. I was lucky to come across Naoto Nakamura, a tour guide who worked in the seafood industry for 12 years and may well be Tokyo’s leading expert on the market’s history. At 3 am, we gathered just outside of the market and Nakamura-san explained the ground rules: no photographs with flash, no standing in heavily trafficked areas, and if TMG security guards approach, simply say that you’re shopping and move if asked.
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An Old New World: Arthur Avenue’s Little Italy

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When I left Italy in March, I’ll confess it wasn’t so much a graceful departure as a beeline to escape. I was tired of fighting bureaucracy in the Living Museum, missed the bustle of a proper city, and had eaten so much cured meat that my sweat stank with lactic fermentation. Italophiles may weep, but I’ll say it anyway—I was totally over Italy and ready to abandon la dolce vita forever.

But like a mosquito to bare arms, I couldn’t stay away for long. Soon, I’d gotten my fix of cilantro and tacos, and my kilo-block of parmesan had run out. Luckily, this is New York and you can get anything here—for a price—so I began discreetly scouting for new dealers.

They said Arthur Avenue was where I wanted to go. It seems that while the Little Italy of downtown Manhattan has long been overrun by tourists and Armenian restauranteurs masquerading as Italians, this little stretch of the Bronx still retains small town character and old men leisurely watching football.

Transportation to Arthur Avenue consists of taking the B/D train to Fordham, a solid 90-minute trek from Brooklyn. The surrounding neighborhood isn’t the greatest, but during the day, I didn’t feel uncomfortable at any point. After you leave the station, walk about seven blocks to the east along 186th St, then one block south on 3rd Ave, and another four blocks east on 187th St until you reach Arthur Ave. The Italian community is centered around this intersection, radiating 3-4 blocks in each direction.
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Pride Parade: One Small Step for Humans, One Giant Leap for Human Rights

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So you may have heard that the state of New York legalized gay marriage last Friday. Thirty days after the bill’s signing, homosexual couples will able to marry in NY, MA, VT, CT, NH, IA and DC.

The city’s annual Pride Parade was scheduled for Sunday, just two days after the historic passage. Cue thousands of signs being printed with the proclamation, “Thank you Governor Cuomo – promise kept!” A few marchers made not-so-subtle jabs at California’s repealed Proposition 8.
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