For a while I was skipping lunch or eating junk food due to work pinning me down for 80 hours a week. I wanted something fast but healthy and not expensive. Prepared meals cost too much, delivery apps only raise the price.

I had heard of soylent before and found ready-to-drink was available at Target. Not bad, but not good. Too sweet for me. After looking into these things more I eventually settled on Mana as they seemed to be the most focused on nutrition and constantly improving their product. I’ve been getting their powder by subscription ever since to replace one meal a day (usually breakfast). Comes out to less than 5 minutes and $2 a day. It’s borderline bland, which makes it easy to have fun with. Add chocolate powder, some mango juice, or leftover coffee from the French press, whatever to break out of the “I’m only eating this for sustenance” monotony.

I wish I liked them. They seem super convenient. I’ve never felt full drinking a meal instead of eating it. I think that feeling of fullness is critical for me.

I mix Huel shakes for lunch when I don’t have leftovers from dinner to eat. It’s healthy (I think), convenient, inexpensive, and it tastes fine.

I have gastroparesis, which means that I’ve been leaning on these pretty heavily of late. I don’t yet have a favorite, really, but the premade Soylent is rather filling. My biggest issue with all of them has be the sugar content.

I personally love my smoothie meal replacement, helps me not feel bloated or overly full and very easy to not over eat/drink. The one meal I wouldn’t replace is dinner though.

I think they’re fine for people with health problems who need additional nutritional support but as a part of a healthy person’s diet they should play a limited role.

Obviously if you’re going to be doing something where you won’t have access to healthy food or the ability to cook then sure, take something with you. But if you have the ability to meal prep a healthy alternative and safely store it, strictly from a health perspective that will be better.

If you are going down the meal replacement route, limit both sugar and artificial sweeteners. These foods tend to be either high sugar or high in artificial sweeteners which, although approved for human consumption, may have some adverse health effects or unforseen effects on metabolism.

You also want to watch the sodium content because various forms of sodium that do not taste salty are used as preservatives. Anything with the word sodium will be some kind of salt and it can be sneaky when it’s a form of sodium that doesn’t taste salty like sodium chloride. Add up all the sodium on a label and sometimes it can be a little shocking.

Edit: personally I rarely eat meat so I use unflavored pea protein fairly regularly to ensure that I get enough protein so I just wanted to clarify that I’m not judging you by saying that this should play a limited role in your diet if possible.

While I think in theory it’s possible for them to work–and they might indeed work for specific people with specific needs–a percentage of people using them are probably of a similar type to others who have gravitated towards food fads through the past century.

Like, if you hit up the Wikpedia or some history site and look at food/diet ads from 100 years ago, those products look pretty ridiculous to modern eyes. But they’re marketing the same thing, right? Health? Convenience? They’re targeting people who are desperate for solutions to their problems, using marketing language common to that era.

And I think a large percentage of these meal replacement products are doing the same thing to modern people, that all the “health food” stuff from decades prior did to our grandparents and great-grandparents. People are, after all, people, and it’s easy to fall for marketing regardless of what era you live in.

Huel hot and savory is pretty good if you want most of the convience and nutrition profile, while still getting the “experience” of food.

The premade soylents are pretty good, and I regularly have them with a protein bar as my lunch. They’re pretty expensive in my opinion, so I try and look for them on sale, but the ease of not having to prep lunch is often worth it. I try and keep it under $2 a bottle for the 14oz ones, which still feels expensive to me, but some of the lunches I prep are around that cost, and it’s way cheaper than going out to eat (I keep a spare one at work in case I ever forget to bring lunch)

I’m looking into some of them (in Canada), curious about your experiences

Not worried about calories (if anything, more might be better…)

Capitalism inventing a new need they can make money with. Totally useless, especially in Germany brands that sell you Milk lol, adults replacing meals with mother milk vitamin shakes

I tried Kachava and it didn’t taste bad, but didn’t taste great. It was very much a planty flavor with cocoa. It is fairly filling and not a hollow sort of filling like you get with Ensure, probably due to the fiber content? It has a sort of creamy texture that holds air from mixing it. It tastes better with milk instead of water. After mixing you kind of need to drink it right away or it gets kinda funky unless you drink it from a mixer bottle and give it a shake after it sits for a few minutes.

I do want to try other options, don’t think I’d get Kachava again. I suspect that all of those meal replacement shakes will be a similar experience with a different taste.

Big fan of penny shakes as an alternative to soylent.

Filling, tastes acceptable, low sugar, high fiber and protein, and costs like 1.80/serving.

I try to eat as few highly processed food as possible. Nearly all industrial meals and convenience products are packed with artificial substances to improve taste and especially optimize production cost. Most prominent water in combination with something to adjust viscosity.

Full meal replacements are the pinnacle of high processed foods IMO. You take “everything that a human needs” mix it with water and stuff it with aroma.

I got some problems with this approach:

• I’m not confident that there is really everything I need in it

• Extracting nutrition from food usually takes time, drinks are easy to process and probably release nutrition much fast (needs confirmation)

• Eating is not only about getting nutrition, chewing also triggers effects on your body

• Eating only artificial stuff destroys your taste, a lot of people are so used to highly processed stuff that they can’t even appreciate the taste of high quality food

• Take a break for eating, you can socialise with your family or coworkers and give your body time to regenerate

KetoChow is fantastic, but expensive - I’ve tried the rest, 2 years of soylent, months of huel, sampled a few other types. KetoChow is leagues ahead in terms of flavor and nutrition profile (very low carbs, high protein)