My thought process goes like: on most weekdays I sure wish I could skip breakfast and/or lunch and only have one sit-down meal with my family in the evening. Time savings and convenience are the main concerns I suppose.
The first solution that came to mind was to try Soylent/Mealsquares/Huel for a month and cross my fingers, 50⁄50 it just goes well and solves the problem. I posted to see if there were any obvious considerations I was missing, or clear standout options to try first.
Pre-made frozen meals and protein bars are also plausibly acceptable meal replacement options.
On a first pass frozen meals register as bulky and hard to store a month of at a time, and not something I’d bring to work. I’ve also never had an item I can imagine stomaching every day.
Protein bars seem mostly fine, but my vibe check is that meal replacements are basically enlightened protein bars? Like, maybe the nutrition profile is better and they are packaged in sizes more suitable for full meals?
I’ve also never had an item I can imagine stomaching every day.
FWIW, this is likely to be a worse problem with a meal replacement than a protein bar, and a worse problem with a protein bar than a frozen option.
bring to work
That adds complexity. Are there social norms at work which necessitate eating with others? If so, having a shake or similar every day may not meet those needs.
I sure wish I could skip breakfast and/or lunch and only have one sit-down meal with my family in the evening
Are you aware of the concept of OMAD (one meal a day)? I don’t think it’s super likely that this is the right solution for you, but it seems like you’d learn useful things about the best solution for your food-is-inconvenient problem by considering it as an option and determining why you would rule it out. Basically unless you’re diabetic or attempting to gain weight, you can just have all your day’s calories in a single meal instead of spread across multiple. Again, there are many reasons why this might not be a good fit, but it seems worth making sure that it’s in your overton window as an option that works for some people.
(edit to add)
packaged in sizes more suitable for full meals?
a “full meal” for someone who’s smaller, sedentary, or pursuing weight loss can be a protein bar. A “full meal” for someone who’s larger, more active, or pursuing weight gain can be 10x that amount, at the extreme. We sort of have a standard daily intake of 2,000kcal from nutrition facts, but not even food packaging attempts to prescribe how many meals an individual eats in a day, how they distribute their intake across those meals, and therefore asking whether an item is packaged in a size suitable for a “full meal” is like asking whether a piece of software will run on “a computer”.
I appreciate the effort but am hoping to solve this problem in an afternoon (if not five minutes) and forget about it, instead of acquiring the correct language to think about things or a full theory of diet and nutrition.
My thought process goes like: on most weekdays I sure wish I could skip breakfast and/or lunch and only have one sit-down meal with my family in the evening. Time savings and convenience are the main concerns I suppose.
The first solution that came to mind was to try Soylent/Mealsquares/Huel for a month and cross my fingers, 50⁄50 it just goes well and solves the problem. I posted to see if there were any obvious considerations I was missing, or clear standout options to try first.
Pre-made frozen meals and protein bars are also plausibly acceptable meal replacement options.
On a first pass frozen meals register as bulky and hard to store a month of at a time, and not something I’d bring to work. I’ve also never had an item I can imagine stomaching every day.
Protein bars seem mostly fine, but my vibe check is that meal replacements are basically enlightened protein bars? Like, maybe the nutrition profile is better and they are packaged in sizes more suitable for full meals?
FWIW, this is likely to be a worse problem with a meal replacement than a protein bar, and a worse problem with a protein bar than a frozen option.
That adds complexity. Are there social norms at work which necessitate eating with others? If so, having a shake or similar every day may not meet those needs.
Are you aware of the concept of OMAD (one meal a day)? I don’t think it’s super likely that this is the right solution for you, but it seems like you’d learn useful things about the best solution for your food-is-inconvenient problem by considering it as an option and determining why you would rule it out. Basically unless you’re diabetic or attempting to gain weight, you can just have all your day’s calories in a single meal instead of spread across multiple. Again, there are many reasons why this might not be a good fit, but it seems worth making sure that it’s in your overton window as an option that works for some people.
(edit to add)
a “full meal” for someone who’s smaller, sedentary, or pursuing weight loss can be a protein bar. A “full meal” for someone who’s larger, more active, or pursuing weight gain can be 10x that amount, at the extreme. We sort of have a standard daily intake of 2,000kcal from nutrition facts, but not even food packaging attempts to prescribe how many meals an individual eats in a day, how they distribute their intake across those meals, and therefore asking whether an item is packaged in a size suitable for a “full meal” is like asking whether a piece of software will run on “a computer”.
I appreciate the effort but am hoping to solve this problem in an afternoon (if not five minutes) and forget about it, instead of acquiring the correct language to think about things or a full theory of diet and nutrition.