The 1000 mile tech diet begins: shaking loose alternatives to Soylent

So my plan all along was to consume Soylent for awhile to prove this could be done up North with relatively minimized cost and effort.

However, the Canadian Government has thrown up some bureaucratic blockades as they have classified Soylent as something other than a “meal replacement”. So, I can’t order it to the Yukon anymore.

Ok. That’s interesting. This is a good example of issues that tech food solutions face. By definition, a new solution would defy current classifications and thus be problematic to Governmental agency oversight. So I am going to mark this down as a good sign.

Thankfully, this compelled me to research Canadian alternatives to Soylent and I found three: Hol Foods, Biolent and Tudo.

Tudo was out of stock when I went to order, which was dissapointing because one of their two flavours is Rasberry. Compared to my previous tasting of Soylent, that promised a flavour… well, a flavour. So I decided to vary my diet between Biolent and Hol Foods.

I ordered both at the same time two weeks ago. The Biolent shipment, from Vancouver, is currently in Edmonton. Interestingly, Hol Foods from Toronto arrived a few days later — and via Amazon. Amazon goods are notoriously difficult to ship up to the North as we don’t have courier companies like UPS or DHL. We only have Canada Post and all mail is delivered to Post Office Boxes. You can trick Amazon and other companies sometimes by listing your P.O. Box as an apartment number. I don’t know why this works, but it turns out this is an important step to getting this food up here.

Hol Food is a chocolate shake. That’s it. That is their current product. So I have replaced one meal a day with this so far, and when the Biolent arrives I will replace a second meal with that.

This chocolate flavour and consistency is … not bad. I mean, with real milk and a some real hot chocolate powder and maybe a banana this would be pretty good. As it is, I am using water as I decided to not have the luxury of milk available. I could definately see camping with this.

As much as I was hoping to eliminate bread and milk from my diet though, Hol Food contains both milk powder and gluten. This is what is available to me so this is what I will have.

I gotta say, drinking this shake leaves me satiated. Maybe not exactly satisfied but not wanting either. It’s wierd. I feel like I am getting what I need and I think that relieves a some background stress in my mind.

My partner Jen though is still not used to the idea that I am not picking up groceries anymore or participating in dinner. Have I food abandoned her or is this a food separation for awhile? I may be preparing meals in the future that I am not partaking in. Creating more time for myself was one goal for this project so we’ll see how this plays out.

Looking forward to getting the Biolent.