Amount | Ingredient | $ / day | Source | |
---|---|---|---|---|
8 | g | Potassium Citrate | $0.40 | Amazon |
4 | g | Calcium Citrate | $0.16 | Amazon |
4 | g | Iodized Salt | $0.01 | Amazon |
2 | g | Choline Bitartrate | $0.09 | Amazon |
0.5 | g | Stevia Powder | $0.04 | Amazon |
28 | g | Ground Flax | $0.15 | Amazon |
100 | g | Hemp protein powder | $2.21 | Amazon |
4 | pill | Pure Encapsulations 950 with K | $0.96 | Amazon |
180 | g | tapioca flour | $2.70 | Amazon |
120 | g | Hemp Oil | $2.49 | Amazon |
60 | g | Pumpkin Seed powder | $2.01 | Amazon |
Amounts for: Total Daily Cost: | $11.21 | Add Ingredients to Amazon Cart |
As soon as I heard about Soylent I thought it would be a good way to do an elimination diet, where you try to avoid any foods that you may not be tolerant to, generally by eating a very simplified diet that only contains a few food items that are ones that you don't normally consume and that aren't ones that are commonly found to cause problems. The key to a good elimination diet is to use foods that you rarely or never eat. The problem is that most elimination diets are not nutritionally complete, because they are so limited. They are also a pain in the ass to stay on day after day, which you must be able to do in order to, first, see if your symptoms (e.g., fatigue, body aches, skin symptoms, etc) disappear while on the diet, which takes about a week or two, and, second, reintroduce foods one at a time, to see which ones you can tolerate and which you can't, which takes many, many weeks.
But the original Soylent wasn't perfect for an elimination diet, because many of its ingredients are foods, or derived from foods, that we (I) eat a lot of--oats, maltodextrin which is based on wheat or corn, whey isolate, which comes from milk, etc. So I looked around for the highest quality, least consumed foods for each of the major nutrient sources--protein, fat, and carbohydrate--to use instead of the ones in Soylent.
As it turns out, hemp is a great source of both high quality protein and fat (oil). So this recipe uses hemp protein as the protein source and hemp oil as the main fat source. This is the non-THC hemp, but probably if you've been eating/smoking a ton of marijuana, this would not be a good source for protein/oil for you because of the frequent exposure. But if you don't do that, hemp is very, very unlikely to be a food you would react to. So that's great, we can get the only two essential macronutrients with one food source.
Tapioca, derived from manioc, is another food that most people don't consume regularly, if at all, so that's the carbohydrate source. In theory, if you wanted a really ketogenic elimination diet and just wanted to use one or two food sources, you could eliminate the tapioca and up the hemp protein and hemp oil to get the requisite calories (you could also eliminate the flaxseeds, see below, but you'd still need the pumpkin protein powder for phosphorus, also see below). I have a feeling that this would taste like crap, but maybe not--i've been pleasantly surprised at the mild flavor of the hemp oil and protein powder.
I used flaxseed powder as a source of omega-3 fatty acids, which isn't strictly necessary because the hemp oil is already a great source, so you can leave this out if you want to streamline it a bit.
The recipe also includes pumpkin seed protein powder. This isn't added for the protein, but for the phosphorus, which otherwise is deficient.
It's sweetened with stevia, which is a plant product. If you regularly consume stevia, then you should leave this out and either try it plain or use another sweetener that you don't normally consume.
Finally, to top off vitamins and minerals, I used Pure Encapsulations Nutrient 950 Plus K (without iron). It's a hypoallergenic, very complete and high quality vitamin/mineral capsule. You do have to open up 4 of these per daily recipe and dump the powder in.
All the rest of the ingredients are in pure form and don't contain any food.
So this recipe contains food products from hemp, tapioca (manioc root), pumpkin seed, flaxseed, and stevia. Those are foods that are not commonly consumed and that are unlikely to be ones that you are intolerant to.
The recipe is deficient in vitamin A. The Pure Encapsulations contains a boatload of carotenoids, many of which convert to vitamin A, but I think you should supplement with a hypoallergenic vitamin A to be on the safe side. Thorne Research makes a good one, the dose is 25,000 IU which is too high for daily use, but when I make up a batch for five days, I put the powder from one of these capsules in.
The recipe comes up as way too high in niacin; however, the upper limit on niacin is somewhat arbitrary and doesn't differentiate between niacin (which probably does have some toxicity at high doses, at least for some people) and niacinamide (another form of niacin which is fine for nutrition and which does not have toxicity associated with it). Virtually all of the niacin in this recipe is in the form of niacinamide, in the Pure Encapsulations capsules, and is not a problem.
I based this recipe on the Shmoylent recipe and also on the original Hackers School recipe, but every single one of the macronutrient sources is different from those, and I use a higher-potency hypoallergenic vitamin source (Pure Encapsulations).
The powder and the drink are green because of the hemp oil and protein, thus the name Hypallergenic Soylent (Green). It's got a pleasant, somewhat grassy or nutty taste with just the right amount of sweetness, at least for me. As with most other DIY Soylents, it has a smoother consistency if mixed up the night before use and stored in the frig.
I started using just this as my food several days ago. I was careful to also eliminate other potential food sources. For example, my toothpaste contained xanthan gum, which can contain wheat, corn, or soy, so I switched to hypoallergenic toothpaste, and instead of drinking coffee to get my caffeine fix these days I'm using pure caffeine dissolved in water (yes, I think you should get to this level of pickiness if you want to do a true elimination diet). I've noticed a huge difference in my energy, concentration, and mood--all of which have improved tremendously. So, at least for me, this has worked great as a food to use in an elimination diet. I'd be interested to hear about other peoples' experiences.