So yeah, I’ll just get right to it.

For the past six months or so, I’ve been receiving a substance shipped to me from Holland. No, it’s not illegal drugs! But it is a bunch of weird chemicals made by folks I’m pretty sure ain’t scientists.

Joylent is the EU version of the US product Soylent. Both companies are aiming to revolutionise the very concept of mealtime itself by reducing everything you need to eat down to simple meal replacement beverages.

The concept itself isn’t really so crazy. Food is just chemicals. We know how many chemicals the body needs to do its thang. So why not just go straight for the chemicals in the first place?

I guess what puts people off is that the end result is something that looks like this:

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Also, @Soylent, change your name guys. Nobody wants to consume something named after a film in which people ate a futuristic product made out of ACTUAL PEOPLE.

Anyway, Joylent do something Soylent don’t, which is to offer an array of fun flavours. There’s banana, chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla. They’re all pretty nice, with the banana in particular reminding me of old-school Nesquik and things like that.

And I guess that the first question most people would have would be is it actually drinkable? And it absolutely is. The problem is that you’re in charge of making it yourself. You’re shipped powder – and a big cup – and basically left to your own devices. It’s not quite clear how much you’re supposed to use at a time, other than some vague suggestion to make three up a day. Add too much powder and it gets a bit lumpy, not enough and it’s really watered down.

But I got the hang of it eventually. I put it all in a big tupperware container, and divided the powder into three ‘portions’ with a spoon – as equal as I could get them. And that worked out just fine. I would prepare the ‘meals’ in advance, and leave them in the fridge until I wanted them.

I found them pretty satisfying, I didn’t get any of the hunger pangs that I expected to or anything. That said, I didn’t 100% commit to the Joylent program. If there was a tasty place to go for brunch, or free lunch at work, I’d obviously opt for that instead. The fact that Joylent is so cheap [15 meals for 30 works out at €2 per meal] means you can spend a little more out of your food budget when you actually do wanna go fancy. And for your everyday meals you’re just saving money.

The one side effect I did notice was EXCESS WIND. Like lots. Like LOADS. But apparently that’s just your body freaking out from a huge intake of fibre when you ate nothing but sweets and biscuits before. So it’s actually a good sign I suppose.

But don’t you miss eating real food?

Like if I wanna eat something properly, I’ll eat something properly. But for the most part, I don’t care. Cooking is a faff. Washing up is a pain in the arse. Getting a balanced meal down ya is downright impossible. I’m all for the single easy prescribed meal approach. So this suits me just fine.

But it can’t be the same as real food! You must be missing something important.

As far as I’m concerned, Joylent is better for me than real food. Here’s the nutritional info for one bag:

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So yeah it’s like 100% of everything you need, unless you think you really need lots of sulphur in your diet for some reason. If I wasn’t drinking Joylent, I’d be eating a lot less healthily – probably excess salt/sugar and not enough of the good stuff. It’s like a perfect ready meal.

And I guess that’s it really. All that’s left is to give it the official cookywook rating:

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It’s a YES from me.