If you’ve been waiting for the option to try Basically Foodwithout starting a subscription, now is your chance to try it. :)
If you have already started a subscription, thank you, and please let us know how the ordering process and subscription-editing interface has been for you! There’s still time to change things around. :d
If you’re wondering what Basically Food is, check out our last update on the blog. Short answer: it’s our shiny new rebrand of Super Body Fuel. :]
Behold…
Anyway. Aside from the whole “most people really don’t want to create a subscription” thing, we’ve heard that some of the tubs are turning out fishy from the DHA somehow. Initially it seemed like this was specific to BALANCE chocolate, but it turns out that it’s just a small percentage of tubs across all flavors and product lines that have the issue. :o
And there’s no way to know which ones will have it, until you open them and smell. :p
Sadly we don’t seem to have any recourse or leverage with the manufacturer that screwed this up, but we’re working on it. Like we said before, next time, we’re trying a new manufacturer. Sigh.
So… the way we’re thinking of handling this is just to send out free replacements for fishy tubs, no questions asked (except for, “how many tubs?” or “what’s your order number?” and stuff like that). Same with any mixing inconsistencies that might arise – if it tastes weird, send us an email. It’s supposed to taste good. Most tubs taste good. :|
We’ve added some guidance and clarification to the FAQ – feel free to check there first if you’re not sure.
For all our customers outside the US, we’re still trying to work with our new fulfillment center to find an international shipping option that will not be prohibitively expensive. It seems that there may be an option to bundle multiple shipments to the same country together to reduce costs a bit, but we’re still waiting on the bundled price quotes so we can see if it will actually be viable. Stay tuned. :d
Anyway, if you still have a subscription on Super Body Fuel, please start a new one on Basically Food this month if you can. If you don’t do subscriptions, please try placing a one-off order with Basically Food and let us know what you think! :D
Air. Earth. Water. Fire. Long ago, the four macro ratios lived together in harmony… Yes, I’m a nerd. Sorry not sorry. :p
Over the next month or two we’d like everyone to switch over to the new website so we can phase out of superbodyfuel.com completely. If you have a subscription, please start a new one at basicallyfood.com and cancel your old one when you’re ready – ideally before it renews!
Use the coupon code SUPERBODYFAM for 20% off subscriptions of $100 or more. It expires at the end of this year, but if you enter the code before then, you’ll get to keep the discount indefinitely – or at least until you cancel your subscription. ;)
So far we have chocolate, vanilla, and cinnamon available at the new site, with plans to add plain in a couple months. Original will be merged with our plain flavors – just add a touch of monkfruit or maple syrup or whatever sweetener you prefer, and you can turn plain into original. We’d like to bring strawberry back at some point but we’re not sure when we’ll be able to make that happen – feel free to stock up now. Yes, I know – it’s my favorite flavor too. :/
One-time orders will continue to be available on the old site until we’ve cleared out all our old inventory, but we’ll be raising the prices a bit on Super Body Fuel chocolate, vanilla, and cinnamon as a little nudge to switch over to the new site. Please switch over. Did we mention that US shipping is free? :3
We’re working on making international shipping available on our new site, hopefully coming soon! If you’re outside the US, you can continue to order on Super Body Fuel and we’ll let you know when the new site is ready for you. If you want to be a guinea pig and help us test out some cheaper international shipping options, let us know and we’ll get in touch. :)
By the way, the new packaging in rigid tubs means that the powder is a bit fluffier than usual, since we’re not squeezing all the air out by hand like we do with every Super Body Fuel bag. For the most part, measuring out a heaping scoop instead of a level scoop is enough to compensate for this difference in density.
If you’re a Keto Fuel customer though, note that the BURN powder turned out quite a bit fluffier than expected (probably because of the MCT oil powder), throwing off the scoop sizes. If you don’t use a scale to measure your powder, you’ll want to use two scoops of a standard 1/4 cup measuring cup per meal instead of the included 90cc scoop. Otherwise, your BURN will be inexplicably watery and flavorless. :x
…Then, everything changed when the ketogenic diet attacked.
Okay, sorry! I’m actually sorry this time. :o
Anyway, that’s the important stuff – good job for getting through it! :] Now here’s a bit of backstory, for those of you who like to read…
It’s been a long road.
We started out as Custom Body Fuel, back in 2014. Then we dropped the whole “custom” thing and became Super Body Fuel in 2015. You know, like Super Mario. Because videogames. But to be honest, the name was always a placeholder. I’d personally brainstormed hundreds of potential names in that first year, each more awkward than the last (Neosylt, anyone?), before giving up and settling on Super Body Fuel, figuring I’d come back to it later.
Eventually I did come back to it, and well, we’ve been at this for a long time – this was years ago, still. As in 2017. We did some surveys, concluded that “Super Body Fuel” really conveyed the opposite of what people liked about our implicit “brand” – or how we’ve always done things. I mean, it’s not the worst name ever, but “Super Body Fuel” sounds hyperbolic, sounds like the sort of overpriced, dubious supplement you’d buy at a gas station and see generic gym bros using, as more than one customer put it on our surveys! (No offense to the upstanding bros out there bulking with Athlete Fuel or getting shredded with Keto Fuel, of course.)
We’ve always been the opposite. I’ve always been the opposite, and the people on the team here who have stuck with me have always been the opposite too. We’re understated. We underpromise and overdeliver – at least when it comes to optimal nutrition and value for price, if not, well, packaging aesthetics and polish. :p We’re down-to-earth, approachable, relatable even – not puffed up in the slightest. Maybe a little silly – we don’t take ourselves too seriously. Even though we take the important stuff – nutrition and quality ingredients – very seriously. Of course. This is what people like you told us, in our survey back in 2017.
“Hey, what’s that stuff you always drink for lunch?”
“Oh, this? It’s basically… food.”
“Yeah, sure, but… like what is it, exactly? What’s it called?”
“Oh, I mean, that’s what it’s called! Basically Food.”
“You’re joking.”
“No, really. Check it out. Basically Food dot com. It’s good stuff. Tastes pretty good too!”
I crack myself up sometimes. XD
Seriously though. That was it. Simple, understated, unpretentious to the point of being pretentious, a bit silly – self-deprecating, even. That’s me – that’s us. Breaking food down into its most basic components. Basically Food.
It took a while to find the right name and to find designers who could translate that into a visual identity that did it justice. You see, Super Body Fuel’s “no aesthetic” aesthetic isn’t a result of me not caring about graphic design. It’s about me caring too much. I can’t do it halfway – it’s 0% or 100% for me. I’m an artist at heart, and a perfectionist with very strong opinions about how things should look and feel, and turns out I’m a very hands-on client when it comes to graphic design and branding projects. :d Shout out to Double Six Design for their patience in putting up with me! ;D
Their work (our work, if I may be so bold) speaks for itself. It literally looks like some of my indie game prototypes, if it were a really classy food and nutrition brand. :o It’s so… me, so aligned with my artistic style and soul in a way I never imagined possible before this. It’s like they plucked it right out of my dreams. I mean, I just wanted to have a website and packaging that I wasn’t actively embarrassed to show people. :p
Look, I’m not trying to pat myself on the back here, Double Six Design deserves the credit – I’m just trying to convey how stunned I was at what ultimately came out of the year-long process of working with them… and how agonizing it has been to be sitting on this for the last five years since then, waiting for all the logistical pieces to come together to actually launch it – particularly the made-from-scratch custom designed website, which we… ended up scrapping and are now working to rebuild, in Shopify. 8|
So many delays and setbacks…
Anyway, one thing you may be wondering about is the packaging. Looks different – a tub instead of a bag? :o Yes, and despite the deceptively natural look of the Super Body Fuel bags, they’re actually neither compostable, recyclable, nor reusable, and they often break during shipping when handled roughly, which is immensely wasteful of the resources bound up in their precious nutrient cargo! Because the bags are made of plastic, metal, and paper fused together, there’s no way to un-fuse those materials and recycle them.
With Basically Food, we want to do things better. Using only the most food-safe type of plastic available, HDPE (the bags use the inferior PET plastic), the tubs hold up much better during shipping, reducing waste, and can be recycled or reused safely for food storage (unlike other plastics). They’re also more amenable to automated filling, since we currently have to squeeze the air out of every Super Body Fuel bag by hand to get the powder to fit. :p
Which brings us to our next point. We’re not filling these tubs by hand. And we’re not mixing them, either. We’re not even storing them in our tiny San Francisco warehouse. We’ve finally hired a contract manufacturer to mix up a literal ton of powder at a time, with their fancy equipment (no clumps!), and crank out thousands of tubs to cover all our product lines. The most immediate benefit to you will be next-day shipping (no more backlog!) but it should also help provide a buffer against the global supply chain disruptions that seem to be happening much more frequently these days. :o
Finding a contract manufacturer and getting them to produce a product to our exacting specification, with all the exact same suppliers and ingredients that we’ve spent years fine-tuning, has been a challenge, to put it lightly. :p There have been a lot of delays and setbacks. Suffice it to say that we will be trying out a different manufacturer for our next run.
Our plan for the plain flavors in the meantime is to make a bunch ourselves in San Francisco, using the new packaging design, and ship them to the warehouse in Illinois that’s handling fulfillment for Basically Food. We just can’t afford the minimums required to get a contract manufacturer to mix these flavors for us – not when we sell so few. Same for ingredients like Super Micros and Super Electrolytes(Basically Vitamins, anyone?). :]
Also, since we finalized the product labels and had them printed back in 2021 (it’s been a long road), we got stuck with the pre-glycine formula from that year. So this first version of Basically Food does not include the added glycine that I’ve grown to love, sadly. :c But fortunately for some of you, it still uses xanthan gum instead of the konjac root glucomannan we’ve started using this year.
Glucomannan is great but it has resulted in shakes that are thicker yet tend to separate more into layers, often including a sludgy layer at the bottom – as you may have noticed. :p So far, it seems that shaking again 30-60 minutes after mixing is the best defense against this abomination, if you can manage it.
We’re still cranking out the batches by hand at Super Body Fuel, but the goal will be to get everyone switched over to the new site and the new brand in the next month or two. The more people switch over, the less time we’ll have to spend scooping powders and moving heavy objects around, and the more time we can devote to fleshing out the new website.
Long-term, we would like to phase out of Super Body Fuel entirely – the sooner the better. We’re all very excited to have our time freed up to make educational nutrition content (articles, videos, podcasts…) as well as to better support and inspire DIYers with guides and resources. It’s been nine long years now – about time for part two. I think you’ll like it. :]
Thanks so much to all of you for your support across these very long years. <3
Please let us know how it goes with the new website and the rebranded product – we’ll be standing by to address any issues that come up. Hope to hear from you soon! :D
In our last email update, we announced that we’d run out of our custom vitamin and mineral mix and had to switch back to placeholder vitamins, again.
Now, I’m happy to announce that we got our custom vitamin mix back, and it’s a new and improved formula! :D That means that Super Micros is available to order again, and soon, new orders of all products will be shipped out with the new vitamins instead of the placeholders we’d been using. :)
You can see the full supplement facts here, but changes to the formula include using only Vitamin D3 (from a vegan, algal source) instead of D2, increasing some B vitamin amounts to cover 100% DV with a single meal (while still staying within safe limits), adding the phytonutrient Quercetin (which is supposed to help reduce inflammation and allergies), and including Myo-Inositol in the mix (previously included in our meals but not Super Micros). Now that we’re adding Glycine directly to our protein blend, we’ve also swapped out some mineral glycinates for citrates, which should be similarly bioavailable but more readily available to source given supply chain challenges. :d
I did consider many other phytonutrients as well (inspired by PhytoGenesis), but Quercetin was one of the few that were generally safe and beneficial in all circumstances, when dosed appropriately. Others may have benefits, but also drawbacks in certain situations, or aren’t safe for certain people – like Lycopene, which may be unsafe to take while pregnant or breastfeeding! Or like Curcumin and Piperine, which can interfere with certain medications. Some, on the other hand, were just not available or affordable to include.
I did want to add Lutein and Zeaxanthin for eye health, but they’re extremely expensive and would have disproportionately increased the cost in a way that the majority of people would most likely not want to pay for. :p As it is, with the improvements we are including, along with inflation and supply chain cost increases, the cost to us from the manufacturer is already twice that of the previous version! :O
Happy to answer any other questions about the new formula – just let me know. :)
We’ve also removed the Xanthan Gum from Super Micros, so you can add it to drinks and soups without it clumping or getting thick. This means it is much more susceptible to humidity damage, however, so be very careful to keep it in a dry environment! :o
Next, we are actually replacing Xanthan Gum entirely with a more natural (and more expensive) alternative: Glucomannan from konjac root, which is what shirataki noodles are traditionally made of. :) Based on my tests, with a 95% or higher Glucomannan extract, the resulting texture and stability is almost indistinguishable from Xanthan Gum! This is for the small number of people who have sensitivities to Xanthan Gum or otherwise prefer an alternative. We’d love to have you. :)
Apparently there are a fair number of studies on the health benefits of Glucomannan as a dietary supplement, as well, and it seems to stack up favorably against both Xanthan Gum and Psyllium Husk in that respect. So, probably a good move all around. :]
Oh, also, as I just posted here over at r/SaturatedFat, we’ve got an experimental vegan 50% stearic acid powder available now as Super Saturated, to go along with our Super MCT, Super Protein, Super Electrolytes, and of course, Super Micros. If you’re wondering why anyone would want more saturated fat (aside from that it’s a zero-carb powdered fat source!) you can read this little writeup I did back in 2021. Short answer is that not all saturated fat (or fat in general) is created equal, and stearic acid stimulates mitochondrial fusion and fat-burning. Kind of like how MCT oil (another saturated fat) stimulates the generation of ketones even outside of a zero-carb ketogenic state. Anyway, feel free to check it out – and please let us know how it goes, if you do!
We hope you like the new changes. Happy Holidays, and thanks as always for your support! :)
My apologies for not getting an update out earlier – as you may remember from our June update, I’ve been busy manufacturing full-time and haven’t had a lot of time to write or respond to emails! :o Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten you – in fact I am lovingly hand-crafting every batch we ship out. ;) I’ve made some small tweaks and additions to our process to ensure a more consistent mix, which you will probably not notice, except in the absence of any bad-tasting or poorly mixed bags. :d But of course, if you do come across any issues, let us know!
With Dan gone, we are thoroughly understaffed – it’s down to just me, Rhodel, and Arrow now, and we’ve all had to step up and do a little bit more (or a lot more!) than before. So our order turnaround time varies, but we’ve got a perpetual rolling backlog of maybe a week or so for most orders these days, as we crank out the batches as fast as we (sustainably) can manage.
The good news is we’re not actively losing money every month now! But if we were to hire another person, we would be. So, we are surviving, not thriving – which is honestly pretty good, considering how many of our competitors are actively in crisis. It’s a tough time for a lot of people. :/
First of all, we have once again run out of our custom vitamin mix before we’ve been able to get our resupply – our premix manufacturer has been even slower than usual this year! That means that we are out of Super Micros, and we are beginning to use NATURELO brand vitamins as a placeholder for the time being – for at least the next month or so. These vitamins are vegan and use methylated B vitamins and chelated minerals and all that good stuff, so while the dosages may not be the exact same, the quality should be comparable.
Next, we’ve made the hard decision to remove the considerable shipping discounts we’d put in place for international orders – no more flat rate shipping for orders of $100 or more, outside the US. :/ This is the place we’ve been losing the most money, and as we search for ways to stay afloat as a business amidst rising costs, this is the place that has made the most sense to tighten up first. We considered ceasing international shipping altogether, but I just couldn’t bring myself to leave so many people out like that.
So, we’ll be charging (almost) what it costs us to ship, with USPS Priority Mail International. For those of you who will no longer be able to afford to order from us overseas, I hope you can find an alternative that works for you. <3
For those of you in Canada, we are starting to test out netParcel, a service that provides access to cheaper shipping between the US and Canada, mostly with UPS. The shipping costs are lower and the shipping speed even seems quicker as well – the potential catch may be that getting through customs without delays or fees might be trickier. Hard to say at this point! We’ve gotten a few test packages through without a problem, but one seems to be stuck, and there’s no information as to why. :p
So, we’ll give it a try and keep on monitoring the situation – if it doesn’t work out, we’ll have to go back to USPS and their very expensive shipping costs. Fingers crossed. :d
Okay, so is there any good news? Well… I have been able to listen to a ton of podcasts, with all the rote manual labor I’ve been doing most days. I’ve been learning a lot – for example, about worker-owned cooperatives, as explained concisely in this 20-minute podcast about Alvarado Street Bakery. Apparently there are actually a lot of worker-owned co-op bakeries right here in the Bay Area! Neat. :)
I mean, Super Body Fuel is basically like a bakery – just, with more nutrients, and less glamor (and gluten!). ;d
Anyway, food for thought. I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the future – as I’m sure many of us are, these days – both for humanity as a whole, and this business, as well as my place in it. I will resist the urge to overload you with all my thought-provoking podcast recommendations (though here’s one morepodcast on worker-owned co-ops, an insightful big-picture discussion between two very thoughtful people) but I do want to acknowledge that we are apparently living in, increasingly, interesting times. I just want to do my best, and I’m still figuring out what that is.
For now, that does seem to mean shuffling heavy containers and scoops of nutrient powder around in a dusty room while listening to podcasts, but this is probably not a long-term solution. :p
The biggest challenges faced by this business currently include ingredient supply disruptions, rising costs of everything, and an increasingly maxed-out and burned-out team, myself very much included!
The obvious solution to these challenges is and has always been what most companies have already done: hire a contract manufacturer that can make literal tons of product at a time to buffer supply disruptions, along with cheaper costs but also better quality due to fancier equipment. Then we can focus on the fun stuff – like putting Rhodel’s video production skills and Arrow’s graphic design skills to good use, along with my tendency to write way too many words! :)
What’s the catch? Aside from the obvious upfront costs (often made easier via crowdfunding) the real challenge is finding a manufacturer that is good enough and big enough to create a quality product at a reasonable cost, while also being small enough to even consider taking on such a relatively small client as us. Especially when that small client is very picky and has way too many flavors and product lines. :p
Really what you have to do is find a promising, upstart manufacturer that believes in your brand and your vision and wants to grow with you – to hitch their wagon to your horse, so to speak. And that’s the sort of perfect match that’s hard to find.
So… kind of a long shot, but if you happen to know of any promising contract manufacturers making supplements or nutraceuticals in the US, who would be aligned with our philosophy and our vision (even better, if they’re a worker-owned co-op!) please let us know! ;D We’d love to talk with them. :3
Thank you all! :D
Alex Cho Snyder (axcho)
PS – Email me if you want my podcast recommendations. ;]
Just wanted to give you a heads up about a couple things, in case they affect you! :O
First of all, we’re shutting down our dairy-based, ketogenic companion brand Actualize, and we wanted to give you a chance to stock up before we close it all down for good!
From now until the end of June, you can get all Actualize packs for just $1/packet – our lowest price yet – while supplies last. :) Use coupon code: KETOKINDNESS
At the end of June, shop’s closed! :o Any leftover inventory will be donated to (citizen) science at r/SaturatedFat. (The nutrition nerd community there deserves a break after suffering through allmysillymemes lately!) ;p
In case you’re wondering, we just didn’t get enough traction to keep up with increasing costs and minimum order quantities for outsourced manufacturing, and after consistently losing money month after month on Actualize this year, decided to focus our resources on the products that have maintained a strong following: Super Body Fuel. Thanks to you all! :)
For those of you who have tried Actualize in the past, I do have some experimental samples of an improved version that will now (most likely) never see the light of day. :/ So if you want to try them and offer your feedback, I’d be happy to send you some with your next Super Body Fuel order – just reply to this email and let me know! ;D
We also still have some free samples of the current Actualize available for anyone who wants it in their SBF shipment this month – let us know. ;)
So, Super Body Fuel. That’s why you all are here, anyway! :d
Last month I mentioned that things have gotten a little rough for the business, losing money for the first time, this year. Not an emergency – the past month has been a bit better – but definitely a thing.
The responses we got actually surprised me – literally every customer who replied said they may not want to pay more, but they wouldn’t mind if prices went up a little bit to account for rising costs – honestly it’s been surprising that we hadn’t already done so. Oh, okay. :o Y’all give me hope for humanity, thank you. <3
Well, I really don’t want to raise prices if I can possibly avoid it, so here’s what I’ve come up with. After bringing all our cost calculations up to date, and fiddling with the numbers to see how to get that bottom line consistently above zero, I found a couple things we can do…
Shipping costs have consistently been going up over time, and while that affects everything, the place where we lose the most money per order is on international shipping. To start with, I’m bumping up the Canadian shipping base cost from $20 to $30, and the base cost for other countries from $30 to $40. Honestly, it probably won’t make a huge difference since we still offer that (very silly) flat international shipping rate on orders of $100 or more, but it’s a start. And I probably should have done it a long time ago. :p
Secondly, that 20% subscription discount is where we’re starting to lose the most money overall. Back when we first increased the discount from 10% to 20% the idea was to make up the difference in increased volume, but… turns out it doesn’t really work that way long-term. That was fine as long as costs were low enough to still break even, but these days? No longer the case.
So, we’re bringing subscriptions back to 10% off, or $45 per bag instead of $40. Fortunately for you all, the subscription plugin on our website doesn’t automatically update existing subscriptions when the price is changed, so all of you who already have subscriptions are grandfathered in at the cheaper price. (For now!) ;p
Obviously, that doesn’t really help us break even, so the plan is for someone (me, unless Rhodel wants to do it) to manually adjust all the active subscriptions to the new price at the end of this month. As far as the (thousands of) additional paused subscriptions in the system, I’ll probably just cancel them at that point, and you all can start a new subscription when you are ready for more. :d
In other words, enjoy the next couple weeks of blissfully low prices on your existing subscriptions, because at the end of June, your favorite fuel is going to take a timid step toward (partly) correcting for inflation! >:o I mean, unless you manage to convince me otherwise between now and then. Feel free to let me know what you think. :3
(Alternatively, we could instead try leaving subscription prices low at $40 and raising one-off purchase prices from $50 to $55 or $60, effectively subsidizing the subscriptions. But that might feel a bit arbitrary and unfair. You tell me!)
The other thing is that Dan, our stalwart manufacturing lead and passionate vegan advocate, will soon be migrating south with his enormous plant-powered puppy to resume his Waldorf teaching career. Rather than hire a replacement, in order to save money I will be taking his place for the next few months, measuring and mixing powders like the good old days. No one else on the team is eager to “seize the means of production” in this particular way, so it’s my chance to show I still got it and crank out batches like a boss. B)
Honestly, I’m looking forward to listening to a ton of podcasts, annoying Arrow with the latest updates on my biohacking experiments, and personally putting our work-life balance policies to the test. ;) And don’t worry, we’ve got some exciting updates in the pipeline with this long-awaited rebrand, so the story is far from over. It’s just about to get interesting. :)
Thanks for sticking with us. You make this all possible! :D
Just a quick update to let you all know that all of our recipes have been updated to include the amino acid glycine, yay! :D That includes Milk Fuel and Super Protein, by the way. :d
You can read more in the last couple email updates from February, archived on the blog. But long story short, glycine is one of those “nonessential” amino acids that arguably people don’t get enough of, these days.
In order to target a 4:1 ratio of glycine to methionine, we have started adding 2g of vegan-friendly, sweet-tasting glycine powder to every Super Body Fuel meal in order to balance out the high methionine content of rice protein (and dairy protein, for that matter).
Nothing weird about this – it’s analogous to how we’ve been adding lysine since rice protein is low in that. With sufficient glycine, your body (and mind) will thank you, with reduced inflammation and a more relaxed mood, among other benefits – according to the studies. :)
Personally, I’ve been adding glycine to my Super Fuel and Keto Fuel for months – and now, I won’t have to! :D Awesome!
All the old inventory has turned over, so with the exception of a few samples (that will be gone soon) anything you order will have the new glycine-enhanced formula.
If you’ve already got the new glycine version (check the Ingredients list!) let us know what you think of the taste! :) Glycine adds a subtle sweetness that has allowed us to very slightly dial back the monkfruit sweetener, so the overall effect may be a bit different. My impression is that the overall sweetness is down about half a perceptible notch – which may be a good thing, as we sometimes get feedback from longtime customers that it would be better if the sweetness were slightly toned down. But what do you think? Please, please let us know! :D We want to get it just right.
At the same time, based on the overwhelmingly positive feedback on our beetroot survey in the last email, we’ve added 1g of beetroot powder to every meal of our strawberry flavor, for an enhanced taste, color, and nutritional profile (betaine and nitric oxide and such). And before you ask, net carbs for the keto version remain the same. ;)
Again, please let us know what you think of the updated flavor! We hope you like it better, but do let us know. :o All the strawberry samples have switched over to the new version, with both glycine and beetroot added.
Initially, I’d hoped that the glycine powder would “pay for itself” in effect by reducing the amount of expensive monkfruit sweetener we’d need to add. But it turns out that we’re only able to reduce the monkfruit very slightly, if at all (you tell us!) and now, the price of glycine has gone up significantly! :o Bad timing, I know.
Still, we are committed to keeping our prices low and affordable, and I believe in the value of this glycine addition in making our formula the best that it can be, so we’re holding steady for now. Please let us know if you think it’s been worth it – your feedback is the main thing that steers this ship. :)
I will say that this year is when world events are finally catching up with us at Super Body Fuel. :/ Our costs for ingredients and shipping have gone up significantly in the past several months, on top of the cost-of-living adjustments we’ve already had to make for the whole team to keep up with inflation in the beginning of this year. At the same time, the number of orders we are getting each month has been declining to a level that is lower than it’s been for years.
The bottom line is, this year is the first time that the business has been losing money month over month since we started operations.Don’t panic! ;p This is not an emergency, or a cry for help, as we have savings to weather this downturn – for the year, at least. And we (still) have the rebrand coming up, hopefully very soon. But this is a new thing for us. And I want to be transparent about that.
I have no intention of raising prices, as I know we could pull out of this just as easily by increasing monthly orders beyond a certain threshold, and I’m stubborn. But if you appreciate us holding prices steady when everyone else seems to be raising them, maybe let us know that – with your words or with your dollars. ;)
Before all that, I wanted to let you all know that we’ve pretty much caught up with our backlog, and you can expect orders to ship within a few days, for the most part! Yay! :D Thanks to the team for working hard, and you all for not overwhelming us with orders this month! ;p I even logged a few weeks in the manufacturing room, getting my (nitrile-gloved) hands dirty to help clear the backlog, and it looks like it’s paying off. :d
Anyway, we got our vitamin mix back, so Super Micros is available again and most of our product inventory (except for samples) at this point has turned over to our custom mix instead of the NATURELO vitamins we were using in January. Also, we got our strawberry resupply a little earlier than expected, so you may have noticed the strawberry flavors are back in stockon our website as well! It’s good to be back on track! :)
We got a lot of responses to our survey on glycine and inulin, thanks to everyone who participated! :D
The response in favor of glycine was overwhelmingly positive, which doesn’t surprise me as I’ve been adding it to my daily Super Fuel for months now at 2g per meal, and it’s been great! :D Some of you have asked for more of the science behind it, so here’s a review paper discussing the benefits of glycine. As far as I’m concerned, it’s no more controversial than the lysine that we already add to balance out the amino acid profile of the rice protein. Glycine is just a piece of that puzzle that I’d overlooked until recently.
We haven’t started adding it to our formulas yet, but we’ve got 50kg of the stuff in our warehouse, ready to go. If you have any concerns or caveats to share, this is your chance! Reply and let us know. :)
The response to inulin was much more mixed. My guess is that it’s not going to make sense, honestly, given the number of people with sensitive digestive systems who would not be able to tolerate it. But we’re running some experiments with the many brave volunteers who have stepped up to try it! :) If you’ve added your email address to the last survey, you will (or may already have) receive a packet of 1g of agave inulin in your next order. Please add it to one of your usual Super Body Fuel shakes, and email us to let us know if you notice any gas or other issues (or not)!
Lastly, we have a new recipe update to run by you all! :) That is, adding a bit of beetroot powder to enhance our strawberry flavor, rather than using fake “natural flavors” that don’t taste very good. :p Yes, powdered beets, as in the reddish-purple root vegetables.
Oddly, while testing beetroot powder as a supplement simply for its nitric oxide-boosting benefits, I found that adding a small amount, say 1g, to one of our strawberry shakes helped enhance the flavor and color of the strawberry without overpowering it! And beetroot powder isn’t particularly expensive – certainly nothing like freeze-dried strawberry powder. So I thought this might be a good way to introduce a beet-enhanced line and boost the intensity of our notoriously subtle strawberry flavor at the same time! :o
Obviously, this is not a change we’d make without consulting you first, so here’s a survey on beetroot! Please weigh in if you’re a fan (or potential fan) of our strawberry flavor, or if you have a strong opinion about beets (as one does). :]
And here’s a review paper on the benefits of beetroot supplementation, before you ask. ;)
It’s been a while! Not much has changed on our end in the past year, honestly – I’d been hoping we’d be announcing our shiny new rebrand by now, but things are still a few months behind schedule. :p
As the great Shigeru Miyamoto once said, “A delayed game is eventually good, but a bad game is bad forever.” Spoken like a true perfectionist. In other words, stay tuned.
The good news is we’re not increasing our prices! Other than that, we just have some supply issues and delay-causing complications to update you about. And a survey at the end. A fun survey.
As you may have noticed, we’ve got a perpetual rolling backlog that is putting us as much as two or three weeks behind on some orders. I’m sorry about this ongoing issue. :/ If you’re lucky, you might not get much of a delay at all, but most likely, it will take a couple weeks before we can ship out your order. On top of that, the postal system has been slower than normal, and it’s particularly bad for destinations outside the US, like Australia. If you can swing it, I’d recommend keeping some extra on hand to cover you when these delays happen.
We also just got notice that the EU is adding customs taxes to smaller orders that may have previously slipped under the threshold. We are already barely breaking even (or even losing money) on international orders, so this is not something that we can really help with right now. If you’re in Europe, you might want to hold off on ordering for a bit, given the combination of our backlog, slow international shipping, and additional customs fees – we honestly may not be able to provide enough value to make it worth your while (or ours, for that matter!).
You may have also heard about the global supply issues that have been affecting businesses all over. There was even an article about it in the San Francisco Chronicle recently, featuring our friendly business neighbor Nana Joes Granola! We’ve so far been able to stay nimble and dodge most of these issues, but there are a couple that we’ve just been hit with.
First of all, we recently ran out of our custom vitamin premix before we were able to get a resupply, and so – a year and a half since the last time – we are back to using placeholder vitamins instead. As before, we’re substituting the high-quality vegan brand NATURELO, which includes the same methylated B vitamins and chelated minerals so it will hopefully be of comparable quality. But it’s still not the same, I know. Fortunately, we should be getting the next shipment of our custom vitamin mix before the end of this month, so you can expect to see it back in our products (and Super Micros!) by January.
We also got word from our freeze-dried strawberry supplier that they will be out of product until next March, which is a long time. Yes, there technically are other suppliers of real strawberry powder, but based on our taste tests, there’s only one that tastes good enough to (barely) justify the price, and so we’re out of luck. :/ We still have some of our strawberry products in stock, but they’ll be gone soon, and it will be a few months before we have it available again. So if you have a subscription that includes strawberry, I’d recommend switching the flavors now. Feel free to email us and we can take care of it for you – just let us know what flavor you want instead.
I also want to say a big thanks to all of you who participated in our scoop size survey earlier this year! :) There was a very slight majority in favor of keeping the big scoops as-is, so we haven’t changed anything.
Have any of you had experience with netParcel? One of our Canadian customers recommended it as a way to get cheaper Canadian shipping. We might give that a try soon, which would involve switching (only) Canadian shipments from USPS to UPS. This could potentially save enough money that we could afford to bring our Canadian shipping fees down to (nearly) the level of our US shipping. Seems almost too good to be true, right? If you have experiences with netParcel, good or bad, let us know. If you’re in Canada and have opinions on UPS shipping in your country, please let us know also!
Lastly, the fun stuff. In the past several months I’ve been experimenting a lot with various supplements for sleep and mood and tissue repair, and one of the most interesting I’ve come across is glycine. Glycine is an amino acid, one of the building blocks of protein, found in significant amounts in collagen and skin and joints, moderate amounts in plant proteins, and smaller amounts in muscle tissue (and rice protein, turns out!).
Super smart nutrition guy Chris Masterjohn (check out his free resources on vitamins and minerals!) recommends supplementing glycine if you eat meat (or rice protein?), in order to achieve a 4:1 ratio of glycine to methionine in your diet and improve your physical and mental health. He suggests that the human body expects this ratio in order to function optimally, which is easy to achieve if you’re eating mostly plants and “the whole animal” but rare these days when muscle meat is the main source of protein for most people.
The good news is that glycine powder is cheap, vegan, hypoallergenic, and tastes sweet (with a slightly weird aftertaste if you take a lot). And in order to achieve a 4:1 ratio of glycine:methionine, we could add 2g of glycine per meal of Super Body Fuel. It would even pay for itself, given that we could lower the amount of expensive monkfruit sweetener slightly to account for the sweetness of the glycine. Initial taste tests are very promising. The slight sweetness even balances out the natural bitterness of the Plain flavors as well.
The bad news? Well, there isn’t any, as far as I’ve found. Glycine can even improve your mood and sleep, via very gentle effects on the serotonin system (unlike the heavy-handed effects of tryptophan or 5-HTP, for example). People like Chris Masterjohn might argue that it’s just about giving your body the glycine levels it naturally expects, so it can run smoothly and calmly the way it’s supposed to. I just want to run it by you all before we pull the trigger and add it. What do you think? Let us know in this short survey! :)
I’ve also spent a while experimenting with prebiotic fiber sources this year and building up my tolerance for the notoriously potent inulin, and I’ll admit I’m tempted to play with it again in our Super Body Fuel formulas. But don’t worry! I wouldn’t do it without consulting with you all first, via this same survey. ;) Inulin is delicious (tastes like cotton candy), sweet and smooth, the best prebiotic fiber source… if not for the explosive flatulence it can cause in some people. :o
But you know, with up to 1g of inulin and 2g of glycine in a meal of one of our plain flavors, “Plain” becomes truly neutral and decently tasty, all without any sweeteners at all (no monkfruit!). The texture is better too. And if you start small, you can usually adjust to tolerate inulin without all the gas – there’s certainly an argument to be made for mixing fermentable fibers, like acacia and inulin, rather than using high doses of a single type as we currently do…
Even if you don’t have an opinion on glycine or inulin, we’d also like to hear from all of you about your digestive experience generally on Super Body Fuel – any gas or bloating, constipation or diarrhea, or is it all just smooth sailing for you? :) Please weigh in on the survey!
Thank you, and Happy Holidays! :D See you next year. ;)
A few months ago I was interviewed by an anonymous journalist for an article about ‘lents that never saw the light of day. So I thought I’d share it with you here! :)
What compelled you to create Super Body Fuel and start using meal substitutes?
I heard about Rob Rhinehart’s Soylent experiment back in 2013 when I was eating a strict, home-cooked Paleo diet, largely on account of my many food allergies. I thought it was an intriguing concept, though I was skeptical about how well it could work in practice. I liked the food I was already eating, and I felt really good on it, health-wise, but as the year wore on I started to resent the hours I spent cooking and cleaning every day, and wonder how much more I could accomplish on my indie game side projects if I had some of that time back. I mean, I liked food, but I didn’t necessarily feel the need to tantalize my taste buds three times a day…
Eventually I decided to check out the DIY soylent scene that had emerged in response to Rob’s initial blog post. Experimenting with chalky concoctions became a hobby, and then a side business, as people began spontaneously asking me to sell them some of my DIY mixes. After a few months, I quit my software engineering day job to focus on Custom Body Fuel full-time. My initial plan was to quickly come up with one good recipe and a brand name that would do it justice, and just outsource everything else to a bigger manufacturer a la Tim Ferriss’s 4-Hour Workweek so I could live my dream of being an independent artist – an indie game developer – but alas, it was not to be. Turns out I’m too much of a perfectionist.
So I turned it into Super Body Fuel and went inside the cocoon to iterate on formula, brand, and learning to be a manager and leader for the next several years, with the help of my employees and our thousands of customers. And when I say “inside the cocoon” I mean no marketing, no outreach, no nothing. Just working that feedback loop with our own customers, learning from experience, trying to make the best product we can within our “optimal nutrition for all” mission. Optimal and inclusive.
Every year it feels like we’re just about ready to emerge from the cocoon, and then that horizon stretches out to the next year for one reason or another. But we’ve finally pinned down the formula and the branding at this point, and we’re just putting the final pieces together as far as manufacturing and website development, so… Let’s just say I’m really looking forward to being a butterfly. And you can bet it’s not going to be called “Something Body Fuel” either!
With what sort of frequency/intensity do you use your meal substitutes? Is it a 100% replacement? Could you briefly walk me through a usual day of what you’re eating and when?
I’ve been using my own stuff (mostly Super Fuel) for anywhere from 30% to 90% of my diet, for the last several years straight. I’ve never gone 100% because I have no reason to – I like corn chips too much to ever cut them out of my diet completely, haha. But it’s rare to have a day where I go without it completely – Super Fuel with berries is the perfect breakfast for me, honestly. I keep a pitcher in my fridge at all times, and while I might also crave (and indulge) some crunchy chips, I never get tired of it. And few other meals leave me with such a perfect balance of energy and satiation, especially with my food allergies. It’s come a long way since the chalky concoctions of the early days.
Do you actively enjoy using meal substitutes or is consuming them more of a practical decision?
I actively enjoy them. I miss them if I’m forced to go without for a while – crave them, even. It’s also a very practical decision, but that’s not coming at the expense of pleasure. Cinnamon with berries is deliciously reminiscent of my favorite pie, and chocolate never gets old.
That’s the benefit of quality nutrition – your body craves it once it realizes how much good stuff is in it. And not in a compulsive way like sugary junk food. It’s a good way to reset your palate for healthy food if your brain has been hacked and hijacked by processed garbage.
Do you feel like they’ve made you healthier? How have they affected your body?
I came to this from a healthy diet, so I didn’t necessarily see the kind of dramatic benefits that so many people see when they’re coming from fast food. However, I’ve definitely learned to optimize for health further in addition to optimizing for convenience and cost, even calculating which vegetables I could combine for the best nutritional coverage when cooking for myself (spinach and broccoli is a great combination).
As far as my body, I got into this business while probably in the best shape of my life, practicing martial arts and parkour at least an hour every day on average, and walking an hour a day for my commute. Probably the best testimonial I can give is that I still have visible abs, even after all my healthy routines were obliterated by the stress and demands of starting my own bootstrapped business these last several years!
Do you feel like they’ve made you more productive? How have they changed the schedule of your day?
Yes, of course. But it’s impossible to compare life before starting a business to life after. Now that has changed my schedule and my life to an unrecognizable degree!
Food can obviously be much more than just sustenance for some folks — it can be a cultural thing, a social thing, an experiential thing, etc. — how do you see your relationship with “real food?” How has that relationship changed after you started using alt-food?
I think I’ve always had to be a lot more aware of the food that I eat, given my allergies and the general sensitivity of my body. But I really dove into the “biohacking” mindset once I got into the DIY soylent scene and beyond. My approach to food these days is a lot more “nutrition nerd” and a lot more utilitarian as a whole, though I’ve also learned to lighten up more and not be so strict about my diet at the same time. Like I said, I like corn chips.
Maybe you’re a little biased here, but do you feel like meal substitutes are “the future?” Could you see a world where people have entirely replaced their diets with these types of drinks?
I don’t think of this trend as “meal substitutes”. It’s really about nutritional completeness as a benchmark for processed food, which previously has been entirely about making something that is tasty, addictive, and cheap. The future isn’t Soylent, it’s Vite Ramen – delicious, gourmet instant ramen that is also optimized for nutrition, complete and bioavailable. And Tom and Tim, the founders of Vite Ramen, are good guys. I’m a big fan of what they’re doing, and it’s a huge honor that they have mentioned me and my work as one of their (many) inspirations.
That said, the processed food industry has been so successful at uprooting and destroying traditional food cultures, and replaced it with food that is so antithetical to health, that at this point there’s a lot of value in something as utilitarian as a powdered drink mix that can actually function as a complete and healthy meal. Powders aren’t particularly exciting, but there’s really no other way to make something cheap and convenient enough to compete with the junk that has come to dominate our diets, as a society.
I don’t see a future where people drink all their meals instead of eating them, but I really hope to see a future where people can choose to drink something healthy and cheap instead of going to McDonald’s for lunch or powering through at their desk with an energy drink. And where people expect solid nutrition from their instant ramen. I don’t think it’s that far off. And it can’t come soon enough – whether from an environmental or a public health angle.
What types of people, in your experience, use Super Body Fuel (or other meal substitutes,) and for what reasons?
Food is such a broad category that it’s hard to pin down any specifics. But the people who get the most benefit from it, and stick with it long-term, tend to be those whose work makes it hard to take time off for breakfast or lunch – whether those are the stereotypical workaholic programmers glued to their computer screens, or the hardworking people who are on their feet in a hospital, factory, or outdoor job site all day.
It’s also great for more specialized diets, whether that’s because of food allergies like mine, goals like weight-loss or bodybuilding, or even recovering from surgery or chemo where it’s hard to eat solid foods. It’s always really cool to hear from people about how this stuff has impacted their lives – you never know what to expect.
Have you seen growing interest in these sorts of products over the last few years? If so, do you have any ideas as to why?
Personally? No. I don’t doubt it’s happening, but I haven’t been focused on promoting my business at all, and things have been about the same for us, these last two or three years. I’m looking forward to getting involved, though. I think the next few years will be a lot more interesting. Being a butterfly should be fun.
Could you give me a short bio of who you are and what your life is like, generally speaking?
I used to dream of making beautiful art that would inspire people, and changing the world through the power of games. Now I live inside of a cocoon. Mostly metaphorically speaking. Though with the pandemic and everything else these days, who knows…
People who think Super Body Fuel has nutrients missing that are somehow in “real food” have it exactly backward.
I had an interesting conversation about this with a long-time customer, after talking about probiotics and the emerging science of gut bacteria. So I posted about it on r/soylent and it turned into my post popular post yet! :O Even got my first Platinum Award (thanks u/chrisbair!) and spurred even more fascinating discussion in the comments. :)
Here it is:
Do you ever wonder if we’ve missed some essential nutrient that’s in real food, but not accounted for in meal replacements? I mean, not discovered some vitamin, protein, or other essential nutrient yet? I do. And I guess the problem is potentially worse, given the microbiome that we’ve barely started to explore.
Do I idly wonder or worry about it? No. Am I constantly investigating new and lesser-known nutrients and compounds that may turn out to have health benefits? Pretty much, yes. Do I add them all to the formula? No. But there are some that I have, like the DHA and Myo-Inositol, after careful consideration of the research and survey feedback.
I don’t think about this as a comparison between a hubristically engineered attempt at playing god on the part of humans, versus a perfect, divinely ordained natural diet that completely and optimally meets the body’s needs. If those were the two choices, I would not be wasting my time with this business, and you would not be a customer.
Instead, we have a comparison between a deliberate, thoughtful diet plan depending largely on supplements for micronutrient content, and a largely naive, haphazard diet based on learned behaviors and impulses within a food landscape overwhelmingly shaped by market forces that have no regard for nutritional content whatsoever. Traditional pre-industrial diets, as Michael Pollan describes, are somewhere in between, but are largely dying out (tragically) and our customers are not generally coming from that background. If they are, the forces pushing them are due to the long-term societal effects of colonialism and capitalism, and Super Body Fuel is merely an attempt to ease the pain, not itself the cause.
Milk Fuel has the exact same amount of “real food” as a bowl of oat-based cereal in milk, and all of Super Body Fuel has more “real food” than a bowl of oatmeal. And yet most people would reflexively assume that the bowl of oatmeal has some mysterious nutrient that is somehow lacking in Super Fuel. Sadly, in fact, it is the opposite. The bowl of oatmeal is definitely – measurably – deficient in over a dozen nutrients that you will suffer known medical problems for lacking, and eventually die without. And many of these nutrients you cannot get in a multivitamin pill (fiber and electrolytes are too bulky to fit, and most multivitamins also include only cheap forms of vitamins and minerals that are not absorbed well).
This extends to the entirety of the diet. Americans as a population are known, as documented in government reports, to be clearly deficient in many nutrients (even by the minimal standards of the FDA), including insoluble and soluble fiber (back to the gut bacteria!), potassium, magnesium, vitamin K and vitamin D, to a degree that causes significant health issues to individuals and incurs significant healthcare costs to society.
It’s almost infuriating how backwards this is – it’s easy to get worked up about this if I let myself. :p
Do you see what I’m saying? It’s not traditional pre-industrial diets and Cheerios with milk, grouped together as “real food” against the “fake food” of Super Body Fuel. Cheerios with milk has much more in common with SBF than it does with any pre-industrial diet. And SBF does everything better than Cheerios. Except marketing. ;) It’s just the next logical step in making industrial food less terrible – indeed, taking it into the realm of (hopefully!) optimal.
Believe me, I wish we didn’t have to do this – I came to SBF from a Paleo diet. But this is where we are, as a society.
Seems we’ve gotten very far from the track, and you’re very right that SBF only needs to be doing better, overall. It’s certainly succeeding in that for me. Aside from all the capitalist marketing of food for questionable reasons, I love to think I could grow my own food, raise my own animals, and somehow really nourish my body on every level, but I just don’t have the right skills, resources, or time for it. And I’ve plenty of other things to deal with.
Are you aware of Bikini, the island where a huge nuke was set off? These days, the natives live almost entirely on processed food: I guess because local food is questionable or non-existent, and everything is shipped in from the US. It has the highest rates of type 2 diabetes in the world. I guess that’s what happens when you nuke the land and sea, nuke a traditional, energetic way of life, and then people live on canned crap :(
Apparently phytochemicals are important, and absent from ‘lents. Maybe that would qualify as a missing nutrient?
I think that is the most reasonable complaint, and the most easily addressed.
Obviously, something like Cheerios has no more phytonutrient content than Super Fuel (both have certain beneficial compounds from the oat flour). But what about fruits and veggies? Like, for people who actually do eat somewhat healthily.
One point is that Super Fuel (but not Soylent) has phytonutrients not only from meager grains like oats or brown rice, but from superfoods like monkfruit and cocoa powder (or Ceylon cinnamon, or freeze-dried strawberries, depending on the flavor) which are rich in antioxidant phytochemicals. That’s one of the reasons we use real spices for the flavors, not isolated flavor compounds (and one of the reasons that people historically have used spices in cooking!).
Another point is that it’s possible to actually include phytonutrients in ‘lents, like u/IcyElemental of Genesis Foods does with PhytoGenesis. I’ve tended to move a little slower and cautiously in terms of adding things, but there are some science-backed phytonutrients and other things that are not strictly vitamins or minerals that I’ve started adding, and more that I’d like to add in the future. It’s just a matter of time, and there’s no reason why ‘lents can’t include them just as easily as they include vitamins and minerals.
But the biggest thing is this.
Even if ‘lents are lacking in crucial phytonutrients, your average meal, even a “healthy” meal with phytonutrient-packed veggies, is still lacking in even more crucial actual vitamins and minerals.
The phytonutrients are not considered vitamins because they have never been shown to be necessary in patients on long-term parenteral nutrition. If and when they do cause issues by being absent from parenteral nutrition, they will become upgraded to vitamins. That’s more or less how choline went from being a B vitamin, to not, to basically becoming one again, according to the FDA.
The kind of medical problems you get from lacking vitamins and minerals are the kinds that are severe and obvious. The kinds of medical problems that may or may not be reduced in likelihood by phytonutrients that have not yet passed the “vitamin” test are by definition not as critical.
So, imagine your ‘lent and your healthy salad, or your grilled steak, or whatever, as two gladiators in the ring, fighting to the death. Who is healthier?
Your favorite ‘lent has a helmet, a shield, a sword. He’s got all the bases covered, all the essentials. But he forgot to put on sunscreen. He’s missing his sunscreen – that’s the missing phytonutrient in this analogy. His skin is going to be uncomfortable tomorrow after a hard day of fighting in the Mediterranean sun. :/
But your healthy salad has his sunscreen. Great. But he’s missing his helmet. His shield is cracked. His sword is too short. These are the essential vitamins and minerals that are deficient or just straight up absent from the meal. You’ve got vitamin K1 in that salad, but how about K2? And where’s the B12? How much of that zinc or magnesium are you actually absorbing from those seeds? How much potassium or magnesium are you actually getting in that steak?
Who do you think is going to win?
Unless you are actively applying a systematic, nutrition-first approach to your “healthy” meals (like the Perfect Health Diet, maybe) I can almost guarantee that you are going to be deficient in something important. Even if you take a cheap Costco multivitamin at the same time. Still not getting that potassium or magnesium, not getting that K2, not getting enough omega-3 fats relative to your inflammatory omega-6, not getting enough fiber to keep your gut bacteria happy.
Phytonutrients are great, but they’re no substitute for essential nutrition.
This is a very thoughtful post and I wholeheartedly agree. Complete foods are not necessarily replacements for nutritionally balanced whole foods diets. But it would be extremely naive to believe that’s what is being replaced here.
I also think the way ‘lents started out was quite beautiful because of the open source recipes and ingredient transparency. A lot more intentionality has gone into making ‘lents than the majority of the breakfast cereal industry.
On a side note, the marketing machine behind the breakfast cereal industry is unbelievable, because it has somehow made us think that eating bowls of predominantly sugar and processed carbohydrates every morning is somehow healthy and great for children.
The world would be better off if we replaced all breakfast cereals and instant ramen with ‘lents.
And that’s what the messaging should be: take a typical diet of what people actually eat every day and compare it to a complete food diet, not the pie in the sky ideas of what people think would be healthy, but what people really put in their mouths every day.
Someone who eats a muffin or bagel for breakfast every day should switch to ‘lents. Someone who eats a sandwich from most fast food restaurants for lunch every day would almost certainly be better off with ‘lents instead.
Exactly.
Like it or not, this is a topic that we’ll have to keep addressing over and over until ‘lents gain mainstream acceptance. And it’s a worthwhile question to ask, in my opinion.
It’s a question we should be asking of all of our food.
Hi everyone,
