My quest is harder than I thought, so I thought I’d give a progress update.
The last post generated some fantastic comments. Especially James Andrix and David who both pointed me towards the Dilberito. I gave it a lookover, and it is both a fantastic idea, and built with a great philosophy. Unfortunately, it isn’t available in many places outside of college cafeterias!
The concept:
Scott Adams is enjoying creating a corporation modeled after tenets set forth in his best-selling book, The Dilbert Principle: Create a vision, hire good people, then get out of the way. True to his word, Adams created the vision for the company and hired one of the best minds in the food industry, Jack Parker, to run the operation. The company’s first creation was the DILBERITO — a delicious handheld meal fortified with 100% Daily Value of 23 essential vitamins and minerals.
Tell me that isn’t fantastic! Unfortunately, in my quest, I’m trying to create this bachelor chow with whole foods. I could simply say to eat 5 bowls of a nutritious cereal a day (like: this or this) and pop a multivitamin, but that isn’t what I’m attempting to create. Key words that I am trying to avoid, ENRICHED and PROCESSED.
I’ve found very nutritionally dense foods, and have to admit I’ve learned quite a bit. This is quite the engineering exercise, which makes it all that much more fun! It’s almost like solving a linear system.
The good point, I’ve found a relatively simple group of foods with a great nutritional balance, but I’ve yet to do cost analysis to see if it fulfills my previous wishlist.
The bad point, it isn’t a single serving food item like I wanted, more of a daily meal plan.
I stuck to my guns on the “KISS” approach, and meal preparation time should be minimal.
Here’s the breakdown of the macro-nutrients:
- Calories - 1711
- 37% Carbs [162g]
- 31g Fiber
- 40% Fats [80g]
- 3:1 Omega6:Omega3 [31319mg:10244mg]
- 23% Protein [104g]
Here’s the breakdown:
Breakfast:
1c 2% milk + 1oz BlueberriesSnack:
Glass of 1c Orange JuiceLunch:
1c Pasta + 1/2c Sauce (I use spaghetti and Ragu Traditional Spaghetti sauce)
Half a can (7oz) Pink Salmon
4oz BroccoliSnack:
1 cup 2% milk + 3oz Sunflower SeedsDinner:
1 medium Sweet Potato
1tbsp Flax Oil + splash Lemon/Vinegar as a dressing + 1cup Spinach [a salad]
or 1C cooked Spinach with a bunch of garlic
[Insert whatever lean protein]Dessert:
Great choice is kiwi, but any fruit (not in hard syrup)
This seems to be very close to ideal. Low on the Glycemic Index (14), good Omega ratio, low cholesterol and lots of good fats, tons of vitamins and minerals, complete protein.
If you can afford it, i heartily recommend organics for at least the spinach, blueberries and milk. If you are unfamiliar with Flax Oil, it is available in large supermarkets and health food stores in the refrigerated section.
The only deficiencies:
- 73% Thiamin
- 81% Zinc
Vitamin breakdown:
- A - 867%
- C - 360%
- D - 282%
- E - 169%
- K - 1264%
- Thiamin - 73%
- Riboflavin - 138%
- Niacin - 132%
- B6 - 113%
- Folate - 163%
- B12 - 200%
- Pantothenic Acid - 116%
- Calcium - 169%
Mineral breakdown:
- Calcium 169%
- Iron 90%
- Magnesium 132%
- Phosphorus 264%
- Potassium 124%
- Sodium 85%
- Zinc 81%
- Copper 139%
- Manganese 318%
- Selenium 284% *199 mcg, dangerous upper limit is 400 mcg
Feel free to round this out with a bowl of cereal for breakfast. And steer clear of multivitamins, you’re getting plenty of them already and don’t want to megadose!
I’d especially like to thank nutritiondata for being such a fantastic resource for finding nutrional information!
7 responses so far ↓
Why can’t we make bachelor chow a reality? [part 1] | evsh.net // Jan 21, 2007 at 2:25 pm
[…] In part 1a, I’ll add my own recipe experiments and thoughts. Share and Enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. […]
Steph // Feb 1, 2007 at 6:24 pm
remove raonocm to email me
stephraonocmenensancheztio@hotmail.com
I’ve thought of the same sort of thing a couple weeks ago, and resolved to invent a bachelor-chow type stuff one can make in the kitchen.
In short, I have come to the conclusion that such a product would be pretty easy to make with industrial food processing techniques, or with just dried food (freeze dried is too expensive, but spray dried is cheap)….. but, I cannot find a way to buy a decent variety of dried foods, in order to just make in my humble kitchen.
My goal is basically to make something that meeds the USDA dietary guidelines for a 5′9 20 yo student like me.
I have made a stew that meets the guidelines and tasted okay, but it was indigestible.
I think a wiki ought to be set up for dealing with such a thing, it could be a sort of open source recipe, or something? The time has come for this to happen….. Can anyone set that up? Please email me if you can, see the top of this message. I would do it myself, but I have no hosting or experience with wikis……
My current recipe, which meets major macro and micro nutrient requirements in a bread like stuff is,
12 fl oz oj concentrate and a multivitamin and at least 6 grams of fish oil for EFAs to be consumed seperately,
396 g 15% grgound beef broken in to small pieces, boil it in the water for the recipe to make breaking up easier
mix in a blender
58 g of skim milk powder
57g ground (like peanut butter) “colorado trail mix“, this includes a variety of nuts and seeds, whatever used should contain about 24 grams of fat with 4 grams of saturated fat
28 g spinach
9.33g sugar
7.2 g salt
less than 229 ml water, this can be the water the beef was cooked in
pour into bread pan. Mix in
350 g semolina flour or mix of semolina and all purpose or bread flour
7ml yeast
Cook at 400 for 20 minutes or something, you have to watch it. When it sounds hollow, it’s done, unless you like a thin crust, in which case it’s too done. Being bread, it’s kind of finnicky, so you might have to experiment a bit.
Knead, allow to rise etc. however you want, depending on where you are etc. I’ve only tried this a couple times, so it’s hard to put more solid instructions here.
Right now I haven’t focused on ease of manufacture, that will come later, but I suppose you could use a bread machine.
If you leave the spinach out it doesn’t taste to bad. I have eaten it for 7 days continously.
I have noticed, though, that such a project to make something that tastes good and acheives my goal, would be pretty complex, there are so many factors to consider.
So, that’s why I suggest making it a wiki-project. Who wants to set it up?
P.s. I think what you are doing here is just inventing a diet, not bachelor chow. Besides, from your goals, it seems MREs would get you what you want.
Steph // Feb 1, 2007 at 7:50 pm
Okay, I’ve set up a forum for Bachelor chow development, but I cannot find a way to contact the people who expressed interest. You guys should have an email adress findable from your blogs or something ’cause there’s no other way to contact you directly.
the forum is here
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bachchowdev/
Whoever writes this blog, feel free to email me. Whoever sees this, recruit.
stephraonocmenensancheztio@hotmail.com
less raonocmen
Food Part 1: Background at bsowell // Feb 15, 2007 at 9:48 pm
[…] I’m clearly not the only person thinking about these issues, and I’ve read some interesting discussions online. One post I found particularly thought provoking was “Why Can’t We Make Bachelor Chow a Reality” at evsh.net (see also part 2). “Bachelor chow,” in this case, is a hypothetical foodstuff that can be eaten everyday and would provide all essential calories and nutrients. (For another take, see also Scott Adam’s failed Dilberito). As I’ve said, I enjoy eating too much to have the same thing at every meal, but article is interesting because of its engineering-like approach to food. At some level eating well simply means balancing an equation involving calories, nutrients, and exercise, and this is an appealing prospect to a scientist. The problem is, of course, that it’s not clear exactly which nutrients we need, and conflicting studies are released almost daily. Food in a pill still seems like a ways off (thank goodness), but this engineering approach to food seems to stand at the heart of the conflict surrounding eating today. […]
Chad // Feb 16, 2007 at 6:34 pm
I’ve been eating based on these recommendations for about a week now, and I’m feeling pretty good about it. I’m not a very food oriented person, so I don’t get very sick of eating the same thing every day. It’s nice to have a default to fall back on. I still sneak in a ZipFizz and a couple cans of soda a day, but I’m sure I’m doing a lot better than the fast food I used to eat on a daily basis.
I’ve felt some effects that I think are more than just placebo. I feel much more energetic and alert than I used to. Also, my dog got loose and I had to chase him several city blocks and I didn’t get nearly the muscle fatigue that I got the last time I had to chase him down.
It also produces much less trash than my previous dietary habits, which I consider a good thing.
I think the instructions need more clarifications. Here are some of the questions I had initially.
- Does 1c Pasta indicate a pre or post cooked volume? I figured it was pre-cooked.
-Are you supposed to eat half of a 7 oz can of salmon, or should half a can of salmon equal 7 oz? I found 7 oz cans in the grocery store and made an assumption that I should eat half of it.
-Is 3 oz of sunflower seeds a quantity with or without shells, if it’s with the shells, should the shells be eaten? Given the amount of fiber that should be consumed on a daily basis, I assume that you’re supposed to eat the shells.
- What are good options for the lean meat to be eaten with dinner? I’ve gone with chicken so far, but I think pork and fish would be good options. I guess you could go with some type of vegetable protein too (tofu or something), but I’m not really into that.
Chad // Mar 22, 2007 at 6:31 pm
Big caution about this diet. I did some cursory research on vitamin toxicity and the amount of vitamin A in this diet is pretty bad. I’ve seen a couple of places that say you shouldn’t consume more than 5 times the RDA of vitamin A or you can cause liver, kidney, bone, and skin problems. I’d cut the sweet potato from the diet and replace it with something else.
Ewdfl // Aug 29, 2007 at 8:05 am
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