Nutrition: Optimizing for everything but taste.
That was my goal when I started experimenting with alternative approaches to food and nutrition 10 years ago.
There was a kind of madness in those early experiments. I wanted something that would maximize nutrition, convenience, ethics. I didn't care much about taste - I was willing to give that up. It's an element that really matters to most people. Something that's just not negotiable. But I became curious about what might emerge if I threw that standard requirement away and focused on the others.
The initial goal was to create something that I could make once or twice a week and that had 7 cups of vegetables and fruit. The idea was that it would be blended together. At the time I didn't have a real blender - we only had a food processor. And daydreaming at work I came up with an initial ingredient list: A crazy ton of vegetables and greens. Wild mix, can't remember exactly what though. And a good mix of fruit too. I stopped at the store on the way home and bought all the ingredients. We were kind of broke at the time, so this was a substantial outlay. I stuffed everything in the fridge and then spent the rest of the evening with my wife and daughter.
And then, after they went to bed, I got an extension cord from the garage and ran it out to a Little Tikes playhouse. And I went out there with the food processor. and a 5 gallon pot. And a huge collection of fruits and veggies.
It was an absurd scene. The Little Tikes log cabin playhouse is perfectly sized for 2-3yrs olds. and terribly small for an adult. And obscenely, stupidly small for an adult and his food processor and a 5 gallon pot and mountains of fruits and veggies.
It made little sense. But compulsion pulled me through and I over the course of a couple late-night hours I managed to get all of it fairly evenly, but coarsely, blended.
It was hard work. and the result still needed to be chewed. and it didn't taste very good. and I made enough for a week but it all went bad within 36hrs. But it also marked the first version of a creation that has undergone many evolutions in the years since.
Almost 10yrs later and I've been on some version of this diet about 70% of those days. I took a year off once. And I've taken breaks in between. But most of those days I've gotten most of my calories from some version of this diet.
There have been other absurd moments, one time where I made my own mix of powders and was in the garage for hours hand rolling a barrel on the wheels of an upside down furniture dolly...
The goal is still to optimize for personal nutrition, health, convenience and ethics.
FUD is a project to bring this project to more people.
What's your optimum diet in terms of nutrition and health? in terms of convenience? and ethics?
Maybe we can get you 85% of the way there? Or 98% of the way there 80% of the time.
It really depends on what you're after. Whatever it is, we want to help you get there.
To know this, we need to answer a few questions:
- Your personal ethical map
- Your health and wellness goals
- Your current health/wellness
- Your lifestyle: How much time do you have to dedicate to cooking + food preparation
- Your budget: practical financial limits
We want to spend most of our energy working on the base of our wellness pyramid. For years I gave most of my attention to the very tip of the pyramid - supplements and vitamins. Putting most of my energy and money into attempting to perfect the very top of the pyramid.
The results were mediocre. It kind of worked because I was already relatively physically healthy. My mental and emotional game were pretty poor. And all of that got ignored.
I was exercising a bit. And not drinking much. But that was almost happenstance. I spent most of the last 25yrs drinking too much alcohol. And not giving enough attention to maintaining high quality sleep.
to be continued…