I’ve just always wondered this as someone who has always found food super annoying. But why can’t goat food be a thing for people?
Why can’t you just buy a giant bag of food with all the healthy proteins and nutrients and just everything you would need to look and feel and be healthy and just eat that everyday like they do with goats or farm animals? Yes of course sure we can add seasoning and stuff to make it taste better to it and theoretically there could be doctors to give you a full workup to say what would be the best for you.
But Why isn’t this a thing? Like why can’t there just be a big bag of food that we can eat 3 or 4 times a day everyday and look and feel perfectly healthy? It would also take away so much anxiety people have toward food because you wouldn’t have to think about what to eat everyday or why you have to eat it would also help the people who don’t really know a lot about nutrition and who try to be healthy but who just can’t because they were never taught.
But Would this just ruin the entire health system if we did this because it would make people too healthy? Or is that just not scientificly possible?But why have they figured out how to do this with animals but not people?
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The equivalent to animal food for people is rice and beans. You can live off that.
Humans couldn’t, mentally, eat the same thing all day everyday
Isn’t that like cereal or rice? Besides, animals have very different dietary needs. Im sure it could be done, but it probably wouldn’t taste very good.
You are describing soylent, and other competitors. They exist.
Most people enjoy food, the taste of food, and the variety, so its not particularly popular but they do exist.
You totally can. They tend to be be shakes rather than dried food.
There are medical nutrient shakes often used in hospitals to increase a patients weight so that they can have surgery. And there are commercial versions.
That’s basically how Soylent was invented. A college kid was studying programming and felt he never had time to eat. So he started experimenting on himself with making Soylent. He had his blood work done weekly (maybe more, I’m going from memory) as he mixed different compounds to get his body to get all it’s nutrients from Soylent. It was really interesting to read as he went through it.
I was a "customer" before it actually hit the market beause i was following the guy’s journey a little as he did it. He also was asking for volunteers to join him, but he was requesting weekly blood work be done, and I’m not good with that kinda thing ever since i had cancer, so i didn’t try to get in to the trial.
Fascinating stuff. Pretty much exactly what you’re talking about, but in liquid form.
You mean like Bachelor Chow from Futurama?
Huel and many other similar products are exactly this.
Animals usually aren’t picky or get bored of the same food over and over. And they cant really communicate if they’re feeling like shit because of what they’re being fed.
Those huge pellets, kibble/dry food for pets isn’t everything they need, it still needs supplementing with things like real meat, plants and wet food. Humans just don’t ‘care’ as much about their pets/farm animals diets as their own, because they can’t really complain about it and it’s cheaper to feed them that. A human equivalent (aside from the stated beans/rice and soylent and meal replacements) would still be insufficient for our diets, taste mediocre, get old incredibly fast, and be very difficult to market. People WANT real food, and human kibble wouldn’t really solve much.
It’s called a “meal replacement”. Normally a shake of some kind. It is kind of nice to never have to think about what to cook and have your only dirty dishes being a cup. But after a while you will get sick of it.
This sounds like depression
I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted so bad. I’ve often thought this too only I called it [my name] kibble. Some people live to eat, others of us eat to live. And when you’re not that in to food, prep and cleanup is also a chore. I could totally eat kibble for two meals a day and then maybe prepare one simple meal. Cereal is close, but lacks the nutrients you would get from fruits and vegetables. I was asking a friend about this a while ago and she said veggie burgers are probably the closest for me (I also dislike meat). The person who said we are probably supertasters is correct. A lot of food just tastes very bad to us.
I know several people who would agree with you (I think it’s just an autism thing)
Edit- my “just” here was not meant to mean “only”, more like when people say “just girly things” and stuff like that!
There are many people (like my mother) that can only get their nutrients via feeding tubes. Before she passed, she lived on the liquid diet for about 6 years. So yes, it’s a thing.
This does exist (Huel, Soylent, similar companies) but most people enjoy eating food and not just shakes or pebbles. As far as it making people too healthy – a variety of foods is certainly more healthy than eating only the minimum requirements present in these products.
It exists. We give it to people in feeding tubes in hospitals and in shakes. It’s boring AF and not possible to be your healthiest with these kinds of heavily processed foods. Same for goats, but nobody really cares, and they can’t really explain how they feel anyway. Goats also don’t live as long as people and are ruminants. It’s not remotely similar requirements for optimal nutrition or "good enough" looking results. They also do better and are physiologically better when grazing naturally.
There is a 0% chance of any kind of heavily processed food disrupting the healthcare industry. Too many important nutritional elements are lost (and too much crap is added) in processing to make the food shelf stable.
I dont understand how an organism can find food to be annoying.
Google "Labdiet 5038". Complete nutrition for all old world primates, which would include humans. About 35 bucks for a 25 pound bag if you can find it.
ha there was a Reddit question about this years ago:
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fvuid/nutrition_can_humans_be_healthy_long_term_eating/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
It sounds like you might be able to survive just on monkey chow, but I’d check with a dietitian before starting.
Other comments have pointed out that this is a thing, but it’s also worth noting that these kibble-for-people products aren’t actually healthier than a varied and balanced diet over the long term.
The fact is, there’s no single optimal solution for nutrition. Dietary needs differ from one individual to another, and even for a single individual at different points in time.
You can make a kibble product that is nutritionally sufficient, but that doesn’t make it superior to a diet that includes a wide variety of fresh and nutritious foods. This is actually also true for goats. They’re fine eating kibble and supplements, but it’s actually healthier for them to have a diet that mainly consists of forage and is only supplemented with processed food.
The real advantage of dried processed food is logistical, not nutritional. You can buy a lot of it at once and store it without refrigeration and serve it without preparation (or in the case of a kibble-for-humans product like Soylent, minimal preparation).
Historically, this is also why grains are so important in the history of human civilization. A veggie garden and a chicken coop might be a healthier way to feed your family, but dried grains stored properly can remain edible for a very long time. Like, people have found granaries in isolated arid environments with grain products inside that are literally thousands of years old and are still intact.
Why did you specify goat food over any other animal food mix?
This is beside the point, but why goat food? I mean dog food is right there?!
Bachelor chow??
You gotta buy 2 bags, rice and beans
Bachelor Chow. I hear it’s available in the Future.
DOGE interns: (reading and scribbling notes)
It would work, there are people who eat like that. But it wouldn’t make people healthier, on the contrary, it would make them ill.
Our physiology is not designed to eat a one-sided diet or a diet based purely on shakes like Huel, even if it contains many of the ingredients we need.
What’s missing from shakes is the variety, the matrix of plant substances, the hundreds of thousands of other (plant) substances whose effects on us and our microbiome have hardly been researched, and the microbiome itself.
So apart from shakes, if there was a kind of food that contained everything and that you could chew, the variety, the social component and a psychological component would still be missing.
It would certainly work, but it would change things, and I very much doubt that it would make us healthier.
However, if it were a food designed under the best scientific conditions, it would probably be healthier for some people than the fast food or the many highly processed foods that would otherwise be consumed.
An exciting topic that can certainly be discussed much further.
I’m curious how, of all animals, including pets, "goat food" is the term that stuck most for you.
You should learn one or three recipes and learn them really well. Then only buy for those recipes. If you have a taste for something more, then go out to eat.
You can buy a $20-60 rice cooker. Add seasoning to the water. Then it’s press a button and forget.
You can buy a pack of salad or grow your own. 4 plants in a window will grow enough for a salad a week.
Or buy some frozen veggies. 5 minutes in a microwave and you are done.
Get a sous vide. Sounds finicky but it’s not. Buy pork loin or poultry breast. Drop it in a bag with oil and seasoning. Drop it into a hot bath (the sous vide part). Then go take a shower. When you shower is over you have a nice meal with minimal effort on your end.
Oatmeal for breakfast – add fruit or honey. I like mine savory – usually last night’s veggies with hot sauce.
A loaf of bread and some cold cuts.
I would love to see this. Individually wrapped bars in white paper and black letters that just say FOOD, flavor 7, or whatever. Nutrition facts: "12.5% of all your necessary everything"
30 lb sacks of FOOD, breakfast flavor. All set for a month! Let’s go! Someone make this happen!!
Sounds like you’re ready for Bachelor Chow!
You can make your own with the right ingredients and not too much hassle.
That sounds like a miserable miserable life. Why would anyone do that to themselves on purpose?
so basically "bachelor chow" from Futurama?
These exist, although they are primarily liquid. Baby formula, Ensure drinks, etc. They don’t taste great and most people prefer eating.
For people who want to keep a certain weight, don’t like food, or have little time this would be amazing!
You ever heard of goat bloat they honestly don’t have a digestive system you want to emulate. Just drink some soylent? But it hasn’t been tested for long term solo use. The short term ones are decent though as far as nutrient and microbiome. You will have the most ghastly gas though.
So, there are companies that do something like this. “Soylent” is one, for instance, that makes a nominally complete food product. It should probably not make up the ENTIRE diet of a human, but it’s some you can live off for an extended period of time.
or cook. I’ve thought about this too each time i feed my cat 😳😅
I feel like we’re talking about Ensure. Are we?
So like the stuff they ate when they were free of the Matrix.
OSM or “One Square Meal” bars. They were originally designed/created for impoverished countries, but they sell them as a 3 pack of bars here in my country. 1/3 for breakfast, 1/3 for lunch and the final bar for dinner. They contain all (most?) of the daily required vitamins and macros for a human. Expensive and boujee asf though, ironically
Speaking as someone who studied both animal nutrition and human dietetics in school. There are options, but eating a varied diet seems to be important for overall health. Put bluntly, we simply do not care on a large enough scale to do the same for our domesticated animals, especially for meat animals – they simply won’t be alive long enough for the repercussions of a non-varied diet to affect their health (they can experience other diet-based health implications, but more to do with the macro distribution in those cases).
That all being said, I’ve also seen/experienced how devastating ARFID and food aversions can be, and am very in favour of using soylent or other meal replacement products when mental health doesn’t allow for normal and varied consumption.
They say “fed is best” regarding breast vs. formula feeding debate, and I apply it here to adults as well.
Take care ♥️
People have attempted to live off of bagged primate chow intended for monkeys. The consensus is it really sucks.
I get Huel advertisements all time and it’s basically what you’re describing but you have to add water a mix well
this question is asked every few weeks on this sub but it’s usually phrased as “why is there no dog food for people.” i love that you switched it up by saying goat food lol
I read about gorilla chow somewhere in another sub. It’s possible for humans to live on it for a little while but it has too much of something, I want to say manganese? Or too little of it, haha clearly do some research before putting it in your mouth, and don’t just take my word for it. But it is supposed to work as a cheap kind of primate kibble that humans can use for short bursts as long as we either supplement manganese or counteract it, and maybe it’s not manganese
Depending on how widespread this is, and depending on the age people start eating this, this could actually be very negative for health reasons.
Besides vitamins and nutrients, one of the reasons we should eat a variety of foods is because of the microbiomes of different places.
Akin to letting your kids eat boogers, or letting them put stuff in their mouths, they are building up immunity to different types of bacteria and other microorganisms, so their body knows what to do with them later.
If we grew up from milk directly to human kibble, then we would all get sick more often, and I’m sure life expectancy would go down.
Its kind of ironic.. you would think being fed this nutrient-perfect food would be good for our health, but there are other factors that make this not good for our health.
Oats. Apples. Beans.
Like Bachelor Chow?
Bachelor chow is the Futurerama term.
And I’ve met the squirrelly kids who drink Soylent or protein shakes, which is the modern solution to this.
Honestly, a decent cereal and protein shakes might be kind of what you’re looking for.
There’s a guy on TikTok who makes what people have been calling human kibble. He dices up everything in the produce section in a bowl and apparently eats it several times a day.
This is why I drink Soylent. Have ARFID do eating sucks
they do. it’s called Huel and it’s disgusting
I mean you can potentially live off a bunch of different nutritional shakes/supplements, it’s just going to wind up being more expensive than eating like normal
Bachelor Chow!
You are in a very small minority of neurodivergence. Those products exist, but it isn’t cheap like dog food would be.
To make shelf stable complete nutrition, you have to process everything more. For human consumption, this would certainly make it more expensive. People with money who want convenience aren’t eating kibble.
People who want convenience but don’t have money can’t afford it.
Most of the world already mixes all their food together, but they do it at home cause it’s cheaper.
It’s called stew.
Hol Foods, Soylent, and others
Futurama – Bachelor Chow
our dietary requirements are more complex than a goat’s.
you can buy ape-food pellets but they’re not cheap
TIL … that manufactured goat food is a thing.
Why the FUCK would anyone want to buy food for a goat? Those cunts will eat anything that grows, and their natural function is to turn impenetrable scrub into delicious meat and milk.
You remind me of a guy I knew who would say "eating is cringe". He does not go outside very much
some prisons use something called the nutriloaf. its basically a ball of nutrients. the problem is that it tastes horrible and no one wants to eat it
Products like this exist.
However – doing this for humans is far less easy than for animals because we are omnivores. Not only are we omnivores – we are opportunist obligate omnivores. Meaning – we eat a range of foods (plant and meat), we have to do so to stay healthy and we eat whatever we can get our hands on. This means that even in the wild our diets were wide ranging and varied day to day month to month.
Most animals we farm are either carnivores or herbivores, or at least mostly one or the other. Many might dabble in the other type of food, but their diet is a lot more limited. Cows literally munch on grass all day. Cats survive purely off meat – thus they can be given a combination of meats as pet food to covert their dietary requirements. Dogs are a bit more complex and often do eat some plant matter – but relatively little compared to us – thus their food can be a mix of meats plus some plant matter to cover all their bases.
Part of diet is how much you get from food vs how much you synthesise. Animals with more limited diets, synthesise more nutrients inside their body.
If humans’ diets were more limited, we’d be easier to feed like this with a single everything food. But because of our opportunist obligate omnivore status, we don’t synthesise as many nutrients in our body – thus we must find them in food. Thus any such everything food becomes a slurry of mushed up everything and thus they don’t tend to taste the best to us.
In addition – I’d speculate that our brains are built to appreciate variety. Again because we are opportunist obligate omnivores – our brain expects to have an at least somewhat varied diet – to be getting different nutrients from different foods.
It takes a peculiar type of human (of which you might be one) to actually eat a singular everything food every single day and nothing else.
There’s things like Huel and Soylent but because humans are omnivores, we don’t tend to do well on or enjoy diets that aren’t varied. They still have their place particularly for people who are busy and need something quick and will keep them satieted.
Also I know it’s called Soylent in a tongue in cheek way, but the name is pretty unappealing.
You got proper answers, even a mention of Bachelor Chow, so I have only one thing to add:
Goats will eat anything, but they crave variety. Give them tree bark one day and thorny weeds the next and they’ll be happier than with the same fresh hay every day. You’ll see them climb up to ridiculous places just to nibble at something out of reach just in case it’s different from the reachable parts.
My gf is a cooking person and when I asked a similar question about food paste (I would prefer it to be a paste so I don’t have to chew) she laughed and said that you need the digestive process that breaks down food to be working or you start having physical and mental health problems. Evidently real food is very important to us, just look at how human infants reject their food paste during weaning.
I thought about this as a kid. All those old sci-fi movies where they take pills instead of cooking food.
It’d be the "New" Ramen Noodles for those with little money. Why spend $300 on groceries when you can buy a 50lb bag of "Food Pellets".
Bachelor Chow, now with flavor.
There are a lot of reasons. For humans, food is very much a cultural and social thing. Even animals get bored of the same thing all the time.
Then there isn’t a complete nutritional food that can be made that wouldn’t be absolutely disgusting. We need a variety of fats, proteins, vitamins, and minerals in our diet.
Then you also have to understand that even farm animals don’t solely live off nutrition pellets. Because even for them, it’s not healthy to only have that. Most farm animals, if they’re well taken care of, will only eat "pellets" as a supplement to the food they forage for in fields and such.
All in all, it sounds like a great thing in theory, but in reality, it would be a hard thing to achieve and then also market and sell.
Most people who have anxiety about what to eat each day are trying to pick something they want, not just something they don’t not want. My fridge is full of food but if I’m not in the mood for what’s handy, I might just have to march down the street and buy some tacos. For some people, the problem comes from having to ingest something that’s bland, uninteresting, or has a poor texture. Chewing and swallowing something boring is enough to make some people want to vomit.
For me, a nutritionally complete kibble would be a last resort. I don’t want to be relieved of choosing and cooking my meals, I want the time and resources to do it.
In any case, as many others have said, such products exist, they’re just not very popular.
AFAIK nutrition is complex enough that we don’t actually know everything we’d have to put into such a food to keep us healthy
You’re describing bachelor chow from Futurama.
Purina People Chow
It does exist, but it tastes like shit. Texture is usually terrible too.
I take a fruits & veggies supplement as well as tossing a scoop of some weird, greenish brown "superfood" mixture into my morning shake to thicken it and add a distinct dirt flavor, and I can definitely tell a difference when I run out.
But yeah, I’m not gonna lie, when my wife had her feeding tube while dealing with throat cancer, I did feel more envious than I really should have.
The fact that you went with goat food instead of something like dog kibble
this seems like pee in a soda bottle because you don’t want to get up level lazy
I’m wondering why you chose goat food instead of cat food or dog food