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You can enjoy eating, meal preparation, and the like and _also_ recognize how very, very, very money, time, and resource consuming it all is. If you could repl

You can enjoy eating, meal preparation, and the like and _also_ recognize how very, very, very money, time, and resource consuming it all is. If you could replace a typical home-cooked meal which cost $3->5 in materials and at _least_ half an hour in personal labor with a pill that costs $0.03->0.05 and can be produced in the thousands per hour, that's a significant win. And if you can build those pills from the byproducts of vats of cheap-ass microbes (rather than through ordinary (or -worse- factory) farming), then that's a massive win for both the environment and animal welfare.

selcuka 4y ago
> [...] very money, time, and resource consuming it all is. So where do you want to spend that money, time, and resources instead?
- wizzwizz4 4y ago
  • Ending world hunger • Making really tasty food for the foodies, rather than meh food for everyone (including people who don't appreciate it). • Art • A really big Minecraft server • Doing something about the fact that populated islands are sinking into the ocean and some biomes are changing classification multiple times a year and we're all just sitting at computers and manufacturing thneeds. Pretty much anywhere else, really. Wasted money, time and resources are wasted money, time and resources. If we could replace food with magic pills – and somehow ensure that the money, time and resources saved weren't just snapped up by the already-wealthy, leaving everyone worse off – why not do it?
- bongoman37 4y ago
hinkley 4y ago
The pitch was not that you could skip a meal when you were in a hurry, but skip all meals, every day, forever. Also cramming 2000 calories into four or five pill sized spaces is practically violating the laws of physics, is it not?
- simoncion 4y ago
  > The pitch was not that you could skip a meal when you were in a hurry, but skip all meals, every day, forever. I'm aware, yes. That's what a nutritionally-complete pill would enable you to do. I mentioned "home-cooked meal" for a few reasons. 1) Some people seriously underestimate the cost and labor that goes into small-scale commercial cooking. Such folks will _usually_ have a better understanding of the details of in-home cooking. 2) Some people have decided that all food that one gets at a restaurant is inherently unhealthy. 3) If you plan well (and/or have a large surplus of time and energy) you can totally set things up so that you can eat home-cooked meals every day. That's what leftovers are for. > ...cramming 2000 calories into four or five pill sized spaces is practically violating the laws of physics, is it not? I very much doubt it. I has been decades since I studied any physics, but I'd expect that there are many examples of substances that pack at least 2000kcal of energy in four or five pill-sized spaces. As mentioned elsewhere, it's a biology problem, not a physics problem.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  Well biology but not physics (since from physics' perspective, there's plenty of energy in a nuclear fuel pellet), but yes. I think olive oil is the most calorie-dense thing food ingredient, and you'd need to drink about 8 ounces of it to get 2000 calories.

selcuka 4y ago

> [...] very money, time, and resource consuming it all is. So where do you want to spend that money, time, and resources instead?

wizzwizz4 4y ago
• Ending world hunger • Making really tasty food for the foodies, rather than meh food for everyone (including people who don't appreciate it). • Art • A really big Minecraft server • Doing something about the fact that populated islands are sinking into the ocean and some biomes are changing classification multiple times a year and we're all just sitting at computers and manufacturing thneeds. Pretty much anywhere else, really. Wasted money, time and resources are wasted money, time and resources. If we could replace food with magic pills – and somehow ensure that the money, time and resources saved weren't just snapped up by the already-wealthy, leaving everyone worse off – why not do it?
bongoman37 4y ago

hinkley 4y ago

The pitch was not that you could skip a meal when you were in a hurry, but skip all meals, every day, forever. Also cramming 2000 calories into four or five pill sized spaces is practically violating the laws of physics, is it not?

simoncion 4y ago
> The pitch was not that you could skip a meal when you were in a hurry, but skip all meals, every day, forever. I'm aware, yes. That's what a nutritionally-complete pill would enable you to do. I mentioned "home-cooked meal" for a few reasons. 1) Some people seriously underestimate the cost and labor that goes into small-scale commercial cooking. Such folks will _usually_ have a better understanding of the details of in-home cooking. 2) Some people have decided that all food that one gets at a restaurant is inherently unhealthy. 3) If you plan well (and/or have a large surplus of time and energy) you can totally set things up so that you can eat home-cooked meals every day. That's what leftovers are for. > ...cramming 2000 calories into four or five pill sized spaces is practically violating the laws of physics, is it not? I very much doubt it. I has been decades since I studied any physics, but I'd expect that there are many examples of substances that pack at least 2000kcal of energy in four or five pill-sized spaces. As mentioned elsewhere, it's a biology problem, not a physics problem.
josephcsible 4y ago
Well biology but not physics (since from physics' perspective, there's plenty of energy in a nuclear fuel pellet), but yes. I think olive oil is the most calorie-dense thing food ingredient, and you'd need to drink about 8 ounces of it to get 2000 calories.