New Juice Recipe - Day 1

New Juice Recipe

After being inspired by Rob Rinehart’s ‘Soylent’ I decided to change my juice recipe with these goals in mind:

1. Substituting most (if not all) meals with juice
2. Avoiding large calorie deficit of over 1,000 calories
3. Maintaining high protein consumption

I decided I wanted this ratio of macro nutrients to take advantage of weight loss and energy benefits I’d noticed from lowering carbohydrate consumption:

1. 40% proteins
2. 40% fats
3. 20% carbs

With all of that in mind, I followed this recipe for my New Juice (highly unoriginal name – I might update it in the future)

1. 2 green apples
2. 1 carrot
3. 3 kale leaves
4. 1/3 of a large zuchini
5. 1/3 of a large cucumber
6. 1 orange
7. 1/3 of a large broccoli
8. 100ml canola oil
9. 12 heaped spoons of low carb protein powder
10. 2 heaped spoons “fiber powder”

I juiced the fruits and vegetables (ingredients 1 to 7), then poured in the oil, protein powder and fiber. I used a hand-held milkshake maker to mix it all together in a pot before serving myself half the juice, with plans to finish the other half later today.

I wanted to get started while feeling inspired so the 12 heaped teaspoons of protein powder would be way off in terms of giving me my 40% protein.

First Impressions?

The taste is much better than I expected. It’s similar to my old juice recipe (fruits and veg. only) but seems thicker and richer. My main concern was that the oil would be overpowering and make it unpalatable, but I think my decision on canola oil paid off – I had tried small samples of olive oil and sunflower oil too but the canola oil seemed to taste the best (mainly because it almost no taste) and didn’t have the bitterness that I noticed in olive oil. There’s little aftertaste.

Concerns

• High protein powder consumption
  I’ve seen many people consume 200+ grams of protein powder per day, mostly from protein powder with no adverse side affects. Still, it’s much more than I’ve consumed in the past and I’m concerned about my kidneys
• Fat composition
  After some casual reading online it sounds like if you’re going to consume fat then you want to avoid saturated fats and trans fats, and go for unsaturated fats such as mono- and poly-. Canola oil fits this well, but who knows what much-larger-than-average quantities of it will do
• Lack of other vital nutrients
  I’ve suffered from various deficiencies in the past such as low iron, so I fully expect to have to add to the recipe in the near future to cover those bases. Also, I don’t intend to only drink new juice. The juice roughly fits into a low-carb diet, and I’ve had very positive experiences in the past living on a low-carb diet with one free day each week. The reason I did not persist with those was that meal preparation times and cost were just way too high.

Why Am I Doing It?

The main reason is that I love tinkering with these inputs, and in my opinion anything that has a chance of increasing energy levels and general well being and that fits well into my otherwise busy lifestyle, is worth a shot.

But also:

• I was totally inspired by Rinehart’s post about his food substitute. The thing I love about it is the potential for benefits like increased energy levels, better sleep, reduced meal preparation times, etc. One frustration I discovered was that the specific recipe for soylent is not available online, and I don’t have much desire to pursue tracking down rare chemicals and substances that you can potentially overdose on.
• I did a 52 day juice fast in 2012 and noticed significant improvements in energy levels and loved certain parts of the lifestyle but in my opinion it was not sustainable because the calorie deficit was too high and I lost lean muscle mass with little hope of regaining it while fasting. I basically want to avoid having my body thinking it’s fasting.
• It’s more convenient that my current low-carb diet, with much time invested each morning preparing a cooked breakfast, which was the only breakfast I found palatable

Why Not Just Drink Soylent?

I like fresh fruits and vegetables every day. One line of reasoning that holds weight with me is the idea that over our history as humans, when we try to suddenly replace a “natural” process with something entirely artificial, bad things happen, and we don’t find out about them until too late. By using freshly juiced fruits and vegetables each day I am creating a kind of insurance policy for myself because there’s a higher chance that I’m also consuming other substances that are required for a healthy long life but that we don’t know about yet. Even New Juice seems pretty unnatural but it feels like a balance between too extremes that I’m happy to experiment with.

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New Juice Recipe – Day 2 ›

Posted in New Juice