When I tell people about food like Soylent, they often ask “but isn’t it boring to eat the same thing every day”? From my perspective, that is actually a good thing. I don’t want my food to be too exciting, because then I will eat too much of it. (Actually, I want, but I don’t want to want.)
I would be happy to have a grocery store nearby that doesn’t sell any superstimuli. Something that would have shelves full of vegetables and other boring stuff, but no sweets etc. I would be happy to always buy there, to avoid the temptation. But I realize that for the owner, there would be constant temptation to increase their profits by slightly expanding the selection. (Which by the way is something that already happened with Soylent-like products. The first ones, they tried to copy the nutrition recommendations. The next ones, they… tried to join the wave by offering a product very similar but slightly sweeter than their competitors. Keep going this way for a few decades and see where it gets you.)
I wonder how difficult it would be to have the kind of grocery store I imagine by simply buying online, and using some mechanism to filter the healthy foods. The simplest implementation could simply be a blacklist—if I ever regret buying something, or if I predict that I would, there should be a “hide” button that forever removes the product from my screen without a trace. (Could this be implemented as a GreaseMoney script?) I suspect that if many people started using it, the shops would start fighting back, but it would work for some time.
Honestly, I lament the fact that things like soylent are not supposed to be eaten frequently. There should be some sort of balance though, as you run the risk of being instantly and permanently compromised by the first dorito you eat (as I’ve seen happen to children of crunchy people).
Now that’s a thought, I would say that there are a good number of “health food” stores that try and fall into that category, updating their branding to be all browns and greens to really give that natural feeling. But as you have correctly pointed at, they are generally compromised by economic concerns. Part of the problem is that people are bad at going to a place like that and only buying the healthy stuff because we are generally already compromised...
The arms race between grocery stores/deliveroo/doordash/etc. and people trying to eat healthy would be funny just in that it would mirror current attempts to avoid the media equivalent (ads). The buying experience has grown increasingly unfriendly to consumers, despite the promise of targeted ads, so I would be surprised if there isn’t a significant market for something as simple as “DoorDash, but we only show things within a defined nutritional profile”.
I’d say the closest equivlent are meal planning companies that ship out fully made meals every day for quite a fee, but they can be carefully tuned for health and ensuring the brain isn’t wrecked by temptations.
Part of the problem is that people are bad at going to a place like that and only buying the healthy stuff because we are generally already compromised...
Also, we are all compromised in different ways, so we probably couldn’t agree on what is okay and what is not. Some people want to avoid sugar, some want to avoid food additives, some want to avoid meat, some want to avoid alcohol, etc., and that would require you to have N different shops, or perhaps 2^N different shops.
Which is why I am thinking about the online solution, which might allow you to create your personal blacklist, and maybe also use blacklists provided by others… for example, it is not necessary to every vegetarian to maintain their own blacklist, you could have someone maintain a public vegetarian blacklist and everyone else could choose to use it.
I’d say the closest equivalent are meal planning companies that ship out fully made meals every day for quite a fee, but they can be carefully tuned for health and ensuring the brain isn’t wrecked by temptations.
Yeah, I tried those, but (at least in my area) they are quite expensive. Also, there is little choice there, often only one option or maybe two (vegetarian and omnivore); but there are some meals that I hate, and I would feel really stupid paying lots of money to have that food delivered to me.
But if they had e.g. 4 options every day that you could conveniently choose on a smartphone, and if the delivery was less expensive, it could be a great solution.
Another great service I could imagine is buying vegetables that are already washed and cut. There is so much junk food out there; I wish there was a place where I could bring my own food box and buy some lettuce and tomatoes that are already washed and cut, so I would just add some dressing at home and eat it. If that existed, I would probably eat much more vegetables than now. The unhealthy food is often ready to eat, but the healthy food often requires lots of work, and sometimes I am just tired or busy.
Yeah an online solution is probably the only real way, although I would be surprised if you couldn’t hit a big chunk of what people need from 2-3 types of shop simply because they overlap or the things some people are avoiding are repellent (allergy) instead of addictive (sugary treats).
In Poland supposedly meal delivery has become the norm and has replaced many “Standard” meals due to the low cost. It’s wild how expensive it is in the US though.
Precut veggies low key saved me during grad school, I’d always been resistant due to cost and the fact that “I can cut stuff”. But then I heard it recast as the adhd tax, and got called out hard for the fact that if the transition energy between me and a cooked meal is too high I just won’t eat anything. Cold salad bars are also technically like this as well, although those are often quite sad.
I suspect I have some ADHD or something similar too, and I observed that difficult things stop being difficult when I develop a habit around them. Basically, “doing it for the first time” and “doing it after I haven’t been doing it for months” are super hard. But “doing the same thing I did yesterday” is easy.
In context of cooking, it means it is easier for me to cook the same two or three meals over and over again. Choices are bad, mindless repetition is good. I mean, I should think about the things that I want to do, but at a different time than when I am actually supposed to do them—at that moment, thinking just leads to procrastination.
Precise plans are easier to do. “Cut some vegetables” is too abstract. “Cut 1⁄3 of iceberg lettuce, 1⁄3 of Chinese cabbage, a few cherry tomatoes, and put some dressing on top of that, maybe add some meat” is a plan I can do reliably.
When I tell people about food like Soylent, they often ask “but isn’t it boring to eat the same thing every day”? From my perspective, that is actually a good thing. I don’t want my food to be too exciting, because then I will eat too much of it. (Actually, I want, but I don’t want to want.)
I would be happy to have a grocery store nearby that doesn’t sell any superstimuli. Something that would have shelves full of vegetables and other boring stuff, but no sweets etc. I would be happy to always buy there, to avoid the temptation. But I realize that for the owner, there would be constant temptation to increase their profits by slightly expanding the selection. (Which by the way is something that already happened with Soylent-like products. The first ones, they tried to copy the nutrition recommendations. The next ones, they… tried to join the wave by offering a product very similar but slightly sweeter than their competitors. Keep going this way for a few decades and see where it gets you.)
I wonder how difficult it would be to have the kind of grocery store I imagine by simply buying online, and using some mechanism to filter the healthy foods. The simplest implementation could simply be a blacklist—if I ever regret buying something, or if I predict that I would, there should be a “hide” button that forever removes the product from my screen without a trace. (Could this be implemented as a GreaseMoney script?) I suspect that if many people started using it, the shops would start fighting back, but it would work for some time.
Honestly, I lament the fact that things like soylent are not supposed to be eaten frequently. There should be some sort of balance though, as you run the risk of being instantly and permanently compromised by the first dorito you eat (as I’ve seen happen to children of crunchy people).
Now that’s a thought, I would say that there are a good number of “health food” stores that try and fall into that category, updating their branding to be all browns and greens to really give that natural feeling. But as you have correctly pointed at, they are generally compromised by economic concerns. Part of the problem is that people are bad at going to a place like that and only buying the healthy stuff because we are generally already compromised...
The arms race between grocery stores/deliveroo/doordash/etc. and people trying to eat healthy would be funny just in that it would mirror current attempts to avoid the media equivalent (ads). The buying experience has grown increasingly unfriendly to consumers, despite the promise of targeted ads, so I would be surprised if there isn’t a significant market for something as simple as “DoorDash, but we only show things within a defined nutritional profile”.
I’d say the closest equivlent are meal planning companies that ship out fully made meals every day for quite a fee, but they can be carefully tuned for health and ensuring the brain isn’t wrecked by temptations.
Also, we are all compromised in different ways, so we probably couldn’t agree on what is okay and what is not. Some people want to avoid sugar, some want to avoid food additives, some want to avoid meat, some want to avoid alcohol, etc., and that would require you to have N different shops, or perhaps 2^N different shops.
Which is why I am thinking about the online solution, which might allow you to create your personal blacklist, and maybe also use blacklists provided by others… for example, it is not necessary to every vegetarian to maintain their own blacklist, you could have someone maintain a public vegetarian blacklist and everyone else could choose to use it.
Yeah, I tried those, but (at least in my area) they are quite expensive. Also, there is little choice there, often only one option or maybe two (vegetarian and omnivore); but there are some meals that I hate, and I would feel really stupid paying lots of money to have that food delivered to me.
But if they had e.g. 4 options every day that you could conveniently choose on a smartphone, and if the delivery was less expensive, it could be a great solution.
Another great service I could imagine is buying vegetables that are already washed and cut. There is so much junk food out there; I wish there was a place where I could bring my own food box and buy some lettuce and tomatoes that are already washed and cut, so I would just add some dressing at home and eat it. If that existed, I would probably eat much more vegetables than now. The unhealthy food is often ready to eat, but the healthy food often requires lots of work, and sometimes I am just tired or busy.
Yeah an online solution is probably the only real way, although I would be surprised if you couldn’t hit a big chunk of what people need from 2-3 types of shop simply because they overlap or the things some people are avoiding are repellent (allergy) instead of addictive (sugary treats).
In Poland supposedly meal delivery has become the norm and has replaced many “Standard” meals due to the low cost. It’s wild how expensive it is in the US though.
Precut veggies low key saved me during grad school, I’d always been resistant due to cost and the fact that “I can cut stuff”. But then I heard it recast as the adhd tax, and got called out hard for the fact that if the transition energy between me and a cooked meal is too high I just won’t eat anything. Cold salad bars are also technically like this as well, although those are often quite sad.
I suspect I have some ADHD or something similar too, and I observed that difficult things stop being difficult when I develop a habit around them. Basically, “doing it for the first time” and “doing it after I haven’t been doing it for months” are super hard. But “doing the same thing I did yesterday” is easy.
In context of cooking, it means it is easier for me to cook the same two or three meals over and over again. Choices are bad, mindless repetition is good. I mean, I should think about the things that I want to do, but at a different time than when I am actually supposed to do them—at that moment, thinking just leads to procrastination.
Precise plans are easier to do. “Cut some vegetables” is too abstract. “Cut 1⁄3 of iceberg lettuce, 1⁄3 of Chinese cabbage, a few cherry tomatoes, and put some dressing on top of that, maybe add some meat” is a plan I can do reliably.