Update II - It was actually the bulk powders brown rice protein that was the perpetrator of the awful flavouor. I will be going back to sunwarrior.

Update: I have done a trial run testing the greens, the hemp and the barley mixed in to a different recipe, and I am currently making adjustments to the recipe accordingly. These changes are not yet reflected in the notes below. The Barley adds a lot of raw flour flavour. The greens add a not-unpleasant herby taste of rosmary and oregano, but it clashes with the chocolate rather than being masked by it as I hoped. It tasted like eating the raw dough of herby Italian bread sticks - with a bit of chocolate.

So the chocolate has to go, and barley must be greatly reduced from the initial 80g, down to 15. As it will do too much harm t the taste above that, I am questioning whether it will be worth bothering with after I have finished what I had bought.

I'm now considering making a large batch of a base recipe, and dividing up in to smaller batches of different flavours. These are some flavours I'm contemplating

• Herby savoury - Herbs from the greens mix, maybe add MSG or nutritional yeast to make it more savoury. This edition would have less or zero palantinose.
• Chocolate - perhaps with raw cacao for the added flavanols in the bro-science spirit of the recipe
• Cinamon and Cloves - Ceylon cinnamon instead of cassia. Cloves are also supposedly very good for you as well.
• Following tojomo's lead, I might make one flavoured with freeze dried fruit powder

Update 2: The barley taste wasn't so bad on the second attempt. I don't know if it was because i'd let it sit overnight or because I'm acquiring a taste for it.

###Intro This recipe is still untested and I may still do some tweaking before mixing it up.

This is the development from my first recipe (https://www.completefoods.co/diy/recipes/vegan-choc-oat), having indulged in a few 'bro-science' hypotheses. I take them all with a grain of salt and wont vouch for any of them making you a superhuman, but I enjoy experimenting and I am confident that all the ingredients are used in tried-and-tested safe quantities.

####Price Price or simplicity is not the main priority. I'm trying to keep £8/day as an upper limit. That is the cost where I break even compared to a typical lunch, which is the meal I will be replacing most. However, I am designing the recipe so that in principle you could live and thrive indefinitely on this alone.

####Sellers I try to use as few suppliers as possible. Unfortunately palanantinose is not available for a decent price on amazon or at Bulk Powders, so you have to get it from MyProtein. If you get a different greens powder (or skip the greens powder), you can get everything at MyProtein instead. However both MyProtein and Bulk Powders deliver by DPD, so it is possible to place the separate orders to arrive on the same day, and you will get them in the same delivery.

For amazon orders, I try to only use items that allow for pick-up locations even in the few cases where there are cheaper alternatives, as it makes everything infinitely easier not having to worry about someone being in to accept deliveries. It may be worthwhile to invest in an amazon prime membership if you are using this approach.

Unfortunately Opti3 capsules and Vitashine cannot be bought from anywhere but the producer. However they are sold from the same company, and you can make decent savings by making use of the bundled deals they offer if you are going to buy both.

I have provided links to Ocado as examples of products readily available in any large-ish supermarkets.

####Shameless plug If you order anything from Bulk Powders, use this code when registering, and we each get a £5 discount. NJ160558

If you order anything from MyProtein this referral code will get you 5% off MP26277789

The code FDUK25 gives you free delivery from MyProtein if you spend over £25

I can also send invites to Ocado that get us each a £20 voucher.

###Nutrient Profile The macronutrient profile is the default 50-25-25 carb-protein-fat ratio for a male of my measurements (73kg, 185cm) exercising 3 times a week.

I have gone through both the USDA recommendations and the EU recommendations and picked the most conservative range for most nutrients, i.e out of the two, I chose the highest recommended minimum and the lowest recommended maximum out of the two guidelines. For some nutrients I have used my own judgments. For example, EU has an extremely narrow range for magnesium, while US has no upper limit. There is no particular rationale for the EU recommendation, and given that most of the magnesium in the recipe comes from whole foods, I am not concerned about going over exceeding the EU limit.

I have bumped up the requirements by a 3% to account for losses by spillage and such. If I recall correctly, user QuidNYC deserves the credit for that suggestion.

###Nutrient estimates Several nutrient profiles are merely educated guesses. I have not found any one complete nutrient profile for hemp seeds. Some information I have found does not state if it refers to whole or shelled seeds. I have pieced together an estimate from several different sources best I could.

The greens powder has a non-negligible contribution to micronutrients. In particular, vitamin k and folate depend on it for reaching 100%. Provided the powder is stored properly, these vitamins should still be present in the necessary amounts. I have estimated the profile from the ingredients list provided by the manufacturer and used the USDA data where available and subtracting 97% of the water weight from data of fresh greens. The breakdown can be found here: https://www.completefoods.co/diy/recipes/complete-greens . Obviously, this approach is imperfect, and changes will occur in the storage and processing of the greens, but the guess is better than nothing.

###Protein ~50% comes from rice protein, which is well rounded, and inoffensive to pretty much everyone. I have previously used more expensive Sunwarrior sprouted rice protein, but I'm not convinced the benefits justify the cost of that.

~15% comes from pea protein because supposedly the Branched Chain Amino Acids (BCAA's) it contains are good for you. It's also relatively cheap, but I am using a small amount because it does not taste very nice.

~7% comes from whole hemp seeds. they are a complete protein, but I have avoided hemp protein powder due to taste and price.

The remaining 30% come mostly from the carb sources.

I've made it soy free to appease the 'soy phytoestrogens gives men boobs' crowd.

###Fat

Guidelines on how fat contents should be distributed are generally very hazy and contradictory. The only thing that seems universally agreed upon is that trans-fats are bad. I am going with the mainstream approach that unsaturated fats are good and in general saturated fats are bad. However, to cover my bases, I am including some allegedly healthy saturated fat from coconut oil.

####Polyunsaturated Fats The omega 6 to omega 3 ratio is just over three-to-one, which should do lots of good by most accounts.

~35% of the overall fats come from Rapeseed oil which provides most of the omega 3. I'm using cold-pressed rapeseed/canola oil due to allegations that conventional rapeseed oil is prone to oxidising into trans-fats, and also is at risk of hexane contamination. Olive oil is rich in monounsaturated fats, but I am avoiding it because of the taste.

~25% of overall fats comes from hemp seeds, which are also lots of polyunaturated fat, although with a higher omega 6 to omega 3 ratio.

I have included vegan DHA and EPA omega 3's in the Opti3 capsules. The omega 3's in plant oils are all in the form of ALA, which the body can convert to EPA and DHA, but there is some debate about whether the conversion rate is high enough to achieve optimal levels. DHA and EPA is otherwise found in fish which in turn get their EPA and DHA from algae. The EPA and DHA in the capsules comes directly from the algae and is guaranteed to be free from mercury or PCB contamination that may be found in fish.

####Saturated Fat ~14% of the overall fat comes from coconut oil, which is almost entirely saturated fat. Coconut oil is supposedly a wonder food with 'medium chain fatty acids' (MCFA's) which are magical healthy saturated fats.

###Carbs

Activated barley is ~20% of the carbs. It seems like a good low GI option as it is sprouted, which reduces anti-nutrients. However, it costs a fortune, so I try to not use too much.

Oats and Buckwheat flour are ~17% each of the carbs. Both are low GI and high fibre. High manganese content limits the use of oats and high magnesium limits buckwheat. MyProtein sells buckwheat flour, but don't buy it from there. You can buy it for a fifth of the price at supermarkets.

There are concerns about eating raw flours (i.e the buckwheat and oats) because of flavour, digestibility, bacteria contamination and anti-nutrients. Previously I have tried dry-heating it in the oven, but this article suggests it is better to microwave it, so I will try that next: https://www.dropbox.com/s/j3fbux47n0q2cdq/phyt.pdf .

~12% comes from palatinose. I have removed maltodextrin because of its high GI. In practice I will probably continue to mix some in because I already bought loads of it, but it's not essential to the recipe. I'm active enough that I should be able to get away with it. Palatinose seems like a cheap and safe replacement to maltoextrin for topping up carbs without going over on the micronutriens whilst keeping it low GI. It has an added benefit of adding sweetness.

~30% of the carbs are sugars from fruit.

###Vitamin D During the summer I will not bother with the vitashine tablet, and count on getting the last bit of vitamin D from sunshine instead.,

Vitamin D3 absorbs better than D2. Most D3 is grown from sheep's wool, so is not vegan. The opti3 capsule adds 17% of the target in the form of vegan D3, the rest is D2 unless the Vitashine is included. It is worth noting that the EU minimum is only 200 IU compared to the USDA minimum of 600 IU.

###Vitamin B12 1700% may seem high, but it is only 40 µg. No adverse effect from B12 has ever been reported in healthy individuals, and it has been used clinically in doses of several thousand µg.

###Calcium 60% is added in powder form as calcium citrate. It is difficult to get it in pill form without also adding other vitamins or minerals that I already have more than enough of.

###Potassium The fruits account for ~40% of the potassium, and the rest is added as potassium gluconate based on the recommendation in the Hacker school recipe (http://www.cookingfor20.com/2013/06/18/hacker-school-soylent-recipe/) and the fact that potassium chloride tastes vile.

The recommendations of what constitutes a safe amount of potassium varies wildly. I have chosen a conservative limit. Do your own research and form your own opinion on this.

###Sulfur A lot of recipes have MSM down as 100% sulfur by weight, but it should only be a third. I have decided to be cautious and not exceed the recommendations of the MSM seller of 1.6g/day. From what I've read, sulfur is often not included in labeling and you get plenty from sulfur-containing amino acids, so I am probably getting plenty more than it says I am. I am including it none the less because the supposed benefits for joint and ligaments appeals to me. I have fudged the nutrient profile accordingly.

###Iodine I have read that iodine has a tendency to sublime from iodised salt, so it is difficult to know how much you're getting. I believe it should be in a bound state in the kelp pills. Kelp tablets also allows controlling sodium and iodine independently, which makes things easier.

###Phytonutrients There are several plant food ingredients to cover my bases on phytonutrients that may be beneficial but not essential, or even essential but not yet identified as such. These include the oats, barley, hemp, fruit, tart cherry extract, and bulk powder's complete greens powder. As with any fruits or vegetables - whole or powdered - some of the phytochemicals within them may have 'anti-nutrient' properties with respect to other nutrients but I am confident the pros outweigh the cons, especially in this recipe where most nutrients are comfortably above the minimum level anyway. You can read the information from the seller of the powdered greens and cherry extract about their supposed magical super-food benefits and make of them what you will. There are several alternatives for greens powders if you want to shop around.

If this approach interests you, user tojomo has recently published a set of recipes taking it to another level: https://www.completefoods.co/diy/users/tojomo

###CoQ10 & Creatine These are speculative additions and not essential by any means. Your body is capable of producing both of them by itself. There is none the less some tentative evidence that dietary intake of these has a range of possible benefits.

Creatine is often considered a bodybuilding supplement, helping build muscle, but there is some evidence that supplementation can boost cognitive abilities, especially for vegan diets which are otherwise devoid of creatine. So I am adding some out of curiosity to see if re-introducing it to my diet after several years as a vegan will have any noticeable changes. So far there has been nothing groundbreaking, but it's hardly a rigorous scientific experiment.

###Xanthan gum

Xanthan gum is produced from a fermentation of sugars. It's safety is well established and is commonly used in for products and gluten free baking. It is included as an emulsifier and is not at all necessary.

###Preparation Blast the flours in a microwave if you are so inclined (See carbs), then just mix the powders together.

I'm not sure how to add the hemp seeds. Either leave them in whole, eat them on the side, or run them in a blender and add them to the powders? I'll update after experimentation. Post a comment if you have any experience.

Add fats separately when adding water. I find most soylent recipes taste nicer mixed to a thick sludge, but that's a matter of preference. Pills are used in units of 0.2 so that batches of 5 days of powder can be made up using whole pills. I grind them up in a coffee grinder and add them in. The omega three capsules are taken separately to avoid the fishy taste.