All ingredients:

-Can be purchased online in one order from iHerb

-Are vegan friendly

-Are all dry, with the addition of almond milk to turn it into a smoothie.**

-Are "whole foods" (no supplements and minimal fortified foods are included to make up the RDIs for each nutrient)

*Denotes organic (organic ingredients are used wherever possible)

I still haven't tried this recipe myself yet. I'm rich in time but not in money so I still haven't ordered ingredients. I intend to divide the daily amounts by 3 and use this regularly for 1 meal/day. I’ll update this note when I have done that for a couple of weeks and know how it tastes/feels. In the meantime, please let me know if you intend to try it or base anything else on it. I’d love to know how you go. I imagine it won't taste great but hopefully it will be palatable.

I set out with the goal of making a vegan soylent mix, created with entirely whole foods, and sourcing everything from the one place. It was a lengthy process, because I needed to research the best foods for each vitamin and mineral, and then input a lot of data for each ingredient. Rather than relying on a multivitamin or heavily fortified meal replacement formula, that ticks all or most of the boxes in one go, I looked for whole foods (in powdered form) that specifically targeted individual nutrients. It took a lot of tweaking and discarding ingredients to come up with a complete formula that didn't exceed the maximum intakes for certain nutrients.^^

It ended up being a lot of ingredients (25) and a bit more expensive than I would have liked, but still under $20/day, (or around $15/day if you use water instead of almond milk) which would be less than I spend on food. The cost of my recipe could be reduced significantly by sourcing local ingredients or choosing non-organic options. Alternatively, you might like to look for more organic options locally, which will no doubt bump the price up a little more. I intend to source some of the ingredients locally if I do this long-term, but I think it’s valuable to make it as easy as possible for others to order, and all come from the one place.

One or two of the items were out of stock when I was putting this together, so you might need to look elsewhere if that is still the case when ordering everything from iHerb.

It may be a lot of ingredients, but at least it’s relying on a variety of food sources, which is more beneficial for nutrient synergy. Being all dry ingredients, it will still be simple and not too time-consuming. You can mix up a large batch and either store it in one big container or in meal sized portions. If it tastes good with water, it will be great to take out as a convenient lunch, which is the meal I intend to use it for.

I created a nutrient profile for my specific needs, which is probably not ideal for most people (I am a very active 26yo male, trying to put on weight gradually). If my trial is successful, I will modify the recipe for a standard 2000 calorie 50% Carb : 20% Protein : 30% Fat diet.

I originally based this recipe on TheMolloy's Vegan Mix, which appears to be a great vegan option much cheaper than my recipe, if you’re not interested in whole foods.

When creating a recipe using whole foods, the first difficulty is that nutrient quantities are not always included on the packaging. Nutritiondata.com has a huge database of complete nutrient profiles of most foods, but it still omits a few vitamins and minerals that are required in the US dietary guidelines. Biotin (aka Vitamin B7 or H), Chromium, Sulfur and Molybdenum aren’t listed (I’m guessing either because they aren’t considered as significant, or they are hard to measure in food, or they just aren’t in many foods so they don’t bother including them.) Multivitamins generally include them, and obviously they would have been measured and added individually, so most people would not have run into the problem of not knowing exactly what they’re getting. After doing some research, it’s clear they are all essential to get an adequate supply of, so I made sure the recipe included ingredients with these nutrients. I’m just making a note of it because they are the only nutrients where I am not certain of the quantities this recipe contains. I have had to make educated guesses at the quantities of these nutrients in ingredients based on limited information. I am pretty sure I’ve got them covered though.

I hope this recipe can be useful for you. :)

**You can choose to use water or anything else instead of fortified almond milk, but you'll just need to get out in the sun or supplement vitamin D. Calcium and Total Fat will also be a bit low, but probably not critical unless you plan to live exclusively off this.

^^I'm not sure if it would have been an issue exceeding the upper limits as I believe they are put in place more as a conservative guideline for supplementation. Generally, if you exceed the amount of a nutrient the body needs, through consumption of whole plant based foods alone, it will be excreted without harm. I've heard that this is not always the case with supplements, and is a reason why people choose to avoid them, beyond the usual argument that nutrients from supplements are not as easily absorbed and utilised by the body. For more on supplements I'd recommend reading this and checking out some of the links to short videos on the site: http://nutritionfacts.org/topics/supplements/