chris, Author at TheBairs

“The gig is up” – increasing costs, but still cheap(ish)

This entry is part 23 of 39 in the series DIY Soylent

So I just placed another order for 5 kg of Hard Rhino whey protein isolate. Some months ago, I switched from NOW wpi to the Hard Rhino and did a review of it; in that review I talked about how they had raised their prices on the bulk packages, looks like they did it again.

If you are just getting in to doing your own DIY soylent, Hard Rhino can be a good source because it sells packages all the way down to 500 g for $15. With the new pricing, the bulk saving have gotten smaller.

prices May 2014
brand	pound	kg	price	per KG	per lb	per 55g serving
NOW	10.00	4.55	115.31	25.37	11.53	1.395
NOW	5.00	2.27	64.99	28.60	13.00	1.573
hard rhino	1.10	0.50	14.99	29.98	13.63	1.649
hard rhino	2.20	1.00	27.99	27.99	12.72	1.539
hard rhino	11.00	5.00	104.99	21.00	9.54	1.155
hard rhino	22.00	10.00	199.99	20.00	9.09	1.100
prices July 2014
brand	pound	kg	price	per KG	per lb	per 55g serving
NOW	10.00	4.55	119.82	26.36	11.98	1.450
NOW	5.00	2.27	71.02	31.25	14.20	1.719
hard rhino	1.10	0.50	14.99	29.98	13.63	1.649
hard rhino	2.20	1.00	27.99	27.99	12.72	1.539
hard rhino	11.00	5.00	135.99	27.20	12.36	1.496
hard rhino	22.00	10.00	265.99	26.60	12.09	1.463

With the price changes, it’s now less expensive to buy the 10 pound box of NOW wpi. Right as I started to write this paragraph I realized that, called Hard Rhino, and cancelled my order so I could order the NOW wpi from Amazon. Anyhow, as it stands the NOW whey protein isolate is currently the least expensive if you buy it in the 10 pound box.

Another cost increase is GNC Mega Man Sport. Ever since I started doing DIY you could get 50% off a second container if you bought 2 at the same time. Add a GNC Gold Card discount and you could get it for much less than the official $50 a container ($67.48 for two). Well the 50% off on the second container has ended. Your only option for a discount now is getting the Gold Card. Why do I stick with GNC? well to start with: it’s fun to have bright yellow pee from all the B vitamins! Seriously though there are a lot of things in the GNC that have been hinted at helping your body but don’t have a RDA. It’s also conveniently powdered and isn’t terribly expensive. Other people use vitamin pills from Kirkland to great effect, I just haven’t wanted to get into balancing out all the micro nutrients. I tried it once about 4 months ago but just came back to MaxK’s original recipe.

The end result is the cost of people chow has gone up some. It’s still cheaper than going to McDonalds every day (and far better for you) but cost increases suck. I still have some stuff I bought at the lower prices but (probably tomorrow) I’m going to raise the prices I charge people for a week of People Chow.

By chris|2016-10-13T07:28:33-06:00July 9th, 2014|Soylent, Ingredients|2 Comments

Daily Storage

This entry is part 22 of 39 in the series DIY Soylent

So a recent thread on /r/soylent asked what people use to store their daily Soylent. Here is what I do. I’ve been consuming People Chow for over 6 months now and have 4 empty containers from GNC Mega Man Sport. Three of those are from mixing and selling People Chow over the last 3 weeks. Anyhow – The labels come off quite easily, they seal well and I can fill one up with about 7 cups of powder, making for around 7 meals. I leave one at work for lunch and have two at home (my recipe yields three 1 cup meals a day). When I only had the one container I would just take it to and from work every day. I started doing it this way right about the time I started mixing 7 days of powder at a time. For oil you can fill a container with oil and just use a measuring spoon to get the right amount out for each meal. I’ve mentioned it before but for oil I just plug my nose and down the daily oil when I’m getting ready in the morning. It’s not something that hardly anyone could put up with, I’m not recommending it.

Scooping out the powder from a bulk container instead of trying to get 1/3 from my daily bag has made preparing my lunch at work a 20 second job. A co-worker messages me that they’re leaving for lunch and all I have to do is scoop out some stuff into a blender bottle and make a quick stop at the drinking fountain to fill up on water. Yes, those are laundry detergent scoops in the picture. They’re 1/2 cup, fit into the mouth of my blender bottles easily, come to a point (making getting into corners easy), and it’s what was sitting on the counter one day when I needed a measuring scoop. So I washed it and have used it ever since.

By chris|2016-10-13T07:28:33-06:00July 8th, 2014|Soylent, Preparation|Comments Off

Old masa and diminishing tortilla flavor

This entry is part 21 of 39 in the series DIY Soylent

I’ve been running through ingredients rather quickly lately since I started shipping out people chow to people.

Hence why I have 6 bottles of calcium/magnesium/D3 on hand right now

I discovered something surprising: the strength of the “tortilla” taste appears to be directly related to the age of the Masa Harina (corn flour) that is used in People Chow. I had previously purchased a 50 pound bag of Maseca Masa off Amazon at an incredible price and had it stored in airtight containers in a cool, dry place. Right about the same time I bought the 50 lb. bag I had also purchased several bags of Great Value (walmart) Masa that I forgot about whilst I was using up the Maseca. I finally finished off the Maseca and started using the Great Value right abotu the same time I started shipping out people chow. I kept the Great Value for my own use and bought new Maseca (since that’s what was in the recipe) to send out.

I hadn’t really noticed but the strong tortilla or tamale flavor of the masa had been diminishing as I worked through the 50 lb bag and was essentially gone when I was consuming the smaller bags. It wasn’t until I was emptying the last of the Great Value that I noticed the “best before” date on the bag. November 2013. Wait, what? I wasn’t worried about getting sick from it but sheesh, that stuff was past expiration when I bought it! (that’s a PSA in and of its self, apparently).

The next time I mixed up a batch with the new Maseca (oddly enough it was week after I shot my “how to mix up a week of dry ingredients in 12 minutes” video) and took a drink with fresh masa in it I was very surprised. Took me a second meal of the new stuff to realize what the difference was. I personally really like the tortilla/tamale taste and I was amazed I hadn’t noticed it was gone until it came back, because there was a huge difference.

I guess the moral of the story is: if you like the tortilla/tamale taste: buy the freshest masa you can get. If you think the corn taste is the worst thing about people chow look for masa that’s nearing it’s expiration date instead (or buy some and hoard it for a few months?), though I can’t say what that will do to the nutrient profile – maybe nothing?

By chris|2016-10-13T07:28:33-06:00July 1st, 2014|Soylent, Ingredients|Comments Off

Mixing Vitamin K supplement into my batches

This entry is part 20 of 39 in the series DIY Soylent

For the past few months I’ve been using olive oil in my DIY soylent “People Chow” because it’s supposed to be better for you than soybean oil and humans have been consuming it for a couple thousand (recorded) years. One thing that Soybean oil has that Olive oil doesn’t is vitamin K. Vitamin K does the exact opposite of rat poison (among other things) in that it helps blood that’s leaking out of you skin coagulate ~~and form wheaties~~. You can get vitamin K from green veggies and in particular from parsley.

Some people are wary of Soybean oil because of the phytoestrogen factor (does it mimic estrogen?) but everything I’ve read says that isn’t something you need to be concerned about. QuidNYC has a great write up in the notes of his Super Food recipe about oxidative stress in Canola and Soybean oil. And then there is the issue with vitamin K in soybean oil being destroyed by UV light. It’s not likely a container of oil is going to go out into the sun. But People on anti-coagulants like Warfarin need to watch their vitamin K intake. This site has a handy tip:

For those of you passionate for your soybean, canola and vegetable oils – there is good news. Exposure of oils to sunlight or fluorescent light destroys approximately 85% of the vitamin K. You must expose them to sunlight or fluorescent light for at least 48 hours.

Last time I bought oil at the grocery store it was on a shelf exposed to florescent light for probably a lot longer than 48 hours. So if you don’t want to bleed out you’ve got 2 choices:

Get your oil from a bottle that wasn’t ever taken out of the original box or the container is opaque like metal
Use a different oil and use a vitamin K supplement

I opted for number 2. To that end I found two vitamin K2 supplements. One is MK-4 and the other is MK-7. There is a lot of discussion as to which is better for you though most agree that the K2 variants are better than K1. So because I have two different supplements I’ve been taking one caplet on even days of the month and the other on odd days of the month. After my recent video on mixing 7 days at a time someone suggested I should just mix it in with the powder.

I have been hesitant to add it to the powder mix because the MK-4 supplement is made partly with alfalfa and I didn’t want it to affect the taste. Well, I tried it this morning.

MK4 caplet

When I mixed up my morning soylent I emptied a caplet into the powder. I wanted it to be a bit of an extreme test with 3x more than there would normally be – an entire days worth in one blender bottle so it could be the “worst case scenario.”

That be Alfalfa

After mixing it all up and letting it sit in my backpack on the way to work, like always, I can’t taste any difference. So I’m going to call this one confirmed.

confirmed

The end result being: from here on out I’m going to be adding the powder out of 3 and 4 of the caplets to each week batch and mixing it all in. That will be one less step for my own consumption and for the people buying mixed people chow from me.

By chris|2016-10-13T07:28:33-06:00June 20th, 2014|Ingredients, Soylent|1 Comment

soylent at the dance recital

This entry is part 19 of 39 in the series DIY Soylent

A few months ago I posted an image of me downing some DIY soylent at Delicate Arch. Now I present to you: DIY soylent at the dance recital.

I do the dance video for a local studio called Wasatch Arts Center, mainly because my kids are in it. We had to get there and set up and I was the only one that had time for dinner. I threw some People Chow into a blender bottle and DONE! Every once in a while when there wasn’t much action going on I could give it a (quiet) shake and drink my dinner. Score another for the sheer convenience of (s)oylent, be it the official or DIY.

Inevitably we’ll end up discussing it so: I usually record from the sound/lighting/projection booth because

It’s a better angle
No little kids are running around bumping stuff (including my own)
No body is standing up blocking me
No one is talking
Power outlets!

I run to cameras and then cut between them in post. My main one is a HDV Canon XH-A1 that still records to tapes though whenever I’m stationary like this I hook it up directly to a laptop via firewire and record to disk instead. Secondary is a HF-100 that does a passable job ab being the fallback when the main camera footage is too shaky or (as has happened before) something goes wrong with the feed from the main camera and it’s the only source I have. The HF-100 does record AVCHD to SD cards so at least there’s no prolonged “press play and capture” going on. For editing I use Sony Vegas Pro and I’m currently a version or two behind because my plugins aren’t available on version 13 (I think, haven’t checked in a few months).

By chris|2016-10-13T07:28:33-06:00June 19th, 2014|Soylent, On Tour|1 Comment

My thoughts on (s)oylent

This entry is part 18 of 39 in the series DIY Soylent

Over on the Soylent discussion forum, Nicole Goodkind asked for people’s thought on Soylent. I emailed her and decided I might as well put it up here too.

Some people on the forum and reddit get uppity if you call the DIY soylent “Soylent” with a capital S and I’m not cool enough to have gotten the real stuff.

I saw the kickstarter campaign back when it first happened and initially thought it was a joke campaign somebody put together with a relabeled energy bar labeled “Soylent” as a play on the movie. I though “dangit – I should have thought of that!.” It was nearly 2 weeks later that I realized that it was an actual thing with a real product that wasn’t a joke. I talked with some friends at work about it and I got pretty excited when I saw the Ars Technica series on it. I wanted to order some but didn’t want to pay $250 for a month and didn’t want to wait.

New Years Day 2014 I finally decided I was going to DIY it, mostly as a way to control calories and lose weight. I researched a bit and arrived on the most popular recipe “People Chow” as the one I would go with. I drove around to vitamin stores in my local area trying to find all the ingredients but being a holiday I was stymied in my efforts. I ordered what I hadn’t been able to buy locally off Amazon and waited a few days for the stuff to arrive.

My family has been supportive, mostly because I’m not drinking soylent 100% of the time. I did that at first and still try to stick to it as much as possible to lose weight; but it’s hard to pass up a really nice dinner that I’ve cooked for the wife and kids. When we have a big get together I don’t even worry about it; why would I eat soylent when there’s bbq chicken or broccoli covered in nacho cheese?

The convenience of mixing up a cup of powder in a blender bottle is the nicest part (see my post at http://www.people-chow.com/tile-is-done-its-soylent-timetm/ or my post at http://discourse.soylent.me/t/soylent-at-delicate-arch/12948 ). For counting calories it’s ideal – I put in my exercise, add “Low Cal People Chow” for breakfast, lunch and (usually) dinner and I’m done. I recently changed my method for measuring the ingredients and now I’m doing a week’s worth of meals in 15 minutes. I feel better than I did before I started and my blood work was rather good last check (http://discourse.soylent.me/t/2-months-lab-results-most-looks-good-except-vitamin-d/11820) except for a vitamin D deficiency that’s easily fixed with a supplement. I’m planning on continuing on DIY soylent for quite a while (years or longer). Back in March I bought a bunch of bulk ingredients and computed that I had spent $500 so far on the endeavor but had enough ingredients to last me until early June (yep, still true – it’ll be time to reorder some stuff in about 2 weeks) and $100 a month for food is a pretty good figure.

Recently I’ve been investigating Keytogenic DIY soylent. I first heard of the concept when my son was having seizures and going on a keytogenic diet was one of the proposed treatments. Trying to manage that kind of diet (little to no carbs, all fats and protein – think Atkins-ish) sounded like a nightmare and we were able to control his seizures with medication that he’s since grown out of. But with soylent, the prospect of doing a major and radical diet change like that is more about picking a recipe, modifying it a bit for my requirements and buying the new ingredients I don’t have already. It’s a complete paradigm shift in the way *I* look at food. This is, however, one area the current official Soylent falls short: the customizability. You’re on a sodium restricted diet? Soy Allergy? Vegan? Wheat intolerant? I’ve seen recipes for all of them. Rob and the rest of the Rosa Labs crew has, however, talked about the possibility of different formulations in the future.

I don’t know if Soylent (or soylent) is THE future but I suspect it has enough traction that it’s going to be a food option for the future. I’d love to get my widower father-in-law on Soylent since he doesn’t cook much more than Mac and Cheese since his wife passed and rarely eats veggies. He’s a perfect case for it – I’m just not sure if he could handle the taste of the official (I’m certain he wouldn’t handle mixing up the DIY). One of my work buddies likes the idea of using Soylent for a shelf stable emergency food – sounds like a perfect application. I highly doubt “muggle” food is going anywhere but Soylent is great option for easy, convenient, unremarkable meals.

By chris|2016-10-13T07:28:33-06:00June 18th, 2014|Soylent, Preparation|Comments Off

Mixing your Own Calcium Magnesium and D3: good idea or not?

This entry is part 17 of 39 in the series DIY Soylent

TLDNR: probably not, unless you like buying 9 months worth at a time.

So I ordered some stuff from bulksupplements.com through amazon (choline and potassium citrate) and was looking at some of the other stuff they sell. Among others, they have pure calcium citrate, magnesium citrate and vitamin D3. The one ingredient I go through faster than any other is the NOW foods Calcium & Magnesium – 8 oz. – the price on it tends to fluctuate a lot. I bought it last week for $12.27 including shipping, now it’s $10.17 including shipping and I think at one point I got it for $6, I started wondering if I could mix my own equivalent for less.

It’s Spreadsheet Time!

So I ran the numbers. The first thing to be aware of is this handy note from bulksupplements about the D3: “This supplement contains around one hundred thousand IU per gram and has no fillers of any kind present in it.” So 1g has 100,000 IU in it? holy crap! Check out the rest of the warnings on this page. Based on that, I’m thinking it’s prolly not worth doing the D3. Not when I can get caplets of whatever dose I want from Wal-mart for $0.06 a dose.

Let’s ignore the D3 then and talk about the calcium and magnesium. Based off the labels, I’d need 2.66g of Magnesium citrate and 1.92g of Calcium Citrate to get the 400&400mg of actual Magnesium and Calcium that’s in the NOW which has 50 doses per bottle. If I buy 500g bags of both and make 500 doses it’s going to cost me $9.69 in bulk ingredients. If it get all nuts and buy the 1KG bags, each group of 50 doses will cost me $7.43 (both figures assume free shipping). It would result in using 3.54g of Magnesium Citrate and 2.54g of Calcium Citrate daily to equal the 6g of NOW that’s in People Chow 3.0.1.

End result: yes buying the bulk powders and mixing your own *would* save you money. But you’ll need to buy it in 1kg bags (which would last 282 days for the magnesium and 393 days for the calcium) in order for it to be cost effective. You also would need to either get a scale that can measure 2.438mg of D3 for a day or use a capsule supplement.

More fun facts: getting the 1kg each of the bulk powders would cost you $63.92. To get 282 days worth of NOW Cal/Mag/D3 would be 8 bottles, and at today’s rate of $10.17 that’s $81.36

By chris|2014-07-22T15:42:43-06:00June 16th, 2014|Soylent, Ingredients|Comments Off

Mixing up soylent ingredients for 7 days at a time

This entry is part 16 of 39 in the series DIY Soylent

Update: There’s a new version here, now with 100% less math errors!

In 4 days I’ll have been doing DIY soylent (specifically People Chow) for 6 months. Time to share some tips! One major change in how I mix up and prepare my soylent started when I bought a 50lb bag of masa and needed to store it somehow. I ended up using the large Utz Cheese Puff bottles. One day when I had just emptied one of the bottles I wondered if I could use it as a mixing container. Up until that point I was mixing the ingredients for each day individually (first in quart mason jars, then gallon zip-loc bags, then rubbermaid containers and back to the bags) and often I would get a blender bottle that was rather bitter (too much of calcium or potassium that time) or too sweet (to much Mega Man) and I also was mixing the stevia into each bottle when I added water as a tiny amount (grain of rice sized was enough for the bottle) which was another hassle. Initially I tried mixing 3 days of dry ingredients at a time in the cheese puff bottle and that worked extremely well. So I moved up to 5 and then 7, then 10… which didn’t work. Although the math is easier when you multiply by 10 there isn’t enough space in the big bottle to shake up the powder. So I’ve standardized on 7 along with 1/4 teaspoon of stevia for the seven days. The stevia is the real mark of how well the mixing works since it’s pretty evenly distributing the 1/4 teaspoon through the entire mixture and each meal tastes the same.

Here’s the video of how I do it:

As noted in the video I also use an old Mega Man canister to keep my daily powder in. There’s a 1/2 cup scoop in it and I just put two scoops into a blender bottle and shake it up. No more shaking 1/4 of a bag into the bottle. It’s easy food made even easier.

By chris|2016-10-13T07:28:37-06:00June 10th, 2014|Soylent, Preparation|7 Comments

About the Concrete Countertops

So, the concrete countertop in the kitchen is mostly done, just need to put on the backsplash. This post is to sum up what we did and what we used.

For the forms we used the Ogee edges from Z-Counterforms

The forms come in a pack that’s big enough to do 2 kitchens the size of ours (64 linear feet of front edge and 48 linear feet of back edge) – so we have enough to also do all our bathrooms, which means we could do a test before going all-in on the kitchen. This turned out to be a good thing and we got some valuable experience, learning things like: “put in the right amount of water” and “use a real mixer not a drill paddle”. Along with the edges we also bought the Sink form, the faucet knockouts, 3 different color samples (amber, wheat and ebony) of the concrete stain, and the AquaPoxy sealer. When we did the bathroom I first tried using Sakrete 5000 since it’s billed as being usable for counters…. if (I didn’t notice this until later) you add additional cement, plastisizers, reducers and fiberglass fibers to it. I could have bought pre-packaged stuff to do that but it was easier to get the Quickrete Countertop Mix that’s all ready to go. You have to special order it from Lowes over the phone but (here in Salt Lake at least) you can just go will-call it at the Quickrete plant if you’re in a hurry. I planned out what we would need rather well I think: 8.4 bags of concrete, two 4×8 sheets of OSB and three 3×5 sheets of cement board (those based on my Planning Drawing) – I got 10 bags just to be safe.

Anyhow, the first try for the bathroom counter (alpha test) I used the Sakrete 5000 without the right amount of water (too dry) and not mixed enough (drill paddle that bent). It was an absolute failure that I had to break apart and throw away before it set all the way. So we got the Quickrete a few days later and the beta test went much smoother once I got a real cement mixer – I made my drill start to smoke when I tried to mix it up using a new mixing paddle. My sister came and did the staining, we sealed it and it turned out great.

We used up most of the wheat and amber concrete stain on the bathroom counter so we ordered the larger bottles for the kitchen. The next step was to demolish the old nasty tile countertop.

Demolition in progress

Once demolished we needed to build up the new counter (and replace the drywall I tore out when removing the old backsplash)

Unfortunately the time lapse stopped right when we started to assemble the OSB and cement board.

Assembling the counter

We originally planned to pour the cement that same day but it was way too late by then so we waited until a big group could come and help. I also got 2 additional bags since I used up 2 of the original 10 on the bathroom and my spreadsheet told me I needed 8.4 bags to finish. Ended up with 1.5 bags – spot on.

Concrete Poured

Starting to cure

Mostly cured

Staining in progress

Stained

Sealed

So there you go! It will look nicer once the backsplash is in place. As for costs: the forms were $200, the other stains and stuff we bought added another $100 or so. The cement was around $200 for the 12 bags. Had to get a compound miter saw and a few other tools. Random stuff at lowes plus $220 in travertine for the backsplash. $170 for the sink. $80 for the faucet. All in all it’s close to $1000 for everything (if labor is free =). A guy I was talking to said he was able to get this guy to do granite counters for around $2000 which is a lot less than the $5000 – 6000 we were quoted but I haven’t verified if the guy is even in business. I also enjoy building and doing stuff (because that’s what computer geeks do…. right? no? well, I’m breaking that mold!) and it leaves me with terribly useful skills: tile skills, drywall skills, plumbing skills, tetherball skills… Then there is the WAF (wife acceptance factor); she’s able to customize it within the realm of what we can afford and it’s uniquely hers.

By chris|2016-10-13T07:28:37-06:00April 2nd, 2014|Uncategorized|1 Comment

2 months Lab results, most looks good except Vitamin D

This entry is part 15 of 39 in the series DIY Soylent

(I originally posted this at the Soylent Discourse Forum and forgot to post it here on my own blog, so here it is)

I started on DIY (People Chow) in early January. Didn’t get blood tests to start (I know, very unscientific of me). Looks like I need to increase my Vitamin D.

Since getting the test my doctor put me on a 5000 iu Vitamin D supplement. I’m also getting more sun.

By chris|2016-10-13T07:28:37-06:00March 20th, 2014|Soylent|1 Comment

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