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Comment by fratlas | Hacker News Reader

Can't wait until someone creates healthy, long shelf life food that is cheap, and tastes OK. Would be a game changer.

From the top of my head: beans. Canned fish (mackerel, sardines). Oats. Nuts/nut butters (ok, these are not that cheap).

That exists. Oats!

He said tastes okay.

With peanut butter, honey and other things, it's surprisingly tasty

Yes, but we need a variety of such foods.

And lentils. You can cook lentils with water and salt and nothing else, and they come out edible and nice enough, if unexciting - but they serve as a fantastic canvas for adding small amounts of other long-lasting things (stock, oil, herbs, spices, cured meat) which add interest.

Which is why my no-deal Brexit survival stash is a couple of kilos of Puy lentils, a bottle of olive oil, and a box of stock cubes!

I lived on $2 a day for a couple of years (although also relying for variety on friends taking me out to lunch once or twice a week) - mainly 500g pasta + jar of pasta sauce (which had some herbs/veges in it), which made 2 meals and cost under $2. Sometimes also home-made cereal made from e.g. shredded coconut, wheat germ, sugar - surprisingly yummy. After about 3 months I splurged on a jar of garlic - man, that pasta was amazing! :-)

It occurs to me (in all seriousness) that dog food fits that bill pretty well. Presumably we could easily make human versions. I think that there is more to it than that. Food that is not particularly good for you often tastes better and isn't any more expensive. It's that competition that makes it difficult. We can make pretty healthy dog food because we control what they eat -- they don't get to choose.

What makes you think dog food is healthy?

From having raised dogs :-) Dogs have similar dietary requirements to humans. If you look closely at the nutrient breakdown in the dog food, you can see that it provides a very good balanced nutrition -- or at least it hits what they are aiming for. People can quibble about whether or not there are healthier nutrient breakdowns, but it's not really that hard to change things around. There are actually studies showing life expectancies for dogs eating dog food vs eating food made at home and they are higher for those eating dog food. There is a variety of reasons for that. For example, dogs are generally smaller than humans and dietary imbalances often have consequences sooner. So it's not really the case that dog food is super food or anything like that. It's just generally reasonable nutrition. The reason I found out about this is that I once thought about cooking for my dogs (I was cooking for myself every day anyway) and my vet highly discouraged me from doing so. She put me on to those papers (It was almost 20 years ago now, so I'm afraid I don't have any useful links, unfortunately).

Dog food also tastes surprisingly good. I never fed my dogs anything that I didn't try first (which I suppose may be weird, but oh well). I can say that some dogs really like the taste of liver, but aside from that kind of thing, dog food is surprisingly good. Some of the wet canned food rivals prepared human meals in my opinion, though the price is a bit higher. I can't remember the brand, but I remember one "beef stew" which was insanely good. I would have happily had it as a meal.

It seems like soylent.com is still around. I think they are making meal replacement drinks. Not my cup of tea, but at $1.80 per meal, it's fairly cheap and convenient. Not sure about taste (I think I'd go for the dog food myself!) However, it is almost exactly the average price for meals I cook for myself, so I'm not sure it's a great deal price wise. The same is also probably true of dog food to be fair.

There’s the urban legend of senior citizens buying dog food to eat because they get so litttle in retirement checks

Not a ledgend. Many now famous people lived on dog food for years. Phillip K Dick comes to mind.

Pre-cooked rice and curries fit the bill for me. Less than $5 per meal, 2 minutes to heat up, and tastes decent. Not terrible for you either.

I'm pretty sure it's terrible for you.

What are the ingredients? How much do you get? $5 per meal is not cheap.

Dried grains and legumes already exist, and provide the majority of calories that humans consume.

Like Soylent?

Similar, but solid and with some kind of taste

Sardines.

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