Hacker News Reader

Comment by untog | Hacker News Reader

I suppose products like these are positive, though I find them profoundly depressing. That eating well has become such an after-thought that no-one takes time to actually make themselves a whole meal, and rather than reprioritise their lives they'll ask a group of people with no discernable nutritional credentials to send them a square of food that they cut into 100 calorie segments, and eat day in, day out.

Scarfing down pastries or energy bars when you don't have time to think about food? You can do better.

Yeah, you can.

View on HN

Not everyone is interested in taking the time to make themselves a whole meal every day. I know I'm not: I don't derive a lot of pleasure from food of any kind beyond a limited amount from a very small selection of specific food items. As a result, I find myself more, not less, aware of the effect my eating habits have on my health. If I could away with it, I'd eat McDonald's for every meal not because I find it to be some pinnacle of culinary superstimuli but because it's that much easier. I don't, because the health and mental effects of eating fast food much more than once a week are immediately obvious (to say nothing of the probable long term issues).

Food is a deep topic with really excellent geeking out potential, but it's not something I'm interested in reprioritising my life over in the way you suggest. To put it in an HN friendly metaphor, people like me are eagerly awaiting things like these squares or Soylent for the same reason Apple has been able to so hugely disrupt and capture the smartphone market: no one is selling a good experience to the people who aren't interested in revolving their life around the topic.

So yes, I can do better. I can shotgun a litre of Soylent and spend the extra time wandering foggy seashores with my wife, or tweaking up my RC airplanes, or working on something opensource. Not everyone wants to be a food geek anymore than you're going to convince your grandma to switch to Linux and then care what bootloader she's using (syslinux FTW!).

Actually, my ability to enjoy food hugely increased when I started eating my prototypes. Focusing on one meal a day means that meal can be awesome.

If you like spending time and effort preparing healthy meals for yourself, more power to you. The MealSquares target user is a busy startup founder whose diet is currently made up of microwavable meals or something like that. You tell someone like this to eat healthier and they say "yeah, I really should", but it's hard to fit in the time for cooking, nutrition research, and meal planning in between all of the other important stuff they're doing. Personally, I like the fact that people are doing important stuff, and I'm hoping that MealSquares will allow people to spend their time doing lots of important stuff and eat healthy while they're at it.

Personally, I like the fact that people are doing important stuff

But that's exactly my point, eating well is "important stuff". I suppose it reflects the general mentality that crunching away on your mobile photo sharing startup is "important" while eating well, being healthy and being happy are optional extras.

You don't have to stop eating meals. I see this as a once-a-month standby when you don't have time.

In my case, the general idea draws me because I have a kitchen the size of a shoebox with poor ventilation and a fire alarm that goes off at the drop of a hat. Cooking an even fractionally complicated meal quickly becomes an exercise in frustration.

Cooking doesn't necessarily mean heating, what's wrong with raw?

Has it occurred to you that we don't all find food as entertaining as you do and would rather do other things with our time? I could just as easily say I find it profoundly depressing that such an extraordinary amount of time is wasted on satisfying the basest of biological needs, to eat.

I agree with you on the anti-intellectualism front and the need for real experts, but please don't be so dismissive of the desire to escape the menial daily tasks forced upon us by biology.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com