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Liquid diet recommendations and tips?
I have an oral surgery coming up that's going to require me to be on a liquid diet for around two weeks (possibly more). Early on it'll have to be pretty strict -- nothing with even small bits of food or anything "gritty" like a smoothie. Later on I'll have a bit more leeway, but I will still have to keep to stuff that doesn't really require chewing until everything's fully healed.
I'm mostly looking for opinions on stuff like meal replacement shakes -- ideally ones that are tasty, satisfying, and without a lot of sugar (if anything like that even exists?).
I'm also interested in any tips/tricks people have if they've been through something similar. I'm hoping to make the best of the (hopefully no more than) two weeks that I can.
If you're in the USA or Canada then look into Soylent. They make completely liquid meals that are pre-made but they started with (and still make) powdered meals that you mix with water. The pre-made ones might be a better idea for you to start.
I used to pack some of the little single meal powder bags to work just in case I needed something extra.
I'm in Canada and last I checked Soylent was the best option here (out of very few options). In the US + Europe there are a bunch more options to consider that may be better.
EDIT: Soylent pre-made drinks are completely smooth. Powders are similar to consistency of pancake batter but maybe more granular.
The bottled Soylent tastes much better than the stuff you mix up yourself. I personally recommend the mint chocolate. The version with extra protein is much less tasty - but the normal version is fairly high in protein so I'd recommend just sticking with the standard.
I've been having a box a month of bottled chocolate Soylent delivered for years (I drink it as an occasional snack). I think it tastes vaguely like chocolate milk, and it's supposedly nutritious, so what's not to like? We also used to get mint chocolate since my wife liked drinking that for a while.
It's a bit pricey. Buying it direct is probably cheapest, but I think it's sold in stores and by Amazon. That might be a better way to get a small amount to try it out?
I'm a big fan of Hol Food here in Canada. They tend to run sales around Canada Day, New Years, and Black Friday. The chocolate is pretty good, if you're into that. The vanilla is closer to "plain" and might need a flavour mixin.
It's powder, not RTD (ready-to-drink), so you will need a blender bottle.
I think I tried them quite a long time ago. Don't they have those chia seeds in it? Not a fan of chia seeds and they don't seem to agree with me.
Looking into it before I hit post, it looks like they don't (or no longer) have chia seeds. If they offer a smaller size at some point I'll try them out. I don't want to commit to a big supply. EDIT: I thought that said 30 days not 30 meals... maybe I will give it a shot lol.
Hol has been pretty consistent since I've been ordering from them, about five years. I think you're probably thinking of a different company. Maybe Biolent? They had a more "earthy" flavour before going bust.
The tubs are pretty big. If you're not sure though, I'd wait for Canada Day. They usually have a 10% off coupon.
Great time to learn to make various types of stocks and broths, if you don’t already know how! Try some homemade chicken or dashi broth. The only experience I have with meal replacement drinks involves lots of seeds, so I can’t recommend that given what else you’ve said.
I had triple jaw surgery ~11 weeks ago and I was on a liquid diet for a month.
I lost a lot of weight - 8 kg in the first 2 weeks - because of how difficult it was to eat anything at all. I dealt with nausea and infection though, so your mileage may vary on that point.
The saving grace of my recovery was yoghurt, soup, and mashed potatoes. Meal replacements, protein shakes, milkshakes, etc... All of this stuff was nauseating to me since it's what the nurses had me eat while throwing up about a dozen times the first 24 hours after my surgery.
Check out /r/jawsurgery for other suggestions.
As for making the best out of your recovery? Get moving as fast as possible. I was in bed 99% of the time the first 2 weeks because of how weak I became from how little I ate and from the morphine. Try to get out of bed as much as you can, take a walk around the block or something... I went for my first walk about 10 days after my surgery and I felt like I had to faint after only 100 meters or so. I think that's my best piece of advice - keep as active as you can to avoid letting yourself become weak like that.
You might want to invest in a decent blender. That way you can make delicious blended soups and smoothies without the grit. America's Test Kitchen has a low-end blender that they still recommend, Nutribullet's full-sized blender, which retails for around $100. I have heard that vitamix blenders can get so hot that they can cook your soup at the same time, but I don't know if that's actually true or not.
But the key to smooth blends is simply to cook your veggies and/or fruits really well ahead of time to break up the fiber.
But if your surgeon/dentist is recommending against even fine particulate, you'll want to get some clear broths like u/Wulfsta recommends. I might not actually go the full homemade route, though, since that might just remind you of the solid foods you can't eat. I'm a pretty big fan of the Better than Bouillon brand of concentrated stocks. Also look for consomme in the soup aisle and consider making some miso soup as well (without the solid ingredients, of course).
At one point I was supplementing with protein shakes, and at the time BSN Syntha-6 had the best flavors. You might want to look into what they're recommending in fitness communities for more up-to-date recommendations.
Soylent got me through many, in retrospect, pretty rough days in university. They are dosed to be "average" meals calorie wise so as long as you're not overdrinking them you should be fine calorie wise. Heavily nutrient fortified.
Probably the best thing I can think that is very smooth. The thing on home made smoothies and such is that you're going to have trouble making sure they're absolutely smooth (seeds are a PITA for instance). You'll also need to really think about what you put in them to be nutritionally balanced, whereas soylent is made to be a meal replacement and is already nutritionally fortified to have all of your daily needs.
I was kind of curious about the nutrition of Soylent since you mentioned it and I looked them up. I don't think they're quite as well balanced as you think. Their Cocoa flavor powder has nearly half of the calories from fat, and oil is the second ingredient, with sugar being the third. From a nutritional standpoint, it's basically a milkshake with added protein powder and a multivitamin.
It's probably still a decent recommendation, but it's certainly not something I would suggest eating for every meal.
I would make sure to look at the "meal replacement" ones, since they do offer different drinks.
About half of the calories are from fat, yeah, but that's not particularly a bad thing? It's all plant based fat. Calories can only come from three things: fats, protein, and carbs, and at this point you'd prefer to eschew carbs if at all possible. Animal originated fats are linked to health issues, but those aren't present in this case. Most of the other calories are from protein, and at 20g per bottle that's definitely on the high side of the macro balance sheet for meals.
The label I'm looking at only has 1g of added sugars. And yeah it's dosed so each bottle has 1/5th the daily recommended value of every nutrient.
The main issue with eating it for every meal is that at just 3g of fiber per bottle, even if you have 5 a day that's not particularly close to the recommended amount of fiber. And the lack of that fiber and other miscelanous plant material may be detrimental to your gut ecosystem (and also make your toilet breaks less comfortable).
But it'd be difficult to fit in that much fiber in completely smooth liquids, so for a few weeks
For supplementing fiber, capsules are probably the best bet. Check with your doctor, but liquid diets after oral surgery usually are to keep bits out of open healing wounds and, depending on the work done, avoid the strain of chewing, so a pill is likely safe to swallow.
Soylent used to have more fiber, but people complained about digestive issues so they reduced it. I think the USDA recommended amount of fiber is quite high compared to what most people get?
Normally, I think it's better to get fiber from some other food like breakfast cereal and adjust it yourself.
Perhaps it’s just this one product they have that has the problems I outlined, but I quickly paged through some of the others and they appeared to be roughly the same. But I also didn’t look through the premade shakes.
Yes, plant fats are less problematic than animal fats, but they do still have problems when consuming too much of them. A single serving has roughly 30% of the RDA for fat, so if you are actually drinking five servings to get your full vitamin dose, you are at about 150% of what you should be consuming. And in this case the product also has saturated fats, which do have negative health effects of their own.
The label I looked at has either 15 or 16 grams of added sugars. I honestly don’t know why since they are already adding sucralose to sweeten it. Surely there are better carb sources to add to these than sugar?
I just looked at a bottle of the Soylent I'm drinking and it says 1g of added sugar. Are we looking at the same thing? The label on the bottle matches the second label on this page.
I was looking at the powdered ones, more specifically this one. You'll have to click on the button that says Nutritional Information.
It looks like the premade stuff is even worse when it comes to fat and fiber, though. Though on the bright side, they are using more heart-healthy fats than the powder version.
Thanks! Yeah, it's interesting that they differ so much.
Looking at the powdered version, the two "added sugars" are likely isomaltulose and maltodextrin (from the ingredients list).
Isomaltose is a slow-burning carb and maltodextrin a fast-burning carb (even more than sugar). They sort explain what they're doing in this blog post but not really. Note that this page is explaining the benefits of the drink and not the powder. It's suspicious that Soylent doesn't say what the glycemic index is of the powder, while promoting the drink for diabetics.
I can say, generally, that the philosophy of Soylent originally was that they are into nutrition science but don't care much about what's "natural," considering that unscientific. Industrial food is a-ok with them. They tried to use seaweed and algae for a while but gave up on that. Turns out that the food industry making ingredients out of plants grown in the ordinary way is a pretty low-cost source of ingredients.
They were acquired in February. I don't know what they believe in now other than moving product. They haven't sold Soylent as something you can live off for a while, though some people do it.
I don't worry about it since I don't drink that much of it. I think that Soylent gets a lot more scrutiny than most of the foods people eat and there's a lot of strongly-held opinions out there based on bad nutrition science. I don't have the expertise to have strong opinions about it. It might not be as good as they claim, but since people do live off it without obvious bad effects, it's probably better than many foods we don't have second thoughts about. Particularly if you eat out.
Edit: the claim here is that isomaltose is a sugar and maltodextrin isn't, it's counted as a carbohydrate. It's also true that all sugars are carbohydrates, but they are counted separately on nutrition labels. And this is why I have low confidence in nutrition discussions.
The thing that put me off Soylent was the hissy fit they threw about Canadian laws regarding meal replacements after they got banned here for violating them, calling them "outdated" when they are in-fact more frequently updated and AFAIK more nutritionally sound than those in the US. IIRC, Soylent specifically didn't like that Canada requires energy from fat to be less than 30 percent for products marketed as a "replacement for all daily meals", and at least part of the reason they stopped claiming that in their marketing (even in the US) was so they could finally reenter the Canadian market.
Like @Wes, I use Hol Food here now instead for my meal replacements.
To be clear, I don't think it's terrible to use as a meal replacement, at least if you're eating an otherwise healthy diet. Most American's don't - but that's another topic altogether. Drinking these is only bad if you're only consuming them for your meals.
Personally speaking, this is a product which I would never buy after all the nutritional education I've gained in this past year. But I'm also not here to pass judgement on the people who do.
Is there any chance I could get you to look at Hol Food with the same critical eye you took to Soylent? It's what I use now for my meal replacement, so I'm curious to hear what you think of it.
If you would be willing to, here are the relevant links (I only drink the Vanilla one):
https://holfood.com/pages/ingredients
https://holfood.com/pages/nutritional-information
https://holfood.com/pages/vitamins-minerals
The good thing is that it's low fat, and I think the distribution of macros is pretty good. But more than half of that fat is saturated fat, which is not good for your heart. It also contains cholesterol, which is also not great for your heart. I'm also concerned that it uses cane sugar to sweeten it (once again, they're already using sucralose so it's not necessary!) The problem with cane sugar is that it's made of sucrose which is absorbed very quickly, which means it's not very filling, and it will also cause a huge insulin spike. Combined with a lack of fiber, I would imagine it doesn't keep you very full for long.
Just like I mentioned with Soylent, it's probably fine if you're replacing a meal once in a while, but you shouldn't replace all your meals with it. Both this and Soylent have more protein in them than you probably need to consume, but that depends on your body and your lifestlye. Both of these are certainly better options than restaurant meals or snack food, but you should always prioritize eating real food.
Thanks! I only use Hol to replace a meal a handful of times every week so I'm not too worried about the negative effects of its saturated fat or cholesterol. I wish we could get Huel up here in Canada though, since it seems to be generally regarded as the best of the bunch (nutritionally speaking), but it's unfortunately not available up here yet.
With plant fats it’s getting to the area of health science where it’s difficult to get clear answers one way or another - too many confounding factors. Personally in the macro spread if the fat were replaced by protein that’d be a tad absurd, and I wouldn’t want carbs in replacement. The macro spread seems the modern nutritional ideal of protein > non-animal fat > carbs.
It seems like they add more sugar to the powder. Probably a combination of it tasting worse in powder form and not being able to use liquid fats means they have to add more carbs to come up to the amount of calories they want. Again it’d border on absurd if they add more protein.
AFAIK there's no universally agreed macro ratio, but I haven't heard from any doctors with the opinion that it's better to get calories from plant-sourced fats than carbohydrates. The primary problem I have is that this ratio of fat is going to help you feel satisfied at first but I'm not so sure about how long it will keep you feeling that way. I would have preferred to see more carbs that came from sources low on the GI, or at least to have more fiber. But yeah, I agree it doesn't need more protein.
Last time I was in a similar position the doctor told me to have some ice cream. 2 months later I had another 15kg and an addiction to ice cream.
You're a responsible adult. Good for you!
Echoing the recommendation of soylent-like nutritionally complete foods. Perhaps 80-90% of my calorie intake is from a mix of a few such brands. https://www.blendrunner.com/ used to be a great resource that lets you compare costs and macro ratios of various products, but it hasn't gotten updated for the last two years. https://eatcomplete.co/ looks like a review-oriented alternative that has similar (or even more) detailed info on each product that's listed.
Update:
I've tried out three meal replacement shakes so far: Soylent, Huel, and OWYN.
I tried the chocolate ready-to-drink versions for each to make the comparisons easy.
In terms of taste and texture, the order is: Huel, OWYN, Soylent
In terms of cost, the order is: OWYN, Soylent, Huel
In terms of sugar content, the order is: Soylent, Huel, OWYN
So, literally even across all three if we keep the scoring at that.
OWYN I've ruled out based on two factors. One, it's only cheaper per-item, not per-calorie (its bottles are 250 calories instead of 400). Furthermore, its sugar content is still too high for what I'd like. At 4 grams/250 calories, I'm looking at 32 grams/2000 calories. If I'm going to subsist off of almost nothing but these for a few days, I'd like to have less.
Soylent and Huel are pretty neck and neck for me. Huel was much thicker than Soylent, which made it feel a bit more "substantial" to have than the Soylent did (which I think is going to make a psychological difference during the days where I can't eat anything). I also liked the taste slightly more, but honestly, I genuinely liked all three. Huel does have a lot more sugar than Soylent, but 20 grams/2000 calories is fine for me. I might just order some of both and switching between the brands can make me feel like I'm getting some "variety" in my diet, lol.
I've also got a blender and do a smoothie daily already, but the way I make it is still super gritty. I'm going to experiment with getting the grit down, and also doing some things like making curries (though without the heat!) and blending soups.
Thanks for all of the people who have chimed in and given advice.
I've found the trick to reducing grittiness in meal replacement powder drinks is to make it, and then let it sit in the fridge for a while. I usually blend mine then put it in the fridge before my morning routine, then come back to it when I'm done, give it a thorough stir or even another quick blend, then finally drink it. And if I am going to have it more than once in that day, I make a bigger batch all at once instead of separately, and just portion it out as I need it.
p.s. For on-the-go, shaker bottles are a godsend. They take some effort, but they're much better than shaking it up in a regular water bottle. And again, if you just let it sit a while afterwards then shake again before you drink it, it helps. BTW, I have a BlenderBottle Prostak so I can take my powder with me, and it's great.
I like my shaker bottle for protein powder. One thing to note with shaker bottles is that I’ve found, depending on the powder and the liquid you’re using, they can add a significant volume of very fine froth that can take a long time to degass. Like the early stages of making whipped cream, since it basically is. That might be ok, or it might give you discomfort. I try to do a combo of shaking and swirling, juuuust enough to get it dissolved, and that seems to minimize the effect.
I actually like the frothiness it creates, but to each their own. :P
What kind of blender? I got a second-hand Oster Versa and the difference the beefy motor makes over the blender most homes have is noticeable. Sounds like a motorcycle in your kitchen though, but totally worth it.
Seconding a good blender. I always used to buy those cheap $40 blenders like my parents had when I was growing up, which struggled to blend ice and frozen fruit, requiring it to be added a handful at time in plenty of liquid, manually pulsed to break down before adding more, and even occasionally having to slam the jug on the counter to dislodge chunks or clumps that got stuck in it. They usually only lasted a few years then burned out, broke, or started rusting, so I would just replace them with another cheapo blender again. And I thought that was just a natural limitation of blenders until I tried a Blendtec blender at a friend's house, which was like night and day compared to the cheap, underpowered, shitty ones I was used to.
So a few years ago I decided to splurge on a similar blender for myself. I got a 1500W Ninja BL770, which was far less expensive than a similarly powerful Blendtec, Oster Versa, or Vitamix. But despite being more affordable, it can also absolutely demolish an entire jug full of ice with ease (no pulsing or slamming the jug required), and makes short work of frozen fruit and anything else I have thrown at it. And the nice thing about the Ninja over the others is that it's also more versatile thanks to the food processor bowl, and two "to-go" cups with their own special blender head for making individual drink portions.
So yeah, I also highly recommend getting a good blender. And IMO the Ninja is great, especially for the price.
cc: @DrStone
I’ve got a Ninja Foodi. I love it and it does an excellent job. The reason my smoothies are so gritty is that I add a lot of stuff into them: oats, protein powder, flax and chia seeds, etc. I also much prefer a thicker, heavier smoothie over something thinner and closer to juice.
If I take those out and up the ratio of liquid to fruit and veg, I have no doubt I can get something smooth out of it.