Have there been studies? How much better/worse would it be than a high starch, processed diet?
In: Biology
I don’t think there’ve been studies on multivitamins/shakes specifically, but conceptually similar ideas are completely possible. In the medical field, there’s Total Parenteral Nutrition, which gives you 100% of all the nutrients your body needs via IV. Soldiers can live a long time on military rations; in the Wild West days, people lived for weeks on pemmican; the Irish could live (poorly) off mostly potatoes.
Multivitamins and workout shakes? Sure, why not. Mind the bioavailability of the vitamins (i.e. how much of them the body can actually use), and yeah, I suppose you totally could live off multivitamins and workout shakes.
They can,
A guy made a a mix called Soylent (after the famous movie, soylent green), https://soylent.com/
The idea is that he sat down and checked the basic things a human needs, carbs, fats, proteins, amino acids, vitamins and such and made powder you mix with water and drinking a specific ammount a day will cover your diatry requirements.
theres tons of companies, Soylent, Yfood, Huel, Jimmy Joy….
What about bacon and YooHoo?
If you are simply talking about “bare minimum to survive”, then the answer is they can, but it is EXTREMELY dangerous.
You technically don’t need anything to survive besides your own body fat, electrolytes, and water; but a multivitamin that hits the daily recommended adult amounts of vitamins and minerals would also be… recommended. A guy actually did this in the early 1900s, I’ll find the link
Edit: https://www.nine.com.au/entertainment/viral/angus-barbieri-the-man-who-didnt-eat-anything-for-a-year/c0192ac3-5905-424b-9310-ecb02b87f2f6
Again though, to really stress this point I am saying this is what is TECHNICALLY possible and no one should do this, there is no real research on what it can do to a human. I can’t stress enough how off the wall this would be and the amount of health risks involved. Not eating food can do an unknown amount of damage to your digestive system and possibly ruin it for good, among a myriad of other issues.
TLDR; they could, but very very bad idea
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