Dietary Needs

First Published: 9 January 2025

Draft 2: 9 January 2024

My last draft really went off the rails, because I got too far into the biohacking mindset. At the base minimum, I should be consuming:

• 90 grams of protein

• 130 grams of carbohydrates

• 17 grams of linoleic acid

• 1.6 grams of alpha-linoleic acid

Below, we see that,¹ at the absolute minimum, I can meet this in a smoothie that does this relatively easily. Since the fat and carbohydrates are incredibly simple to achieve, it’s worth considering what 90 grams of protein otherwise looks like. Common ways I get protein are:

• Rice

• Pasta

• Fish

• Chicken

• Gelatin

• Beans

• Eggs

• Milk

• Cheese

• Yogurt

To get 90 grams of protein from each of these sources, I would need to consume²:

• Rice³ needs about 3.8 kilograms⁴, and has around 52 calories per gram of protein.

• Pasta⁵ needs 2 KG, and has 28.5 calories per gram

• Fish⁶ needs 500 grams, and is around 5 calories per gram⁷

• Chicken⁸ needs about 480 grams, and is about 7.7 calories per gram

• Gelatin, as mentioned below needs about 150 grams, and is about 5 calories per gram

• Beans need about 1.25 kilograms, 15.8 cal/g

• Eggs⁹ are apparently 50 grams per large egg, so the 710 grams I need is about 14 eggs,

• Milk: 2.7 kilograms of milk, about 27 cal/g

• Cheese: 404 grams, 13.5 cal/g

• Yogurt: 2.6 kilograms, about 22.3 cal/g

In the future, I’ll hopefully figure out a way to take these numbers and construct a meal plan out of them.

Daily:

• Practiced guitar? Yes

• Practiced accordion? Given up for now because only so many tasks to be added at once

• Twice daily stretching? yes

• Journal? as with accordion, given up for now

• Poetry? yes

• Blog? look!

• Net cleaner home? technically

Draft 1: 9 January 2024

First, it appears that I was wrong in yesterday’s musing. The oil requirements are just straight up grams per day, which makes my life significantly easier. In order to hit my nutrition goals, I should be consuming at a minimum:

• 90 grams of protein

• 130 grams of carbohydrates

• 17 grams of linoleic acid¹⁰

• 1.6 grams of alpha-linoleic acid¹¹

• I generally see 1500 calories as the starvation threshold.

That is very little, and in total seems to add up¹² to around 2300 calories. If I choose better oils for alpha linoleic acid¹³, that number drops to 1222 calories per day. If I price out my costs,¹⁴ to hit the minimum I need for nutrition:

• about 144 grams, or 5 ounces of gelatin, which comes out to 6.56 dollars

• 1 tablespoon of corn oil is about 14 grams, and costs about 4.5 cents, which means daily need would be around 10 cents

• Flaxseed oil is approximately as dense, one tablespoon costs 44 cents, and so the daily need is about 14 cents

• Sugar costs 80 cents per pound, and I need about a third of a pound per day, so that’s about 30 cents per day.

Total cost for the base need smoothie comes out to around 7 dollars and 10 cents.

If we swap the gelatin out for egg whites, we get a little bit of carbs, but, assuming the cost is only in protein¹⁵, we can start pricing out the price per gram of protein for different foods:

• Gelatin: 7.5 cents

• Egg White: 4.7 cents

• Whey Protein: 6.5 cents¹⁶

• Chicken breast comes out to around 4 cents per ounce

• Flour technically has protein, though incomplete, and so is being discarded¹⁷

• Generally seems like peanuts are complete, and come in at 1.9 cents, or 2.3 if I don’t want to bother shelling them myself.

• Beans also appear to contain all amino acids, and come in at 1 cent per gram as pinto beans

• Rice can come down to 1.6 cents per gram

• Lentils are around 1.4 cents

Gelatin and egg whites are both about 1.6 grams per gram of protein, whey protein is about 1.1, and pinto beans are about 5, so it does require significantly more bean consumption. It also takes me well over the minimum carb load for the day, which also saves me 30 cents in sugar. It would, however, require consuming a full pound of beans¹⁸ each day. Egg whites probably strike a good balance of volume and cost.

Now that we have gone through this, we also need to remember the whole “there is a limit of calories I can, or at least should, consume in a day.” At the 3500 calorie mark, that means everything needs to be under 40 calories per gram of protein in order to be a valid source of all protein I consume.

Also, if I do the insane thing of bulk buying gelatin, I can get it for as cheap as 40 percent the cost, bringing it down to 3 cents per gram, which is honestly kind of tempting. It does, however, require purchasing 50 pounds of gelatin, which would serve me for around half a year. It would take us down to under three dollars a day.

According to the USDA, as long as I’m spending under 10 dollars and nine cents a day, I’m doing well.

This has absolutely degraded from the initial goal of figuring out how to feed myself well, for all that it would, without a doubt, be a very easy and effective way to get myself all of the nutrients I need in a day. I do wonder if I would be able to eat enough fruit and vegetable in a day to feel satiated.