Complete meals are the lifehacker way of eating. They, from brands like Queal, Soylent, Ample, are meals that are nutritionally complete and take almost no effort to make. They've become the most popular meal replacements for everyone who's ever not had the time to make a proper meal.
The meals distinguish themselves from other fast meal by taking a lifehack approach. They start with the following question: Can we make meals both complete and very easy to use? Is it possible to both keep you productive and energized? Yes they can.
First, let's take a look at what's in these complete meals.
Hacking away sugar
Most easy meals are pumped full of sugar. Sugar gives you an immediate boost, but before you know it you're craving for some more. Just ask yourself how you felt after eating a donut.
With complete meals, you get a mix of fast and slow carbohydrates. Most of these come from oats, just like healthy morning cereals. Most complete meals are therefore low in sugar and give energy over a long period of time.
Hacking away salt
Sodium is one of the top contenders for public health criminal number one. It's perfect for enhancing flavors, but detrimental in the quantities it's pumped into most foods. Just check the label of any micro-wave foods.
A shake (or bar) from complete foods only contains the amount of salt that is essential for your body to thrive. Because of the amazing flavors, no extra salt is needed to make them taste good.
Hacking away fat
Saturated fats can induce insulin resistance. And many of the fast meals eaten are full of saturated fats. And why not, they taste really well. But it's not healthy and our body would very well survive without this type of fat.
Vegetable oils and soy form the basis of the fats for complete foods. They contain almost no saturated fats and are full of omega 3 and 6 lipids. Just like your body requested.
Hacking weight loss
Losing weight is something about everyone wants to achieve at one or more points in their lives. We need to eat enough, but not too much. At the moment of writing more than 65% of Americans are obese.
The hack with complete food is that you can measure exactly what you're eating. The meals are balanced and you decide how much you want to drink or eat. And easily track the amount you've eaten on paper or in one of the health apps (e.g. MyFitnessPal).
Hack weight gain
A smaller percentage of people want (or need) to gain weight. They have trouble eating breakfast, eat too little and miss vitamins and minerals in their diet, or want to gain muscle.
Complete meals make it easy to have a meal at your convenience. Of course the shakes are filling, but also very easy to make and drink when you want or need to. You can even drink them as a fourth meal to supplement your normal calories.
Next to food, complete meals are also a great way to hack your time, convenience and shopping.
Hack your time
Think back to last week and count the hours you were busy buying, preparing, eating, cleaning, finger-licking, etc. Food can take up many hours in your week. Hours that you may not have spare. Or hours that you better could use doing something meaningful.
Imagine just taking one minute to prepare a shake, or grabbing one right from the fridge. That is the promise of complete meals. Make in minutes, drink at your convenience. And of course, no more dishes and less boring grocery trips.
You can even hack your shopping habits. With a subscription, you can save on those trips to the grocery store and have quality food delivered to your doorstep every month (or whenever you want).
Hack food waste
We throw between 30 and 40 of food away. And that is not even counting the amount of food we throw away before it reaches our plate. Crooked cucumbers, not perfect-red tomatoes, milk past the due date. All of these and more end up as waste and do nothing more than have a small change of ending up as biofuel.
There is virtually no waste in the complete food journey. The products are made from oats, soy, red beets, and whey protein (which was a waste product of the cheese making process). None of the oats are thrown away because they didn't have the right shape. And with a BBD of 12 months, you are not likely to throw the food away yourself too.
And that is not even speaking of the environmental impact. No animals are involved, production of the ingredients is done in a sustainable way, and you have virtually no packaging (which you can recycle). What more could you wish for!
Complete foods are truly a lifehack worth trying out. It will make you healthier, save you time, and have a positive impact on the world.
Try it out yourself with a Taste Tester!