You see them in the station kiosk, in the supermarket and maybe even in the canteen at work. The bottles of the German Yfood are on the rise in the Netherlands. The Dutch Jimmy Joy (founded in 2014 under the name Joylent) can also be found in supermarkets and can no longer only be ordered online.
Complete food providers offer powders as well as bars and ready-to-drink shakes. For a bottle of Yfood you pay about 4 euros, for Jimmy Joy 3.50.
Sillicon Valley
The meal replacement, also known as ‘complete food’, came over from the United States. In 2014, the company Soylent was one of the first to market meal replacements: a powder, some water and you’re done. Soylent was especially popular among tech boys in Silicon Valley, where pretty much everything revolves around efficiency.
Founder Rob Rhinehart was a software developer himself and was tired of thinking about what he was going to eat. The recipe for his powder was public, so anyone could use it. In the Netherlands, Joylent was the first to do so.
Enormous growth
According to data agency Circana, the ‘meal replacement’ segment has risen enormously in supermarkets. In the first twenty weeks of 2023, the turnover is more than double (3.4 million) of the turnover in the first twenty weeks of last year (1.6 million) and the number of products sold also increases by no less than 61 percent.
“Brands such as Yfood and Jimmy Joy will be available in supermarkets from the end of 2021 and are experiencing significant growth,” a Circana spokesperson said. “In 2022, this will still be at the expense of the more ‘traditional diet meal replacements’ such as Atkins and Weigth Care, while from 2023 the new meal replacements will really get a boost. They will ultimately ensure a significant growth of the total meal replacement segment.”
Online is more important
In the year 2022, the meal replacements achieved a total turnover of 4.9 million euros, with their sales in supermarkets. To indicate that there will be a boost from 2023: from week 21 in 2022 up to and including week 20 of this year, a turnover of 6.7 million euros was achieved.
Joey van Koningsbruggen, founder of Jimmy Joy, says that it is growing by twenty percent annually. “Retail is not a large share of our turnover for us, but we have indeed expanded well in Albert Heijn this year. Mainly because we are now in more stores.”
It is not clear to what extent Yfood relies on supermarket sales. In any case, the company is doing well: Nestlé has acquired almost half of Yfood’s shares this year, reportedly worth 215 million euros.
So there is a market for this kind of product. But are you actually doing your body a favor with a drink of, say, 500 calories? Meal replacements mainly consist of fibers (from corn and/or oats), maltodextrin (a carbohydrate), proteins (for example from milk) and added vitamins and minerals. The shakes have the flavors you also find in the average ice cream parlor: banana, vanilla, chocolate, that works.
Edge underweight
In principle, these are the nutrients that you also get from (healthy) food, only: “It is not always entirely clear which components in a food exactly provide health benefits,” says the Nutrition Center when asked. “That is why it is better to eat foods such as vegetables, fruit, fish and whole grain products, instead of taking a drink with the same nutrients. Otherwise you miss the health effects.”
Filmmaker Matthijs Diederiks put this to the test a few years ago and lived on complete food for a year. He made the movie there 12 Liquid Months about. Long story short: it takes some getting used to, but soon he feels better than before. He can focus better (Diederiks has ADHD) and is full of energy. (Also not entirely unimportant: he doesn’t drink alcohol for a year.) The only downside is that he’s losing some muscle mass and is on the verge of being underweight.
Diederiks concludes in the film: “The greatest happiness is that you get closer to yourself”, but in an interview he later says: “I believe that shakes cannot replace food. You deprive yourself too much.”
Do you think food is stupid?
Nutrition scientist Guido Camps, affiliated with Wageningen University, is not a fan of liquid meal replacements. “The main question is: why do you drink this? Because you think food is stupid and want to get calories in as efficiently as possible? Then I think you should look for other alternatives such as a snack, a piece of fruit or something similar. The shakes claim that you will get everything you need, but not every meal has to be perfectly balanced, it’s about your total diet in the end.”
Chewing is very important. “It’s a signal to the brain that you’re busy eating, it leads to satiety,” says Camps. “It’s good for your saliva, your teeth and for jaw development in children.”
Camps emphasizes that there are still things that are unknown about nutrition and nutrients. “We don’t know what we don’t know either.” What is certain: nutrition is more than the sum of nutrients. So throwing all nutrients together as separate parts in a powder does not work.
Rice and beans
“Look at fruit smoothies, for example. That looks the same as fruit, only thrown into the blender. But because you destroy the matrix of the food, the digestion also changes. In that sense, it is better to just eat whole food.”
How often should you drink such a meal replacement? “Not as far as I’m concerned. I don’t understand the added value of this, you just have to eat a varied diet.” According to Camps, that really doesn’t have to mean that you cook a star meal every night. “But something simple with rice and beans, for example, already provides a lot of your required nutrients; you’re not going to tell me that’s unattainable. And it’s even cheaper than these drinks too.”
2023-07-21 05:16:27
#eating #drinking #dont #understand #added
