It takes about 5 minutes to grill an egg or boil one. If you soak oatmeal overnight, it takes about 10 minutes to fully cook. You can make toast or hashbrowns in about that amount of time as well.
My routine is often start heating some food, then go brush my teeth while it's heating, so no time wasted.
Small condiments can add a lot of variety -- buy a tub of yogurt, cream, cheese, salmon slices, sausage, etc., then just mix and match. You won't have to have the same meal twice in a week.
And if cooking is simply too much of a hassle, why not just buy some apples, oranges, or whatever fruit suits your fancy, and just eat it whole? Pretty sure everyone agrees that fruit is healthy, and they're cheap.
Many people don't really agree that fruit is healthy, though, given how much sugar is in it; I personally avoid it, because I feel like hell when I have it.
Some people don't afford to spend one hour for this, especially in the morning, and some people find 20 minutes of mandatory cleanup exhausting; both physically and mentally.
I love to cook and to eat good food. I cook real, elaborate, dinner at least 3-4 times a week. However, I can't affort to spend one hour every day for breakfast. That being said, Soylent is... awful. For me the alternative is not to eat soylent for breakfast, but to skip breakfast.
Eating time...well, that's a personal thing. =) I do WFH, so I am more relaxed on that, but I tend to scarf food down, so, eh.
It seems funny that people are coming out of the woodwork to tell me alternatives to Soylent like its some kind of toxic waste. I might be horribly wrong, but I'm pretty sure that a soylent shake is going to be nutritionally better for me than an orange in the mornings...
I don't claim to have any answers on this, mind! And I'm certainly not perfect about any of this (said my waistline, peevishly), but actually thinking about this stuff has made me spend more time taking care of myself. And I actively wonder if attempted solve-everythings like Soylent are not a step backwards for us as people, instead of mere consumers. The stuff you don't want to do with regard to going to the store and so on is so very, very trivial, and yet actually engages you with the ephemera of your world in a way that I would suggest meditating on before discarding.
For example:
https://discourse.soylent.com/t/phytonutrients-and-all-the-o...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistant_starch
http://www.webmd.com/diet/guide/phytonutrients-faq#1
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4287321/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26757793
There are all sorts of compounds in natural foods that science hasn't even begun to analyze in depth, but which humans have been eating and coevolved with for millions of years. What's the effect if you take them all out of your diet completely?
Soylent's strategy, understandably, is to put in all the things that we think we already understand and know we need, but what if that's only 10% of what the body needs long term? How do you quantify the risk from unknown unknowns?
Also, the comparison isn't really between Soylent and oranges alone, but Soylent and a normal balanced diet, of which fruit is one component.
Yeah, 5 minutes of cooking and 20 minutes of cleaning.
I don't use a dishwasher, so every bowl, dish, cup, plate, and utensil I use gets handwashed.
Even so, boiling an egg, making a slice of toast, and then having a piece of fruit costs me <3 minutes of cleanup time: rinsing 1 plate, 1 pot, and a spoon.
To be fair, I do this more or less every day, so I have plenty of practice.
The 20 minute number is not arbitrary. I deeply care about optimising time spent cooking and eating, and I have measured this stuff for myself. Sure I can make something that takes two minutes to clean, but I want to eat something more satisfying that requires me to fry something. And cleanup after that, takes 20 minutes (more or less) if you are insane about the cleanup standards like I am.
