It's a ritual as old as civilization: hunt and gather, cook, masticate, repeat. Like everything else, though, the primal act of eating real food is under siege. Celebrity cyborgs dismiss traditional meals as a wasteful indulgence, and dream of a dystopian diet that's as grim as it is efficient. Legions of likeminded techies—toiling away at startups from Mumbai to Silicon Beach—can't wait for the day when autonomous vehicles drive us down the road to gastronomic ruin. These are the people who would gladly spend all their waking hours coding or chasing VC checks instead of visiting a produce market or whipping up a tomato ragù.
To appease the slow food hater demo, dozens of calorie-dense products promising maximum nutrition with minimal effort have flooded the marketplace. Blendrunner, a clearinghouse for this emerging cottage industry, lists 47 different Soylent clones that target customers ranging from pot smokers (Stoner Shake) to chemists (Joule Fuel) to Hasidic Jews (Schmilk), each one with a convenient carb/protein/fat pie chart. For those who prefer the lifehack approach, DIY Soylent offers hundreds of free open source recipes like Superfood For Fat Guy In His 30s and Trader Joe's Soy + Whey. Just plug in your own bio/lifestyle data points, and an algorithm will adjust the formulas accordingly.
It may sound easy on a Reddit forum, but making powdered meals from scratch is a tough nut. In fact, just clearing the water-solubility hurdle and minimizing the flatulence-factor (tip: easy on the sulfur) is a time-consuming process. Which is precisely what the sci-fi trope of nutrients-on-demand is not supposed to be. That's why most bootstrap office drones purchase their instant kilocalories on Amazon. But what if you want a healthy Soylent that's more Whole Foods than faux foods? Say no more.
Ambronite markets itself as "the world's first Real Food Drinkable Supermeal." Like all drinkable supermeals, Ambro R&D regularly tweaks its formula. The company just launched a new recipe that features several improvements. In addition to being easier to mix and yielding a smoother texture, the new stuff is supposed to taste better. Bold statement. Is Ambro v5 the answer to Elon Musk's prayers, or just more PR malarkey?
Ambronite is god-awful expensive. Five packets (five meals) will set you back $59. A 10-packet box is a bit cheaper per ounce: $99. To put those numbers in perspective, consider that seven bags of Soylent (28 meals) are only $54. Huel, another player in the powdered supermeal category, has a similar price-point: $55.09 for two bags (28 meals). Some brands charge more, some less. But they're all roughly in the same range: about two bucks for a single 500 kcal serving. Why is Ambronite more than four times the cost of the competition? To start with, this stuff is made in Finland. The average hourly wage for industrial workers there is €14 an hour ($15.50). Throw in fancy organic ingredients, pretty packaging, marketing, shipping, a lot of unbridled greed, and presto: 59 bucks.
In 2014, Finnish sailor Ari Huusela completed a trans-Atlantic solo boat race. His diet during that arduous competition consisted partly of Ambronite. Here's what Mr. Huusela told the International Business Times about the powdered meal-in-a-bottle invented in his native land: "Ambronite is rich in energy, healthy and feels good. As nutrition it works well." Just as I cannot block that glowing endurance athlete endorsement from my memory, neither can I un-see the heroic video of Ari lustily chugging a bottle of Ambro at sea. Now that's product placement: Man pitted against the elements in a life-and-death struggle, fueled only by the sheer will to survive, and the occasional Ambronite shake. Must not allow Finnish Aquaman to cloud my judgement!
The Ambronite hook is that it's made of real food that's been pulverized into a fine dust. Unlike other sludge shakes on the market, there are no ultra-processed supplements in this stuff to sully the ingredient list. Those ingredients, limited to just 20 (some organic and "wild grown"), tread the fine line between health food store and Chez Panisse menu.
There is nettle leaf, sea buckthorn, bilberries and black currants. Every line item sounds like something healthy. There's no artificial anything. That deep green hue, which conjures images of fern-covered Nordic forests, comes not from Green Dye No. 1, but instead a generous portion of spinach, chlorella and spirulina. The two main ingredients are oats and almonds. Ambro is also vegan, non-GMO, and contains no additives or preservatives.
The nutrient pie chart is pretty standard: carbohydrates (40 percent), fat (36 percent), protein (24 percent). One bag is 500 calories and offers 30 grams of protein. Based on the USDA's recommended 2,000 calorie per diem, four Ambronite bags is a daily allowance. All of the nutrient metadata can be found on Ambronite's website.