In the fast-paced workplace life, migrant workers face the dilemma of three meals, although takeaway is convenient but full of hidden dangers, and traditional diets are time-consuming and labor-intensive. As a result, “human feed” came into being, and this type of meal replacement product has attracted attention for its rapid nutritional supplementation and time-saving characteristics. However, behind this phenomenon of “quitting eating”, it is not only the compromise of young people on the pressure of life, but also the deep thinking about health, quality of life and food culture. This article will delve into the reasons for the rise of “human feed”, controversies, and the dilemma of migrant workers, revealing the social significance behind this phenomenon.
In 2025, a self-deprecating sentence will become popular on social media: “The last desire of contemporary young people to disappear is appetite.” “When the appetite, which is regarded as the epitome of the enthusiasm for life, gradually fades, the stress and emotional problems of young people become particularly prominent.
The takeaway war has started round after round, but the migrant workers are trapped in the dilemma of three meals, using “human feed” to evolve their appetite.
In an era where appetite is dying out, eating no longer seems to be a necessity for survival, but a superfluous feeling that was first evolved in the workplace jungle. But this has also become a business opportunity for enterprises, and the “time poor” in the office building is the most accurate audience of “human feed”.
Appetite under workplace pressure is cut off
When Wang Mo’s teeth bit through the aluminum foil packaging, the elevator of the office building was stuck on the 17th floor. The chia seeds in the meal replacement bar make a faint popping sound between the teeth, mixed with the dry taste of soy protein isolate.
At this time, a work group notification popped up on the mobile phone screen, and three minutes ago, the team leader Aite asked the morning meeting to synchronize the PPT that had been changed by staying up late last night, and at this moment the PPT was still lying in the depths of the D drive of his computer, like a piece of beef that had been forgotten in the freezer layer and had no time to thaw.
This is the 15th time he has eaten an energy bar this month. As an operation specialist of a major Internet company, since the month before 618, Wang Mo’s breakfast time has been compressed into three minutes in the elevator.
The packaging bag of the energy bar Wang Mo chose was printed with the words “Scientific Proportion of 29 Nutrients”, which glowed with a silver-gray industrial luster in the morning light. This is the brand he chose after carefully studying the ingredient list in his first month of employment: it contains 15.6 grams of protein and 3.2 grams of dietary fiber per 100 grams, which is about the same energy as two tea eggs and half a corn, but the consumption time can be shortened to one-twentieth.
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“I used to think that breakfast should maintain a sense of ritual, exquisite and healthy, but now I only think it is just necessary for survival.” Wang Mo crumpled the empty packaging bag into a ball and stuffed it into his trouser pocket, and the moment the elevator door opened, his breakfast time was over, and he was about to devote himself to the morning meeting after taking a sip of water at his desk.
Compared with Wang Mo’s sacrifice for breakfast under work pressure, Shen Yujie’s situation is somewhat different.
Contemporary migrant workers face the problem of three meals
After graduating from university, Shen Yujie’s parents repeatedly persuaded her to return to her hometown of Wuhan to take the public examination and return to her familiar environment and family, but Shen Yujie always insisted on staying in Beijing to accumulate certain work experience before considering returning to her hometown. Other difficulties in the north drift can be overcome one by one, but eating is really a big problem.
On the one hand, Shen Yujie usually works long hours, Shen Yujie can’t buy vegetables and cook in time every day, and she completely gave up the idea of cooking by herself after seeing the dangers of eating leftovers in the posts of many bloggers. On the other hand, takeaway does not dare to eat more, whether it is the poor environment of the takeaway store or the “additional” news of the delivery person, it always makes Shen Yujie tremble when eating takeaway.
In addition, Shen Yujie has never been very enthusiastic about eating, so meal replacement products that can maintain the functioning of the body are a divine weapon for her.
“I saw some people say that domestic pets have eaten cat food and dog food for a lifetime, which is trouble-free and healthy, so why can’t people eat human food?” Shen Yujie believes that spending too much time on cooking and eating is a waste.
It is precisely because some people have no time to eat and some people are too lazy to spend time eating that “human feed” is becoming more and more popularIt is different from diet meal replacement products and compressed biscuits purely for satiety, and “human feed” often focuses a lot on the publicity of efficacy, among which nutrition is almost the biggest selling point.
If rice sells
Taking the “Ruofan”, which is a popular brand on the market, Zinc Scale saw the brand’s profile from the homepage of its official website and wrote: “We are a catering service company, using video technology to create a new generation of staple food, reconstruct nutritious meals, and reduce the burden on the body.” ”
From the perspective of the product line, Ruofan is divided into liquid version, powder version and solid version, one of which claims to contain 21 kinds of core nutrition full meal, customized for mental workers. In addition, in the “Ruofan Manual” column, Ruofan officially replied to the question of “how fitness enthusiasts eat Ruofan”, mentioning that Ruofan is a flexible and customizable fitness meal, in addition to accurately supplementing protein, it can also avoid various uncertain nutrients brought by traditional foods.
However, some users on Xiaohongshu mentioned that after reading Ruofan’s ingredient list, the fitness coach said that most of the products contained in the product were vegetable protein, the fat content was too high and it was still a highly processed product, which was not suitable for long-term consumption.
Some users also mentioned that this kind of gelatinized product is not suitable for long-term consumption at all, let alone as “human feed”, even if it contains nutrients, it will cause blood sugar fluctuations, which is not good for the body. A study by the University of Oxford also showed that meal replacement can indeed reduce body fat, visceral fat and liver fat, but the fat in the heart muscle has increased.
Even if there are endless doubts, Ruofan did rely on the “quitting food” demand of young people to gain sales.In the Ruofan Douyin flagship store, 27,000 copies of the youth version of the original basic nutritional meal plus granule pack package were sold; in the Tmall flagship store, the Ruofan liquid version of the meal replacement drink sold better, with nearly 10,000 orders sold.
If there is an advertising slogan written on the official website of Ruofan, “Your next meal, why bother with rice”, it sounds like no problem at first glance, but is the dilemma of three meals for migrant workers really only possible to solve by “quitting eating”?
The dilemma of three meals for migrant workers around the world
In fact, Ruofan is not the originator of “human feed”.
In 2013, American programmer Rob Rhinehart was facing entrepreneurial difficulties, and in order to save time on meals as much as possible, he delved into nutrition, sorted out 35 key substances needed for human survival, and produced the first generation of “human feed”. Later, RobRhinehart published the recipe on social media, and the product became an instant hit, evolving into the world-famous meal replacement brand Soylent within a year.
American version of “human feed” Soylent
Soon after, Shao Wei, who is also a programmer, re-enacted this entrepreneurial story in China and incubated the Ruofan brand.
The commercialization of meal replacements has been steadily advancing, but the concept of “human feed” is still somewhat different.Prior to this, meal replacements were either used to reduce fat or supplement certain nutrients, but “human feed” focused more on replacing meals with basic nutrients, saving time and effort.
Behind the phenomenon is not only the actual needs of contemporary professionals in the fast-paced life, but also the real dilemma of time urgency.
Some migrant workers are taking the initiative to get out of the predicament, and there are 53,770 members in the Douban “Today is also a good day to eat” group, some of whom agree to eat at least one “meal with their tongues” a week, and some actively share the moment of biting into freshly baked bread and tasting the surprise of tasting authentic curry…… No matter how busy the day is, you can also have a hearty meal.
When the urban subway turnstile swallows the body wrapped in a suit, and the elevator numbers in the office building jump faster than the heartbeat, the matter of eating has long since faded away from the fireworks and has been reduced to a sophisticated efficiency calculation. From the stomach to the intestines, the human digestive system is alienated into an assembly line for nutritional transformation, and those meal replacement products that claim to be “precise energy supply” are like mass-produced industrial parts, embedded in the survival game of contemporary migrant workers against time.
Source: Joint research industry consulting
The act of chewing is compressed into the instinct of swallowing, the pleasure of the taste buds is dismantled into numbers on the nutrition facts table, and food is no longer the comfort of life, but a strategic material to combat involution.
In this never-ending war for efficiency, we sacrifice the table to time with our own hands, feeding a seemingly energetic but actually empty shell with “human feed”.
The German philosopher Feuerbach once said: “Man is what he eats.” “When a generation begins to actively castrate their appetite, what we lose may not only be taste, but also the most basic perception of life. Mastering your appetite and mastering your own table is also a process of regaining the initiative in life.
