Can all the nutrients needed be squeezed into a pill?

Question

Like one pill for a day. It contains ALL the carbohydrate, protein, fat, fiber, vitamins and the minerals. Only water is not in there.(drink the pill with water and drink more).

This thing might be useful for:

1) People who are on diet.(to restrict their food consumption )
2) Astronauts.(easy to store and eat)
3) People who are planning to go for a dangerous places.(hikers,snowy mountain hikers,crossing the desert,going into the mariana tench...etc)
4)parents who want their children to eat healthly without having to taste a single thing.
5)sick people...

Answer 1

Sure and just like One a Day Vitamin pills they will end up at the bottom of your septic tank.

The human body is designed to break down food to process it and get its nutrients from it; not pills. Your body is lucky to get half the amount of nutrients delivered in pill form than in pill form; this is why astronauts don't eat just pills, but real meals. It is more expensive to haul the meals to orbit and the water to re-hydrate them is even more expensive, but that is the best way to feed them.

Once we thought we could get all we need down to a few pills and multivitamins still try to do that, but they don't do it that well.

Sick people are most often fed a glucose solution in an IV bag; glucose is sugar and it is the basic nutrient used to power cellular action. Potassium, iron, copper, vitamins and other nutrients are needed but not as much. Normally, only very sick people are fed this way all other have to eat something.

The one a day fill all needs pill would be pretty big and may not even be small enough to make into one pill, but you can shrink most of a meal down to one single pill. You wouldn't have the fiber because you wouldn't have as much waste to get rid of. Fiber is non-nutrient food that just passes through the system to push the food and other waste through it. We don't need a lot of fat, minerals and vitamins and we can cut down the needed carbs by using sugar so the protein will be the largest component of the pill (you would swallow it with sugared water). However, the theory doesn't work in practice and you can't support a human or any animal that way.

The problem is that the villa in the small intestine need to have the food rubbed up against them, fiber and bulk insures this happens. If you only take a pill and sugar water then the pills will pass right through the system hardly broken down at all. This is why One A Day pills are such poor vitamins; they are too tiny and just pass right through. If the pill is broken down totally in the stomach then it will pass through the intestine in a solution form and it won’t pass to quickly; you need the bulk of fiber to do that. To take enough fiber to pass the food would require you to eat something like food; at least a candy bar sized meal.

It is possible to make one candy bar sized super bar hold most of what you need for one meal and that is the bare minimum that your body can properly process and still get some nutrient value out of it. These power bars do exist and are sold in grocery and health stores. They aren’t perfect, but they are better than pills, but you need a healthy and strong stomach to digest them. Digesting food itself is much easier, especially bland hospital food.

Answer 2

No.

Assume you need 2000 Calories per day. Fats provide ~ 9 Cal per gram. Proteins and carbohydrates (includes sugars and starches) provide ~ 4 Cal. per gram. FDA recommends no more than 65 g of fat/day, which equals 585 Cal. That leaves 2000 - 585 = 1415 Cal from protein + carb. 1415 Cal equals ~ 354 g protein + carb.

So, an average daily diet should contain 65 g fat + 354 g protein + carb, = 419 g total. Note this doesn't include any dietary fiber (which would increase the weight substantially) or any vitamins, minerals, etc. (which probably wouldn't add much).

419 g equals nearly 1 pound. So this hypothetical pill would weight almost a pound. Imagine a 15 oz. steak, or almost one fifth of a 5-pound bag of sugar. That's how big such a pill would be.

And no, you could not somehow compress 419 g into something small enough to swallow.

By the way, don't "swallow" the stuff Dan S wrote. Food doesn't have to rub up against the villi in the intestine to be absorbed, and pills don't pass straight through because they're too small!

Food is digested down to its molecular parts (e.g. protein to amino acids, starches to simple sugars), and these are absorbed into the villi. Pills disintegrate in your digestive tract, and their components can be absorbed in the same way. (There *are* reasons that vitamins in pills may not be absorbed effeciently, but it's not because the pill doesn't break down.)

Answer 3

I doubt it could all be put into one pill. Maybe a few pills to take throughout the day.... like the ones Shaklee has.