The quest for people chow

Posted on by

Do you think pets get truly bored with their food? I mean, cats and dogs can, literally, eat nothing but whatever comes out of a 40# of dry mix and seemingly be okay with it. Why can’t that be done for people? You know…Purina People Chow, or some sort of equivalent.

Futurama, of course, addresses the issue with ‘bachelor chow’, as seen here. Technically, as best I can tell, there is no such thing as People Chow but there is a very, very close approximation – MPF. But good luck getting ahold of that. It turns out that Purina does (or did), in fact, make a Primate Chow. Humans are primates, right? Sooooo…couldn’t a fella just have a couple cups of primate chow in the morning, another for lunch and another at night? Maybe not according to the guy who tried it….and vlogged it.

There is a certain appeal to the notion of simply scooping out a nutritionally satisfactory and somewhat palatable food product into a bowl and not having to screw with cooking, dishes, cleanup, and groceries. And if you can do it cheaply, all the better. But…what if you have the ability to cook and you have access to…a freeze dryer?

You get freeze dried beef bourguignon as your People Chow.

I actually like beef bourguignon quite a bit if it’s done properly and you cut back on the carrots. But what fascinates me most about this tongue-in-cheek video is that darn Harvest Right freeze dryer. I saw one up at the local feed store a few months back and decided at the time that it just didnt make financial sense since a) I already had a pretty large stock of freeze dried food in storage and therefore didn’t really have a genuine need and b) I’m a cheapskate. But….Mountain House doesn’t offer a version of beef bourguignon, or a lot of other foods I like, and it would be kinda cool to be able to freeze dry stuff that I prefer. But, dang, for the price of that unit I could buy, literally, a pallet of freeze drieds all packaged and ready to go. But….the unit would let me do more food than that initial amount. What i really need is to find four or five local LMI who’d be willing to pony up the $$$ and we could do it as a group sort of thing and eventually one person would buy out everyone else. (Or, alternatively, when everyone has made as much as they ever plan on needing, sell the thing and divide the proceeds among the original investors.)

I’ve communicated with several people who have uses this thing and almost all of them complain about the oil system that is used. There is an oil-free version but its about $1500 extra, which is darn near and extra 30-50% on top of the several thousand price tag the thing normally comes at.

I suppose until I take leave of my senses long enough to decide to purchase a freeze dryer, the closest thing to people chow is going to be those lifeboat ration bars which seem to meet pretty much most of the basic requirements – somewhat nutritional, calorie dense, long shelf life, no prep, no mess.

But, man, freeze dried General Tso’s would be totally awesome.

21 thoughts on “The quest for people chow”

  2. Oil free usually means some plastic sealing rings on the piston or scroll. Plastic running against another plastic surface, or a metal cylinder wall, isn’t good for longevity. Can almost guarantee someone has a food grade oil that can be swapped out for whatever that unit uses.
    And if it’s a vacuum compressor, the oil vapors are going away from the food you’re sealing, not being sucked through the chamber with the food. Yes, there’s a chance that you’ll have a bit of backflow if the system stops and you have shitty check valves. But the system is a vacuum cleaner, not a leaf blower.
    Just my experience, and I’ve been told it’s wrong before.

  3. FAMEAL a 60% corn or wheat, 30% beans or lentils and 10% cooking oil ground together. Was served as thin grey gruel to starving people while I was in Africa.

    Needed constant stirring or would clump and burn in the pot. With less water and a little more care in cooking made a nice bean bread, adding sugar or honey made nice muffins and so on. Tastes “Foody” in it’s basic slop.

    Adding some vitamins and it would keep you healthy for decades.

    I’ve eaten it for months overseas. Food fatigue is a Western thing cured by HUNGER.

  4. I own a Harvest Right unit. I bought it for $500.00 on Craigslist. These come up on that site once in a blue moon, so when this one came up, at that price, within two hours of the rancho, I jumped on it. Mine uses the oil-filled vacuum pump. It uses mineral oil. Yeah, it’s an added chore to swap out the oil every couple of uses, but I never find oil residue in the vacuum chamber of the Harvest Right. You gotta change out the oil because it picks up A LOT of water during the freeze drying process. My usual practice is, every use, to wait until the day after, until the water has settled to the bottom of the oil sump, and drain off oil until it runs clean. After two or three uses, the oil will start looking milky. At that point, I change out the oil entirely. Being frugal,… not cheap,… I pour the old oil into a clear container, cap it, and let it sit. After some time, the water in the oil will again separate and settle to the bottom. I then pour the oil through a coffee filter into another container, where it can be used again.

    If you don’t swap out the oil in the pump, you’ll rust the thing out…

    I’ve never been a big fan of “oil-free.” That usually translates into “really noisy” and “short-lived…”

    The pump noise issue; if you run the unit in your kitchen, yeah, the noise will be annoying. Put it in the basement or the garage, and you won’t even notice it. The pump noise is actually a good indicator that the drying job is done. The Harvest right beeps when it’s done, but it can barely be heard over the compressor noise of the unit. When the pump stops, the job’s done…

  5. Son purchased a top of the line Harvest Right, NO CUSTOMER SERVICE.
    They insisted we down load it’s info to better determine the problem.
    Found out it was an earlier unit ( built several years ago). More lies and stroke,
    Thank God, used American Express. A COMPLETE PIECE OF JUNK.

    • I haven’t had any issues at all with mine, so far. I have heard of issues with the seals going out on the vacuum pumps, but then again, the vacuum pump is the lowest tier, quality-wise, of its manufacturer. Most folks who have these things buy an extra set or two of seals.
      The previous owner of mine had the electrical connection break for the heaters in the shelves. The connector for this is a very basic but very solid connector. One of the wires broke off one of the pins on the connector; a five minute job to fix if you have a solder iron…

  6. I take it you’ve never tried Oreos or Chips Ahoy?

    I’m also pretty sure I’ve survived for goodly stretches of time on naught but Diet Coke, Red Vines, and Reese’s Pieces.

  7. How about Purina Monkey Chow? It is made for primates and I think I qualify.

    The trouble with home made beef bourguignon, chile, beef stew or what ever is the fats that won’t age well. The Monkey Chow has “porcine animal fat preserved with BHA”.

    Monkey Chow seems made to order.

    Disclaimer: I have never tried it.

  8. When The New Regime in D.C. gets through destroying the economy and jailing Republicans we’ll all be eating “people chow,” aka Nutraloaf.

      • RE:
        “Bob…
        Don’t you mean Soylent Green?”

        Nope. Nutraloaf is the stuff prisons and jails use for prisoners confined to solitary as “additional coercion”, aka, “not quite punishment.” It meets all nutritional and dietary requirements but has absolutely no flavor whatsoever. None. Zero. Nada. And, as a side benefit, it’s made to minimize any positive “mouth feel.” I tried some once just to see what the Lucky Few were getting. You can’t quite drink it, but it’s soft enough to simply “bite and swallow.”

        Absolutely horrid stuff, which is precisely what it’s supposed to be.

  9. My version of people chow is combining the contents of a 2.6 ounce mylar meat envelope (i.e. tuna – pulled pork) with about 1/2 a cup of oatmeal. Make the oatmeal first (I use water), then stir in contents of envelope and mix. Many different flavors to choose from without requiring any additional spices. Nothing requires refrigeration and takes about 5 minutes to prepare to eat.

    • Forgot to add above – I’ve never tried this, but I bet if the envelope could be propped up and left in the sun, you could probably heat and eat in the same container. I keep some of the mylar containers after consuming, folding and leaving in trucker’s wallet. A good way to carry a ‘glass’ of cold water when waiting in line – any water cooler will do.

  10. I’ve looked into freeze drying units with a friend… In addition to the cost, there are challenges to meet for packaging, O2 levels, etc, to make sure your items will survive for a long time.
    In the end we decided that the uncertainty and shorter shelf life wasn’t worth it – and as you say, they are expensive enough that they are tough to afford anyway…

  12. CZ, I never comment but I will today: This does actually exist and you can buy it.

    Lookup Soylent. (Yes, it’s really called that.)

    Bay Area Bro’s have been living off of Soylent exclusively for several years now.

    Shelflife is another story though.

  14. People Chow (ingredients), Church meal packing for Int’l mission work.

    The ‘meals’ we’ve packed at church were for a bean soup that consisted of rice, beans, freeze dried soy protein, freeze dried veggies, seasoning and vitamin/mineral powder. What’s missing to make this meal nutritionally complete and increase the calories is fat.

Comments are closed.