Ah, but music is so a part of every culture. Everyone used to sing or play intruments. And the first chance they got to give that up, they bought that gramophone and stopped making music themselves. I wouldn't expect cooking (as opposed to eating) to be any more resilient than that.

Seriously. This is coming from a forum that believes that Soylent is the way of the future.

A programmer told me that after 2 months on Soylent, he "Missed the feeling of eating" and returned to eating regularly.

Evolution took a long time to evolve our DNA. It doesn't change easily.

I tried Joylent (a version of Soylent made in EU) for few weeks and I too "missed the feeling of eating" a little, but I recognized it as just a habit. The same kind of habit browsing HN is, with similar procrastination values.

One of those habits developed over millenia to ensure the survival of the species. Eating is the opposite of procrastination.

Tell that to me when I'm eating to reduce stress caused by work I have to do that I can't make myself to.

Like all habits developed over millenia, just because something worked back then, doesn't mean it makes sense now. We had our cost/benefit evaluation slowly tuned to the environment that rapidly (i.e. over last few thousand of years) ceased to exist. A lot of problems we have with each other can be explained in terms of executing adaptations we had from the time where survival involved hunting, and not filling out forms.

Not saying that normal eating is obsolete - just that arguments from nature tend not to be too strong in general case.

Good point. I meant eating as in consumption (soylent or not) when comparing to HN but I see what you mean.

I can cook moderately well (it's a skill like any other and comes with practice) but I absolutely loathe doing it (with one exception: I like to cook for partners and family).

The daily hassle of sourcing ingredients, cooking them, cleaning up the mess from cooking etc is an absolute chore.

95% of the time I'd be happy to be able to order a nutrious well made meal and have it delivered, here in the UK where I am your options for delivery are largely "pizza/kebabs" and "chinese/indian" and neither is particulary healthy (the salt and fat levels in a lot of the chinese takeaway dishes are insane, like 80% your RDA).

Hey, pizza ain't bad for you.

Having said that, I agree that sourcing ingredients, cleaning up, and all the other upkeep costs turns into a big hassle. Some time ago I voiced the concern on HN and from the answers I learned that generally, like every other task, you can learn to optimize away lots of that startup/teardown costs - but it requires planning and adjusting you daily routine.

Not something I have time to do now, though - changing routines takes a lot of time and effort too.

I just dropped 50lbs in 4 months by eating porridge, salad and cottage cheese and salad and baked fish, no sugar and few carbs.

Pizza was my kryptonite, after a few weeks I stopped craving everything else but Pizza :).

Food can be a part of the culture without everyone being a cook. See Thailand. Street food is very cheap and owning a kitchen is expensive, so most people eat out. Obviously low labor cost is a factor in Thailand, but the opportunity cost of cooking at home in the west is high.

In Bangkok, yes. In other parts not so much.