system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Could someone live off a diet of pills containing the nutrients we need to live? Or does food have something "more" that we need to survive?
gpt
If we were sure we had all the nutrients (and enough calories to use for energy) then we could live off that. It would be too much to be compressed into pills probably, but some companies do sell powders and shakes that you're supposed to be able to live off of (for example soylent.com). The real question is whether food is providing some nutrients that we haven't discovered yet, that might be missing from this artificial diet.