The cheapest defensible design is not a literal Soylent clone. It is a locally produced, fully precooked maize–soya meal, fortified with a professionally manufactured micronutrient premix — the same architecture the CSIR reached decades ago, priced for an anti-poverty product.
This estate has a long thread on maize-porridge nutrition — from the apartheid-era CSIR National Nutrition Research Institute's PVM (protein–vitamin–mineral maize–soya food) and the ProNutro lineage, through today's FutureLife, to the UNICEF Super Cereal relief foods. This page turns that into three concrete designs — and is honest that the right move for babies is to separate "infant formula" from "baby porridge" entirely, and to hand real formula to a licensed manufacturer rather than publish a recipe.
Target group: adults and children from three years. Pilot formulation per 100 kg — whole commodities, no protein isolates, one professionally made premix:
| Ingredient | kg | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Fully precooked / extruded whole maize flour | 67.63 | Carbohydrate, texture, local staple |
| Dehulled, heat-treated full-fat soya flour | 24.00 | Protein, fat and lysine |
| Sugar | 4.00 | Palatability — far less than most breakfast cereals |
| Canola / sunflower oil blend | 2.00 | Energy and essential fats |
| Dicalcium or tricalcium phosphate | 1.20 | Calcium and phosphorus |
| Potassium chloride | 0.27 | Potassium |
| Custom vitamin / mineral premix | 0.20* | Micronutrients |
| Iodised salt | 0.25 | Taste and sodium |
| Mild malt / vanilla flavour | 0.30 | Familiar cereal flavour |
| Soya lecithin | 0.15 | Mixing and mouthfeel |
| Total | 100.00 |
*The 0.20% is a development starting point. The premix supplier must calculate the final inclusion from raw-material assays, processing losses and the SA nutrient targets. It must never be hand-mixed from tablets.
| Per 100 g dry | Expected |
|---|---|
| Energy | 380–395 kcal |
| Protein | 14.5–16 g |
| Fat | 9–10 g |
| Dietary fibre | 6–8 g |
| Added sugar | 4 g |
A 125 g meal should provide about 480 kcal, 18–20 g protein and 11–13 g fat, mixed with roughly 250–300 ml water (final ratio set by viscosity and consumer testing). The premix targets about 30% of the SA adult / 4+ nutrient reference values per 100 g — so someone eating ~300–350 g across the day approaches the daily target without receiving three excessive "100% NRV" doses.
| Stage | Target |
|---|---|
| Raw ingredients | ~R11–R14/kg |
| Processed & packed ex-factory | ~R18–R24/kg |
| Large-volume public / NGO procurement | R25–R30/kg |
| 125 g meal | ~R3.10–R3.75 |
Targets requiring supplier quotations, not firm costs. For comparison: FutureLife ≈ R80 / 750 g; plain instant maize porridge ≈ R22–R30/kg.
Full family-meal specification (Markdown) →
This is a complementary food for children aged 6–59 months — not infant formula and not a breast-milk replacement. It uses the current UNICEF Super Cereal Plus architecture:
| Ingredient | % |
|---|---|
| Extruded maize | 54.81 |
| Dehulled, heat-treated soya | 23.49 |
| Skim milk powder | 8.00 |
| Sugar | 9.00 |
| Refined vegetable oil | 3.00 |
| Infant / child vitamin–mineral premix | 0.20 |
| Dicalcium phosphate | 1.23 |
| Potassium chloride | 0.27 |
| Total | 100.00 |
UNICEF finished-product targets: at least 400 kcal, 16 g protein and 9 g fat per 100 g.
Full 6–59-month complementary-food specification (Markdown) →
We deliberately do not publish an exact ingredient recipe that someone might manufacture or feed experimentally. A South African study found home-prepared replacement milks failed to meet all infant micronutrient and essential-fat requirements — and powdered formula is not sterile. This should be a manufacturing specification issued to an established infant-formula contract manufacturer.
| Per 100 kcal | Proposed target | Codex permitted range |
|---|---|---|
| Protein, cow-milk based | 2.1 g | 1.8–3.0 g |
| Fat | 5.2 g | 4.4–6.0 g |
| Available carbohydrate | 11.2 g | 9–14 g |
| Linoleic acid | Optimised by oil assay | Minimum 300 mg |
| Alpha-linolenic acid | Optimised by oil assay | Minimum 50 mg |
| LA:ALA ratio | 8–12:1 | 5–15:1 |
Target prepared energy ≈ 67 kcal/100 ml — roughly a powder of 500–510 kcal, 10.5 g protein, 26 g fat, 57 g carbohydrate per 100 g, reconstituted at ~13.2 g powder per 100 ml (exact scoop/dilution set by bulk-density and osmolality testing). The full vitamin, mineral, choline, inositol, carnitine and amino-acid specification must meet the complete Codex table — not merely the macronutrients above.
Full 0–6-month manufacturing specification (Markdown) →
A first design pass (two AI formulator threads, each checked by an independent dietitian-reviewer thread) produced a more elaborate, more expensive product — and the review is why the design above is deliberately plainer. Keeping the rejected path visible is the point:
| First pass proposed | Why it was rejected |
|---|---|
| Soy protein isolate/concentrate in the family meal | Isolates are the expensive path. Whole heat-treated soya hits the same amino-acid complementation for mass-feeding cost. Isolate belongs in formula, not a relief ration. |
| A "last-resort" maize/soya infant-formula variant | R991 permits only soya isolate (not soya flour) for infant formula, at a higher protein minimum; a cheap plant formula as default is exactly what the home-replacement-milk evidence warns against. Formula was split out into a contract-manufactured spec instead. |
| Fortifying every product to ~33% adult NRV per serving | Applied to a child audience taking 2–3 servings, this pushes vitamin A and iron toward paediatric upper limits. Retargeted to ~30% per 100 g on a child-inclusive basis. |
| Empty ingredient/micronutrient tables; "meal replacement" at ~200 kcal | Unverifiable and overstated. A water-made serving is a supplementary food; honest positioning and real masses that sum to 100 replaced the marketing frame. |
| Product | Base | Design lesson |
|---|---|---|
| DIY Soylent (People Chow, Schmoylent) | Maize/oats + protein isolate + dosed supplements | Nutritionally instructive, but isolates and hand-dosed vitamins are too costly and risky for mass feeding. |
| ProNutro | ≈67% wholegrain maize, 13% soya, 9% soya isolate | The proven local maize–soya template. |
| FutureLife Smart food | Whole maize + whole soya + fat powder + soya isolate + rice flour + large premix | 18 g protein & 10.9 g fat / 100 g — but 15.8 g sugar and imported palm-based fat. We cut sugar to 4 g and use local canola/sunflower oil. |
| UNICEF Super Cereal (+) | Heat-treated maize & soya + vitamins/minerals (+ milk) | The closest thing to an anti-poverty product — our template for both the family meal and the baby porridge. |