How did they manage to convince people to give up on actual food?

The people are convinced by "don't waste your time preparing the table, eating and washing dishes." Also, big bosses supported this idea because lunch breaks are down to 5 minutes only.

Why wouldn't they just buy pre-made food then... or eat at a restaurant... or order take-out... or get a robot to do all the washing up for then? It's difficult trying to think of how to market these comswafs because it seems like something nobody would ever buy.

@AngelPray 'seems like something nobody would ever buy' - I disagree with this bit - people already take things like huel, which isn't too far off the idea put forward by the OP. I would however say that the idea of good old traditional food won't go away completely (at least not immediately), although a large number of people would probably be quite happy to take these pills as a complete replacement for food.

@Mithrandir24601 Huel and the similar soylent are designed to replace occasional meals. Not replace all eating outright. People like the experience of eating. They won't give that up for "convenience".

@AngelPray Yes, although these tablets are designed to replace all eating outright. Most people won't give that up for convenience. There are probably a large number who would. What if humanity spends a lot of time in space, where it's easier to have tablets than food?

@AngelPray I believe I can convince people to use compact food by preparing commercials against traditional food. If that is ever a thing, the conversion would be really fast. Just like e-cigs instead of ordinary cigarettes.

In 900+ years we'll all either be dead or we'll be mostly robot. Either way the need to eat will be irrelevant. You might want to adjust your timescale to something under a quarter-century from now. I could actually see this happening even in this century or in the early twenty-second depending on how shit things get for the underclass.

@padawan The difference is that e-cigs give an experience similar (or according to many, superior) to that of tradtitional cigarettes. These pills on the other hand, don't. This just seems like a very implausible premise.

An average person eats somewhat more than a kilogram of food per day, that would require hundreds of pills, not very convenient.

People are all different. Nutritional needs are different, based on the person and the lifestyle they lead. Pill food for the cyclist...for the gymnast... for the scientist... for the office worker. Be the best at what you do - that sort of thing.

What about flavors? I like to eat food that tastes delicious (even when it's sometimes unhealthy).

Won't work without major alterations to the human digestive tract. See e.g. "dietary fiber".

It is really strange that instead of building a world, people usually tend to prevent it from building. How is any prediction more realistic than the question? We are talking about 1000 years.

I already eat fully nutritional powdered food. Everything you need, vegan, sustainable production, minimal packaging, zero waste, just mix with water, cheaper than buying lunch... why people don't eat like this is a mystery to me. I guess they like grocery shopping, cooking, chewing and flavours. google Huel if interested..

I don't really buy the idea of having a hard cut from substantial food to pills. I would rather suppose that changing gradually.

What does this question have to do with Euro???

@Taladris it is just an example for changes in daily life. Nothing really spectacular.

It seems to me that the only reason large numbers of people would concede to taking pills or any other food substitute would be because they couldn't afford to buy actual food or that real food was no longer an option. No commercials would be necessary.

@Ferruccio why not? why are there food commercials, then? for science's sake, there are water commercials.

@padawan - I see your point. I had assumed that there would be no way to differentiate among different pill brands. Clearly, that would not necessarily be true.

people would have to eat a lot of pills each day, you can't really reduce the volume of food a person needs. Even assuming perfect dehydration (which means they need to drink a LOT of water) you still have half a kilo of pills per day.

Consider how"food bars/breakfast bars/trail bars" are marketed now. Take that forward and combine it with how multivitamins are now marketed; those too are largely indistinguishable in real content. But the advent of bad food isn't really killing good food in middle and up incomes, just building bad habits. At the low end, cheap, filling, and keeping you alive another day has always been the staple...

Obligatory photograph of actual anti-hunger pill: cdn2.tmbi.com/TOH/Images/Photos/37/300x300/…

@jamesqf We already have vitamins and other pill-like supplements for things like that

@AngelPray The person who first came up with the idea of Soylent as an experiment did design it to replace all his meals.