Maths behind Queal solving world hunger

[beerd]

My collegue @jakejones88 and me were discussing the possibilities of solving world hunger with Queal. We found a price we need to be able to create a meal for to solve world hunger with today's foreign aid budget.

So we found that 796 million people world wide are undernurished (source: https://www.worldhunger.org/africa-hunger-poverty-facts/) and that we currently spend at least 114 Billion euro's (current exchange rate) a year on foreign aid by public donators only (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_development_aid_country_donors).

This means we have 114000/796=143 euro's a year for people to live on. Not bad huh? Let's calculate to what price we need to bring down Queal to feed everyone of those undernourished people (1 Queal as unit in this post is defined as 1 meal).

We estimate that undernurished people do not need 3 full meals a day as we do to be classified as "properly nurished". This classification can sadly not be expressed in nutritional numbers, but are expressed in undergrowth (stunting) and underweight (wasting).

Because of this we make an estimate ourselves of 1000 calories a day as necessary to survive (advice on dieting is do not go below 1200, but that is when a body has been grown to take 2000 a day).

This would mean 1.5 Queal is needed a day. That is 1.5 * 365 = 548 Queals in a year. So we would need one Queal to be 143/548 = 26 cents.

That sounds like non-reachable right? Let's see some savings that can happen:

• Queal is a meant for consumer and profit business and thus has loads of extras: packaging, branding, R&D will all be costs that can be excluded from the actual cost per product on this scale
• You pay when you bulk around 2.1 euro per meal as a consumer. Imagine if we would buy bulk on a world scale (this calculation would total to 139 billions bags of Queal a year) what factors of saving we can make happen!
• Also, Queal right now is nutritionally complete. There are probably a lot of nutritional things that can be left out to just make it nutritious enough to survive.
• Queal uses high-quality ingredients. Undernourished people do not have our standards and will therefore probably be okay with a lower standard of ingredients.

Also, over the last years foreign aid spending has been increasing and a lot of spending is held back by corruption. If we just directly plane drop Queal instead of go through government, corruption will be almost zero which means trust will go up thus foreign aid will go up.

Are question to Queal is:
Can you produce 139 billions bags of Queal a year for 78 cents each?

We think Queal has high potential to remove world hunger. Hopefully you too.

Queal for Life

[jakejones88]

Excited to hear the responses to this.. #quealforlife

[Latestfuels]

I think creating a Queal base in those developing countries where resources can be high and labour cheap and transport cut out partially would be a better solution than shipping it from a megafactory in Netherlands.

Also, it would still not solve the problem, since it would be really hard to reach and many do not have access to drinkable water. I guess they could drink it with milk of some sorts.

Making sure the development happens on those countries would also be crucial in the long run. Once they are develop, Queal would lose a lot of the consumer base, but that might be a story for another time.

Can Queal and other meal replacements help. Yes, I think there is potential, however, getting some of the prime ingredients like rice, beans, pasta... is still really cheap, so it would be hard to compete against that. Also, I do not know how much food quantity is required to make 1 Queal unit. There would have to be a lot of optimization.

However, the idea of using complete foods, to ensure some kind of balance nutritition still holds.

Keep up with the brainstorming.

Sorry for being a party crasher

[Floris_Queal]

Can you produce 139 billions bags of Queal a year for 78 cents each?

Great question! And very interesting that you've thought about this problem.
This is actually something that has been on our radar from the beginning, but as @Latestfuels says, there are quite some roadblocks/complications.

To start with your question:
Theoretically it would be possible to get the price of Queal lower, especially at that scale.
- Oats, corn, red beats are products that can (in a commodities market) have prices in the 10's of cents per kg. That would mean that in a bag of ~500g these ingredients might cost 5ish cent.
- Corn (but also other grains) are heavily subsidised, so this would maybe even make sure that more money is spent (indirectly) on global aid
- We add vitamins and minerals to our mix, but using GMO techniques (if we put politics aside for a moment), I think it would (again, theoreically) be possible to grow crops that will come close to providing us with 100% micro-nutrition without having to add anything
- Transportation would be a pain in the butt, but shipping is actually very efficient, the last-mile problem would be much more difficult but something that many people are already working on (e.g. with medicines or malaria nets)
- That being said, I love the idea and using Complete Foods on a larger scale and for good

[Latestfuels]

That being said, I love the idea and using Complete Foods on a larger scale and for good

Indeed, I think it could solve not only nutritional problems, but also waste issues and some ecological problems too.

Also thank you for the quick maths, that was very insightful. So what would be the the subsidized, non-profit, max saving Queal bag? (or cost per 2,000kcal)?

[Floris_Queal]

Let's say a government decides to use the basics of our product and make it themselves, I would (guess)-estimate the costs as the following:

Ingredient costs

• 175g whole grain oat flour
  € 0.04 (based on commodity price, still needs to be milled)
• 150g maltodextrin (I used this instead of 50/50 with isomaltulose because maltodextrin is cheaper)
  €0.20 (based on commodity price of maltodextrin (already processed))
• 75g whey protein
  €0.30 (based on commodity price)
• 50g soy flour
  €0.02 (based on commodity price, still needs to be milled)
• 40g vegetable oils (sunflower & linseed)
  €0.03 (based on commodity prices)
• 10g vitamins, minerals, etc
  €0.10 (very much an estimate)

Total costs ingredients (2000kcal): €0.69
Costs per 400kcal meal: €0.14

These numbers are rounded but come close to the Queal recipe.
I would be very uncertain how much the milling and processing would add to the costs, or how much it would be subtracted if the government decides to do the conversion of corn to maltodextrin themselves.
The next step is production costs.

Production costs

• Cost of machine / 2000kcal portions made
  €0.00(2)
  €1.000.000 costs of machine
  €1.000.000 cost of maintenance
  running at 80% for 5 years (24/7 minus maintenance)
  one batch takes 1 hour
  one batch is 20000 2000kcal portions
• Cost of energy for machine
  €0.00(01)
  €0.20 price per kWh
  one batch is 20000 2000kcal portions
  (energy use is very difficult to estimate, but is lower than you might expect)
• Cost of 25kg bags / 2000kcal portions made
  €0.00(4)
  €0.20 estimated price of bags
• Labor costs
  €0.00(1)
  €15 per hour, 1 person operating machine

Total costs production (2000kcal): €0.00(62)
Costs per 400kcal meal: €0.00(12)

Again, very rough estimates. All probably too low, but maybe doable if done at great scale and efficiency. One thing I did here was use a 10.000kg mixer. If you would use a 1000kg mixer (which is way more common), then the costs would be:
€0.06 per 2000kcal

Total costs ingredients & production:
€0.70 per 2000kcal
€0.14 per 400kcal

Then at the end there would still be transportation costs (the lower of which is the shipping (if needed), and the higher the last-mile delivery). If someone else feels comfortable, I would love to see you take a stab at it.

[Latestfuels]

I wish I could give you more than one like.

This was not only very amusing and insightful to read, but a great glimpse to the complexity of the manufacturing process behind the little pouch we consume so easily.

[beerd]

Last mile we could probably just airdrop the packages in right. I mean then essentially you can bring it from door to door with a single transport.

But jokes aside, love your calculation. Cool to see you guys actually think about this stuff!