Nutrium

Nutrium is a liquid nutrient blend with all of the necessary proteins, fats, vitamins, fibers needed to survive on a daily basis. It is a translucent silvery fluid that is stable at room temperature. Nutrium is a staple food of humanity.

Nutrium is a carefully blended all-in-one nutrient slurry consisting of twenty-three genetically curated plants mixed in an electrolyte hydration fluid. Since it consists of stable, processed ingredients, it has a near indefinite shelf life at room temperature. Even when exposed to scorching hot or below zero freezing temperatures for an extended period of time, Nutrium can still be consumed safely, albeit at a much lower efficiency and with a terrible aftertaste.

Base nutrium has no taste and a thick consistency.

Nutrium's success is attributed to a companion process known as Nutrium Sequencing. The fluid is run through a sequencing machine which can alter the taste, texture, and smell of nutrium to hundreds of different preset flavors. While the taste is similar to the actual products they are mimicking, most still prefer the taste of 'real' food products due to a perceived lack of depth of flavor.

Nutrium sequences can be categorized into a few popular types.

Nutrium Steak is a meat substitute block high in protein and fats. It is dispensed as a juicy, fleshy, solid block. It can be eaten raw or cooked. Calling it 'steak' is technically a misnomer since it is a generic meat that does not closely follow the flavor profile of chicken, pork, or beef. To remedy this, there are specialty restaurants that have their own sequences for nutrium steak to match different real life meats.

Nutrium steak can be processed in the same way traditional meats are. These processes can yield nutrium jerky, dry aged nutrium, smoked nutrium, and so forth. These methods are mostly to enhance the flavor of nutrium rather than for long term storage.

When cooked, nutrium steaks turn from silvery to a dull grey. Searing the nutrium will turn it a slightly brown color.

Nutrium flour is a white powder used for baking and cooking. It is dispensed as a solid brick from a sequencer and then typically ground down into a fine powder. It can be activated by adding water and mixing until forming a dough, and is suitable for baking into nutrium pastries. The base flavor is slightly sweet. Products made from nutrium flour are typically crumbly and less fluffy than their organic counterparts.

Apart from baking, nutrium flour can also be added to soups and stews to thicken them and add more nutritional value. It can also be rolled and cut into noodles or formed into pasta. Eating nutrium flour raw is possible but generally inadvisable due to how dehydrating it is.

Nutrium flour is less common than the other nutrium products due to the fact that natural grains are widespread and easily accessible compared to meats and spices.

Nutrium spice is a catch-all term for seasoning made from nutrium. The term usually refers to nutrium genspice, which is essentially a salt and pepper flavored nutrium powder. There are a dozen official spice sequences and hundreds of thousands of homemade ones to account for every flavor imaginable.

Nutrium spice is essential for frontier worlds or disaster zones with supply issues. Emergency rations, simple organic foods, and even very basic soups and stews can be made nutritious and flavorful by adding nutrium spice. Using spice instead of forming the nutrium into meats or flour allows the supply to last much longer.

Officially denounced by the Order Nutritional Department and looked down upon by most authority figures, nutrium mash is a fermentable liquid used to make hard liquor. There are no official mash recipes preprogrammed into sequencers but a quick search on the network yields potentially millions of homebrew sequences. Most mash recipes are very similar at the base level to nutrium flour but are optimized to produce as much alcohol content as possible.

The process of fermentation and distillation is fairly wasteful and removes a lot of the nutritional value from the base nutrium.

There are no laws against sequencing nutrium mash on the empire level, but there are hundreds of planets prohibiting it on the grounds of wasting nutrium. Culturally, distilling nutrium liquor is a celebrated tradition among many of the ICASF, deep space exploration teams, and frontiersmen.