Ask HN: Your Experience Using Soylent as a Food Replacement? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Your Experience Using Soylent as a Food Replacement?

Hi,

The Soylent website estimates that the average person would consume 4x 500cal/day for a total of 2k cal daily. This would equate to 5 400cal bottles/day, or 155 bottles/month. With subscription pricing this would cost upwards of $350/month.

I don't know if I would want to completely replace normal food with Soylent, and at this price I wouldn't be able to afford to even if I wanted to.

What has your experience been regarding a balance of Soylent and normal food. What kind of foods do you cut out of your diet, & what do you keep? How does an affordable food replacement plan look, practically speaking?

I typically spend $200-$250 on normal food in a month, & originally wanted to switch to Soylent to save some money, but it appears this goal isn't realistic.

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Thanks for the reminder, I actually had no idea 2.0 was out!

I spent a short amount of time experimenting with an earlier 1.x version. I personally need significantly more than 2k calories/day, and I also found that I lacked a lot of energy on days I'd go to the gym but had taken a lot of soylent beforehand.

Ultimately the best compromise for me was to take Soylent as a meal/drink in the morning when I'm less likely to typically consume food. Also maybe after a workout or something since each serving had a decent amount of protein. I'd typically also mix in chocolate whey protein as well.

I don't think I could ever fully meal-replace with it but I wouldn't mind having a serving every day, which is why I had been looking forward to 2.0 since it'd give me a very convenient grab-n-go meal whenever I wanted it.

Huel was a good experience for me. I don't think it's possible to replace food completely. Having good lasagna or whatever is your favorite meal at least one time per week is needed to avoid frustration. I found it quite useful when I don't have time to cook or I want to eat lightly for dinner.

I don't know the taste of Soylent because they don't deliver yet in UK but Huel has a small taste of vanilla and it's quite nice.

http://huel.com

This was my reason for giving it a try, and having no time to cook a decent meal. The biggest hurdle in my opinion is the taste. They describe is as being as plain as they could make it and boy is it plain. This may be just me but it was too plain, on the verge of off-putting. I have to supplement every batch with some sort of flavor additive.

You can buy the Soylent powder instead of premade drinks. It's $216 per month for 28 bags; each bag contains 2000 calories. Either way, if saving money on food is your goal and you're only spending $6 a day now, neither meal replacement powders or drinks is going to help much in that sense.

I drink 2.0, average it once a day. It took 2 days (2 drinks) to get use to the taste. Drink it cold, it'll help. I also got a headache the first time I drank it but after that it never came back. It doesn't seem like a lot but I did get a full stomach after consuming it. So far I like it a lot, its basically my breakfast at the moment and if I drink it consistently I can actually function without coffee in the morning which is pretty awesome.

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