> but I'll never understand that feeling of "ugh, I need to eat, guess I'll have a Soylent".
It sounds like you have either more free time or a more a steady work schedule then their target user.
It sounds like you have either more free time or a more a steady work schedule then their target user.
Always having too little time, always working and being proud to plan every minute of every day (recently Marissa Mayer and Bill Gates and someone else from the US said in interviews they have every minute of every day planned; sounds like pure hell but he) seems very American. This Soylent thing fits in there.
Why would someone want to work that much unless you want to become a billionaire which, again, seems a drive in media coming from the US?
Maybe it is just the media I read though, but here there is no vibe like that and when I meet (very successful/rich) entrepreneurs in Asia/Aus/EU they seem to be always eating elaborately so they do not give of that vibe either. Again the press distorts but posts here on HN and a thing like Soylent support that press.
I think there is more acceptance in certain cultures, for example, to skip lunch because it's a busy day. Having worked globally and in multiple industries, I don't believe it's an American only thing although probably more common there. I see it as more of an industry thing, and each industry seems to have it's own use case for a product like Soylent. i.e. the programmer 'in the zone' and not wanting to stop for dinner or the investment banker running on a few hours of sleep due to an upcoming pitch.
> Always having too little time, always working and being proud to plan every minute of every day
I'm not sure how that was implied, but that does not represent the typical American workforce in my view.
> entrepreneurs in Asia/Aus/EU they seem to be always eating elaborately
I would be surprised to hear these types of individuals don't deal with skipped meals or lack of time based on what's going on in there life/work like their counterparts in other countries do.
People here imply that people consume Soylent either because they cannot get enough calories in with normal food to not lose weight (what a luxury that must be), or, in most cases and as the direct parent writes, that they do not have time to eat 'normally'. That seems to mesh with the whole culture of fast food and minute day planning; I for one could not tell you if I have time for an elaborate meal or a quick meal at lunch today and I would not want to know if I do either. I'll see what happens when I get hungry.
> but that does not represent the typical American workforce in my view.
Not typical workforce; I'm citing some famous and very rich US business people. Just noting that these people seem proud of it while I don't hear the same stories (in the press) from anywhere else. And others (especially on HN) seem desperate to copy it (which is, I assume, were Soylent came from in the first place); people who cite this (time-hacking/life-hacking/whatever-hacking it is called) as a great feat are all from (=living in currently) the US when I check their profiles.
But having employees willing to sacrifice their actual wellbeing for the pipe-dream of getting "rich" is quite beneficial if you're say, a VC, so of course they foster this culture. "Look at how busy you are, you must be doing such important work!"
https://books.google.com/books?id=2uBEAAAAIAAJ&lpg=PA44&ots=...
I find it hard to hit 2500 calories daily to not lose weight.
2400 calories per gallon, well balanced between protein, fat, and carbs (you might say that it is ideally formulated to feed large mammals :P). The best part is that it is readily available every where and super cheap (< $3 per gallon).
https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/lactose-intolerance#statis...
Europe varies greatly, with by far the highest level of tolerance in Northern Europe (I'm Norwegian, and I didn't even know about lactose intolerance until I was in the 20's - it just wasn't something that became a subject until we were exposed to more immigrants as while it existed in Norway before that it was <5%), with lactose intolerance increasing to well above 20% in many other European countris.
In any case the advice to down vast quantities as milk isn't universally applicable anywhere.
The full quote:
"Approximately 65 percent of the human population has a reduced ability to digest lactose after infancy. Lactose intolerance in adulthood is most prevalent in people of East Asian descent, affecting more than 90 percent of adults in some of these communities. Lactose intolerance is also very common in people of West African, Arab, Jewish, Greek, and Italian descent."
It is also a very inferior product made with zero genetic engineering. Just silly crossbreeding until the cow has big enough milk gains.
Don't see how it's, from a nutritional or health perspective, superior to Soylent.
Milk is also super cheap because it's heavily subsidized through taxes. I'm not saving idiot entrepreneurs by buying their unsustainable products.
Several other points:
1. The OP was remarking that they had a hard time maintaining weight. Anybody who has done GOMAD (gallon of milk a day) can tell you that large quantities of milk will head off the possibility of weight loss.
2. Is there any reason to believe that the agricultural inputs to something like Soylent aren't just as heavily subsidized as you claim milk to be?
Milk is in our diet for several thousand years, not millions.
1. There's also a lot of people who ate balanced meals and kept weight. Drinking that much milk has some unwanted stuff in it - like IGF-I - which can cause cancer in those huge amounts.
2. Maybe soy, but that's a side-effect of the dairy that uses it not for the sake of human consumption. But it's highly likely the soy used is the one for human consumption, which would remove the necessary subsidies.