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Comment by Xisiqomelir | Hacker News Reader

I'm still amazed people pay for this shit when fully-regulated formulated meal replacements have been around for years.

I ask this in every thread when it's brought up and almost never get a real answer. Are there any examples of drinks with a flavorless (or very mild) option, that don't focus on imbalanced amounts of protein and body-building?

I like Soylent because it's relatively cheap (if I was just going for cost effectiveness, nothing beats bulk-buying beans and rice), I don't get sick of the taste after having it 3 times in a row, and it has a good balance of micro/macro nutrients.

I'd gladly save money by buying a cheaper competitor. Or even just support a less popular brand that's comparatively priced. But they all either have imbalanced amounts of protein that make me feel sick eating 3+ a day, or only come in "double chocolate shake" flavors which also feel disgusting after having more than one in a day.

The only comparable products I've found are Huel [0], but they don't offer shipping to the USA.

[0] https://huel.com/

Have you looked at medical product supply houses? There's a wide variety of tube feeding products, and many of those are unflavoured. (There's no point putting flavour in a product delivered into the stomach via a tube through the nose).

Some of these are fibre free, and most of them are high calorie, but there are normal calorie and with fibre versions available.

I recall looking them up back when Soylent was just getting started - aren't they horribly expensive, just as most other medical products?

They're comparable in price if you're buying in bulk.

I guess if you want quality assurance you're going to have to pay for it.

2015: https://www.reddit.com/r/soylent/comments/3o1uit/a_note_abou...

2016: https://www.reddit.com/r/soylent/comments/4tabm4/found_mold_...

2016: https://www.reddit.com/r/soylent/comments/55q9ga/is_this_mol...

https://myvega.com/vega-one-nutritional-shake?option_Flavor=...

It has flavors, but is not a "gimme protein!" formula, so it is what I consume.

Anecdotal experience about Vega that might help others. I tried Vega 4 or 6 times during one month to see if I could use it as my protein shake replacement for the whey-based product I'd been using.

Every time I had a Vega shake in the morning I experienced abdominal bloating, digestive issues, and nausea two or three hours after consuming it.

The first couple of times I wasn't sure if the Vega was the cause or if it was something else going on, but after trying it in isolation (no other food products within 8 hours, only water and the powder) I was able to consistently replicate the issues.

Something in their formulation doesn't agree with me. I'm not 100% sure what it was.

Thanks for this! Looks like I can pick the "Natural" flavor at a nearby store, so I'll probably be trying this soon. A little higher on protein than Soylent, but it doesn't seem to be in the protein-shake range that normally upsets my stomach, everything else looks pretty good.

Queal, Joylent, Jake, ...

I've tried Queal myself and was given a "bad batch" that was making me nauseous. But I forced myself to drink it until a friend told me he received an email from them about the problem (they never contacted me). I complained and got a whole new batch and the taste was completely different, not making me nauseous anymore.

Any product designed to be used with a feeding tube.

Do you have examples that are both not full of sugar and available to the general public at a reasonable cost?

http://www.rayandterry.com/products/more-categories/weight-l...

http://www.procapslabs.com/Products/Details/268447427/Secure...

Both have 5g net carbs per serving, but are intended more as a single meal replacement than something a person could solely subsist on.

> Both have 5g net carbs per serving

Depends on what you consider a serving. The second link only has 67 calories per "serving", so really 30 scoops in a day. Using the 2000 calorie baseline, that would be about 150g of sugar, twice as much as Soylent. Also 200g protein vs 100g.

The first link would still take 20 scoops in a day. There's no sugar in it, which is good (personally I hate things like Stevia, but others may not mind), but it's still clearly a protein drink with 372g of protein in one days worth of calories.

As I said, neither are intended to be one's sole source of calories or nutrients.

With most of these "meal replacement" products (soylent, meal squares, etc) the goal is to have 100% RDA per calorie. This means that you don't have to "make up" for them with other meals by adding some nutrient or cutting back on sugar.

Any snack that satisfies appetite and doesn't make you sick or fat too quickly would suffice. A bag of nuts, a power bar, fruit, vegetables, canned fish/meat, etc. One can always balance out nutritional intake on subsequent "real" meals.

Somehow the marketing folks for Soylent have been able to convince a lot of people that they ACTUALLY NEED a fully balanced meal replacement consisting of synthetic food upon which someone may subsist indefinitely. That's a feat of marketing, but apparently little else.

All those examples you've mentioned fill a very different niche than what Soylent is filling. Most people on Soylent aren't looking for something to keep them from getting hungry until they get a more balanced meal. They're looking for a quick, healthy, balanced meal. Soylent fills that desire, your examples do not.

They actually DON'T NEED Soylent, that's simply the magic of marketing.

I tip my hat to their marketing skills, however. I never would have thought they could get anywhere selling a bland sludge to affluent consumers as a replacement for food... who would've thought that could work? They did it and did it well for a while at least.

They also "DON'T NEED" any of the snacks you presented as alternatives. But regardless, I never claimed anyone needed it. There are few things in life that are truly "needed", but there are many that are wanted and/or provide a significant improvement in life quality.

Soylent doesn't fill a separate need from normal food, it fills the desire for a more efficient vehicle of nutrition than normal food. For example, I use Soylent not as an "I'm too lazy too make food" but rather as an easily replicatable nutritional base that is easier to customize to my nutritional needs and preferences than any other option out there that I'm aware of (there may very well be something better out here).

Their success is the result of "magical marketing", but of filling a niche desire of the market. In fact, Soylent didn't even do marketing for the first year or two of its existence. Rinehart just started experimenting, realized it hit a nerve with the hacker community, and created a product that appealed to the demographic that responded to his experiment.

While the Soylent formula is a modern medical marvel, its marketing is the real secret ingredient.

What do you mean by "fully-regulated?" I guess, can you clarify why the examples you've using differ from Soylent's regulation?

Some, but not all, of the other products are marketed as medical products to doctors for use in hospital settings. There's a bunch of regulation over those products.

EDIT after downvotes. For fucks sake, it's pretty obvious that a product making medical claims to doctors has more stringent regulation than food.

Here's the FSA guidance to industry about enteral food products: http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocuments...

To find that page I put "Does the FDA regulate enteral food products?" into a search engine. This is the first result. (Although my filter bubble might affect that.)

Why the focus on liquid diet?

There are plenty of good meal replacement options like trail mixes and other snack mixes that fill this niche without the science experiments.

Maybe it's because you're entirely uninformed about the specific ingredients and macronutrient ratios of new products like Soylent vs old school meal replacements.

But enjoy your high fructose corn syrup slop Ensure / Jevity.

I cook and eat real food, but I'll award you 6/10 for effort.

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