There is a schism on this site between the entrepreneurs and the technologists. The entrepreneurs will tell you that what Soylent did was hard. They found a population that would enjoy a nutritional supplement, but didn't like the branding of current offerings. The created and popularized a brand to serve busy, health-conscious professionals.

The technologist will tell you that Soylent is essentially a direct marketing business that mixes commodities (poorly) and sells them at high markup.

A similar narrative has existed in business news for the past year, where readers bemusedly read about a pyramid scheme company that distributes protein shake called Herbalife to see whether it will implode or not.

Name is gross.

Food is a topic where people are intensely invested in their views, and shame-based thinking holds strong. Anyone who claims a shortcut to decent nutrition will draw the nay-sayers out of the woodwork. Proper nutrition ought to be hard.

I think food is something people have a lot of their identity tied up in.

I'm a mealsquares man myself but all for something like Soylent or something becoming popular and cheap.

I can't speak for others, but I read about two paragraphs of his blog-diarrea and suffered instant hate of the guy. Truly sounds like he has his head firmly up his arse.

Anytime anyone says (practically) anything about food or nutrition some people are going to be enraged. Food is both extremely personal and very polarizing.

For what it's worth, way back in the beginning (I was there), the Soylent guy solicited work from the community under the guise of contributing to an open source product. That the "source" was eventually closed up and the end product rented out for a subscription fee... That might be where some of the disdain is coming from. Plus also he is kind of insufferable to a lot of people, if you read any of his writing.