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Comment by tejaswiy | Hacker News Reader

What's going on with Soylent these days? They've been out for a while, so I'd be interested to learn about any (relatively) long term studies that came out about the health effects of a soylent-only diet.

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They've been silent on health benefits. The blog seems to be all about new variations and marketing.

It's kind of annoying since being interested in and relatively transparent about health stuff is how they got started.

Well that CEO transitions makes it clear that this isn't about developing a product anymore, but selling a brand. That new CEO is not going to develop and long lasting company, he is going for the sale. And the timing is good.

Not sure if it's a meme, but reddit/hackernews seem to harp on soylent and prefer Ensure which seems to have more nutrients per meal.

Ensure is made with milk, though, which a lot of people are allergic to

So is Soylent occasionally - https://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls/ucm554489.htm

Milk is a common allergen, especially among young children, but Soylent is also made with common food allergens (notably, soy protein and gluten), so on balance that issue is kind of a wash (or, maybe, advantage to Ensure), though specific users may avoid one or the other based on their specific allergies and conditions.

And the disclaimer to the meme: it’s worth pointing out that Soylent Drink gets about 2.5% of its calories from added sugar while Ensure Original gets 27% of its calories from added sugars.

Correction: neglected to multiply by 4 kcal/g for the sugar in Soylent. Correct number is 9% calories from sugar in bottled Soylent.

From what I can tell the main ingredients are:

Filtered Water, Maltodextrin, Soy Protein Isolate, High Oleic Algal Oil, Isomaltulose, Canola Oil, Rice Starch, Oat Fiber, Isomaltooligosaccharide.

So water, misc carb powders, protein powder, and misc high mono unsaturated fat oils. Yes they also add some vitamins/minerals etc. But essentially its just water, powder, and oil.

I'm not sure if your question was fuelled by your interest in making this a main part of your diet, or if it already is, or if you were asking in jest?

Oh no, it was definitely a serious question. When the product came out, I was excited about replacing atleast one of my meals (probably dinner) with Soylent. I held off because I was uncomfortable switching to something that can potentially have negative long term health consequences. I was just wondering if there were any studies done on people that were purely on a soylent diet to feel more comfortable about drinking it.

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