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Comment by andreilys | Hacker News Reader

“They taste absolutely terrible”

That’s your opinion, I personally think it tastes great and haven’t had issues drinking it over the past 4 years. Given that Soylent has continues to grow signals that other consumers agree (investors also agree given they’ve raised $50m led google ventures).

Also your product costs $12 per 500 cal (vs. $2.42 for 400cal for soylent) which is a huge selling point for people that drink soylent (it’s affordable, convenient and better than most fast food alternative)

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I think it ultimately depends on the circle of people and what kind of cuisine they have normally. I think Soylent tastes quite mediocre- but my favorite foods are curries and vinegar/chili oil sauces. (Sad to say I often have meal replacements as punishment food.)

I would definitely try this saag as a service(alas, I live in NYC), as a healthy alternative to food I already love eating. Meal replacements are definitely not covering that niche for me.

Saying Soylent tastes like food is a bit of a stretch.

Increasingly, it seems like Indian restaurants where I live are including southern Indian menu items with lentils, and I was happy to see something beyond the usual at first and then disappointed that stuff like dosa, medhu vada, etc, seemed pretty meh.

And I've tried mulligatawny soup at one of those places and been really disappointed.

But there is an Indian/Pakistani restaurant near me that has lentil soup I really liked and in fact that's what inspired me to start experimenting at home as I was afraid they would go out of business.

Some months ago I made lentil soup and through sheer luck, happened on a combination of spices and other ingredients that made it really, really good. Unfortunately I didn't take good notes, and I'm not sure how to recreate it.

So what I'm saying is lentils can be anything you want, it's all in the execution.

Indian food in the United States has, IMO, fallen into the same trap that Mexican food has. You get one or two items (e.g. chicken tikka masala or burritos) that represent a small region of the source country and that's about it. Or maybe you'll get some more unusual regional stuff and then half hearted burritos.

So what I'm saying is lentils can be anything you want, it's all in the execution.

Apropos of nothing there's a co-op restaurant in Sydney named "Lentils as Anything". It's named after an Australian band but hey it works here too ;)

Perhaps "taste absolutely terrible to me" would have been better phrasing. I think Soylent has its place, and I'm glad it exists.

In terms of price, food is expensive to make (especially in the Bay Area), but as we scale we think we can leverage automation to bring the price down to $6, which is not as cheap as but in the same ballpark as Soylent.

I’ve experienced issues with five separate version numbers of Soylent powder over the past five years (and two versions of the Soylent drinks, and two versions of Meal Squares), to the point that my body now considers this entire category of “constructed” food products unappetizing and would rather skip a meal than consume any of them.

Your statement that it’s “affordable” is valid only the sense that it’s cheaper per calorie. Declaring it “better” without qualifiers is, to use your own words, “your opinion”, and declaring it “convenient” presumes that it is nutritionally valuable to all, which in my case and in this founder’s case, it cannot be for flavor or digestive rejection reasons.

Please take more care when declaring your opinion not to misrepresent it as fact. Evangelizing a competing product in a Show HN isn’t going to earn you much favor to begin with, and misleading people by stating opinions as fact will only undercut your message further.

Soylent growing and getting more funding doesn't necessarily mean people like its taste, it means that it solves a problem better than some other competing products for some customers.

Put another way, if it tasted absolutely terrible then it should never have grown to it’s current size.

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