Hacker News Reader

Comment by jeff-davis | Hacker News Reader

It doesn't need to be perfectly healthy to serve its purpose to me. It helps me avoid time-and-money-wasting bad meals.

If you are out somewhere busy, sometimes you just want to keep going but you are hungry. But all the food options might be overpriced junk food that you have to wait for. Drink a soylent and skip that meal. When you get home eat real food that you actually want to eat.

Soylent kills food cravings and keeps your mood even for hours.

View on HN

> But all the food options might be overpriced junk food...

Isn't the point of the article that Soylent is overpriced junk food?

Try carrying a couple of granola bars, dried fruit and nuts when you're out.

One serving of Soylent gives me 14g of fat and 13g of protein. Better than a granola bar and some fruit and nuts, which tend to be only carb heavy with some protein.

It also gives you 37g of carbs. Read the label.

It's a fine idea and I do eat a lot of nuts. But it's pretty hard to match the convenience and effectiveness of a soylent.

Basically, if you ever have cravings or moodiness due to food, that can be solved by a soylent in about 60 seconds. Maybe nuts can solve it too, but a lot of people don't do that, and end up eating junk instead.

It has protein and it's not greasy/salty. Like a protein bar except easier to consume and doesn't require a separate drink (bars are usually super dry for me).

A soylent is a couple dollars, whereas bad restaurant food at a crowded event is easily $15 plus 20 minutes of waiting.

I guess I don't see a big problem here? What's an alternative that's better?

It is "low sugar" but actually has 37g of carbs per bottle. You can eat entire bags of nuts without getting that much carbs.

Nuts have been around forever, so they apparently aren't solving the problem of bad meals (inconvenient, time-consuming, expensive, unhealthy, and unejoyable) completely.

Soylent offers a new product that might help reduce the problem of bad meals.

Soylent works for me. If nuts work for you, then great.

>Soylent kills food cravings and keeps your mood even for hours.

Why not eat an apple, a handful of almonds or a can of sardines? There are a multiple of convenient, healthy foods.

Because taking a drink from a bottle is perhaps a bit more crowd-friendly than opening a can of sardines when you're at a grocery store, hospital, gym, etc.

Because none of those on their own has the same balance of macronutrients (fat/protein/carbs)?

An apple is 50 calories and mostly sugar. Almonds are pretty good. Most people don't find eating sardines plain to be convenient or tasty.

Soylent is fairly well balanced, plenty of people seem to think it tastes good enough (I think it's a bit chalky, but, ymmv) and it's reasonably enough priced and convenient.

If you aren't cooking most of your meals, and if you struggle with tracking macros and your needs are statistically average, then Soylent is probably not a bad solution. I got a case for my sister when she was having trouble keeping weight on her and it helped her back on track nutritionally - anecdotal obviously.

Fasting is also a viable alternative, you don't need every meal.

While I admittedly would benefit from skipping a few meals, I get very surly when hungry; not a good thing either at the workplace or at home. Dunno how people overcome that.

Supposedly it gets better when you're used to fast, which actually might be a reason to try it ?

How bad this is depends heavily on what your diet consists of. It can also be exacerbated by withdrawal from stimulants like caffeine, which tend to coincide with meals.

FWIW when I'm eating a very low carb diet with no stimulants, fasting for a day is a complete noop, pleasant even.

But I also feel nauseous consuming caffeine when fasting. I've come to suspect a major reason people eat breakfast is so their morning caffeine dose doesn't make them sick, though they may not acknowledge it.

I've come to suspect a major reason people make silly non-falsifiable claims on the internet is to feel good about themselves and pat themselves on the back about how clever they are, though they may not acknowledge it.

Maybe I should try it more often. Definitely feels good.

> "But I also feel nauseous consuming caffeine when fasting."

Caffeine stimulates acid production in the stomach which can possibly trigger gastritis. An antacid might help there in lieu of the buffering effect of the food you'd normally be eating.

Fasting can be a valuable practice, but I think it should be applied intentionally, based on your goals for your health and body, not haphazardly when you find yourself in a context where good food is inconvenient.

It can also be a good idea to not look at screens sometimes, but it's disruptive if that time away from screens is at a time not of your choosing but forced on you by external conditions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com