I have to admit it's interesting to follow this experiment, though. As bootstrapped marketing schemes go, I've seen much worse.
Some people have. He says as much in the blog entry that various folks have let him know they've replicated it and tried it.
In the latest post he mentions that several chemists have figured out how to make his concoction, but he explicitly states he's not making the recipe public yet.
I think the author has definetly started to see real business potential, especially after all the exposure (both here on HN, and in general). That being said, he's probably not a legal expert, and is probably treading carefully (gathering data slowly, not immediately selling the mixture, etc).
Personally, I wish him and his future (potenial) business well. Its definetly a product Id buy. Eating healthy (especially when your choices are very restricted, eg school), can be a pain in the ass. Quick, very healthy, potential food replacement (Though, id probably only totally replace meals with it occasionally) sounds really, really great.
Related: I'm sure most of us don't care upon the soylent formulation per se as long as we could easily make our own meal-in-a-shake-form.
Does anyone have any suggestions/ideas about how to produce something similar?
http://robrhinehart.com/?p=424
Thats the link for the ingredients. Blog posts around there discuss some modifications that were made here and there.
As for production, I think many things like this can be replicated. However, I'd love to just buy this, or at least a "base version" rather than sourcing all the various nutrients and powders, then measuring/mixing them, etc.
The whey protein and olive oil you can get anywhere. The maltodextrin means picking up a giant bag from a brewery supply store once every few months.
I'm coming up with two scoops of protein, eight scoops of carbs, and a third cup of oil, and a bit under half a gallon of water. After that it's just a teaspoon of salt and a few supplements/multi-vitamins and you're set for the day.
He mentioned earlier that it takes about five minutes to prepare the next day's batch, and he doesn't need refrigeration or much in the way of kitchen utensils. That's a fairly tight upper bound on complexity.