Soylent Campaign
campaign.soylent.me
campaign.soylent.me
The characteristic of this kind of marketing that I enjoy the most is the presence of what I call 'linguistic asymptotes.'
These are words that imply a product has unparalleled or infinite properties.
On the soylent page we have "ubiquitous", "perfectly", "optimized", "automatically", and "optimal" all in the first paragraph.
On a sample of snake oil labels we have 'instantaneously', 'cures all aches and pains', 'always', 'strongest', and 'immediate.'
It's very difficult for a claim that contains a linguistic asymptote to be true, but it's cognitively very easy to understand and process. You don't have to consider your personal medical history, or cost, or anything else really, because the product is 'always' right for you!
Fun stuff.
I too am highly skeptical of ALL of these claims.
My main gripe with Soylent (ever since I first saw it here on HN a month ago) is that they are making cooking seem like a horrible chore that nobody wants to do.
Shopping is convenient because I go whenever I have time and only buy exactly what I need. At the same time, I also ensure I only buy the best ingredients I can at the moment (Assuming labeling is correct).
A lot of people I know and myself included, LOVE to cook. I love cutting a bell pepper and catching a whiff of its fresh smell in my nostrils. I love sometimes adding different sauces, spices or ingredients in my meals to give them a distinct and unique taste.
And cleaning up is also fun because I recognize I am a responsible adult, able to revert something back to the state I received it in. Just like my bed, or a rental car or my home.
~400 cals or so.
Or taking it further with blending/vitamixing (so you keep the fiber) veggies.
I thought this was the most hilarious article I've read. And it was not sarcastic...
Quoting from the list of ingredients for ON[1], this is wrong: Natural and Artificial Flavors, Acesulfame Potassium.
[1] http://www.optimumnutrition.com/products/100-Whey-Gold-Stand...
Better discussion then I can espouse. Small summary, we don't necessarily know why whole foods > substitutes, but they are, ergo risk of non-intake of whole foods doesn't make sense for some anecdotes of a few startup folks.
(I wonder for instance if gas chromatography would keep in tact the larger complex molecules, but I don't know much about it either)
I realize this is anathema (I love food as much as anyone else) but there are moments in my life where I'd like to code or create things rather than worry too much about my next meal.
You have to maintain a car, feed it (oil/diesel/electricity) and care for it (regular washing), otherwise it will go the 'way of the horse' ...
I agree with you on your last statement but I don't think soylent is a solution to that problem. I don't think a formula will have the nutritious benefit of a manually prepared fresh meal.
This is a silly thing to say, honestly. It's unscientific in every possible way, and honestly sounds like saying "I don't think there's any way there's not a god" to defend religion.
It's worth giving it a shot, or doing research to prove or disprove it, but wild speculation is not the way to approach this one, imho.
Is it just the "nutritionally complete" bit?
Can I come over for dinner? :D
> My main gripe with Soylent (ever since I first saw it here on HN a month ago) is that they are making cooking seem like a horrible chore that nobody wants to do.
Some people really do hate cooking. Either they don't enjoy the act of it, or do not have a lot of time for it. I know... one could say that you could make time for it. The fast food industry works not because the food is good (It generally isn't...) but because it's so easy. I think people are a lot better off eating Soylent then MCD :)
Convenience foods (microwave dinners, fast food) tend to sit somewhere in the middle. Cheaper then restaurant food but also both likely deficient nutritionally and not tasting good unless it's absolutely loaded with carbs, fats, salt, etc.
That cup of snot is most likely better for you then fast food and is a hell of a lot cheaper. Eating something like it could very well mean that you get to eat delicious restaurant food more often simply because you can afford to do so.
Restaurant food is also very often unhealthy. They add tons of fat (generally butter or cream) to make it taste like "proper restaurant food". Unless you stick to the salad.
And many "convenience" meals (frozen stuff, or souse-vide packets for microwaving, ready-made soups you just heat in a pot) just are not very good. I personally struggle to find easy-to-make meals, and often end up just frying some eggs or cooking some pasta with oil and garlic, just because I don't have the energy to make a proper dinner.
To me, the more worrisome thing is that they are making eating seem like a horrible chore that nobody wants to do.
That said, Plumpy'nut and other RUTFs have done amazing things for the neediest people on the planet, so I'm not as willing as other HNers to throw the project entirely under the bus. I am interested in how this product compares to what exists.
I fear for the people who see this as a great "life hack" who wind up doing long-lasting damage to themselves. There are cases of people having liver failure when they go on a long-term liquid diet. I have no idea if that applies, because we don't really know why that happens.
I appreciate the hacker instinct, but, in this case, I fear it is a dangerous one.
None of them have a background in biology/nutrition/medicine/health from what I can see.
Their product ha the story and format to appeals to the HN audience "hack food".
They consider cooking a chore and a "waste of time", which means there are audience is VERY limited. The majority of people spend a large amount on variety and taste in food because they like it. So their target market is people who think like them.
And finally - and most importantly - you cannot eat the same concentration and matrix of nutrients every day!
On some days you will work harder, or work less, fall sick, want sugar, drink alcohol, be happy, have medicines - or experience any of a thousand different variable large and small which necessitate a change in diet.
A person's vitamin C needs are different if they are eating a diet that is predominately meat than if they are eating a lot of grains (the reason why Inuits didn't suffer from scurvy). Maybe there is a combination in Soylent that makes calcium very difficult to absorb or alters the body's ph so calcium has to be leached from the bones to proper ph. After 10 years, your bones become exceedingly brittle, and there isn't much you can do about it.
I'm not saying this is less healthy than eating Ensure for every meal, but I would say the exact same thing about Ensure, and I trust a little more science has gone into it (maybe 10% valid nutrition and 90% "how do we get this to taste/sell better" food "science").
The worst part for me is that we have no idea. At best, we have a few anecdotes. But I feel this way about every "miracle food" that comes on the market.
On the contrary. I think they're doing something reasonable, which is purposefully marketing the product to people to whom cooking is a horrible chore they don't want to do. I'm one of those people, and I suspect there are others.
I despise all the time I have to spend on food preparation. I'm annoyed that even if I eat out regularly, I have to spend time planning my nutrition and budget or risk being unhealthy or broke. Other people (or machines) can prepare food better than me, so I think it's ridiculous that it's still expected that each adult (or household) should learn to cook personally. Sure, it's not terribly difficult, but neither is making clothes, fixing many home plumbing issues, cutting hair, performing an oil or tire change, and many other things that are well-accepted as outsourceable.
A lot of the arguments here seem to boil down to "Much smarter people are working on this and they haven't solved it, who the hell does this KID think he is?!?"
That's pretty depressing for a website that, at least originally, was to help startups talk to one another. Shame on you, hacker news. You're smarter than this. By this logic, never ever trust your data to anybody other than IBM because those dumb hacker kids don't know what they're doing!
Second: "He's violating ALL KINDS of FDA regulations! [none of which I can name]"
Oh is he? Because if you actually look at what he's doing, it appears that he is taking things are already approved from human consumption, and mixing them together. This would be akin to a baker taking eggs and flour and mixing them.
What he's selling (although selling is a bit of an incorrect word here) is effectively a big power bar, except his comes in powerdered form. There are some hippies that sell power bars at my local coffee shop. They are terrible. What sort of advanced degrees do you suppose the hippies have? None? Possibly some experience in "baking"?
Finally: this is being presented within the context of "an experiment". If you start eating soylent, and you get sick, STOP EATING IT!
I'd imagine that I might have similar results if I ate nothing but the hippie vegan power bars at the coffee shop.
Personally, I'll be in for whatever the $65 level is.
1) Because I think this is neat
2) I want to encourage people to experiment with the world around them.
3) I'm not an idiot, and if I start feeling sick as a result of not eating any "real" food, I'll stop eating soylent.
Geesh.
...and then saying that the nutrients are stable for years.
> A lot of the arguments here seem to boil down to "Much smarter people are working on this and they haven't solved it, who the hell does this KID think he is?!?"
Mavericks can solve big problems. They show their working; they provide a demonstration; they give a proof. Other people then pick at the work to see if there are any problems. That's how science works. We check the sample sizes, we check the stats, we check the confounding factors, we proceed cautiously.
This guy has gone from self-experimentation (and caution about letting other people try it) to a full blown sales pitch full of errors and over-blown claims.
The actual product might not be the TimeCube of nutrition, but the documentation so far is hopeless.
So it's exactly like any other campaign for supplements. But he is one of us, so apparently we cannot let him get away with it.
Being fair in your assessments means that some days you will rightly give out negative assessments.
If you ate a McDonald's said their food was nutritionally complete, and you ate it everyday for a week, and then got sick, who is to be blamed? Of course, given McD's reputation I'd say you're to be blamed. But in this case Soylent is untested, and so far doesn't even substantiate its claims very well. And even McD's doesn't go so far as saying that their food can replace your meals (or maybe they have? I do not get that vibe though), while Soylent here is supposed to do that (the vibe I got from his blogs, at least -- this is supposedly revolutionary, no?).
Although I love cooking to bits I do find Soylent interesting as a concept, but the way they've gone about doing things isn't what I'd approve of myself.
And as I see it, a majority of the arguments here do not boil down to "Much smarter people are working on this and they haven't solved it, who the hell does this KID think he is?!?" or "He's violating ALL KINDS of FDA regulations! [none of which I can name]". For the former, Soylent is simply making unsubstantiated claims, to which much smarter people have not even come up yet. If Soylent is indeed that smart, then they better have good claims to back it up. For the latter, I only saw one commenter talk about breaking FDA rules, and he was only speculating about them, and to be honest it's very likely that there's something about false advertising that they broke.
But then again the FDA probably didn't expect some company claiming that they'd come up with a food to end all foods...
This isn't a cheap or quick process.
Not only is this process simple, but there are community available certified kitchens in most major cities that people like the aforementioned hippies use to make their granola bars.
Here is the first link for "certified kitchen Phoenix": https://www.chefssharedkitchen.com/default.aspx
This is why it would have been useful for these guys to consult people with actual experience in the supplement industry.
It's a food. Similar to the hippie granola bars I mentioned.
edit: are you saying that you have experience in this field? Enlighten me. What are they doing wrong, and how should they remedy it?
Here is the compliance guide for small entities: http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocuments...
As of 2010 all SEs must meet these requirements, regardless of firm size.
Re: my experience in this field, it is all indirect - research for those interested in developing products in this area, alongside business partnerships and friendships with those who produce a wide range of dietary supplements.
EDIT: I will note that they now claim the product will be produced in a FDA-approved facility. Whether this facility's certification is applicable to their specific case is not made clear but this is at least a step in the right direction. There's also the matter of labeling/ad claims with the FDA but hopefully they have the foresight to dial back the hyperbole before pushing the product to a wider audience.
I would also suggest caution with what "industry experts" one works. There's quite a few less-than-desirable elements in the dietary supplement game. Case in point? The lacing of the Craze/Detonate pre-workout supplements with amphetamines just a few months ago. (http://patrickarnoldblog.com/craziness-over-craze/)
"Soylent is perfectly balanced and optimized for your body and lifestyle, meaning it automatically puts you at an optimal weight, makes you feel full, and improves your focus and cognition"
The techniques and the wording seem snake oilish.
Also, if anything those dumb hacker kids build breaks (email, web app, game) etc, they won't hurt you physically.
The body is a weird mechanism: it can put up with lots of abuse and experimentation. It is also fragile at the same time.
Also, where are the ingredients listed? The FAQ is hilarious. I can't believe that people are so gullible. There are mountains of research on nutrition in modern science and thousands of years of accumulated evidence from traditional practices (Indian, Chinese) etc.
"But, hey, there is this magic potion which I can buy. Don't care about the ingredients. Can't be bothered to read up on the manuals for the greatest mechanism I will ever own. "
Whatever happened to extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence? In this case, there is a huge chance that a bunch of guys will get rich and some person will get hurt badly.
We have enough knowledge and resources to lead healthy lives without believing in possible snake oil. There is a whole bunch of physiological feedback that they are glossing over. E.g. the act of eating a meal mindfully.
I don't wish them ill. If they have a product which is better than the best thing out there for us, I wish they succeed.
I would not have stopped you if you wanted to invest with Ponzi himself.
You know, every time this guy's story has popped up on here I've defended him. I like that he's trying to do something big, I like that he wants to solve a very real world problem, and I like that in his blog posts and updates he phrased all of his results as personal findings needing further study.
However, this:
>>"Soylent is perfectly balanced and optimized for your body and lifestyle, meaning it automatically puts you at an optimal weight, makes you feel full, and improves your focus and cognition"
and
>>puts you in excellent health,
...This I do not like. At all. It's a massive, massive leap to go from "this is something under test," to "this is something that 100% works and will cure [insert list of ailments here]."
It's completely and wholly intellectually dishonest. It's put a sour taste in my mouth over the whole thing. It's gone from personal experiment to fund raiser and company structure in what? Five months? All of the early adopter "testimonials" sound like little more than confirmational bias rearing its head. "Oh, you bought a magnetic bracelet on the internet and you do actually have more energy now that you're wearing it!? Whoa! Amazing that it worked out exactly how you wanted it to!" These testimonials carry the exact same weight.
I feel like there's green in their eyes. Rigor be damned if riches can be had. Also, his ego is now on the line. I'm sure his brain is still being objective about the results.
IF is works, and IF it's safe, and IF the claims can be backed up with ACTUAL DATA, then by god, more power to the guy... but in the mean time, at the very least, can a guy get a trial with some other vanilla flavored sludge acting as a placebo?
Hell, I'll settle for an footnote on the page that says "None of our claims are backed by any form of relevant data."
But that would be false.
I'm not exactly sure what the control would be, I guess what ever it is they stick in feeding tubes?
The meal replacement idea is not entirely new, though, they've always been more in the area of supplement, rather than outright replacement. Things like ensure, slim fast, and a host of other meal in a can things exist. A quick googling led to this study: http://www.nutritionj.com/content/9/1/11 which indeed did follow the shake vs traditional food format.
If nothing else, it could be benchmarked against existing meal replacements.
I'm now actually curious how these things do get tested, and over what period of time. I'll have to hit my school's database tomorrow and see how trials have been run in the past
I've talked about it in an old thread about Soylent:
One though I had was, if Ben and Jerry are adored for making a product that is delightful but contributes to the obesity epidemic, why can we not also praise people trying to do the opposite?
What's not great is moving from "This is me, noodling about with my own personal weird idea, and here's the information so you can join in" to "Hey! I'm going to solve world hunger, and obesity, and you can live off this with no problems no matter who you are!!! (only $200 per month)"
Rest assured, if Ben and Jerry had a crowdfunding website and claimed their food was balanced for optimal nutrition I'd be very critical of them too.
If he tempers his claims and recommends it as a time-saving meal, the danger to consumers should be mitigated and the reactions here would likely be a lot less violent. Say,
"Use well-balanced Soylent for 1 to 2 meals a day to save yourself a great deal of time. You should have varied diet in other meals to ensure even more complete nutritional composition for your body."
The body is complicated and stopping eating this diet if you feel sick doesn't necessarily mean that you won't have ongoing health problems even when you go back to a normal diet.
"Finally: this is being presented within the context of "an experiment". If you start eating soylent, and you get sick, STOP EATING IT!"
Really? So if a mega corp drugs company just handed out experimental products to who ever wanted it with out and controls what so ever, you'd not be worried by that? It would be a national, perhaps international scandal. But that doesn't bother you because it is "neat"?
Yeah, sure entourage people to experiment, I agree. Make your own goo, and eat it yourself, fine. But encouraging people to participate in unregulated medical experiments is reckless and negligent.
I'm a harsh critic of soylent, but even I'd be fine with it if they said "try this at your own risk! here's the research we're using. Here's what our critics say."
I am genuinely surprised that the people of HN can not see that. I expected the conversation to at least be about whether it was parody vs. not, not about whether it was healthy or not.
do these hippies claim you can replace your entire diet with just those power bars?
hey I'm all for this project btw, and really not having to deal with preparing food a few times a day sounds ideal (I do love cooking, but I have a lot of other things on my plate (haha) recently).
one thing I simply do not understand is how this guy went from being a single dude experimenting with food replacements on himself, to expanding his team with five other people, and NONE of them has a background in nutrition, medicine or even biology. why?
sure you can figure out this stuff by reading up on it, looking things up, but someone who has studied even slightly related subjects for 6 years knows things that you don't even know you didn't know, or know you might want to look up something on a particular subject that you would never have considered. that's what education is useful for, crazy idea I know.
I'm not saying doing this with only technical computer and marketing people on your team is going to make you fail automatically, but he is definitely cutting himself short on some valuable knowledge and ideas.
Soylent is definitely not "perfectly tailored to your body" and it probably isn't "everything the body needs", for the simple reason that nobody has any idea what the body needs, let alone how to tailor a perfect diet. Nutrition research is extremely complex and fraught with false findings. When John Ioannidis said that most medical research findings are false he singled out nutrition and genetics as the most problematic fields.
False advertising this particular product can be dangerous because a lot of people get obsessed about diet and health, and tend to cling to whatever subset of findings they happen to have heard, and then treat the whole thing religiously.
Some nutritional deficiencies become apparent only after years and then possibly only in people with a certain genetic makeup.
You are targeting a population that adopts health fads like they were the ten commandments, and are trying to sell a product that has properties you can't possibly know. Please stop because you may inadvertently hurt people.
Soylent is the sort of thing that could seriously damage your health. I know that several people have trialled it over the course of a few months, but nutritional deficiencies can take much longer to develop. For example I don't recall ever reading that oral health was being monitored during the trials - when you're not chewing anything, your teeth will fall out.
I'm sorry but I truly do believe that selling Soylent would be dangerous and irresponsible. Please, don't sell Soylent to anybody until you've done some proper clinical trials.
Bull-fucking-shit.
This is a product made by four twenty-somethings, none of whom appears to have a background in nutrition or any kind of health studies. To trust your health to these people would be fucking stupid. Jesus.
Also: They've got to be violating some kind of FDA rules. So that'll be fun. When they get sued. Or accidentally harm someone.
Please. Do not back these people.
-----
Edit: What FDA rule do I think they're violating? I don't know, exactly. But I doubt you can say things like "it automatically puts you at an optimal weight, makes you feel full, and improves your focus and cognition" without having some actual data backing you up.
----Edit: Also noticed this----
Soylent will be produced in an FDA-approved facility with strict regulatory controls ensuring safety.
"Soylent is perfectly balanced and optimized for your body and lifestyle, meaning it automatically puts you at an optimal weight, makes you feel full, and improves your focus and cognition."
After that, they don't offer any comprehensive list any ingredients, any recipe, any nutritional information (if you find any, I'd be glad to retract this point). Also, as far as I know from the guy's blog, the idea is to replace your diet with Soylent (and water, I guess). Surely that's false advertising, by saying your food can replace all other foods, while your food hasn't even been tested yet? I'm sure if it was just some fruit smoothie thing they could get away with saying that it's a healthy food. But as a complete, all-round food-replacement? I'd be careful with that.
HN has pessimism in its culture, and most of the best comments are the critical ones.
That, frankly, should be illegal, and it probably is.
Like here for example : http://robrhinehart.com/?p=424 ?
> I am reticent to provide exact brand names and instructions because I am not fully convinced of the diet's safety for a physiology different than mine. What if I missed something that's essential for someone of a different race or age group?
Why does he now think it's acceptable to market this to everyone?
Because he and a number of people have been "eating" it for a number of months?
That's a strawman. You're ignoring the fact that those frozen meals are made by companies who have more experience in the food industry than these 4 clowns combined a million times over. I am MUCH more afraid of the Soylent guys' sheer ignorance than I am of any profit-motivated negligence on the part of large frozen meal companies.
Edit: also read this thorough breakdown of Rob Rhinehart's claims regarding Soylent by a health expert and nutritionist: http://www.businessinsider.com/rob-rhinehart-food-substitute...
From what I can tell, the Soylent team appears to be pursuing their goals in an admirably scientific fashion. Although there's quite a bit of work to do, I recall an article from a couple of days ago on HN that was talking about the wonderful work the big guys are doing. This quote from General Mills is priceless:
>In a public comment posted on the FTC website, our friends at General Mills pointed out that under the IWG guidelines, the most commonly consumed foods in the US would be considered unhealthy. Specifically, according to General Mills, “of the 100 most commonly consumed foods and beverages in America, 88 would fail the IWG’s proposed standards.” [1]
I understand your disagreement, I disagree with your ad hominem attack and think that there may be some merit to the Soylent team and their claims, especially when taken in light of the General Mills comments.
[1]http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2013/05/19/de...
There is a world of difference between "unsafe" and "unhealthy." I am not claiming that frozen dinners are healthy. Far from it - I avoid them like the plague. However, they are not going to land you in the hospital in the short term.
> think that there may be some merit to the Soylent team and their claims
The fundamental issue is that statements like "there may be some merit" might be sufficient for trying an iPhone app. It is NOT sufficient for trying a radically new diet like this one.
To you. It's your opinion, not mine. You could say "The FDA would strongly condemn something like this" or "I think this is unsafe" but you can't say it is not sufficient for everyone just because you feel that way.
You can't make blanket claims that apply to all of humanity; being an absolutist only works if you're a Sith Lord.
Except Soylent are doing exactly that.
But I do appreciate your point and you did make me scratch my head when I first read it.
Let me point you to a randomly chosen scientific study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20856266
Now you point me to something similar for this new wonder food.
I've seen this posted a few times and I'm having trouble seeing it as thorough. Her complaint on his caloric restriction claims contained a link to relevant research, that was adequate. Her other complaint, which was about his understanding of protein digestibility, contained little detail. These were the only claims she addressed with more than denial.
It should be taken into consideration that the article is a hit piece, and many of Stella's comments seem to miss the mark or are totally irrelevant. For example, it doesn't matter if he's not using "real" olive oil; many people live fine without ever tasting the stuff, but it does matter that olive oil is [almost] totally devoid of omega-3 fatty acids. Olive oil is not a complete source of fats! Living on fast food isn't cheap, but who cares?
It's as though Stella Matsovis decided to respond from the standpoint of a forum troll!
Also, iron deficiency won't show up in three days, obviously, but what's not addressed is that he claims the problem disappeared after he started taking an iron supplement -- the real surprise! ...come to think of it this latter point makes me want to doubt the veracity of Rob Rhinehart's claims in toto: he may not have even been eating Soylent, or he may have changed the recipe in a more obvious way, or... y'know. That's more concerning than the simple idea of a meal replacement powder. Ditto: his claimed caloric intake (1000 kcal/day?) should by all rights have killed him by now. Even calorie restriction true-believers usually aim for 1400.
I made an earlier post in this thread defending the general idea and possibility of Soylent. I hadn't looked into it with serious interest until just now.
My new concern: his claims about Soylent appear to be simply impossible: iron deficiency appearing in three days, ridiculously low calorie consumption, etc. They may, of course, be artistic license in the construction of a narrative. I would like to believe that his physician is already aware of this experiment.
>The author has no idea what he's talking about when it comes to protein digestion and assimilation.
Does it really matter? As long as he's not actually eating hydrolysate [isolated amino acids] (which would probably be rather painful!), most protein powders are, shall we say, mediocre at worst.
Addendum: the most obvious regulation he's breaking is false advertising. Soylent is [probably] fine (at least mediocre) despite everything, but billing it as the gateway to perfect health is, uh, silly.
Anyway, I agree that it's advertised as a too good to be true product, and it was created by people without the needed background. In the last update they added sulfur!!! ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5609546 ). It's one of most common elements in the human body, not a very strange unexpected thing.
Most of the vitamins were discovered because some people aet a very restrictive diet. Usually because more diverse food were not available (in the middle of the sea), or because they didn't have money to buy more diverse food (semi slavery). A diverse diet of complex food protect you form not eating the thing that you don't know you should eat. Eat only this at your own risk.
If you look at something and find yourself salivating / very hungry, it's probably your bodies way of telling you it has some nutrient you're missing.
On one side, it is very sad that the majority of posts in this thread are very negative. But on the other side, I would give more credit to their enterprise if there was a nutriologist, chemist, or at leas tan MD in their team.
The fact that no one in the team is slightly related to food/nutrition or human well-being rings bells.
Like what?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_and_Drug_Administration#Fo...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_food_and_dietary_...
"The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 mandated that the FDA regulate dietary supplements as foods, rather than as drugs. Therefore, dietary supplements are not subject to safety and efficacy testing and there are no approval requirements. The FDA can take action against dietary supplements only after they are proven to be unsafe. Manufacturers of dietary supplements are permitted to make specific claims of health benefits, referred to as "structure or function claims" on the labels of these products."
However, false advertising claims are handled by the FTC. I suggest you talk to them before the FDA.
edit: For a court case to be effective the plaintiff has to prove that the product does not work; the burden of proof is not on the manufacturer, according to FDA regulations. Depending on wording this could require a long testing period with many people for a judge to take it seriously.
General Mills got the smack down from the FDA for claiming that Cheerios lowered your cholesterol. [1]
[1]http://www.fda.gov/iceci/enforcementactions/warningletters/u...
These claims indicate that Cheerios® is intended for use in lowering cholesterol, and therefore in preventing, mitigating, and treating the disease hypercholesterolemia. Additionally, the claims indicate that Cheerios® is intended for use in the treatment, mitigation, and prevention of coronary heart disease through, lowering total and "bad" (LDL) cholesterol. Elevated levels of total and LDL cholesterol are a risk factor for coronary heart disease and can be a sign of coronary heart disease. Because of these intended uses, the product is a drug within the meaning of section 201(g)(1)(B) of the Act [21 U.S.C. § 321 (g)P)(B)]. The product is also a new drug under section 201(p) of the Act [21 U.S.C. § 321(p)] because it is not generally recognized as safe and effective for use in preventing or treating hypercholesterolemia or coronary heart disease. Therefore,under section 505(a) of the Act [21 U.S.C. § 355(a)], it may not be legally marketed with the above claims in the United States without an approved new drug application.
Isn't that the intent? Rob Rhinehart (creator) lived for a period of one month eating Soylent and nothing else. My understanding is that Soylent is intended to be a meal replacement, not a supplement of some kind.
While I'd love for this to be a safe, reliable option, and might even try it as a replacement for some proportion of meals if/when it becomes more widely available, their marketing claims far exceeds what they have evidence for so far.
Regardless of legality, they are making some very bold claims that would benefit from some scientific study. Preferably, expert, peer-reviewed, published scientific study.
[1] http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRs...
As of the product, I join vast majority that says stay away. My personal thing is that after reading one of their interview where they were inviting people to clinical study, I send them long detailed email covering my willingness to participate and even pay all the cost from my own pocket. My email got ignored and I never got response. For that reason alone, I would stay away from something you have to pay for, because their customer support sucks from the get go.
But you still eat them right?
"Junk food is perfectly balanced and optimized for your body and lifestyle, meaning it automatically puts you at an optimal weight, makes you feel full, and improves your focus and cognition."
Ever see anyone say that about junk food?
Not to mention all the 'regular' non-fast preprocessed food people all over the world believe to be fitting for a regular diet.
If you don't like it, don't buy it.
Your original post's attitude seemed to imply it was almost risky to consume this as it's made by people aged "20 or so". Not only do I find your age discrimination shocking, I also take issue with your sarcastic tone.
If you want evidence, I can think of two sources:
[1] http://discourse.soylent.me/ -- Plenty of people on the discussion boards
[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8WpksPED_Q -- Week long study
As of now it hasn't existed for more than a few months so it's a little hard to give sources for trying it for "years".
Additionally, Rob strongly suggests NOT eating it every day.
As for problems arising months (or years), there's also a post about that too: http://robrhinehart.com/?p=570
Speaking as a biochemist who works in the biotech industry, this looks to be like a gigantic train wreck just waiting to happen.
At first glance, I would be convinced these individuals know very little about the science behind their product. They all have a bunch of fancy business acronyms next to their name, yet the majority of this group appears to have little scientific background.
Website annoyances:
- Why is a benzene ring in the background of their logo? Sure, the benzene moiety is prolific and crucial throughout biological systems, but plain benzene is a toxic carcinogen.
- Why is their favicon cyclohexane instead of benzene, if that was why they're going for?
edit: I will probably try it myself as a replacement for some meals, so I hate to simply sound like another voice piling on, but it seems pretty clear to me (whether it was intentional or not) that the "FDA-approved" comment is misleading.
I admit they need a warning of some sort on the campaign, and they should probably link to his blog posts about everything that goes into this, but the "life and death" argument is a bit extreme.
It's not what's in this product, it's what this product is purported to replace. I don't see anything inherently harmful in a wooden frame until it's marketed as a drop-in replacement for reinforced steel construction.
This product is being marketed as an alternative to food.
Please, stop commenting on things you clearly do not understand. Human biology and nutrition is a tad more complicated than creating an iPhone fart app. There's a lot more to nutrition than examining a list of ingredients.
The reason I even bother pointing this out is because you seem like the kind of person who might actually be able to present a specific reason.
Obviously, it's not safe to assume that it can replace all food, period, but I don't see/haven't heard any specific reason to suspect that it would be dangerous to consume it in large portions on a regular basis.
Risk vs reward. Very little risk in tech companies, quite a few in biotech.
That's because the FDA regulates food. Read The Jungle[0] if you want to know how things were before the FDA existed. These guys need to understand that biotech is nothing like tech and shut this shit down before they kill someone.
There's a good reason why you don't see uneducated teenagers "disrupting" the food and drug industries. This isn't like creating Tumblr.
Yeah, because before 1906, people were constantly dying from bad food. There wasn't any safe food to eat. In the whole world. For all of history. Until the FDA came along to save us in 1906.
I mean, it's demonstrably true that people aren't capable of caring for themselves. We need the government for force us to take care of ourselves.
P.S. The Jungle is a piece of left-wing propoganda.
Unless you are claiming that these guys are likely to put dangerous, non-FDA approved substances in their product?
The comment you respond to makes the point that while there's plenty of possibilities for dangerously deficient diets at any grocery store, and lot of people do choose diets - from regular grocery stores - that are extremely limited, most of us do ok.
And that is what Soylent needs to match or beat in order to avoid doing harm. The bar is extremely low considering some of the stuff I've survived on for extensive periods of time, and the type of diets I see others manage on.
That's not to say that they shouldn't aim higher, but there are a lot of people here that seems to be completely oblivious to just how shitty diets a lot of people live on.
That said, I think their marketing claims are well in excess of what they have evidence for, and it saddens me a bit that they feel that hyperbole is necessary. I also hope they put a lot more effort into testing.
Which is precisely the reason your fear-mongering is nonsense. The FDA isn't going to suddenly disappear because these guys are selling the same thing tons of other companies sell: meal replacement shake mix.
People who care to do better than burritos and ramen and freezer pizza already can do better than burritos and ramen and freezer pizza with minimal effort.
So, no, I don't think that the bar Soylent needs to pass to be offering an improvement over current options is quite that low.
"For anyone that struggles with allergies, heartburn, acid reflux or digestion, has trouble controlling weight or cholesterol, or simply doesn't have the means to eat well, soylent is for you." is not carefully constructed. It has clear and specific meaning, but it is untested and not yet proved.
Have Soylent really thought about that sentence? What happens when someone with a digestive disorder eats Soylent, thinking they're getting the nutrition they need and then they get even more ill?
> Soylent is perfectly balanced and optimized for your body and lifestyle, meaning it automatically puts you at an optimal weight, makes you feel full, and improves your focus and cognition.
How can they say this? They have no idea what my body and lifestyle is! I could be a 78 year old bed-ridden patient riddled with cancer or a 17 year old who goes out clubbing 5 nights a week.
> By taking years to spoil,
They're claiming their nutrients are stable for years. I seriously doubt that.
I was having a hard time swallowing (ha) that sentence too. Many digestive problems have nothing to do with the lack of eating biologically correct nutrients. A good amount of acid reflux problems are caused by having a hiatal hernia for example.
Obviously the guy has a background in chemistry or biology. As we all know, you don't have to go to school in a subject to become an "expert" in it.
Never heard of books and the internet?
That being said, health claims such as the ones you cite-- "it automatically puts you at an optimal weight, makes you feel full, and improves your focus and cognition"-- fall into the realm of regulated speech. You shouldn't be making claims like these without well-controlled clinical trials to back them up. The sellers of Soylent will need to hire legal counsel before long...
Its pretty hard to violate FDA rules when soliciting investment, they'd most likely only run that risk when they start actually marketing product. And even then, the incredibly lax FDA rules around supplements have enabled some of the biggest (and most dangerous) health related scams ever to operate within the rules, so they can probably be okay even then. Usually, this seems to involve placing a disclaimer that the product is not intended to prevent or treat any disease or condition on advertising touting its health benefits (often including explicit claims that the product prevents or treats various diagnosable diseases and/or conditions.)
> But I doubt you can say things like "it automatically puts you at an optimal weight, makes you feel full, and improves your focus and cognition" without having some actual data backing you up.
You'd probably be surprised.
I'll listen to what the kid has to say.
Word of advice to you, sir. If you care about avoiding rat feces, spoiled food, and contamination in general, buy whole foods. For example, buy apples rather than applesauce. Buy steak rather than soylent. When you can visually inspect the thing, you see a lot of defects that are hidden when you grind or mash it all up.
Then I started reading the HN comments, and initially assumed them to be tongue-in-cheek replies running with the joke: the typical "this is why it won't work", the usual "this is why it's a bad idea", the inevitable "it's actually amazing, stop being so negative". But that gradually stopped making sense the further I read, with people appearing to take it way too seriously for a simple spoof.
So thanks HN, you've managed to confuse me completely. This might be a sign I've been spending too much time here lately.
Since the term soylent is widely understood to mean human remains masquerading as food, the name suggests pretense.
He wrote:
Before I rarely had enough energy to go to
the gym, but this day I had plenty so I
decided to put the diet to the test. I'd been
running off and on for several months, never
able to do more than a mile straight, but
this day I ran 3.14 miles non-stop. This is an
irrational improvement.
Elsewhere, he said he only needs 1/3 the calories on Soylent, which was explained away by an apologist in the comments as a figure of speech, or perhaps art of rhetoric, but that explanation is contradicted by his precise descriptions elsewhere and worrisome in this context regardless.
There were more jokes like that, conveniently allowing its author to laugh at people no matter whether he's being truthful or not. Parts of the campaign are patronizing and condescending and they've shown no desire to fix that aspect, making me more leery due to the immaturity. Should I trust my health to such a cavalier attitude?
I lean toward it being legit, but they've got a long ways to go to catch up with the cutting edge of understanding in nutrition science and it's not clear what advantage they'll be able to offer over established meal replacement drinks like Ensure, which most people don't want to drink today. Improved taste? You can get rats to overfeed to fatness on chocolate Ensure. Expertise? No. For personal use, Soylent Orange is more convenient, available today, and safer, IMO:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/h2h/i_hate_preparing_food_my_solutio...
e: AND called that an "irrational improvement." That must be a joke or something...
Edit: Okay, you beat me to it :P
Edit 2: Are we the same person?
On his blog [1] he talks about running 3.14 constantly, so it's possible that he chooses to run pi miles on purpose regularly. Who knows.
[1] (cached) http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kUt_beW...
Unfortunately, I don't think such a study is runnable. How do you blind 'oil-sludge' against 'real food'?
That said, randomizable is perfectly doable: Rhinehart could flip a coin each week to decide whether to eat real food or Soylent. I suggested as much on his blog a while ago, but he never responded.
If nothing else, it could be compared to something like formula that's used to keep folks on feeding tubes alive.
Ensure isn't remotely close to nutritionally complete. We're not talking about your mythical unknown magic plant powers here, we're talking known vitamins and essential minerals, with established RDIs, that Ensure and similar products do not come anywhere close to providing enough of. If you can show me a product that is actually nutritionally complete (provides 100% of the RDI of all vitamins and minerals with an RDI) then you have an argument.
I'm just dumbfounded. I can't comprehend what is going on in this comment section. It seems quite clear to me that the HN community is being parodied, and yet either everyone here is so gullible they have never been on the Internet before, or they are dutifully playing their part in the parody.
I mean, in Soylent Green it's all about "freeing your body" as well.
if this turns out to have been an incredibly elaborate hoax, I'm gonna laugh, tip my hat and buy the guy a beer if I ever meet him
http://www.shaman-australis.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=35...
That's the next alternative if Soylent doesn't work. Now either offer a design for a better food replacement, or shut up and get out of the way.
As a type one diabetic if 80% of meals were the exact same, my long term health prospects would be brighter.
Here's to hoping!
Soylent has none of the complex/unnecessary/unhealthy chemical substances tradional diets (milk,bread,nuts,fish) have that are the frequent object of intolerances.
One of the key "milk" allergies is allergy to whey, which from what has been posted in this thread is the protein source for Soylent..
In his blogs he mentioned that in his head this could ultimately be a drink tailormade for your specific needs, so someone with whey allergy could swap the whey proteins for meat or fish proteins (if those are readibly available at all)
People (and, really, adult mammals that aren't humans of European descent) mostly are lactose intolerant, which is a non-immune issue (and thus not an allergy.) Milk allergies (allergies to one or more of whey, cassein, or other milk proteins) are a different issue, but also a real thing.
What kind of exercise did you do, at what intensity, and for how long?
The creator of Soylent will be the first to tell you this (he works out quite a bit).
Weight loss is deceptively simple. Take in less calories per day than you burn, and you will lose weight. That's it. "Types" of calories is important too but is focused on too much. Exercise is very important, but trying to lose weight via exercise is ridiculous. It's much easier to just not intake those calories in the first place.
There are calculators that will help you to figure your BMR (basal metabolic rate) which will allow you to figure out the corresponding amount of caloric intake you can have that will allow you to have a net caloric "loss".
Actually putting this into practice does involve meticulous calorie counting and very probably feeling hungry a lot of the time, as you are used to a higher caloric intake; that is where the "deceptive" bit comes in.
Pretty disappointing.
Why don't we instead give money to the sensible things that the WHO does, like genetic engineering probiotic yogurts which produce all of the essential vitamines that humans need (which is something WHO has funded).
What's "metabolically disadvantaged"? Are you suffering from a medical condition for which no satisfactory diet (in the proper sense of the term) has been developed?
I'm not sure I have all the background information necessary to properly understand all the intricacies of what the OP in the link you posted is describing; but it sounds like what he's going through is complex enough that it probably won't solved by something as straightforward as Soylent (which is basically "let's take everything current science says your body needs, and mash it all together in one solution").
Any light you can shed on this for the non-initiated would be appreciated :)
In the vast majority of cases, "metabolically disadvantaged" means "lazy and sedentary" without actually taking the responsibility for it. It's similar to blaming one's obesity on "genetics" or "body shape" or being "big-boned." (The last one is especially funny. Guess why your bones are big. It's because they have to carry all your fat!)
I resent having to frequently stop what I'm doing - what I'm really excited about - to spend time attending to the endless whining of my body. And I resent even more the things my body does if I don't give in and feed it perfectly every damn time (so far, gastric ulcers and frequent heartburn). Food currently sucks. It could be so much better. It could "just work".
I'm also in for $65.
I did try to solve the same problem the Soylent guy is solving, it's on LW under "I hate preparing food". I think I did a better job.
He's making a number of health claims on that page. I'm curious about the legality of doing so; it's not legal in the UK unless he meets some pretty strict criteria.
> If not for this waste there would be plenty of food to adequately nourish everyone alive.
Waste food is a serious problem and something needs to be done. I'm not sure there's a connection between food waste and world hunger.
> 2 million people are killed annually by smoke inhalation from indoor cooking stoves alone
This could be an interesting problem. Why do people use really inefficient dirty open fires to cook? Why aren't they using better stoves? It's not as if a stove requires huge amounts of resources.
"Unfortunately due to regulatory constraints, our initial runs of Soylent will be available within the United States only. We are diligently working to provide it worldwide as soon as possible."
So indeed the UK won't be seeing this sold (legally) anytime soon.
That said, I don't think it's really a case of whether or not Soylent is safe. Even if they have FDA approval, and produce Soylent under the strictest conditions of food safety, the real problem is their idea behind Soylent's use -- that it can replace a balanced diet. I'm sure it's safe to have it occasionally, if even a few portions of it everyday. But to virtually replace your diet? That's a bold claim, and with dangerous consequences at that.
Or better still, why not just let them eat cake? Then they won't need stoves or fires at all! Those poor people out in third-world countries sure are silly....
Sarcasm aside, if someone can't afford a better stove they're not going to be able to afford Soylent, so it's a pretty ridiculous benefit to cite in the first place.
Rather more worthwhile than some bullshit diet for Americans who can't cook.
Like he explicitly said he was going to do from the start? Man, those people must be clairvoyant.
Citation needed. I'm a big fan of n=1, but making these kinds of claims supported by anecdote and then asking for money based on those claims is ridiculous.
Either they deliberately misreported something; in which case they're lying while trying to raise money.
Or they made a mistake. And if they get something this simple wrong why should I trust them when they're making something that I'm supposed to be able to live on?
In most of these cases, there is no distinction between a "cooking stove" and "heating stove" and whether these families require heating year round or not, cooking is not a seasonal activity.
Splitting hairs on this point is dumb, though. The point of citing it at all is to illustrate how big they are thinking. They want to solve the entire world's food problem. Isn't that scale of vision why we're all here?
That's an amazing vision. Soylent shows little to no understanding of the actual problems of food security. There doesn't appear to be any research into the causes of food scarcity, or who is affected by food scarcity, or what a sensible solution would be.
Soylent glop doesn't seem to do anything to increase local independence. Where food could be grown and sold locally now people are importing a bunch of stuff from elsewhere.
Here are some people in Mogadishu selling food. (http://www.irinnews.org/Photo/Details/201207161308270312/Veg...)
How much Soylent does this child need? (http://pinterest.com/pin/278519558175219781/)
How do you get Soylent to the Democratic Republic of Congo?
What do you do when people don't have clean water?
Soylent have made a strong link between food waste and world hunger. They claim that waste here causes hunger there. That's clearly, blatantly, wrong.
I'm all for big ideas and thinking big, but so far this is either a cynical scam or brutally ignorant.
The concept of Soylent is orthogonal to the slow food movement, but it isn't incompatible with local production by definition.
None of your objections make any real sense. This is an early prototype of balanced-diet-in-a-pill, but because they haven't solved the problem of clean water across the globe, they're the cynical ones?
Somebody comes out with an idea to drastically transform the way that we consume food + the top comment, at the time, was about one small detail in his vid.
Is it wrong to ridicule that kind of comment?
No. Liquid feed has existed for a long time. You can walk to a shop and buy it. There's a small convenience store across the road from me selling it next to coca cola and pepsi.
We are polite to people who are sincere, even if they are foolish and ignorant. We are rude to people who are engaged in blatantly dangerous scamming.
So in that way it is simply another "look, eating this probably won't kill you, at least not quickly." product. There are many of these introduced and produced every year.
That said, to the extent that this guy can get traction for his effectively artificial food, the big food companies will watch it and talk about it. If there is something to it they might add their own toe in the water, or not. Most recently they have been hammered pretty publicly about how their manufactured food products aren't really much food (see "In Defense of Food" as an example of the narrative)
"One Month's Supply of Soylent We'll ship enough Soylent to fully replace one month's worth of meals. Shipping included."
From his blog, he really did seem to push the idea of making Soylent his only food -- IIRC he felt like that the traditional idea of eating from a lot of different sources was stressful (I guess the decision of what to eat, etc, was stressful). His blog seems to be down for me right now, though, so I can't confirm that.
There are markets for this kind of stuff though, like military foodstocks (MREs) or disaster supplies if there is a decent shelf life. But those products have some interesting (at least to me) testing cycles they have gone through.
If that's how it was marketed most people would have much less problem with it.
But when it's claiming to regulate cholesterol and etc, well, that's just sleazy.
Are we that rare?
There's this idea that because we have such stringent laws governing our medicine, we probably have such laws governing food too. But the reality of it is that if you take a bunch of ingredients that have already been established in the market and you throw them together you're allowed to call it food and sell it in the supermarkets.
In a macabre way, if this drink _does_ seriously harm someone, and they sue these guys that would actually be a good thing, because these guys are doing nothing different from what the preprocessed food industry is doing. Except that the preprocessed food industry optimizes for minimal ingredient costs and maximal consumability, where Rob is optimizing Soylent for maximal ingredient coverage and minimal consumation need, the exact opposite! We might actually get some sane laws (like the rejected one that said food marketed for children should consist of at least 50% nutrients)
Before you question the integrity of this project, please consider that Rob himself has already been living almost exclusively for 4 months. No that does not mean this product is by all means safe or that you should replicate him without doubt, but it does mean he already put his life on the line for the idea of this product.
That being said, I do find it a bit disconcerting to see that all the cautionary language of his blog is gone in this marketing site. It wasn't a good idea to hire a sales person for this kind of project, he already has more initial backing than he should need in my opinion.
Maybe by "nootropics" they just mean everyday vitamins that have been shown to benefit your brain, but that's certainly not what I think of when I hear that term. Then again, maybe there's somewhere online where they actually list what they're using, but I couldn't find any details on the campaign page.
[1] http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-sta...
To those people, I highly recommend green protein smoothies.
They aren't cheap, really, but they are fast and done right they taste good and will take an otherwise mediocre diet to better than 99% of people without much other change (I am not a doctor, just an observer).
Some fruit, some leafy greens, some nuts, optionally some protein powder (my favorite had been pea protein, but my nutritionist recommended alternating protein sources every few weeks of doing it regularly).
Adding in some thing like vitamineral green and you are really doing alright. Spending about 3-400 USD on a good blender and you can have an über healthy, delicious meal replacement in minutes with about 30 seconds of clean up.
A mediocre blender still make the experience less enjoyable when using nuts and tough greens like kale.
Expect an 800 calorie shake to cost maybe 3-5 bucks to put together depending on your tastes, whether you go organic, and access to produce.
2 large handfuls of fresh spinach or kale, 1 apple or 6 strawberries, 1 banana, 1 tbsp ground flaxseed, 1 large handful of ice, 1-2 cups of water, 1/4 cup unsweetened almond milk
I prefer to drink it with a straw.
I'm really on board with the idea, but what got me interested was the notion that it would be easy to adjust the formula to my needs, e.g. choose a different ratio of various powders if I want to gain weight, lose weight, or compensate for some genetic difference.
It may not be the perfect product, but at least it's pushing some boundaries. I, for one, am excited to get my hands on a batch and let the results speak for themselves.
I wouldn't even consider ingesting this mystery powder, even if they paid me.
Liquid feed is not new.
No shit. Seriously, who is going to try this powder made by this twenty-somethings guys with no background in any kind of health nor nutrition studies.
It reminds me to the Power Balance scam http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Balance
(a) Both the 1973 Charlton Heston movie and mixed, some-negative health connotations of the word 'soy' make the chosen name for the product problematic.
(b) The argument for its safety – "We have been testing Soylent on ourselves for several months and the data shows it to have a positive nutritional benefit" – creates little confidence compared to thousands of years of alternate practice, and strong evidence the human system needs some variety/chaos for optimal health/resilience.
If you decide you don't like soylent there are a bunch of other products from other more mainstream manufacturers.
Fortisip and Ensure are the two brands I'm most familiar with, but there are others. Fortisip do wide range of different style products (shake, juice, yoghurt, and 'savory'.) But it's an acquired taste.
I'm not sure why they have two trailing slashes. (https://www.nutricia.co.uk/fortisip//)
Sure, it's marketed as having a low glycemic index — but the GI of chocolate cake and ice cream is even lower...
The macronutrient breakdown based on calories per gram is 50% carbs, 13% protein, 37% fat, if I'm not mistaken. I'd rather have a bit more protein and a bit less fat, personally.
http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Food/GuidanceRegulation/UCM2654...
I'm in the same camp as the author, saying that people overestimate the harm of fat. I don't think I need 56 grams of fat in a serving of soylent, though. Let's assume I want to maintain my bodyweight and need about 2500-3000 calories to do so given the amount I exercise. Two servings of soylent will give me 1600 calories from carbs, 400 calories from protein, and 1008 calories from fat. Maybe that's fine, but maybe it's not ideal. I guess I'd like to know. I think it's a stretch to say I have no clue what I need. Maybe I don't know what I need to survive, in terms of a bare minimum, but I know what I need to maintain my weight in terms of calories.
With me being a college student with a VERY limited budget I get very little nutrition that's needed for my body to operate normally. I was so turned on to this product because it was initially advertised to cost the creator between $50 and $100 per month. Now, all of a sudden it's going to cost me $230 just to get started.
It's starting to sound more and more like a scam; I'm pretty livid.
I remember when I first read the creator's blog post and how little it costs to make. Now I come and see it costs about the same amount it costs me to purchase food for a week.
I highly recommend you switch to brown rice, wheat pasta, beans, produce, and cheap cuts of meat. Add in a slow cooker if you don't have much time.
Oh, and as for this soylent product, I would run screaming away. I only read his recipe up to the carbs section, and the fact that he thinks all carbs are the same because they end up as ATP is mind-boggling. It's as if he isn't aware of the huge problem with HFCS. Any biochem undergrad can tell you about the incredible complexity of the feedback and regulatory mechanisms of the body; to focus only on the end product of a mechanism is ignorant at best.
Put probably not cheaper than grocery shopping for a month for one person, unless that person has particular food tastes that Soylent isn't going to address.
Multivitamin ~10$
1 gross eggs ~20
30 cans refried beans ~20
~100 small tortillas ~7
5 lbs rice ~5
3 lbs sour cream ~9
salt ~.7
pepper ~1
garlic ~2
10 lbs potatoes ~10Prices sourced from an H.E.B. supermarket in Austin Tx. Oh, also, I've been living on less than 3$ of food a day for the last year, so this isn't exactly theoretical. 230 per person per month would the height of luxury for me.
The ingredients list is published and available, there's even a spreadsheet up with online locations where you can buy everything.
I can understand being dissatisfied about cost - but it was never claimed that you could receive this delivered to your door for $100/mo.
I'm not certain who's maintaining or how up to date this is; but here is the one I'd previously seen. There may be better data sources around.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjA38cUd4BZBdGZ...
I think I remember him saying that the recipe was "open source", maybe you could just make it yourself to save.
I can see his saving time argument though. Although there are days I gladly spent an hour or more in my kitchen, some days when I'm busy or lazy I would consider it.
Sidenote - calling this "corporation", I don't know if it's a joke or just poor marketing.
1) All foods are broken down into their respective molecular constituents (free fatty acids, glucose, amino acids, etc) through a series of enzymatic reactions. These nutrients are ultimately absorbed through the wall of the bowel or what remains passes as feces. This is true whether you are eating lettuce, ribs, a slice of bread, or this soylent product.
2) Frankly, I see no difference in this product from any other meal replacement powder available in bulk at any nutrition store. If we ever see a nutrition label, I suspect it will look strikingly similar to Slim Fast.
I really like the idea, but until they apply some real science to it, I'll pass.
[1] http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD007176/antioxidant-supplemen...
"Plumpy'nut is a peanut-based paste in a plastic wrapper for treatment of severe acute malnutrition... They are also relatively high in calories, which means that a patient receives a lot of nutrition from small amounts, important because malnutrition shrinks the stomach."
Now, in hindsight, we know what a mistake that was, as natural breast milk contained compounds which decreased various cancer and health risks.
I cannot help but think they are going down the same road.
Not good.
Man, i'm dying to be able to live on shakes (I already do, protein shakes and soluble fiber when i'm out of time) but claiming you can go on and on on just one food source for long periods of time without extensive testing is just irresponsible.
How can pets tolerate eating the same food for a long period of time? Most cat and dog owners get one brand of food for their pet and stick with it for years at a time.
Are our digestive systems really that different?
There are foods for fat pets; foods to clean teeth; food for kidney health.
Pet foods have considerable number of patents. Talk to British people about dog excrement, and there are people of a certain age who remember dog poo being white and furry. People want a food that produces a nice firm stool, that's easy to clean up. Anything too loose and they think the pet is ill (even if it isn't).
There's a lot of money in pet food.
Notice, also, that pet food is often a mix of biscuits and meat, or just meat, or just biscuits. These are solid foods. Water is extra. No-one so far has taken the nutrients a pet needs and blended these into a glop.
Still, my basic point still stands, that our pets do just fine on essentially a single source of food. Why would it matter if it was blended into a glop? My cat has food allergies so he's been fed a single high-quality hypoallergenic food for over 3 years now. It stopped his excessive itching, made his fur softer, and he generally shows all signs of being very healthy according to the vet. I'm sure all the lab research contributed to the cat food's effectiveness and it would be great to see the same happen with Soylent.
>Talk to British people about dog excrement, and there are people of a certain age who remember dog poo being white and furry
That is because they remember dogs eating meat. Now dogs eat corn. There is no patent on dog food that makes white poop.
>Notice, also, that pet food is often a mix of biscuits and meat, or just meat, or just biscuits
This is for the benefit of marketing the product to people, it has nothing to do with nutrition.
Here is a hint, folks: it is called a random controlled trial. Until these Soylent guys conduct a few of those and show that their product is not only just better, but also safe for consumption, it needs to be dismissed and ignored.
According to the popular science/history book 1493, it is more-or-less a complete diet in itself. The two datapoints it uses to back this up are a story about two Polish scientists who ate nothing but potatoes and milk (or milk products, like cheese and butter) for a year, and remained in perfect heath for the duration, and the claim that prior to the Potato Famine, 25% of the Irish population was already surviving on nothing but milk and potatoes indefinitely, and they were regarded as a healthy and hale race.
A 2000 calorie diet of milk and potatoes (4 cups 2% milk, 5.5 300g potatoes) costs around $65 / day. Preparation time involves as little as microwaving a potato and pouring a glass of milk.
On the other hand, selling this stuff with claims like, "Soylent is perfectly balanced and optimized for your body and lifestyle, meaning it automatically puts you at an optimal weight, makes you feel full, and improves your focus and cognition," is another thing completely. It sounds like a total scam, especially since they don't even say what's in it.
There's a pretty big difference between "I'm trying this new nutritional approach out for myself" and "without any serious testing, I am trying to get investors to sell this nutritional approach to the public".
I suspect the difference you observe in responses is tied to the that difference.
Which is nothing more than a failure of my imagination, of course, and I'm not seriously suggesting that anyone who does is defective in any way, but I feel like most of life's greatest pleasures come directly from the preparation and consumption of food. To want to get rid of these pleasures in the name of efficiency is a strange argument to my mind.
I'm 100% behind the vat grown meat brigade on this one.
It sounds like the guys behind this are impatient, overconfident and reckless. Worse than that, they're preying on those caught up in how fashionable crowd-funding is these days. I doubt very much that a website like Kickstarter would actually get behind a project like this, which is why they've had to roll their own website.
If these guys had a background in Bromatology and did their due diligence before launching this campaign, I'd be skeptical. Just imagine how confident I am, given the reality.
Edit: specifically, these two guidelines:
- Projects cannot offer financial, medical, or health advice.
- No tobacco, drugs, and drug paraphernalia; energy food and drinks; or nutritional supplements.
That's pretty scary to me. Who is the person who is certifying this as safe for meal replacement?
Where is the clinical study that was done before this was released to people?
What irks me though, is the lack of a true clinical trial.
This fundraising effort is for the supplement itself when it really should be for clinical trials to prove the stuff is safe and works.
Perhaps they are scared of the results, or perhaps they really believe in their product, either way this is in the wrong direction and people COULD get hurt.
They study, they tell us what they find, they study more, and tell us new information, and keep going, getting better and more refined as they progress. More researchers test the claims, and prove it one way or another. If this isn't good enough for you, then at what point would information ever be good enough for you? Do you expect a time when knowledge is complete and set?
You prefer the ideas of non researchers, people with no foundation in the subject or scientific methods? You prefer their advice? You might as well take your scientific facts from a bloke in a bar.
In all seriousness, kudos to these kids and their ambitions. However, the software model of iterating fast doesn't always translate to the physical world, especially when it comes to items ingested by human beings.
It's one thing to "pivot" on your Instagram clone, but taking some experimental goop that hasn't been rigorously tested with good unbiased science (not to mention with a sample size larger than one 24-year old) and deciding to market it is another thing--especially when none of your "team" are nutritionists by trade. There's a reason we have the FDA. I get that this is the "startup culture", but let's take a moment to realize the physical world doesn't allow us to recompile and try again very easily.
it seems to just be a implementation of Selfstarter with a backend to process payments, but at the same time they boast "Free to use"... how can a payment processing be free?
But for someone trying to hack nutrition this way, you would think they would open the ingredients, or at least offer research sources.
Knowing the contents of Soylent isn't going to stop anyone from buying it (convenience), but it would allow people to understand some of these bold claims.
Also, it's a little disconcerting when the only founder with any food or biotech background is the sales guy.
My reasoning is if every nutrient is absorbed and used, there is no physical waste left, and all toxins and byproducts would be expelled through urine.
That said, I am missing a significant length of digestive tract, so my experience may be atypical. I would also note that that as calories increase, to or above your metabolic needs, that this effect would likely diminish.
In fact, an extremely common request of clinical nutritionists is for a non-diary product, especially for ones aimed at children.
I strongly urge Soylent to try and gain the help of someone with experience within the established industry and get their assistance. Whilst us hackers might be happy to take the risk at this stage, someone with industry experience and knowledge of product development and production would bring invaluable skill. Plus, they'd be best placed to answer any questions about FDA issues, etc
Disclaimer: I have a family member who works in this field
Clearly this is a very controversial topic, but the general attitude for most of the supporters (myself included) appears to be that if no serious negative effects have been exposed from consuming Soylent in three months, it must be safe to try.
Is there any possibility that consuming Soylent for a while (say, a week to a month) and then stopping cold-turkey could be significantly harmful to one's digestion? Maybe? I guess we'll find out when the first round of supplies is consumed.
Another thing, props on the campaign and having already been funded, but let's hope the next promo video does less to seem like a run-of-the-mill infomercial... :\
1. Record your current height
2. Record daily: weight + timestamp, sleep start time, sleep stop time,
food consumption (http://www.livestrong.com/thedailyplate/ perhaps to help
or alternatives), exercise,
and how you feel physically (tired, energetic, sleepy...).
3. Blog about your experience and contribute the data to science.
Disclaimer: I will not be participating in this experiment, but am interested in the results. =D
Not yet. This first run will be the regular vegetarian soylent, but it is lactose free, kosher, halal, and absent of all known allergens
I believe soy is an allergy to some people. What does "absent of all known allergens" mean then?
For example, vegans would care about this.
Whey protein isolate is a more "pure" form or whey protein that does not contain lactose. Whey concentrate is cheaper, but does contain some lactose.
The site mentions that the formula is lactose free, so I imagine they are using Whey Isolate.
I guess that a few months from now we'll see a New York Times article explaining how a fake startup with a fake product managed to raise seed capital.
I feel pretty confident that this is the case right now. A lot of people here are shitting on these guys for creating something that completely contradicts our notion of nutrition. I for one, support this new venture and wish them the best of luck.
I don't even really believe soylent is legit, but it's interesting enough to plunk down money for. However, this is kinda a deal-breaker.
How exactly is Soylent currently not vegan?
EDIT: Re-reading http://robrhinehart.com/?p=424 , it's implied that this uses whey protein. I've used hemp protein rather than whey before.
Also, it'd be green then. ;)
It is extremely inexpensive, delicious, vegetarian/vegan-if-eggs-are-omitted, flexible, nutrient rich, high in fiber, high in good fats, relatively "slow-cal"/low glycemic index, wheat gluten-free, protein rich, easy to digest, and very quick to prepare.
Pre-cooked in large quantity weekly/every-two-weeks:
- quinoa (2 minutes total prep time, in a large cheap rice cooker) - sweet potatoes (4 minutes total prep time -- simply baked in foil 30 mins to a side at 425 F) - beans (I do black beans, Mexican style -- this can take a fair bit longer, but they're super tasty, and can last 2-3 weeks if portions are frozen)
In the morning ...
Ingredients - olive oil (1/4 to 1/2 a cup) - pre-cooked quinoa (3/4 - 1.5 cups) - pre-cooked sweet potato (1/2 - 1 cup) - pre-cooked beans (1/2 - 1 cup) - eggs (1-4) - greens (kale/spinach/chard/whatever) - salt and peper - hot sauce!!
I pour the olive oil in a large cast iron skillet (cast iron is the best!). I then add the cooked quinoa and fry at high heat for maybe five minutes -- the quinoa should absorb most of the oil (there should be no smoking or anything!).
Then I add some beans and some sweet potato (skins on! and, for the last few mornings I haven't had beans so it's been sweet potato only) and mix it all up. Then comes some chopped up vegetables (kale/spinach/chard). When the vegetables are 70% cooked or so I add one to four eggs (this morning it was four). I mix the eggs in with the rest of the hot conglomeration and cook them very briefly, being careful to avoid having them spend too much time on the hot skillet (which makes them rubbery).
I then put the hot mess into a bowl. If I have avocados (as I do now) I chop one up and mix it with some salt and lemon juice and put it on top of everything. I usually douse it all with hot sauce, repeatedly.
I estimate that my breakfasts are typically between 1800 and 2800 calories, though some days (like today) I only get through a part of it, in which case I save it for later. If I get through it all, it usually means I don't have to worry about eating anything more than a snack at dinner time. This has the benefit of avoiding the afternoon food-coma caused by lunch.
I wash the meal down with some homemade carrot-ginger-apple-greens-beet juice (mixed in with a bit of creatine).
Also, the nutrition data site says that it's got ~124% of the recommended vitamin E (http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/recipe/2832909/2)
What would you add to this to make it better?
And, though I didnt' mention it, I typically consume the meal with capsules of fish and cod liver oil.
"Very poor" alternative? Really? What kind curve are you grading on, exactly? I would say twinkies, or meat-and-potatoes, or anything that took hours to prepare, would be "very poor" alternatives. If this is a "very poor" alternative, what is a "reasonable" alternative, then?
I believe in the general cause so much, that even if there's only 1% something good will come out of this particular project, I'll happily take that chance.
"It's a single cell protein combined with synthetic aminos, vitamins, and minerals. Everything the body needs." - from The Matrix
They also have a poor understanding of what constitutes an allergen.
Please help me flesh it out so it can help people come to their own conclusion about Soylent's safety: http://www.slant.co/topics/695/~is-it-safe-to-replace-my-die...
How about a sleeping pill named Quietus[1]?
[1] Children of Men reference, film version
I've found it's surprisingly hard to make something healthy that doesn't make me gag. So far I tried egg protein powder mixed with chia seeds, olive oil, plain yogurt and a banana.
I'm now thinking I'd be better off with something solid that I could eat on the go. I haven't seen a good recipe though.
Why would you alienate potential customers with a product name that beings with "Soy"?
1. I can make a Hot Pocket in about 3 minutes. While the microwave is running I can browse my email on my cellphone etc...
2. Some instant food is unhealthy, perhaps healthy instant food is market for disruption?
3. Are we living in a society where people can't stop for 3 minutes to grab a bite to eat!?
2. Healthy instant food tastes bland or like garbage.
3. Yes. I don't like it, but most of us don't have choices.
Either way that and the snake-oil type sales pitch has really turned me off. Through all the hoopla this generated on HN I mostly sat on the fence. Now I feel distinctly like I don't trust them. But they've got backers, so we'll see the results eventually.
This gif pretty much sums up my feelings on the matter: http://i.imgur.com/twkp3So.gif
Only one item on the menu. No need for a kitchen or trained chefs. I'll be rich!
Eat till you are full. Normalise your weight.
- I don't care what they do to their own bodies
- I do care that they don't have any rigorous testing done before offering this to the public without disclaimers.
I agree they've gotten carried away in their claims and are focusing the pitch on some silly stuff.. for ex I don't think they're going to solve world hunger. But these are criticisms of this particular pitch, and don't change at all the actual product they're pushing: a best effort implementation of medical science's actual nutrition guidelines + some nootropics.
Does it taste good?
If only this genius and effort behind 'soylent' were put to good use.
[checks date]. Late for April Fools.
Liquid feeds are already available, and are made by regulated suppliers to a high quality.
"It's made of people."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sp-VFBbjpE
This is marketing genius
person #1: But he hasn't proven it's safe!
person #2: But you haven't proven that it isn't!
person #1: But he doesn't have a PhD or any qualifications in food science!
person #2: But you don't either! And anyway the real experts admit they don't know what they're doing anyway. The fake experts are busy pushing colon cleanse products and miracle diets.
person #1: But he's playing with people's lives! Think of the children!
person #2: But so are the guys who invented the Doritos taco shell, the twinkie, and the super-sized french fries. Why the double standard?
How about injecting some reality into this debate and admitting that nobody is going to actually eat nothing but soylent every day. OK, maybe possibly the original inventor will stick to it for a while, but I can't imagine anyone else possibly doing this. Most Americans can barely make it between meals without grabbing a snack. Do you really think someone is going to eat nothing but green snot for a year? All these arguments are irrelevant, really.