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Comment by iandanforth | Hacker News Reader

I really enjoy this campaign because it gave me an excuse to compare it with snake oil labels. (https://www.google.com/search?q=snake+oil+label&tbm=isch...)

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.

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That's a very good point and very observant.

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.

As much as i love cooking, there are times where i would love something that is quick and healthy. not to say soylent is that, just that it would be nice.

Not sure whats wrong with blending some protein powder (ON is tasty), a full avocado, spinach if your feeling frisky, whole-milk if your feeling more frisky (higher fats / a bit more protein) for a near-meal replacement (near, nothing compares to whole foods).

~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...

> Not sure whats wrong with blending some protein powder (ON is tasty)

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...

What exactly does whole food offer that a meal replacement doesn't? Are we talking nutrients? Because those can be replaced. Are we talking about the form? Because form shouldn't matter much to a digestive track that is built to dissolve and pulverize food. So what makes "whole foods" so much better?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5369778

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.

Take whole foods. Break them down. Gas chromatograph them. Match nutrient content artificially. I don't understand how that doesn't work.

And if Soylent would actually have some experts on their team (be it bio, medical or nutritional, even a chemist!), they could actually do that, or be told why that wouldn't work.

(I wonder for instance if gas chromatography would keep in tact the larger complex molecules, but I don't know much about it either)

Your claim is not backed by any evidence at all. There is nothing special or magical about "whole foods". And what is wrong with what you just mentioned is that now I need to keep fresh fruits and vegetables and milk on hand, those spoil. Your proposed meal replacement is also incredibly deficient in over half of known vitamins and essential minerals. Take my default challenge for the "oh its so easy to get all your vitamins and minerals" people: put together a recipe for me that gives me 100% of all my vitamins and minerals. When you actually try doing this, you will realize how unreasonable it is.

Most people would regard riding a horse as a pleasant thing to do in leisure time, but most today would also balk at the idea of having to care, feed, and maintain a horse to get to work every single day.

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.

I'm sorry but I find that a poor example.

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.

It's a great example. Cars started out needing much more maintenance than they do now, but they're steadily getting better, and so should food.

> 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.

Did you just describe Soylent?

What do you find appealing about Soylent compared to a bag of salad and a ready meal?

Is it just the "nutritionally complete" bit?

A bag of salad goes bad very quickly, I can't keep it on hand for whenever I need it. Frozen crap meals are clearly less healthy than soylent, and are also more effort to prepare.

> 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.

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 :)

I like cooking too. But sometimes it is a chore, or sometimes I'm busy and don't want to spend time cooking.

That's why there's restaurants and convenience foods. What a false dichotomy. The chore of an elaborate home cooked meal, or gulping down a cup of snot.

Many restaurants make lovely and delicious food... but their food is also expensive compared to preparing something yourself.

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 comparatively expensive for many people. In my country (welfare state, high minimal wage), even takeout is generally much more expensive than a homemade meal. Not to mention food delivery to your doorstep; the cheapest Indian meal I can order for delivery, for example, is $43, of which the delivery charge is $13. That's insane. For $10-15 I can make a decent meal at home.

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.

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.

To me, the more worrisome thing is that they are making eating seem like a horrible chore that nobody wants to do.

This is my concern, as well. I love food. My family loves food. Most people, even in developing countries, would prefer actual food to a nutrition shake. Culture, family, community, and love are all bound up in our relationships to eating. Bachelor chow is all well and good, but it won't save the world.

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.

My concern is that they are billing this as healthy with zero evidence that it actually is. The last few years of nutrition research has begun to show us that we know nothing about it. Pretending you can come up with an optimal solution when nobbody knows what healthy is, is just that, pretending.

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.

In this case it is.

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.

How can eating Soylent do more long-lasting damage to oneself than eating any other food?

just off the top of my head - if the nutrient powders in there are contaminated (which isnt impossible - a lot of the things he has in there arent your typical over the counter Centrum - but rather rare metals / their compounds - manufactured in some factory somewhere)

He specifically said compared to eating any other food. Every food can be contaminated. In order to sell this, he has to meet the same requirements every other food producer does.

Missing nutrients is probably the most obvious, but bad combinations of nutrients having strange effects is certainly possible.

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.

I've been using my own version of Soylent (Soylent Orange see elsewhere in this thread) for 8 months now and I find it enhances cooking. When I only have to worry about one meal each day i can actually enjoy the process. With 3 not so much.

> 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.

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.

You aren't required to buy it or use it. Cooking and shopping is a horrible chore for lots of people. Those are the people this is marketed for. "I am not the target market for this product" is not a problem with the product.

So you coined a new word for hyperbole? Cromulent!

No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

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