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You can't make blanket statements 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." because people might think they can eat Soylent and nothing else. I won't say they are breaking the law. All I am saying is they need a lot of clinical trial to cover their butts in court.

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False. There is no law that requires them to qualify "structure or function claims". They can claim it makes you 200 feet tall, and it doesn't matter, because it is not a drug and it has nothing to do with listing ingredients on the label.

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.

Incorrect!

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.

It's true, though -- under current law, you get a free pass for the majority of evidential requirements just by calling your product a "supplement". As long as they don't explicitly state that it can cure something specific (see e.g. Airborne, which made that mistake), the above wording you quoted isn't much different from the junk you see all over labels in health food stores.

>people might think they can eat Soylent and nothing else.

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.

He's still eating Soylent, and has been consuming it for now 4 months I think.

But not exclusively. And that is one of the problems. If they marketed it as "only" a meal replacement, the risks would be a lot less severe - after all a lot of people get by just fine with horribly deficient meals a lot of the time. But it's a big leap from "a lot of the time" to all the time over a prolonged period of time.

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.

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