Soylent Subterfuge: When a Bad Joke Turns into a Business | Hacker News Reader

Soylent Subterfuge: When a Bad Joke Turns into a Business

priceplow.com

70 pointsw1ntermute90 comments

Soylent is definitely suspect. The idea that human nutrition can be boiled down to a minimal list of ingredients that are the only things you should eat is nonsense.

That said, there's no reason to think this article is any better. Honestly, I didn't finish it, because as soon as it said that you might crave animal protein heavy products because of a protein deficiency I knew that the author was as full of it as what he or she is criticizing.

The citations look good until you start digging. One of them cites a naturalnews.com article (not a peer-reviewed journal) that in turn cites the Weston A. Price Foundation site, a towering bastion of pseudoscientific nonsense. I wonder how many of actual scientific articles cited even support the points the author cites them for.

In summary, the nutrition science in this article is about as poor as the nutrition science behind Soylent.

It's pretty cool, actually. If you're entrepreneurial it's good to know that even hackers will fall for anything provided it's being marketed by someone who seems like a hacker, too.

"The idea that human nutrition can be boiled down to a minimal list of ingredients that are the only things you should eat is nonsense."

why?

Because nothing is simple in life, our bodies are complex, and there's Wikipedia if you have tons of super broad questions like that.

I'm not saying whether or not Soylent is the real deal.

But I don't understand why you think it's not possible to come up with an optimal combination of input (food) into our bodies that maximizes it's output (longevity?).

First, longevity is not the main output of the human body. At least there's no single output. What if Soylent is good for your brain but detrimental to certain organs? Or the opposite?

I have a biochemistry background and from what I know the digestive process is extremely complex and still certain parts are not fully understood. So I highly doubt a bunch of whiz kids can find the optimal formula for food without any scientific background, sufficient research and proper studies to support the claims they make.

Plus, it's not like there are no variations from one person to another in terms of what you need in terms of nutrition. We know genetic differences exist, in some parts of the world you have deficiencies of certain enzymes to break down some types of food, and so on.

By the way, if you want a simple diet, you can probably live on rice and bread alone (mostly). You don't need to stuff your body with some shit people have no experience with. Rice/Bread may not be a very good diet but it satisfies a number of nutritional requirements and we know for a fact people can live (maybe not very well) on such diets (because they did for a fairly long amount of time).

Don't forget that enjoying meals with other people and having direct connections to the earth and the people who produce your food is socially and emotionally healthy. The psychological damage to most people due to a strict Soylent diet would be significant, and psychological stress causes physical health problems.

I agree with you but that has nothing to do with the point being discussed here in this particular sub-thread.

So if someone is looking for optimal food inputs with respect to longevity, I think it's relevant to point out that how you eat may be almost as important as what you eat. That's all, really.

Complexity is not, has never been, and will likely never be an insurmountable barrier to learning more about it. Let's take an individual example: The brain. It's very complex, has an extremely large number of variations from human to human and nuances of operation. And yet that hasn't stopped neurologists from trying to unlock, simulate and stimulate its every function.

There's no reason nutrition can never boiled down to the sum of the ingredients in some form (hopefully a form that tastes better and isn't liquid). And let's face it, Soylent (in a way) tries to basically be liquid Tofu.

That said, In that regard, I completely agree with autarch's take on the article content itself.

I also don't like it that the article started off with a preconceived bias: "Rhinehart, a 24 year old software engineer, believes he’s solved the befuddling food conundrum, and has named his product Soylent. It is intended to replace your entire diet — one food to solve it all." Emphasis where "software engineer" was underlined.

So what if he's a software engineer? It doesn't mean his profession precludes him from learning about nutrition.

Kinda like why human flight is impossible?

We've made things fly - even all the way to space. We've transplanted organs. We've developed vaccines that eradicated diseases. We are making progress towards deciphering the genome. What once required a library the size of a city block can now fit in your pocket. You can have a conversation with someone on the opposite side of the planet. Or even someone who isn't on the planet.

Nothing is simple in life, and our bodies are complex. But if you EVER ask me the question: "Will people figure it out?" Unless the speed of light factors into the discussion, I'm putting my money on "yes" every single time.

I'm not saying anything is impossible. But all the solutions we find are usually complex and not easy. A phone is complex. A computer is complex. Transistors are complex. Organs transplant is complex.

So why do we expect the answer to food to be a simple bunch of ingredients mixed together?

A simple bunch of ingredients mixed together? Isn't that basically a recipe by definition. Or a diet?

Getting a bunch of ingredients and turning it into something nutritious just isn't particularly difficult. Finding such a combination that is both nutritious and palatable is the challenge. The interesting bit with soylent is not that it is a fantastically revolutionary recipe. One could probably concoct something out of rice, beans, and a brassica cultivar that would serve the purpose of being a complete human diet just fine.

Rather, it's people saying "I'm going to give up the pleasure I get from food in exchange for removing whatever distress the uncertainty in deciding what I'm going to eat causes me." It's a mental hack, not a culinary one. Are you're willing to make that trade? The culinary and scientific problems just aren't that difficult on the scale of culinary or scientific problems, but I don't think most people would be willing to do it.

> A simple bunch of ingredients mixed together? Isn't that basically a recipe by definition.

No, the usual recipe of a daily meal is way more complex than the composition of Soylent in terms of the variety of elements/proteins you get.

http://www.priceplow.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/pat...

I didn't realize that you could respond with image macros on HN.

Ok, so it's a complicated image. The first thing I thought is it looks like the schema of a simple arithmetic operation in a processor. Meaning that it looks complicated, but it doesn't tell us anything. I see dots and lines and pretty colors, but I don't see an argument.

> it looks complicated, but it doesn't tell us anything

That's because the vast majority of the detail has been omitted in order to make it look pretty. Here is a slightly more detailed version: http://primalmeded.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/metabolism.jp...

And another: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MJisxWVfZPA/UEF_-1krN-I/AAAAAAAAr9...

For more info, read Principles of Biochemistry: http://www.amazon.com/Lehninger-Principles-Biochemistry-Davi... (and if you aren't familiar with organic chemistry: http://www.amazon.com/Organic-Chemistry-1st-Edition-ebook/dp...)

This doesn't seem like a good argument. You could provide a diagram of a modern car that would be just as complex as a section of this image, but I don't think anyone would argue that it's inherently impossible to understand the necessary inputs to that.

You are asking a totally different question. It's not about understanding the inputs, it's the claim that the inputs can be super simple and can ensure your body still work as normal.

> The idea that human nutrition can be boiled down to a minimal list of ingredients that are the only things you should eat is nonsense.

It's perfectly sensible that there is a mathematically minimum sufficient diet, or mathematically optimal diet, with the caveat that:

1. There's a high probability that this varies for each definition of "you", and for different times of day / month / year / within a lifetime

2. Soylent is, with almost perfect certainty, not it. But there is a nonzero chance that a purely soylent diet is healthier than the current median human diet.

Will we get there someday? Probably. I"d say there's a better than 50% chance it happens within the next century. Whether we want to get there is another story. FWIW, our bodies aren't really a whole lot more complex than feline or canine bodies, and we've managed to come up with a sufficiently nutritious kitty kibble (or at least, we think we have).

Remember, deciding what to eat is a decidedly modern problem, as is looking at food as a combination of nutrients. For the vast majority of human existence, nutrition consisted of avoiding starvation. When deciding between options, the proper answer was "all of the above".

This is my exact outlook on it. You have a very fair chance of Soylent being significantly healthier than your current diet (as an American). At the very least, it provides the nutrients that a hundred years of studying dietary deficiencies have proved necessary and will possibly give some indication of necessary nutrients that we have overlooked.

> Whether we want to get there is another story.

NASA could probably have come up with a Soylent-like product by now, but they haven't. I guess that being stuck in a small can in space means that nice food becomes important.

So, on the ground, there are two hurdles. i) Portion control, ii) Choice.

Some people will not eat two scoops of ice cream. They will eat a pint of ice cream. They won't eat 2 cookies, they'll eat the packet of cookies. Some people will smear the cookies with peanut butter, and crumble them over the pint of ice cream.

Will Soylent help these people? What happens if someone eats double the recommended daily amount of Soylent? Or triple? Or quadruple?

Some people will walk into a supermarket, walk past all the fruit and vegetables, and into the doughnut aisle. Then they'll walk past the meat and fish and into the crisp / chip aisle. Then they'll go to the weird salt / sugar / fat / slop instant meal aisle and buy bizarre "food".

I have no idea how Soylent will help them.

As far as I can figure out NASA's original solution to space food WAS a Soylent-like product. Astronauts responded by smuggling a corned beef sandwich into space. [1]

The point of Soylent is to separate the pleasure from eating. Rather than being a emotional, sensory activity, treat eating with has all the excitement of popping a pill - insert nutrients into body. What do I eat? Soylent. How much? The amount it tells me to. The questions of "Do I eat the broccoli or the ice cream?" or "Do I have seconds?" are taken off the table.

I wss in the hospital for the better part of a week a year ago. They had me on the "nothing by mouth" diet for a couple days - simply an IV drip for nutrition, then a liquid diet for two more. When my friends came to visit, the first thing I said was something along the lines of "As soon as I get out of here we're getting the best cheeseburger in this city." Could that desire be trained away? I'm not sure.

[1]: http://history.nasa.gov/Apollo204/zorn/grissom.htm

First of all, trying to find just the right foods reeks of premature optimization.

Second we don't know what our requirements actually are. And lab rats aren't going to fix that... one of the arguments why there has been a rise in autoimmune disorders in this century is our obsession with cleanliness... we may not be getting enough dirt, microbes, etc to keep our immune system in check.

Third, nutritional science doesn't have unit testing. We don't have integration testing.

Nutritional science has bug reports from the field, we have minimal requirements and max quantities. We can compare two systems, but we can't debug them. It's like trying to reverse engineer COBOL from machine code, when you don't know either.

Further, we don't know exactly how such things interact with other factors, sleep, genetic and environmental factors, exercise. Nor do we necessarily know all the elements of your health effected by nutrition. Fertility, resilience to disease, mental state.

Soylent is an experiment. And if people taking it as their food source keep good records of what goes on with them on it, we may learn from it, by comparing people on other diets in the same environments.

You want better nutrition? Log your food, accurately, for years, along with your feeling of health, and environment and any other factors (weight, exercise, amount of sleep, etc.)

Publish the data regularly, and maybe someday we'll be able to analyze it and build a nutrition model.

However, I think it's premature to decide we know what we need. We are learning. We know some things. But we don't know enough.

Are any other citations suspect? Concerning the overall argument of the paper, that citation was in support of a very minor point concerning whether dietary cholesterol is necessary.

Obviously the main point of the paper was to explain our relative ignorance of nutrition as a whole. The sub points appear intended to show that Rhinehart is not even properly informed of the details that have evidence, let alone the massive unknown.

In summary, its unfair for you to summarize what you did not entirely read. Read it in its entirety and find more insufficient citations before you debunk everything.

   In short, knocking your body out of its natural
   equilibrium state of ingesting/digesting/synthesizing
   /excreting cholesterol may swing the pendulum too far in 
   the opposite direction.

   End of story: while your body might get along with 
   cholesterol-free Soylent, the “gut decision” to 
   disinclude a vital compound may prove to be short-
   sighted sometime down the road.

The words "End of story" and "may prove to be" do not belong in the same sentence, paragraph, thought, or visible on the same screen.

This is a hyper aggressive article that fails to impress.

To be fair to Soylent, a lot of the subterfuge against this is "We don't understand the human body enough to do that yet", wouldn't the best way to find out is to try?

My biggest complaint about Soylent is that they turned their marketing to 11 and failed to mention the fact that long term studies haven't been done so be extra careful, however if people are willing to experiment then power to them.

As a final note while complete meal replacement is possibly out of our reach, partial replacement is already done extensively.

No, the best way to find out is not to try. The best way to find out is to study, on a meaningful sample size and with a well documented process and at least a modicum of scientific rigour.

This. FFS your body is not a car and you can't (well, not yet) replace parts of it if you fuck it up. You can't stop people from trying but I don't think most of them fully realise the danger they're putting themselves in.

Seconded. Playing with nutrition is the same as playing with any other chemical you do not understand very well. You can certainly do it, but chances are you will do the wrong thing and mess up.

The way I see the "we do not understand nutrition" argument is that we can tell some types of very bad nutrition: lack of vitamin C, lack of amino acids, etc. but we cannot design good nutrition. Soylent is bad. We can see that. However, if it was better, if it included all the known macro- and micronutrients int the ideal proportions, from some wholesome looking sources we could not tell whether it was actually good.

I am starting to come to the realization that all good kills us eventually, and all we are really trying to do is to find a diet that kills us the slowest.

I think most people are unlikely to exclusively drink Soylent. I tried Soylent, and rather enjoy the taste. I could see myself drinking it for breakfast instead of eating sugary cereal. If you're starting from the point of having perfect nutrition, you don't need Soylent. Most people, however, eat junk food and it's hard to eat well when you're busy. For the average person in a rush, replacing a meal with Soylent may be an improvement.

I will take a sugary cereal over Soylent for at least the reason that cereal typically has some fiber and iron in it. Also, just eat oatmeal. Less sugar, whole grain, more nutrition.

Or, if you insist on Soylent-like stuff, go with something that has been around for a bit longer: Ensure.

It really comes down to this :

- The guy is not a career nutritionist.

- He's basically recreating the food they eat in Matrix (the second movie I believe)

- He's making money off it.

#1 and #3 are pissing people off. I'm actually glad many people are offering to be guinea pigs for this because all-in-one fast food is a good tech to unlock.

Doesn't Ensure already exist?

no fat in Ensure! It can't be a complete food without fat right?

Ensure has 20% of its calories from fat.

This is something that concerns me about soylent. Ensure is basically the same thing, already mass produced, and Ensure is freaking crazy expensive. Crazy crazy expensive. I'm not willing to spend that much money to not have to prepare food. I'd make more money if I just take an hour off work every day and make my food. How can soylent be cheaper? Is Ensure just gouging?

I can find ensure for around $1-2 per bottle. Not really that expensive. Even if you didn't have to purchase food that you were planning on preparing, ensure would be the cheaper alternative.

wow! Costs 3-4 in Canada. I had a tooth removed about 5 months ago and had to get some liquid meal replacement. The packs cost 25 bucks. Where are you getting them!?

yes, but it doesn't provide the fullness feeling you get from soylent. Ensure feels like starvation. Soylent, because of the oats, stretches the stretch receptors surrounding the stomach. This is one input the brain uses to make you feel more full.

Yes it does.

And it's made by Abbott Labs. I don't know how popular Ensure is, but Abbott's baby formulas are literally the only source of nutrition for millions of growing and thriving babies every year.

I would rather buy a product from a real company than from some egotistical young hipsters who (most likely) are nothing more than a recent example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

And if Soylent goes horribly wrong for them, perhaps the most apropos comment would be: "think of it as evolution in action".

If you have something specific to say about their science or tips and suggestions then please say it. Ad hominem is somewhat counter productive to the spirit of HN.

Perhaps I assume too much, but if nutrition and what one should eat were really as simple as what Soylent is trying to do, wouldn't NASA or the Soviet Space Program devised a solution like this for the Astronauts and Cosmonauts? Each program spent tons on researching anything and everything needed to go into space and at some point, I would presume their scientists would have proposed or tested an idea like this.

Edit: I mean that more as a statement of curiosity as to if they did any research and the results of it than as an argument (since there's flaws to it like the argument of variety and morale in long missions). I would guess the Soviets if not NASA would at least be interested in it due to the tight budget of their space program and the ideology of the government (perception of avoiding extravagance).

My memory could be mistaken, but I seem to recall that they have tested this and do have options similar to Soylent, and the reason they use "regular" foods is more for psychological reasons than technical ones.

I suspect NASA has safety a higher priority than efficiency. They might go that route, but why take the risk?

In the Mercury program, food looked like this (mmm Soylent-y) : http://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/apollo-to-the-moon/onl...

Problem was that it wasn't particularly enjoyable.

During Gemini/Apollo food looked like this: http://www.space1.com/Artifacts/Apollo_Artifacts/Apollo_Food...

Anyone up for Catfood? Probably tasted a lot better than Mercury Tube food but not quite the same as mom's.

Today food looks like this: http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/presskits/spacefood/ga...

And well..

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/70/Ast...

Kinds like it does on Earth.

Some other fun tidbits: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_food#Apollo_program_.2819...

I think NASA and other space entities could come up with a super Soylent like substance for sustenance in space, but the trend towards normal food is apparent. I think it's safe to say that Astronauts are well disciplined and dedicated... and if they're not willing to put up with eating goop in a tube... Well I think it goes to show that people by large, even under extreme and alien circumstances, enjoy presentation and variety more than Mr. Rhinehart may believe (or like to suggest to us).

The first time I heard of Soylent and this guy I thought "here is a guy who is literally being killed by his own stupidity and does not know it". I can see people buying into this scam and it sucks. The problem is that Rob is a skinny, healthy looking guy. This diet, if it really is his full time source of nutrition, is going to have its effect on him sooner or later, but chances are that one of his clients, perhaps someone twice his age and weight, will suffer the consequences first.

When his story was originally shared on HN, I believe it made a point that his diet wasn't entirely Soylent and that he consumed normal meals once a week. I wouldn't be surprised if that combination could carry him for a long time.

From reading the comments here and on other articles about Soylent, the argument seems to break down into two camps: Harmful until proven safe, or safe until proven harmful. And I really don't understand the mindset of the "safe until proven harmful" people.

The immaturity and uselessness of this article(written by somebody in a competing market) doesn't support any fear, uncertainty, or doubt for me.

I vouch that if there continues to be market interest, and a lack of forceful interference(from say, a government); Soylent will become what it needs to be in order to succeed(safe, complete, and vetted).

Why is everybody so negative about this? He's doing something weird, but he is still leaving himself open to scientific evidence, which is better than the average mystical / religious diet recommendation (chinese medicine, hinduism, vegetarianism) which mostly do not accept scientific evidence, and instead do their diets for unassailable moral/mystical reasons (balancing "qi", balancing hot/cold foods, purity obsessions, etc.)

People survive on life rafts eating flying fish and drinking rain water, for months at a time. Most people using soylent will not eat it for all their meals, and they will almost always be surrounded by other food they can eat if they start feeling bad. So I don't think it's a big deal, let him do what he wants!

Yes, they live on the rafts. Then they spend a month in the hospital when they get picked up.

So, a vegetarian diet is without science on its side despite plenty of evidence to the contrary (not listing any sources, there's plenty of information available on the subject), yet someone marketing a nutrient goo with obvious nutritional deficiencies as a complete food replacement is totally okay. That's some odd logic, pal.

To me, the appeal of soylent is that it's such a compact food delivery system. I eat healthy food, but my portion control is all out of whack.

My hope is that a month of Soylent will help my stomach shrink and learn the proper signals telling me that I've had enough to eat.

Have you tried drinking lots of water with your meals? Especially carbonated water/Seltzer water? That tends to curb appetite very effectively for some people.

You should get a kitchen scale and measure the foods you eat. It's pretty simple to keep track of calories and portion sizes this way. i.e. I had 150g of pork loin for lunch. I can type "pork calories" into google and some clever google app tells me that 100g of pork loin is about 200 calories. So I had a 300 calorie lunch.

I lost 10 lbs in 3 weeks keeping a strict 1500 calorie a day diet and it's just as simple as taking a minute or two to measure your meals.

Read my comment above. Soylent is very filling

Interesting the assertion that 80g of protein is paltry. I happen to agree, as do many people I respect.

But many, many people (esp vegans) argue the opposite. The FDA, after years of avoiding an opinion, finally settled on 34-56g/day RDA for protein.

everyone's body is different. there was an article earlier today about losing weight with the same premise.

soylent should be sorta like those the soda machines at the fast food places, cept instead of mixing dr pepper and coke, you could get an extra dose of chicken squirt instead of soy squeeze

As a powerlifter I consume 200g of protein per day.

One thing you won't see is any IFBB pros or ANYONE with muscles drinking soylent...

Here's a good URL to read with lots of science. http://examine.com/faq/how-much-protein-do-i-need-every-day....

I am all for this since I rarely have time to enjoy food. However, I also understand that some of the nutrients probably can't be absorbed by the human body in that form, so for me, it'll be treated as a supplement. If they can do one thing that'll make me buy this. It'll be to change it into a cookie.

I mean c'mon, that gruel looks disgusting and the thing already tasts disgusting.

The appeal of Soylent is cost and convenience. This advice to do bulk cooking instead is not helping in that regard.

Buying food in bulk = cheap Cooking food in bulk = convenient

Cooking food in bulk is anything but convenient. Where the hell do I put all of it? How do I track if it's still good to eat, etc.

In the fridge?

My fridge isn't that big.

Get a bigger fridge. It'll be less than a year on soylent and you get to eat actual real healthy food.

My fridge is exactly as large as the hole in my kitchen allows for it to be, and I have no place to put a second one.

Small condo is small :(

In the bellies of all the people you share it with! Cooking in bulk makes the most sense when you've got a big group of people sharing food.

There's only two of us, unfortunately.

You've got an answer for everything. Maybe Soylent is your answer.

I agree with the article on the "If food is too hard… you’re doing it wrong" section. I don't think that this means Soylent is worthless though, on the contrary, I think it's what makes it viable.

While I would never choose to live on just (or mostly) Soylent, as I enjoy food too much, I think it would be very useful to keep around.

Instead of something to replace food entirely, it could be reserved for when you're in a rush. I'm sure that Soylent for breakfast Mon-Fri is much better than nothing. If you're out of the house and need to grab lunch, I'm sure Soylent is healthier than McDonalds.

All the criticism of soylent I've seen is the completely reasonable (and almost certainly correct) assertion that it's not sustainable as the exclusive food source in the very long term. Like everything it should be done in moderation.

I wouldn't eat the tasteless crap and this guy is spot on. However, some of these comments stating eating only this stuff vs eating all processed food isn't too far off.

At the very least, I would not use a fast carb like dextrose/glucose, I would say use a longer burning carb to reduce energy spikes and dips.

While I am highly dubious of Soylent as a product, Rinehart's approach seem solid enough. The problem with Soylent, as I see it, is that no one formula is applicable to very many people. RR himself had regular blood work done and tweaked the formula heavily based on his body's response. Given that it's been several months and he is alive and seemingly healthy, I see no reason why this approach couldn't work for anyone else. As long as you throw in a couple meals of varied real food in every week for good measure, this really seems pretty safe.

What do people think about soylent just replacing like 1-2 meals a day? And then you have your full course chicken breast and brown rice meal for dinner or something.

It seems like that might be a good compromise for people who are scared of their bones deteriorating, their kidneys waning, or their tissues slowly inflaming.

No one says you must eat only soylent day-in and day-out. But it sure seems like a nice way to save time and money on, say, a dozen meals per week.

when I was younger and lived in the USA, I had a diet of virtually only mcdonalds (and burritos). I survived.

this has got to be, at least slightly more nutritious. LOL, what's the big deal? I'm also like 100% sure this is better than what the starving africans are eating.

why doesn't he just provide some constructive improvements instead of a graphically enhanced rant, with the assumption that the entire world eats a balanced nutritional diet?

oh yea, the various arguments against the man (and other fallacies), are nice touches too... seriously, who cares dude? if he's such a super experienced nutritionist, why doesn't he make his own soylent v2.0?

disclaimer: never tried soylent, nor care to try it, but soylent did inspire me to make my own version of easily reproduced "food". it's still in experimentation, but ironically this article was informative. it's given me a few new ideas to improve my own blend (which uses almond butter instead of soy as a base). thanks!

I love the "it's sure healthier than eating a pile of rocks mixed in with cow shit" argument.

Yes, and hitting yourself across the face with rebar sure is healthier than driving it straight into your eye socket.

well, I didn't mean it like that.

IMO, the author of the article went way out of his way to try and prove soylent to be something... I'm not sure what he was trying to prove actually -- it seemed like he was generally kinda being negative. what bothered me is that he's spending so much energy to try and belittle something which is cheaper and probably healthier to eat than most fast food.

why didn't he just give constructive criticism?

EDIT: what I would like to see is some sort of concerted effort to try and make a cheap, inexpensive food, which isn't perishable. that's all. I'm sorry for being negative myself. I think such a product could go a long way for improvement of all humanity

McDonald's food contains a larger variety of foods and nutrients than Soylent. For example, a Big Mac has all of the following:

Beef, Salt, Black Pepper, Bleached Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Canola Oil, Soybean Oil, Pickles, Egg Yolks, Onion Powder, Mustard Seed, Vegetable Protein, Turmeric, Lettuce, Onions

It's also loaded with HFCS and a laundry list of preservatives and additives. I'm not saying it's the healthiest food, but given a choice between the two, I'd choose the one that at least has a few real food components.

And before you mention Supersize Me and the effects it had on his health, remember that it was an n=1 study and The Fathead Movie did the same experiment and his health improved.

I would never mention that awful film. I only mentioned mcdonalds, because I grew up on "fast-food" and not healthy balanced diet food... actually I didn't know anything about nutrition until the soylent thing came out, and I decided I wanted to make my own version, so I started researching.

I have my own criticisms of soylent but that's not my point. (I don't think soy to be the best form of protein. I'm experimenting with a combination of almonds and chicken breast right now) so if, and when I become as well knowledgeable as that guy, and perfect my recipe I may post it for others to see -- but I don't know enough yet. I think he could have been more constructive though. I think maybe that actually soylent (or any other one-size-fits-all solution) is not universally good for everyone. maybe we should all be experimenting and trying to create a variety of different recipes.

I think the most minimalistic, food, product execution that has proven to sustain life, pass on immunities and provide superior nutrition is breast milk.

Of course we can't attach "vacuum suckers" to lactating women but the "old" 'soylent green' "....is made [by] people" and cow milk is probably a close second.

I appreciate the vocal skepticism as I feel it's important, especially when it comes to this topic. Proper studies should be done, but if people want to take on the risk themselves to consume soylent then more power too them, so long as they know the risks.

I hope they don't start asking for the Healthcare insurance to pay for all the long term effects they may get from this. Wanna live off Soylent? Good. You're on your own.

This girl was able to get by on only McNuggets so what could possibly be more harmful? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2092071/Stacey-Irv...

You could say that about almost anything though. A Soylent diet is significantly better for you than what many people currently eat. Should we deny people healthcare because they eat too much fast food as well? The chance of soylent incurring any meaningful healthcare cost is basically nil.

> A Soylent diet is significantly better for you than what many people currently eat.

Zero evidence. Good job on the comment.

I am still waiting to learn that they are just trolling with the name Soylent and have another name picked out for it.

Regardless of the health aspects, do that many people WANt to drink liquefied meals? I like eating food.

Excellent write-up! I'd love to see a similar write up for the popular medi-fast diet!

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