Hacker News Reader

Comment by jacques_chester | Hacker News Reader

Funnily enough, that's the whole pitch for Soylent. "I'm just a smart guy with a fresh pair of eyes who spent a few weekends reading undergrad textbooks and skimming pubmed".

Not: "we're a large company with deeply-interested professionals who've made this their life's work, our own multi-million dollar labs and decades of accumulated experience in the development, testing, validation and manufacture of temporary food substitutes". Because that's boooorrrrinnnng.

Basically it's getting buzz because of novelty (to people who didn't know there were existing products) and homophily (Rhinehart is "one of us").

The actual product is at this point nearly completely tangential to the marketing.

It's a bit like a dietitian bursting in and saying "I've invented a new thing, I call it 'computertalk'. What you do is you 'type' your 'instructions' into your computer. It's going to change everything, you won't need programmers any more!"

View on HN

This Soylent thing is literally the SV techie equivalent of those "This School Teacher(tm) found one weird trick to [BLANK]... [BLANKERS] hate her!" advertisements that we all like to make fun of.

Why do those ads use "school teachers"? Because it is relatable to the target audience and sufficiently anti-authoritarian that they don't question the credentials.

Well it's like that story of Colonel H. McMaster, who DID technically find "one weird trick", and the Army DID pass him over for promotions, etc...

I'm not for or against Soylent, and I usually find this kind of advertising annoying, but it's also entirely possible that people further down the chain of command in any system discover things that people higher-up won't or can't.

That's part of the entire premise of why startups work, no?

Re McMasters - I think the parent refers to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._R._McMaster and the change from daily location in Tal Afar to permanent location there.

> people further down the chain of command in any system

Here we're talking about people who aren't even in the same system!

Einstein was a patent office guy. Yet his notable weird tricks (like constant speed of light) aren't even in the same system.

Yeah, a "patent office guy" who knew nothing about physics at all until he suddenly overturned the entire world through sheer force of will. Certainly not a guy who already wanted to be a physics teacher with all the requisite training and credentials, including published papers in prestigious journals in his first year of working in the patent office, but had to find a job to make money in the meantime while he searched for one.

Einstein was someone who went up the academic course for physics, but had a brief detour during a jobless interval. I imagine many of us here can relate to that. He's not some sort of quintessential outsider.

(He's not a quintessential insider either; while the rumors about his poor grades are overstated, he did have a rough relationship with any academic subject he didn't really care about. He certainly wasn't the valedictorian type or a groomed, perfect academic from tip to toe. But neither was he an outsider. He's just an average everyday genius who combined tons of hard work with immense native talent.)

Exactly, just like all the barista's and waiters / waitresses that became doctors and lawyers ;)

> Not: "we're a large company with deeply-interested professionals who've made this their life's work, our own multi-million dollar labs and decades of accumulated experience in the development, testing, validation and manufacture of temporary food substitutes". Because that's boooorrrrinnnng.

I think it's not because it sounds boring but because it sounds like a marketing bullshit. Guy in a suit tells you "trust us, we have a whole basement of experts and years of experience" but when you check them out, the company was funded few months ago and only one employee doesn't have some sort of "manager" or "director" in his job title.

I guess openness of soylent and creator's low experience in bullshitting is what makes it attractive. Those of us who eat to live don't expect much from industry after McDonalds and sugar everywhere but we still desperately hope for something better. That hopes fuels enthusiasm for soylent.

> I think it's not because it sounds boring but because it sounds like a marketing bullshit. Guy in a suit tells you "trust us, we have a whole basement of experts and years of experience" but when you check them out, the company was funded few months ago and only one employee doesn't have some sort of "manager" or "director" in his job title.

But this is an aspect of the large nutrition companies that can be checked out. Unless you're talking about the other companies.

They do have a lot of people with respected qualifications working for them; they do produce all these different products.

The bullshit with these companies is that they push multivitamins as useful for everyone, when really there's a limited market. They push a bunch of other stuff as useful for all kinds of conditions, when really the evidence is weak at best.

> Those of us who eat to live don't expect much from industry after McDonalds and sugar everywhere but we still desperately hope for something better. That hopes fuels enthusiasm for soylent.

That's fair enough. It's your body, and you can make your own choices. You know that as well as Soylent there are a bunch of these liquid feeding products, so if you wanted to experiment now you can?

> don't expect much from industry after McDonalds and sugar everywhere

Sometimes a fresh set of eyes are valuable, because the industry culture has developed some pathologies. Sugar in the food industry is a prime example.

And sometimes, it's just a cover for charlatans.

But can your computertalk run in the cloud? Please advise.

Give me a million dollars and I will ship you a box full of randomly chosen words. You can see if they evaporate. That's a cloud, right?

FWIW this is an analysis of the rhetoric, not the science. As such, I think it's pretty accurate. It's like noting that with Rush Limbaugh advertising you get appeals to what he personally does or enjoys using, whereas on NPR advertising you get vague references to strange sounding companies....

you don't need to know about dietary supplements or supply chain management to understand the rhetorical distinctions.

It's brilliant marketing though, because they've managed to sell a $230/month system as cheap!

While I have no ability to judge the veracity of the claims of Soylent.me -- let me tell you the only reason I am hopeful it works is for the same reason Jobs only wore black turtle-necks and jeans: simplicity.

I want to be able to take a good fuel for my body and indulge in great food whenever I want.

I want to be able to back-pack for a week with only a 4-pound food supply.

> I want to be able to take a good fuel for my body and indulge in great food whenever I want.

Then eat some meat and some vegetables.

> I want to be able to back-pack for a week with only a 4-pound food supply.

Then take trail mix.

jacques_chester, The Dream Killer.

P.S.: I am currently eating Chicken I made with a side of snap-peas from my garden. I do what you say already -- I just also want an alternative which has incredible shelf-life, portability, cost-benefit, etc. etc. etc.

Dream killer? Nah, merely a young curmudgeon. I need my 10,000 hours of grumping so that "get off my grass" really stings, y'know?

By the way -- there are such alternatives already available. Have you bought any before?

What are they? I'm interested in "I'm too lazy to cook today but don't want to eat unhealthy fast food" food.

Seriously? You are unaware of meal replacement bars and drinks?

https://www.google.com/search?q=meal+replacement+shakes

Almost all of them are marketed to the diet crowd. There are a bunch of 'atkins' branded bars, too, if you are going the low-carb route. Slim-fast, I know, can be had in giant tubs for relatively little money per serving; I remember as a kid, looking through my grandparent's pantry and finding a giant tub of slim-fast.

This is a huge industry. I mean, sure, marketing it to hackers is a new thing, and something I, personally, would have never considered, and the guy is doing a hell of a job of it, but yeah; the product itself is nothing new, even if he's selling to a group that has not yet been targeted.

I was indeed unaware of them, they sound good, thank you.

Yeah, I can't guarantee they are better than fast food. But, I bet you can find one that is similar to Soylent. It is more convenient than fast food.

I actually kinda like the McDonald's salads. I mean, as far as you can like fast food at all. If you go easy on the dressing, (the dressing comes in a package that looks like a giant-size katsup packet, so you get to decide how much you eat.) I think it's probably pretty healthy, I mean, at least when you compare to shakes.

I have used meal-replacement shakes in the past as supplemental breakfast; I like to load up on calories in the morning, but eating can be... hard before my system wakes up, so the meal-replacement shakes (with as much breakfast as I can choke down) is a reasonable way to consume as many calories as I can in the morning.

Of course, for me? meal-replacement shakes have never quelled hunger like real food, so I'm no longer using them just because I'm trying to reduce the number of calories I consume. If I eat something, it had better make me feel not hungry for a good long time. I'm having the best luck with meat and vegetables... the carbohydrates tend to make me hungry shortly afterwards. On the other hand, I have not lost significant weight. (I vary from 200 to 195#, and that has been true for some time now. As far as I can tell, most of that 5# is either water gain or loss, or inaccuracy of my cheap bathroom scale.) so "you shall know him by his fruits" - don't take my advice on losing weight, as I've not managed to do so myself.

Also, a big, sarcastic thanks. after that 'meal replacement shake' query on google, now just about every webpage I load is trying to sell me some sort of 'optimized nutrition' (Google seems to get that I'm male-identified and thus is trying to sell me the shakes targeted at 'building lean muscle' - you know, the stuff with the rippling abs on the can. Google does not seem to be smart enough to notice that I quite often google things I don't intend to buy. Really, books on what I'm searching for are usually more appropriate than products I'm searching for. Not that I often buy books through ads... but it's more likely than me buying nutrition shakes targeted at bodybuilders.)

Hmm, thanks. If they don't sate my hunger, there's no reason to them. I'll either keep cooking chicken breasts (you just pop them in the oven for an hour with minimal preparation and are delicious) or have milk with cereal, one cup of which keeps me full for 5-6 hours. Losing weight with that sort of diet has never been a problem, as I feel full all day and still manage to have a nicely-sized dinner.

About the targeting, either use incognito mode or opt out of targeted advertising (it's in your Google account preferences).

I bought a week's worth of Ensure Complete and was unable to sustain any sort of meal replacement plan on it. Each drink only seemed to alter the 'flavor' of my hunger rather than sate it in any way.

You can add fibre, if you think that's going to help.

Liquids are nowhere near as effective at satiation as solids.

Fibre and protein can increase the satiety of a drink, though.

Yeah. I like chicken; cheap and easy. I put dried chopped onions on mine before cooking, but yeah, that's a huge part of my own diet, along with salads, which are good for 'fill you up' bulk.

I've also started doing slow-cooker pork. I pan fry it when I'm done, and it comes out kind of somewhere between pulled pork and carnitas. I slow-cooked a bunch of boneless beef short ribs last night, I haven't tried them yet. more expensive per pound, but short ribs are so good.

Especially if I cook something in sauce (like chili) I put it in little ziplock baggies and freeze it.

How about actually clicking the links in those search results. Nothing in the first few pages even attempts to provide a food replacement. None of them provide 100% of known essential nutrients. You will develop a vitamin deficiency consuming any of those exclusively. That is in no way accomplishing what soylent claims to do.

Does Soylent explicitly and specifically claim to be a total food replacement?

Or do we all just think that because of the original blog post?

>None of them provide 100% of known essential nutrients. You will develop a vitamin deficiency consuming any of those exclusively. That is in no way accomplishing what soylent claims to do.

Personally? I dismiss those claims as marketing fluff. I am not competent to evaluate those claims; I'm not saying that the guy is lying or anything, soylent may in fact be perfect. I don't know. but the claims sound so out there that I don't think they are worth evaluating. I am treating them as marketing fluff until/unless credible people do a credible study.

I suspect that none of the other meal replacement drinks make such claims due to fear of legal liability. "A delicious shake for breakfast, lunch, and a sensible dinner" is the standard formula, which is reasonable; I'm sure Soylent would work just fine on a similar plan. (hell, for most of us, water would work just fine.)

I bet that as Soylent accumulates money (and lawyers) they will move towards a model where they emphasize 'And a sensible dinner'

I am not talking about claims, I am talking about the nutrition info required to be provided by law. We know that there are a bunch of chemical compounds we call "vitamins" which are required to maintain our health. Soylent provides 100% of all of them. Meal replacement drinks do not.

http://abbottnutrition.com/brands/products/ensure-plus-retai...

And really, if you think that the RDA is good enough, just take your vitamin pills.

> marketing it to hackers is a new thing, and something I, personally, would have never considered, and the guy is doing a hell of a job of it

Really, it's textbook. He's using his ties and understanding of a subculture demographic to market to it specifically.

>Really, it's textbook. He's using his ties and understanding of a subculture demographic to market to it specifically.

Sure, but the execution (to me) looks good. He is doing a way better job, for example, than I've done at marketing VPSs - a product that is much more natural to this market. Better, I think, than I did even back when I had a compelling price advantage over the competition.

Trail mix is elementary school crap, we trail Nazis have all moved to pemmican. Better density and energy content.

I want to be able to back-pack for a week with only a 4-pound food supply.

That's doable already. 4-pounds of dehydrated food will last you a week, and has the advantage that you get to eat something different for every meal.

Well we all know how Steve Jobs foray into doing it his way turned out. I am all for new and ingenious ways to maintaining one's health. However I am not for new ways that don't have the strong trusted evaluations.

The number of bad habits I engage in over my days is one thing, I am not about to jump from fad to fad in hopes of out smarting the medical community.

Um, blaming pancreatic cancer on eating too much fruit?

>to people who didn't know there were existing products

Would you care to link to where people can purchase these existing products? It seems that every time someone makes that claim they are either referring to medical products not available to the public, or to crap like MET-Rx that doesn't provide a complete, balanced micro nutrient profile.

> they are either referring to medical products

Very few of these products are prescription only or even pharmacy only products. It is possible to persuade companies to sell to individuals. To answer your question - Ensure brand includes complete meal replacement products; the Fortisip range also includes suitable products. There are a bunch of others but these are easiest to obtain.

Most companies are very careful about selling these products. Some people think that's a good thing.

>Would you care to link to where people can purchase these existing products?

Did you even try google?

Enshure: http://ensure.com/products/ensure-complete-shakes click buy online from the product page.

Fortisip: http://www.fortisipdrink.co.uk/. Again, click the buy online link from there homepage. (Though I think this is a UK brand.)

PS: You can find a wide product range at http://abbottstore.com/

Did you try reading the thread you are attempting to participate in? The whole problem is vaguely claiming that there's already products that cover the use case of soylent, but not giving a specific. None of the products you linked to provide 100% of known essential nutrients. None of them are intended to be used as a replacement for food, and none of them can be used as such with long term safety. It is absurd to see people bitching about how unsafe soylent is while claiming that products we 100% for certain know are not nutritionally complete already make soylent useless.

None of the products you linked to provide 100% of known essential nutrients. None of them are intended to be used as a replacement for food, and none of them can be used as such with long term safety.

No, that's almost exactly what these products are designed for.

EX: Similac, Complete nutrition for your baby's first year.

It should be noted that most of these are balanced nutritionally but not calorie wise because it's easy to backfill empty calories with soda etc and people generally drink quite a few extra calories. But, you really can live off of ensure complete and empty calories or just ensure if you don't mind spending more money.

Isn't silly nonsense like that supposed to be reserved for reddit? You are of course fully aware that I, and everyone else in this discussion, is over the age of 1.

How is 13% of one micronutrient and 65% of another balanced? In order to get complete micronutrient coverage from ensure, you have to drink 5 a day, putting you at risk of overexposure to manganese assuming you drink water still.

Ahh, ok your assuming nutrients all need to hit exactly 100% each day to be heathy. The reality is perfection changes with age, Heath issues, pregnancy, sun exposure, body weight, and a host of other issues. However, close enough is plenty to stay in good heath. So, while there is no diet that works equally well for a nursing mother and a sedendary accountant both can stay heathy eating just rice and a multivitamin or enshure and some empty cal.

No, I am not assuming anything. I gave you a specific real example of an actual problem. Do you have anything constructive to add to the discussion, or did you just want to provide an example of the kind of deliberately dishonest hand-waving I was referring to?

Let's look at some actual science.

http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/DRI/DRI_Vitamin_A/394-419_150.p...

The Manganease recommendation is based on observed western diets not actual need. From existing studies it looks like there is a fairly wide tolerable range for Manganease with some people needing quite a bit to maintain Manganease levels. Anyway, 5x ensure is well within the 'Tolerable Upper Limit' and thus Not an issue.

Except that most people get a significant amount of manganese from their water, thus putting them at risk. This is what I said in my post, which you should read before you reply to.

Sorry, assuming you drink water still. does not read as assuming your water has unusual concentrations of Manganese. Even still, known heathrisks relate to breathing excesive Manganease as it's normally excreted though the gut not the urine.

Edit: If it's really bothering you. Ambient manganese concentrations in seawater have been reported to range from 0.4 to 10 μg/l (ATSDR, 2000), with an average of about 2 μg/l (Barceloux, 1999). Levels in fresh water typically range from 1 to 200 μg/l (Barceloux, 1999). ATSDR (2000) reported that a river water survey in the USA found dissolved manganese levels ranging from <11 to >51 μg/l. The United States Geological Survey’s National Water Quality Assessment Program has gathered limited data since 1991 on representative study basins around the USA. These data indicate a median manganese level of 16 μg/l in surface waters, with 99th-percentile concentrations of 400–800 μg/l (Leahy & Thompson, 1994; USGS, 2001). Higher levels in aerobic waters are usually associated with industrial pollution.. (http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/chemicals/man...)

So, again there may be people that need to be consurned to it's less than 1% of the population and they can get buy by drinking bottled water if nothing else.

It doesn't need to be unusually high levels, that's the point. You are already half way to the TUL just from ensure.

No, the high end of the 99th percentile is 800 μg/l or .8mg/ liter. 2 liters per day of water is 1.6mg/ day and the TUL is 11mg/ day. Thus adding 50% from ensure and 1.6 / 11 = 14.5% from unusually high water levels is at worst 64.5% TUL and again not a problem.

> None of the products you linked to provide 100% of known essential nutrients. None of them are intended to be used as a replacement for food

You keep making this claim and it is just not true.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com