Hacker News Reader

Comment by sharkweek | Hacker News Reader

Call me an anti-foodie

I only eat because I'm hungry; the taste, as long as it's bearable, is always an afterthought. I find grocery shopping, cooking and especially doing the dishes to be insanely inconvenient in my daily life, and eating out is far too expensive. My wife asked me the other day, "It's not that you expect me to make dinner for you, it's just that if I didn't, you'd likely eat either a frozen pizza or boil some pasta every night, right?"

I would absolutely love for this Soylent project to become a reality. The convenience of getting a well balanced diet served in one small dose is something I only dreamed of coming true; fingers crossed they can pull it off.

View on HN

When Soylent was first a guy's "garage project," I too wanted it to work, or, to be clear, I do still want the idea of Soylent to work. However, Soylent went from being a simple meal replacement, to a snake oil miracle food nearly overnight.

Once the internet buzz started swimming around their milkshake idea, it felt like the developers saw green and threw their standards out the window. Their Kick Starter page read like something out of the Patent Medicine era of the early 1900's. "Do feel tired, groggy, or have ailment X?" Soylent with cure it!

Obviously, I'm a cranky minority, but the absolute lack of intellectual honesty and rigor presented in the claims on their Kick Starter put a sour taste in my mouth over the whole thing.

You're saying you liked Soylent because it was a "garage project", but you no longer like it because it's using marketing and has become popular? But you'd like the product if it weren't associated with the marketing? Does like == buy here or is this just fashion for ideas?

There's a difference in the claims.

Soylent as a simple meal replacement makes quite a bit of sense. It's the same as Weight Watcher shakes and the like-something you can eat to replace a meal once a day at most. That product can get away with not being perfectly nutritionally balanced because it's not meant to be eaten every meal. You can use the other meals to fill the nutritional holes left by it, even if you're using it to replace one meal a day.

Soylent as a total food replacement brings a LOT more scrutiny. It means that they have to prove that it IS perfectly nutritionally balanced, and that there aren't any adverse side effects for long-term consumption. That's where the snake oil responses come in, because the burden of proof is so much higher.

The post I responded to treated a business with a real product as fashion. They liked Soylent because it was "garage" and then didn't when it became popular... it's the cliched hipster who only likes bands you've never heard of. I am probably frustrated with the the consumer vs critic chasm. I will probably purchase Soylent when it's available, at least to try it out. It will probably never replace all of my meals (I don't think they really suggest that it SHOULD, although they may suggest that it COULD) but I'd try. The post I responded to was purely critical and only focused on the presentation of the product not the use of the product.

>They liked Soylent because it was "garage" and then didn't when it became popular...

sigh I can only conclude that you read the first sentence of my comment, and fired off a response before bothering to read the rest.

It's fine if you want to argue against one of my opinions, but at least make it about an opinion that I actually hold! ;)

Well, No. I didn't say anything like that. In fact, I'm not quite sure how you got that interpretation from what I wrote (assuming you read the whole thing, and not just the first sentence).

For clarification, the problem is not that it's now being marketed, it's that it is marketed along with unverified medical claims.

I am more or less a foodie, and yet am watching Soylent intently for exactly the opposite reason: I could conceivably only eat when I'm able to have an excellent meal. Maybe that means setting aside time to cook an exquisite dinner a few times a month, and only going out to eat when I want to try a new restaurant or to socialize.

I could actually see Soylent as the hardcore foodie's dream come true: Never eat a boring meal again, because you don't have to eat until your next feast.

Good point. Nobody has the time, money, and energy to construct perfectly-sourced and meticulously prepared meals three times a day. I cook a lot and I get to do a fun experimental food project maybe every second week - most of the time I'm falling back to the grind of stand-by stuff since I've got a family of 5 to take care of.

Obviously it wouldn't work for my case because there's no way I'd feed this stuff to my kids, but I can't really blame folks - even food-lovers - for wanting to just skip the effort with a big chunk of their meals.

Bad point. Make time for cooking.

Can't you already use Ensure, the stuff people drink after they have stomach surgery and the like? I thought people could survive indefinitely on that.

It's generally not marketed that way and it's unclear if it would work like that. Possibly the relatively new "Ensure Complete" (announced less than a year ago) might work.

I'm not sure if anyone is so binary with their food that they will only give themselves a choice between an exquisite meal or powdered, bland goop. Maybe I'm just not "hardcore" enough.

I can crack a few eggs in the morning, toss in some veggies and have a hot, delicious breakfast to enjoy with plenty of protein and it all cooks in just a few minutes.

For the most part with "weekday cooking", the most time consuming part is the prep work and that stuff can be easily batched as long as you plan ahead.

I just don't see how anyone who would consider themselves as foodies could be happy drinking this stuff for the majority of their meals.

If you can effortless get healthy, whole foods into your body whenever you want then you probably have cooking/shopping/organizing skills well outside the norm.

I love to cook, and am good at it. But I run out of food all the time, or have weird random stuff lying around that doesn't fit easily into a quick recipe. I wish I had your skills/organization.

I'm exactly like that! Agree 100% with your comment.

However I find the current Soylent version a little disgusting, not very convenient, and quite expensive.

If/when they have a dry pill that costs $2 per day I'll be completely sold (hope a pill is possible? maybe not?)

I genuinely don't understand why you think Soylent is anything new or unique.

Is it just the marketing buzz that Soylent created?

From what I can tell, it's fairly new and unique. The closest thing I'm aware of both feature-wise and marketing-wise is "Ensure Complete" which was announced less than a year ago and still isn't marketed in quite the same way.

Powdered shake meal replacements are all over Amazon. Moreover we've already seen Soylent's alternate pitch as a two meal replacement product which makes it little different than the Slim Fast delicious shake for breakfast, another for lunch and whatever you want for dinner that Tommy Lasorda and other people have hawked on TV for decades.

Meal replacement is almost always marketed as missing an occasional meal or up to 1 or (max) 2 meals in a day for up to a few consecutive days. Soylent is marketing 14-21 meals/week for several/many/all? months.

I think that's the worrying thing about Soylent. I really wish they'd kept it experimental, or pushed it as suitable for daily use but not all meals, or some such.

But then it really would be, as you critique, not new.

"Soylent is marketing 14-21 meals/week"

I'm pretty sure this was exactly my point. Soylent's original angle was as a total replacement and they've already started moving the goalposts to 14. 14 meals a week is the same thing that Slim Fast has pitched since the late 70's and no this wasn't just for occasional meals or 2-3 days at a time, customers were encouraged to follow Slim Fast's 2 shakes a day as a long term solution.

I haven't seen them market 14 meals/week, I was just putting out what I thought was a reasonable range. I don't think it's moving the goal posts. Rob said in the very first post that Soylent allowed him to enjoy regular meals much more.

Slim Fast, of course, is strictly marketed for weight loss. Soylent, not really at all.

In Australia we have Sustagen. They also make a medically approved "Sustagen Hospital Formula" which is used by hospitals as a full meal replacement for extended periods (I've lived of it for multiple multi-month periods due to health issues). It is available in all supermarkets, and most corner stores and convenience stores.

As someone with serious medical issues who depends on meal replacements regularly, and through that experience has learned how important the right mixes are, I wouldn't touch Soylent with a ten foot pole. I'm really really worried (and convinced) people are going to end up with pretty serious health issues from Soylent but the fanboyistic reception it gets saps my energy to bother arguing with people about it.

> From what I can tell, it's fairly new and unique ...

It isn't, and it looks there was even an American company which tried to sell something similar (total meal replacement) in the past and failed. Maybe someone HNer will remember the name, as it was commented on a previous Soylent article.

> ... and still isn't marketed in quite the same way.

It isn't marketed in quite the same way because Abbott (the manufacturer) is a responsible company and is well aware a fully enteral diet has drawbacks.

So it's ambitious and novel?

Soylent is the first... to specifically target the market segment that is fawning over it. Ensure and the like are not seen as products for young active SV desk jockeys; instead it is that shit that old or ill people drink.

It doesn't hurt that Soylent has a distinct "anti-authoritarian" vibe going on with it, that tickles the "techies can solve any problem, everyone else isn't as clever as we are"-bone.

> Soylent is the first... to specifically target the market segment that is fawning over it. Ensure and the like are not seen as products for young active SV desk jockeys

There are actually lots of meal replacement powdered shakes that are marketed to young, active, middle-to-upper-class people.

Sure, but are they marketed to nerds? That I can think of, products like this tend to be marketed towards health enthusiasts, gym goers, body builders, hikers etc. Techies may be any or all of those things, but those products don't categorically stroke the egos of "techies" by playing into their preconceived image of themselves. I've got some protein shake mix (not quite the same thing, but close enough) above my sink, but nobody on HN cares about that stuff; it's not marketed like Soylent is.

The last time I discussed Soylent on this site, I compared the marketing phenomenon around it to the "School Teacher discovers [whatever], Doctors hate her!" ads. I think everyone is fawning over soylent because they are techies, Rhinehart is a techie, and a techie somehow 'disrupting' a non-tech field fits their mental image of superiority. If Rhinehart were a nutritionist and if he were marketing this to, say, people into cardio, then this product wouldn't be notable.

(Note that this isn't me saying the product will sell poorly. It is just my reason for not, say, thinking that this is going to "Change Everything"(tm))

Are there any others that have had success marketing to this segment? I'm sure many try.

I'd say this is a fair assessment. It's a pure marketing play, not a tech company in any meaningful sense of the word, any more than 5-Hour-Energy is a tech product.

If you can't make a tasty meal out of pasta or a frozen pizza, I would suggest the possibility that you are doing something wrong.

All frozen pizzas are not created equal. Shop around and try different brands and styles. Do not microwave them.

Pasta should be an exciting meal every time. You are probably using a low quality sauce, or overcooking it, or rinsing it after draining it (never do this). Use enough salt.

You can also doctor things up. A cheap box of macaroni and cheese is transformed by crumbling a couple slices of high quality bacon onto it.

You can dress up a frozen pizza with some extra toppings. Even canned black olives make a difference.

They reach for pasta or frozen pizza out of convenience and it's not the healthiest option if eaten every day.

"convenience of getting a well balanced diet served in one small dose"

Drinking a whole 2 liter pitcher of soylent is not easy. Really, go read the day by day reviews from Ars.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/08/ars-does-soylent-day-...

I'm not sure I'd use the word convenient either. Your protypical cheap bachelor microwave meal of pizza, burritos or pot pies beats soylent on both prep and cleanup. It also tastes better and is cheaper. A bowl of cereal or oatmeal ties on cleanup and price but wins on prep and taste. Energy bars for a lunch snack win on all counts.

At the end of day 2, he says that Rhinehart encouraged him to only eat as much as he needs, and only when hungry. The logs of days 3, 4 and 5 are much more positive once he starts eating only when he's hungry.

The chopping, prep, cooking part and eating I enjoy. It's the work involved in buying ingredients, bringing them to my home, as well as cleaning up the kitchen and doing dishes (even with a dishwasher!) afterwards that are the real inconvenience. Selecting which ingredients to buy and what dish to prepare also take up a lot of mental bandwidth. I don't like ordering/eating out excessively because it's too expensive, often unhygienic, with poor quality ingredients. I grew up on high-quality home cooked meals so I'm simply not used to it.

If they make Soylent In A Can, you can have my entire yearly grocery/restaurant budget.

If you want it so much, you don't have to wait for Soylent, there are other, proven supplements on the market today. I make use of one daily.

But, guess what... it isn't cheap because they've actually researched this stuff and got it past FDA.

And.. what is it? Medifast?

Yawn.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com