That's how you dismiss a food as a toy.
I'm fine with the idea of meal replacements, but:
1) I think they already exist. They just aren't marketed to trendy 20-somethings. (This is what Soylent does well and why, I assume, they're getting investment. The actual product can be completely reformulated until it comes reasonably close to being a good meal replacement: It's the brand that's become valuable.)
2) The Soylent team sounded like such snake-oil salesmen out of the gate that they simply don't have much credibility, as far as I'm concerned. With all of the made-up benefits they touted at the start, now they have to dig themselves out a deep pit of bullshit to actually demonstrate the value of their product.
It's important that we don't treat this kind of food product like a toy. Which is why it's important to be critical of unsupported claims. (And critical of supported claims, as well.) Especially those made by young people with no particular background in the field they're purporting to be experts in. Food is not a toy. It's not Tumblr. It's not Zynga. It's something we require to survive.
Remember supersize me, that guy started having liver problems from eating McDonalds... Yet nothing changes and McDonalds keeps selling crap.
Food is a toy, and Soylent are very far down the scale of "bad food products I can buy"
On the other hand... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Head
So does it concern you that in McDonalds ads there are always attractive slim people, when in fact at most stores you see average looking obese people?
Are we arguing truth in advertising? Or Danger in food products?
Where 'the hype' includes claims of total meal replacement over long periods of time.. yes.
I don't think many, if any, people are concerned that this stuff is literally toxic. The concern is what will happen if you use it as advertised: constantly, exclusively, for extended periods of time.
People eating McDonalds for every meal every day of the week is troubling, I don't think anybody actually suggests you do that. McDonalds certainly doesn't suggest that you do that, though I sometimes feel that many people wish they did suggest you do that so that McDonalds would be easier to flay alive. Being appalled by McDonalds is an international sport after all...
There really isn't that much of a problem with eating a greasy deep-fried cheeseburger once in a while, and there isn't a problem with skipping a meal or two and having a shake instead. That isn't what concerns me, that isn't what seems to concern DanBC ("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."), and that isn't what I see concerning other people in this thread. The literal product, the substance Solyent, is almost certainly perfectly fine to consume. So are cheeseburgers.
I thought part of the problem was that McDonalds /did/ suggest you /could/ do that, without any ill-effects - that their meals were healthy and you could eat breakfast, lunch and dinner there without a problem.
On the other hand, soylent is making the claim that it's healthy to use soylent as a complete replacement for food. Thus, the standards are much higher in terms of truth in marketing.
http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/food/food_quality/nutrition_c...
There's no mention of food from other places, and the final paragraph ("Variety keeps things interesting") certainly implies you could eat there daily without problem, to the exclusion of other food sources.
No, because I've already dismissed McDonald's menu as not having any relevance to anything I care about.
EDIT: OTOH, were people promoting McDonald's new menu items as the solution to real problems (both personal and global), I'd react with the same kind of skepticism as I do to Soylent's claims.
Mcdonalds on the other hand never market their food as a complete meal replacement solution. In fact, here in the uk, they're very careful to point out you still need a healthy balanced diet (admittedly due to regulations, but still... They do it, Soylent don't)
If this new menu item is intended to be eaten full-time to the exclusion of everything else: yes.
If Soylent's angle was "running late? don't have time? give Soylent a go!" I don't think anyone would have a problem with it. The claim that bothers people is that it obviates the need for any other food.
Not all food is super-healthy, and that's fine. I like tasty food that's not particularly good for me sometimes.
This is not what Soylent claims to be. It claims to be something you can replace almost all of your food intake with and remain healthy.
And prolonged exposure to anything. I mean anything will cause harm to your body. Its not just McDonalds.
Soylent is a bit like a drug company releasing a new drug.
Do you think it's possible people are taking food too seriously?
Empirically, Soylent has been on the market without causing any problems for a few months. What if it doesn't cause problems for a few years?
I'm interested to understand why people choose food to get so passionate about. When a new source control system comes out, people don't get so heated. Why for a food company?
- Food is a major component of identity. It conveys things about your values and belief systems. Thus, like other identity factors (race, religion, political position, sexual orientation, socio-economic class), when this is challenged, some people are particularly sensitive and respond very defensively.
- As food choices are widely accepted to be a major factor in overall health (and thus, susceptibility to serious illness, life-expectancy, etc), it's natural for there to be a significant amount of fear behind people's positions in the discussion. I.e., when someone says "this diet will give you a greater chance of positive health outcomes than the one you currently follow", that can be frightening to people who harbour fears - conscious or subconscious - about their health and their expected lifespan.
The reason I hate Soylent is, as several other people mention in this thread, the over-blown claims made in their crowd-funding drive.
Before any work with nutritionists or dietitians the Soylent team were claiming:
> "You can finally join the easy, healthy, and affordable future of nutrition."
> "What if you never had to worry about food again?"
> "For anyone that struggles with allergies, heartburn, acid reflux or digestion, has trouble controlling weight or cholesterol, or simply doesn't have the means to eat well, soylent is for you."
> "Soylent frees you from the time and money spent shopping, cooking and cleaning, puts you in excellent health,"
> "By taking years to spoil"
> "there is much evidence that it is considerably healthier than a typical diet."
Some of these are just enthusiastic US marketing. I'm in the UK where we have stricter rules for advertising, so there's some cultural clash there.
But some of them are sleazy and not truthy.
That bad-feeling is retained by many people, even though the Soylent team are now working with real food scientists and being more careful with the claims.
As the word is used on The Colbert Report, "truthy" is somewhat sleazy. It means something that sounds like it's true, but which isn't necessarily based on facts.
>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.
Not just easy and healthy. No. Perfectly optimized... Automatically puts you at an optimal weight They've toned down the language since saying this, but I think anyone has good reason to be upset over such claims.
Tim Ferriss gave a platform to Soylent on his blog recently, which is one of the best things you can have happen for your product: http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelellsberg/2012/01/11/the-t... Rhinehart wasn't very grateful, simply because Ferriss showed some healthy skepticism. Here's the whole event:
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2013/08/20/soylent/
http://robrhinehart.com/?p=874
http://www.flickr.com/photos/timferriss/9684046788/
One of the last things Ferriss says? I don't want you to fail and explicitly stated otherwise in my piece... That mimics the same attitude a lot of us here have.
Being skeptical of bogus claims isn't the same thing as dismissing something. Or calling it a toy. That accusation is a dismissal of reasonable skepticism.
I'm neither For/Against Soylent, but after reading that I have a fairly negative view on Rhinehart.
As an extra: His response to 1-size-fits-all is laughable, is he forgetting about the 1000s of eating issues people have (gluten, lactose, allergies, diabetes)... Sorry ranting now.
Nope, all fair points.
Frankly, if they were doing something other than food, it probably wouldn't be an issue either. They are playing with people's health and wellbeing.
The worry with soylent or other food replacement is that it could outright harm you. Pfizer was developing Torcetrapib as a successor to multi-billion dollar Lipitor and it was on in Phase III that it was found to have adverse effect. It took 16 years of development, and close to $1B expense before the side-effects were discovered.
The soylent effort is great but if there are any health issues, they may come to the surface much later.