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Comment by fredsters_s | Hacker News Reader

As a long time beta user I have a bunch of problems with this piece:

- the Oakland space was a temporary location while they were iterating on the beta. Soylent is not manufactured there.

- all the journalists writing about Soylent seem to attribute to Rob stuff that he doesn't actually say: namely that you should only consume Soylent all the time. The point of Soylent is that it replaces transactional eating and makes me healthier. It's not about replacing the eating I do for fun.

- Soylent is a technology company. It's not just positioning. They are iterating towards finding an exponentially better way to do transactional eating using technology. That's the definition of a tech company.

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Soylent is a technology company. It's not just positioning. They are iterating towards finding an exponentially better way to do transactional eating using technology. That's the definition of a tech company.

Well, any product is technology in that sense. But this particular technology, meal-replacement shakes, is already reasonably well established. What seems new to me is that Soylent is pitching itself to people who either don't know about or have failed to become interested in the existing products, which seems like a marketing innovation more than a tech innovation. They don't seem to be differentiating on technical quality or iteration. If you read their campaign, for example, it is entirely positioned against regular food, as if they have just invented the full-meal-replacement shake, and does not mention anything about technical innovation over existing competitors: https://campaign.soylent.me/soylent-free-your-body

It's possible they also have technical innovation over any existing meal-replacement shake, but they are being very quiet about it if so.

The existing products have really terrible marketing. They sell them in pharmacies and generally broadcast a message of "for supplementation or diseased/senile people only".

Kudos to Soylent for trying to normalize liquid diets.

That's it. I had to read this far before I realized that's exactly what their core is: "trying to normalize liquid diets" (as in make them normal, acceptable, approachable, I think?). There's nothing natural (as in biologically normal, desirable or standard) about a liquid diet, so that's going to be an uphill battle.

I have some kind of psychological problem where I chew 5x more than normal people. This causes me to fill up on very small quantities of food and it's very difficult to hit 2000 calories a day without eating a lot of small meals or taking liquid supplements. So, at least for me, a liquid diet would be highly desirable.

As for biologically normal, it all turns into a liquid sludge in your stomach, doesn't it? Past that point I don't see how your digestive system can tell the difference as long as the composition of the sludge is similar enough.

A lot of the issues people have with Soylent seem to revolve around making it the only thing in your diet for extended periods. You're right that this is not how they are pushing it. I would never want to replace food with this entirely. If I were planning to have Soylent for dinner but some friends called up and asked if I wanted to grab a meal with them, I wouldn't hesitate for a second.

Because of this I don't worry if it's healthy enough to be the only thing I eat for a month, or if I would miss food, or be less social. This will never, and isn't designed to, replace all food.

iterating on the beta, transactional eating, exponentially better way, etc.

Give me a break.

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