For instance: manufacturing. They've contracted with an experienced, FDA-certified manufacturing facility that Does This Sort of Things.
Can't wait to get my soylent!
(My girlfriend has been trying to create DIY soylent, so I'm really curious how hers will taste different than the "real" thing. The experiment from last night: soylent flatbread!)
You shouldn't consume only Ensure, but you could do it with Soylent. They are completely different products.
[citation needed]
Malnutrition can have effects years down the line. A bunch of early-adopters with confirmation bias trying it for a couple months proves little about its long-term safety.
It's not like meals are an arcane science working some unknown magic on your body, it's about biological needs and chemistry. And it's not like there are chefs cooking healthy food in every home. I don't claim anything about Soylent, I have never consumed it, but it sounds like a possible solution to a big problem. Time will tell.
It could also be worse. Without long-term, scientifically valid studies, no one knows for sure.
> It's not like meals are an arcane science working some unknown magic on your body, it's about biological needs and chemistry.
The workings of the body are not fully known, even today. There are many unknowns in nutrition, which is precisely why none of the pharmaceutical companies have a "replace all meals!" product.
I would like to try this for those times when I'm short of time to cook and resort to ordering a pizza for example, not as a complete replacement. And I think it would be advisable for the people interested to do that as long as there's not serious research.
However, currently there are serious studies about the bad effects of fast food on your health, it's not an unknown. The way I see it, you are more worried about something that could be bad than about something we know is bad. It doesn't add up to me. Sounds like neophobia. And I'm sorry in advance if I seem rude.
This is why the concept of a general meal replacement (as opposed to an occasional meal replacement) is scary. It has absolutely no diversity. If it's missing something it's missing it for every meal, and it takes a long time to find out that something's missing.
You don't need a chef to quickly cook healthy food at home. In fact, most chefs tend to overcomplicate food by aiming for taste instead of healthiness.
Throw some vegetables in the steamer, add some tofu and in five minutes you got yourself a healthy lunch. This is just one example.
*Seriously, not one size fits all. Changing elevation will cause you to need more/less potassium for instance.
No, it has not. An ensure contains a mere 11% of your daily potassium for example. Has anyone ever actually recommended that someone drink 9 ensures a day?
If you are referring to Ensure Complete, (rather than regular Ensure, which is not intended as a complete replacement), it may be low in potassium because complete replacements may be used by people with various medical conditions for which reduced potassium intake, below the usual-stated Adequate Intake, is recommended [1] (its possible for other users to supplement potassium, so that design choice would make it more broadly usable.)
Nutrition is more than one-size-fits-all values.
[1] See, e.g., the special considerations that apply to Potassium here: http://www.iom.edu/Global/News%20Announcements/~/media/442A0...
They are used on people with malnutrition, eating disabilities or digestion disorders, effectively replacing meals, but never marketed as such for the general population by Abbott and co. because 1) they know about nutrition, 2) know it's shortcomings and 3) know it's bad idea.
[1] http://discourse.soylent.me/t/effects-of-re-introducing-soli...