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Comment by zacinbusiness | Hacker News Reader

I'm unsure that I understand the whole Soylent thing. Is it for lazy people or is it for people who simply don't enjoy food? I know it's not about solving some sort of food supply problem, as we've not seen tons if it being distributed for free to the hungry. And it can't be about eating healthy, because eating healthy is easy and doesn't require buying chemicals from shady manufacturers. So what's it all about?

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Reading your other comments, it seems you've already formed a negative opinion of this product based on your existing lifestyle. Hopefully I can explain it a way that makes sense.

I have plenty of time to make food, but it's not just making the food.

It's coming up with an idea of what meals I want to have each week, it's going to the grocery store and purchasing the food. When it comes to putting it away, you have to decide if you're going to eat this steak right away or if your're going to freeze it for another day. If you have frozen meat, there's a good chance you'll have to take it out and thaw it the night before so you can cook it.

By no means is this an onerous task. It's really all just part of daily life for a lot of people. But here's the rub. If you don't have time (or "lack of foresight") to get your groceries on Monday, you're not going to be able to spend 40 minutes to grill that salmon on Tuesday. You certainly won't be eating the leftovers of that on Wednesday.

I clean the house because a dirty house is distracting and becomes unsanitary. I can even enjoy the process and the satisfaction of making clutter go away. But I don't plan out cleaning the house. I try to keep it tidy as I go, and if it gets out of hand and becomes a problem, I dig in and start cleaning. I don't hire a cleaning service because it's manageable with my lifestyle.

I have a fairly large yard that I have to mow each week. It usually takes me about 3-4 hours each weekend between the riding mower and the pushmower. Sometimes I need to get the weed eater out and trim around the house. For years, I had no problem doing this on a Saturday morning. When I got married, my wife and I divided this job up and it cut down on the time. But when we had my kid last year, we could never seem to find the time to mow the yard each week and by the second week the yard was looking like a hay field. So we started paying the neighbor kid to do it. It became amazing to come home from work and see the yard cut. Just removing that from my list of things that need done became a relief and allowed me to focus on other things that were more important to me (like replying to posts on hacker news ;).

The crux of the matter is about priorities. I may spend a couple hours building a new PC, or more likely, spend time out in my hamshack setting up an PC to radio interface because that's what I enjoy. I make time for those activities. I also enjoy eating or drinking with friends as a social activity. I could have friend over and fire up the grill or we can go to a restaurant and eat. But other things are done out necessity. But when it comes to getting a meal for myself, I could care less. I'd much rather spend my time working on my radios or solving computer problems or teaching my son how to read. Going to the grocery store is really far down on my list of things I'd like to do. But since I didn't go to the grocery store, I don't have supplies to make a meal with.

To get around this, I can swing by any sort of fast food place (Subway right away), I can order pizza, or I can stock up on frozen meals from Sam's Club. My freezer has a lot of 2 minute breakfast sandwiches. But none of these are really that healthy.

So when I heard about Soylent, it struck a chord. I can theoretically by this in bulk, it has a long shelf life, and make it in the blender in a couple minutes. People have done meal replacements before of course, but this seemed to be much more complete than those canned milkshakes or protein bars ever were (and I've tried some of those before). So now whenever I look up from whatever I'm working on and realize I'm hungry, I can make something that (hopefully) tastes good in 5 minutes and take it back to whatever interesting thing I was doing.

Another benefit of this time saving is that you don't have to go right back to work. If you have 30-60 minute lunch window, most people spend the bulk of that time obtaining and consuming food. Imagine having your thermos at the ready and you take it with you to go read a book, or just stare out the window, or maybe you go for a job and eat it when you get back. Most people are focused on the lunch in lunch break, but might enjoy using that break time in a different way.

You're just going to replace the time you don't spend on yourself with time you spend at work. I'd rather be taking time to make and eat food (and my team takes hour long lunches at minimum) than gulping something down and then wondering "what now?" as I sit in front of the workstation. Meals are incredible. They are social, they are spiritual, they are international, tasteful, satisfying, new, nostalgic. Soylent is a bland smoothie that supposedly meets your body's "needs" without meeting your body's needs.

>Another benefit of this time saving is that you don't have to go right back to work. If you have 30-60 minute lunch window, most people spend the bulk of that time obtaining and consuming food. Imagine having your thermos at the ready and you take it with you to go read a book, or just stare out the window, or maybe you go for a jog and eat it when you get back. Most people are focused on the lunch in lunch break, but might enjoy using that break time in a different way.

I typically don't eat breakfast because I either don't have time, have run out of eggs/cereal/milk, or don't feel like eating one of the three typical breakfast foods. If I could supplement/substitute breakfast it would be really nice.

Sometimes I eat fast food or some microwaveable thing because I am either exhausted when I come home, don't have food in the fridge, and I don't want to prepare anything or go to the super market. If I had a healthy and cheap alternative to a borrito, burger, or teriyaki chicken that would be awesome.

I'm not going to go 100% on Soylent and I don't think many of the people buying into it are, it's a meal alternative and another option for those 20-40% of meals that I simply am not going to cook for whatever reason.

So it's for people with poor time management skills or who have almost no foresight? I'm glad I am able to take the minute to throw together a tofu sandwich in the morning but maybe I'm blessed with a less hectic morning routine than most Soylent users.

I have plenty of time in the morning to make a lunch to take to work. I don't want to. Your "holier than thou" comments are not helping anyone. So you're not interested in Soylent... why be a jerk about it to people who are? I hate tofu... should I trash talk all the people that put that disgusting, vile creation into their mouth?

I'm not making comments, I'm asking a legitimate question. If you have the means, the time, and the ability to make a meal for yourself then what provides the motivation to say "Nah, I'd rather eat this." For example, most folks on HN have the means, the time, and the ability to build their own custom computer rig. Some choose it, and some choose not to and for various reasons such as they simply don't need a custom rig, or they aren't sure that their craftsmanship will yield a better result than a store bought product and so forth and so on. So, when it comes to food (which is infinitely more important than what computer system you're using) what is the motivation for drinking a paste of dubious origin vs. eating solid food that you build yourself?

Sorry. Usually legitimate questions don't involve reducing people interested in Soylent to various negative buckets like: Lazy, no foresight, poor time management skills. I mistook your comments for condescending snark. Still not sure I am wrong but since I'm not a mind reader I'm not going to argue about what you were thinking. I can just go off of what I read.

Perhaps lazy is a bit of a strong word....I guess I meant....people who...don't want to perform...tasks? I've still not seen a legitimate answer. I mean if someone didn't have teeth, or if they were allergic to a lot of things, or if they literally didn't have 1 minute to spare either in the morning or at night then I could see it. Or if they were really into fitness and weight loss and wanted to fit into that new swimsuit by spring break then maybe I could see it. But it doesn't look to me like Soylent is nutritionally flexible enough (it comes pre mixed in pouches) to be used as an actual nutritional supplement for the masses (nutritional needs are different depending on many, many factors). So maybe it tastes good? But does it provide the variety that can be found either in nature of even at a restaurant? So maybe some people simply don't care for variety? So why not make a Soylent-like product that's more customized to your nutritional needs? The guy published an extensive blog about how he did it so you can too. So does it really come down to just not having the time or the inclination to feed yourself? It just seems like letting someone push a slurry of chemicals into your body, and paying them to do so no less, is a strange life choice.

If I thought for a second that you actually wanted a legitimate answer, then I would give you mine. But when you say things like "literally don't have 1 minute to spare" I know you just want to put people down. You don't want to know because you have already judged everyone and it shows in all of your comments. I'm not going to waste any more time thinking I can convince you of anything when you so clearly have already decided. Which is fine. You don't have to like the idea of Soylent. But you also don't have to shit on like that.

I promise that my intention isn't to shit on anything. It just seems to me that most people are trying Soylent either because it saves time or because it's easier than cooking proper food. And those two reasons, to me, don't sound like a good reason to try a nutritional supplement.

Most of the things we all eat comes from dubious origins. The average meal comes from several different continents and from animals and plants grown under a wide range of conditions. If you buy all of your ingredients in their least processed form then you have a shot at knowing roughly where it came from. Good luck if you buy anything canned, in a box, or pre-made at a restaurant and don't even bother trying with supplements.

Soylent isn't from another planet and isn't made of some crazy chemicals just invented. Looking at its ingredients list isn't any stranger than looking at the ingredients list of almost any product in the supermarket.

Well, I can give you my perspective.

I'm lazy when it comes to food: my primary motivator with respect to food is not being hungry. While I like to eat food and definitely have types I prefer over others, I don't like to source them, prepare them or clean up afterwards. I also don't like that I have a whole room dedicated to the storage, processing and cleanup of food and food-related paraphernalia.

Basically, aside from the 'provides vital sustenance' aspect of it, I don't believe food enhances my life in any way. A product that claims good, fast, palatable nutrition with a minimum of effort? I will give that a try.

Just wondering, how often in the past have you purchased some kind of meal replacement shake to solve the problem?

If never or not often, why will Soylent be different?

I drink protein shakes in the morning about once or twice a week (usually the morning after a workout). Soylent appeals to me because it seem like a more "complete" protein shake.

I haven't purchased other meal replacement drinks because I frankly wasn't aware that they existed until I started following all of this.

It's for people who don't care about eating enough to spend hours every week just preparing healthy meals, but care enough about eating healthily that they don't want to just eat fastfood/takeaway all the time.

I also contest your statement that eating healthy is easy, unless by easy you mean 'requires careful planning and constant vigilance'

It doesn't take hours to eat an apple on your way to work in the morning. And it doesn't take careful planning nor constant vigilance to grill a salmon steak and prepare a small salad. It takes about 40 minutes to do that and costs maybe $10, for two meals for two people and with about 5 ingredients (salmon, lettuce, olives, red pepper, olive oil).

Don't confuse easy with inexpensive or quick.

A fine point!

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