Orders projected to begin shipping 4/21
blog.soylent.me
blog.soylent.me
It costs a lot of money to buy. It costs a lot of time to prepare, unless you pay someone else even more money to do it for you. It takes up a ton of space, and even requires you to have a bunch of appliances just for its existence.
All so you can what- get a taste in your mouth and not die? I know that's a gross oversimplification(forgive me for it if you will), but it's always been a hassle I just really don't enjoy dealing with as often as I have to. I want to enjoy food, not be forced into it.
If this is actually healthy- and I want something more than a few people living off of it for a couple weeks- I'd love it. I wouldn't give up food entirely of course, but I'd save it for when I actually want a specific taste, or to go to a specific experience with friends and family.
Edit: I'm not suggesting that Ensure and soylent are identical, but there is a lot of overlap, and in this case it appears to satisfy a lot of the requirements in the parent comment.
It's interesting to me when something like this comes along and people herald it as something completely ground breaking when there's already a myriad of products do this and probably taste infinitely better.
Not saying its a bad idea, but this space is already incredibly crowded. what's the selling point that Soylent has over its competitors?
Ensure doesn't even get you close to the recommended amount of macronutrients, unless you're trying to lose weight. Ensure has 210-350 calories [0], yet high levels of micronutrients which means if you drink too many of them you risk taking in way too much of some vitamins and minerals.
Soylent is meant for healthy people who want to consume a normal amount of macro and micro nutrients each day.
Don't get me wrong...I hope that this startup will succeed and prove me wrong. And to be fair, they aren't calling for people to abandon solid food. It's just that, as technical people, I think we sometimes overemphasize the efficiency of this product and underemphasize the cultural attitudes of everyday consumers.
This is the best criticism of soylent; what they're doing just goes against the grain of how peoples' minds are wired.
Maybe it'll wind up gaining traction as a fad instead, like the meal replacement product on House of Lies[1] this past season[2].
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLPhbw0IBk8
[2] When I saw that episode, I wondered if it was meant as a deliberate spoof of soylent.
I disagree. With sex, the enjoyment can be had no matter what, while the biological part (reproduction) is optional. But with food, it's often a mutually exclusive choice between enjoyment and biology (proper nutrition). Especially when you have three dollars and ten minutes to spare. So it isn't quite a valid comparison.
They aren't necessarily looking to replace the ritual of eating for the average consumer, and there are applications outside of that market that Soylent could be extremely beneficial for. For example they have cited it being a useful replacement for people who can't eat certain types of foods, or who can't eat solid foods.
That said, the creator claims that he "appreciates" food more, while on soylent. Rather than paraphrase, here's the relevant quote:
Soylent has changed my relationship with food. Before I probably craved pizza and cheeseburgers because that was the easiest way to provide my 6'3" frame with the calories it needed. Now that my nutritional needs are always met I am able to appreciate food more for its flavor, and started really enjoying sushi. Sushi is especially interesting because there is such range and intensity of flavors, and it is so difficult, yet rewarding to make well. This makes it pricey, but I spend so little on food I can enjoy nice sushi once or twice per week. Fast food restaurants look laughably obsolete to me, like a Blockbuster.
http://robrhinehart.com/?p=570
Whether this holds true for the majority of people, time will tell. I'd be interested in trying, at least.
Not at all! The ideas is that many, or at least enough, consumers want nourishment without the effort or time spent on prepping, cooking, and cleaning up after a meal.
Aside from Soylent, the only way the person who can't cook -- or can't cook well, or hasn't access to good cooking facilities, or just doesn't want to spend time cooking -- can get good nourishment is to pay a lot to eat at high-quality restaurants -- and end up spending almost as much time on the process. Or, much more likely, to eat crap such as Ramen, MacD's, frozen dinners, PB&J sandwiches or take-out pizza slices and beer. And ironically still pay a very high price per protein calorie and fall far short of MDRs of many things.
Soylent's market is obviously not the people who like to cook, or have partners who like (or have the time) to cook, and access to a proper kitchen and pantry and such. It's the bachelors of the world, the grad students, the people living in studio apartments writing code all night. And I think it will do very well from and for them.
The biggest feedback I get about Soylent are the following:
- What if it doesn't taste good?
- But I enjoy eating real food...
We'll find out soon about the first and, frankly, the latter simply doesn't apply to a very large number of people. Soylent is perfect for people who are short of one of two quite valuable things: time and money.
Time: When's the last time you thought or heard "man, I wish the day had 10 more hours in it"? Soylent won't buy you 10, but I'd say it'll easily buy you one at the very least. All of a sudden you don't even have to think about grocery shopping or where you're going to go on your lunch break. You now get to spend your grocery evening doing whatever you want because you have Soylent. You can spend your lunch break working and get 45 minutes more done every day, or doing something you really enjoy.
Money: Given all the recent posts about what percentage of people own what percentage of money, it's clear that there are a large number of people who are not well off. There are people in third world countries who are not and will never be well off. Soylent will probably be able to feed them the most nutritious meal they've had in a long time for very cheap. They're at about $3 per meal right now and I'd imagine the majority of their focus has been on scaling infrastructure, not pushing the price point. Imagine when the get into manufacturing ingredients themselves, the price point could be much lower. That would be revolutionary if we could feed entire countries more nutritious meals for far less money.
I can't wait until I get my Soylent. Hopefully it tastes as great as they advertise. :P
The price aspect can be interesting , but I really don't need an excuse for my boss to get rid of my lunch break
The verdict is still out on whether you can actually live off this stuff. If you're curious about the experience, there have been a number of journalists who have gone on the stuff for a short period and wrote about it. [2][3].
EDIT: To clarify, there haven't been any long-term studies that I found on living off a nutritional shake like this and the effect that it has on your overall health. It's akin to the same stuff they feed people who won't/cannot feed themselves[4] except a lot cheaper and (hopefully) tastes better.
[2] http://motherboard.vice.com/en_ca/blog/soylent-no-food-for-3...
[3] http://gawker.com/we-drank-soylent-the-weird-food-of-the-fut...
[4] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/14/r...
Diet is still not well understood, and current science, IMO, is too soft of a foundation upon which to build a complete meal replacement on. I'm sure this would be fine for the occasional use, but until some longitudinal studies are performed, I would be weary for long term usage.
Well, the thing is that there are all sorts of micronutrients and less "quantified" benefits that are derived from eating whole foods. A product like Soylent will cover the primary nutrients well, but will likely miss the mark with regard to truly replicating how we are supposed to eat.
But, here's the thing: given our lifestyles, costs, and industrialized system of processed food production, so few people eat a consistent diet of chemical-free, healthy whole foods. Just drinking Soylent to avoid the chemicals in our current food supply alone may be sufficient to improve one's diet.
TLDR; relative to the crap that comprises most diets, Soylent will likely (and sadly) be better for the majority.
Everything is made from chemicals. Which ones are you referring to?
Is it your assertion that there are no chemical additives in the food supply that are harmful?
It's not pedantic to ask if you have any good examples of the chemicals you are complaining about.
Derailing the conversation with complaints of pedantry is, however, rather unhelpful.
Sure it is when it's not the point. If you're really stuck there, then just re-read my comment without the word "chemical". You'll find no impact on my point. So, if you disagree with my actual assertion (which seems to be the case, judging from your other comments on the topic), then you might address them, if you weren't being pedantic.
>Derailing the conversation with complaints of pedantry is, however, rather unhelpful.
Actually, I am complaining about others derailing the conversation with pedantry. Important difference.
But, I see that you are unwilling to answer the simple on-topic question that would address all of this; that being, are you asserting that there are no harmful chemicals in the food supply?
Carry on with the downvotes and faux discussion.
(I didn't downvote anything in this thread, by the way.)
Good enough. We can stop there. This is a discussion about Soylent and its potential benefits/risks. That it seeks to avoid chemical additives is one potential benefit that I posited in the comment that spawned this fork. This is the only reason the word "chemical" entered the discussion.
In all honesty, I am not really interested in enumerating a list of problematic food additives. Perhaps you'd like to post another submission?
This is exactly why I appreciate HN. Thanks for sharing.
(It's important to specify the negative aspect; mineral and vitamin fortification both have pretty big positive effects, in countries with legal requirements for fortification, things like rickets are a bizarre anomaly.)
"chemical-free, healthy whole foods" is a nonsense phrase. Particularly "chemical-free foods". Not only is everything made of chemicals, but the whole point of foods is their behavior as reactants in chemical reactions.
EDIT: Removed snark.
You obviously mean something other than "chemical" when you say chemical, but there isn't any really clear definition of what it is.
AFAICT, when people use this phrasing, they are appealing to one of a wide array of different (but stylistically similar) mythologies that some point in the past had the ideal level of technical involvement with food, but using language that is completely inappropriate, probably because it creates the impression that there is a real objective concrete differentiation that doesn't actually exist -- that there is some well-defined category of "bad thing" that is being excluded when that is the farthest thing from the case.
Although, sometimes, the inappropriate language seems to be used instead just to make it impossible to discuss the whole subject meaningfully, since any disagreement with what is actually said is treated as missing the point obscured by the language -- which is never actually clarified so that it can be addressed.
So, then you knew all the while that I was obviously referring to certain chemical additives and not just chemicals. Yet, you replied with the obvious statement that "everything is made of chemicals". This kind of pedantry is what really makes meaningful discusion difficult.
>sometimes, the inappropriate language seems to be used instead just to make it impossible to discuss the whole subject meaningfully, since any disagreement with what is actually said is treated as missing the point obscured by the language
No. The reason it was impossible to discuss meaningfully is not because of how "any disagreement [was] treated". It's because you didn't actually disagree. Instead, you interpreted the comment literally and complained about it being a "nonsense phrase", even when you understood perfectly well what was meant. You then went on a tangent about chemicals and how they work.
If, instead, your assertion is that there are no harmful chemicals in our food supply or that there is no difference between eating organic foods vs. processed foods with chemical additives, then you should have stated as much.
All of this is tangential to the main point, however, which is that, while Soylent may not be the perfect food replacement, it is likely a step up for most people whose diets are suboptimal for any number of reasons.
This type of thing is already well established in the healthcare sector, see e.g. https://www.evidence.nhs.uk/formulary/bnf/current/a2-borderl..., with the added benefit that such products are formulated by nutrition scientists who actually know what they're doing, and run proper clinical trials to test.
Do you have another link? This looks interesting.
It pops up everywhere; It's ubiquitous. You always have someone saying "I don't understand why this is so popular when it was done before". "I don't understand why you would do this when this also works and is already available".
With tech, with everything. Heck, even on HN/Reddit! When there's a repost with a catchier title, people don't understand how the old submission didn't get more upvooootes!
People don't understand Docker when BSD Jails are the thing!
People don't understand why Das Keyboards are so popular when the Model M is clearly better!
People don't understand why Apple is getting all the love for products that are "basically just a shinier x and y".
Maybe you guys should think for a minute and then you'll understand. I'm tired of this trope.
Because marketing
I would be more trusting of their product if they had worked with an established medical nutrition supplier to rebrand and flavour an existing enteral feed, rather than hacking something up and minimally testing it.
If anything, Soylent will serve to actually show that there is demand and push other products to be more readily available to the public. If that doesn't happen, well it's not really relevant in the first place.
It's kinda like the earlier article on flying car prototypes being there but not affordable. They're not affordable because there's no demand, and there's no demand because they're not affordable. Someone needs to break the cycle, and when Tesla will break it, someone will not understand why the Tesla is suddenly so popular for something that has existed for years.
Since you bring up Docker, it's the ease of use and sharability that are the big wins outside of how it's implemented. Heck, if you want to get real, it's a wrapper around lxc. Folks I know that are serious Windows hackers with zillions in funding decide not to compete with Docker because it wouldn't be differentiated or better enough to bother... They're on track for acquisition and it wouldn't have been worth lost momentum.
People need new things to love as they fall out of love with the last that didn't fulfill an inner existential emptiness. (Chronic retail addiction.)
Also people love to tear down the works of other people, because either they didn't think of it, they wish to justify their own laziness or are afraid of being abandoned.
* The medical things like Jevity are developed for people who are very sick, rather than people with normal health.
* The medical things are sold to hospitals; it is not easy to find them or buy them as an individual. (I know it is possible though.)
* It is not clear that the medical stuff is cheaper than solid food. Part of the idea of Soylent is that it is cheaper than food. I'm not sure if this has actually come to pass, though.
* The nutrition drinks on the market, such as Ensure, taste disgusting and are full of sugar. (I once had to drink several cans of the stuff every day for a year.) Soylent is designed to have minimal taste: the idea is that you can add your own flavoring. To me, this is a huge deal, and it also seems to indicate a difference in underlying philosophy.
There are also more specialist products to suit certain medical conditions e.g. organ failure, but that's not relevant to Soylent-type feeds.
$3.04 per meal is not cheaper than food (though its cheaper than most prepackaged, ready-to-eat food.) Since Soylent is food -- and highly processed food, with processing having a cost -- it hard to see why it would ever be expected to be a particularly inexpensive alternative. Sure, I know that's part of the vision that Soylent marketed, but its not particularly realistic. (It might be cheaper to ship, and therefore able to be cheaper all-in than other food alternatives if you are getting it someplace that is very remote from food production, but the nature of human society is that isn't where most people are.)
> It is true that medical meal replacement things do exist, as well as mass market shakes like Ensure.
It is also true that there are meal replacement shakes designed for active, health-conscious adults, and with a wide range of specific focuses, that are neither "medical things" designed for sick people or things that are full of sugar, including ones that are intended for people to add flavorings.
Soylent's may have a well-developed hype machine, but it doesn't really seem to offer anything substantive that doesn't already exist on the market.
Since Soylent is food -- and highly processed food, with
processing having a cost -- it hard to see why it would
ever be expected to be a particularly inexpensive
alternative.
I don't know if soylent will ever be cheaper than canned tomatoes on dried pasta, though!
Not saying soylent 1.0 is much different but the fundamental difference in market and purpose will drive soylent farther and farther apart from ensure et al.
The media hype about Soylent as a total meal replacement that gives you superpowers or something seems misguided. Much more compelling to me is the idea of something that is very easy and inoffensive to eat when I don't have time to make or buy food.
Yes but it was media hype triggered by the guy who came up with it in the first place. He made the claims, not the media.
Right now, I mostly consume quick oats and protein powder for bulk caloric needs. Vitamins are a generally a waste of money so daily requirements are met by a balance of vegetables, nuts and legumes.
If Soylent were viable and cheaper than Ensure, I'd consider it. But I'm unwilling to pay more for convenience as I can do better on my own for far cheaper.
Also, potatoes are already nutritionally complete (minus B12 iirc), probably cheaper than this, and certainly better tasting.
I'm excited about this. I love eating food but I really hate making it. If this proves adequate I can definitely see myself having this 5-6 days a week and then eating meals on the weekend with humans.
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2013/08/20/soylent/
http://robrhinehart.com/?p=474
http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/soylent-no-food-for-30-days
^Soylent's response: http://blog.soylent.me/post/66807143901/this-morning-vices-b...
I'm doing a nutritional experiment for the month, avoiding meat, bread, alcohol, sweeteners, and potatoes. It would be interesting to do the Soylent for a month experiment, perhaps with additional flavorings.