Soylent gets tested, scores a wholesome nutritional label
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
My concern is about the thousands or millions of micronutrients and phytonutrients that are poorly understood or even yet to be isolated by nutritional science, and the subtle and complex way they interact with our bodies and each other.
To me, the entire premise of Soylent is predicated on the idea that we know, on a compound-by-compound basis, what's good for our bodies nutritionally. The more I learn about the state of nutritional science, the less I believe this to be true.
Well Soylent is going to be an interesting test to confirm what we know and do not know about nutrition. As long as there are some willing volunteers to put their health at risk, I'd say why not. It will benefit mankind as a whole to know more.
If Soylent is used by even a modest number of people, the probability approaches 1 that some people will get sick, develop a chronic illness or die after years of Soylent consumption. The probability is the same for a modestly-sized group eating a regular diet over the same timespan. Is the morbidity caused by Soylent? Is it caused by a regular diet? Is it caused by uncontrolled variables, or random chance?
In an uncontrolled environment, it would be extremely difficult to establish a causal link between Soylent consumption and a particular health outcome, even if that health outcome were so radically more or less prevalent in the Soylent group vs. the general population that it was actually noticed as a trend and people went looking for it.
But it's far likelier that, if Soylent consumption were associated with a particular health outcome, the trend wouldn't be so clear-cut or obvious as to stand out outside of a controlled environment, and people wouldn't go looking for it. Especially if it took years or decades to manifest.
You can easily confirm or infirm that with statistics. If Soylent is used by hundred of thousands of people and the health issues reported are about the same rates as issues reported in general population, it means there's no additional risk. The only bad thing it may get is more media attention, but media is well known to care shit about statistics.
On top of that, it will be interesting to see if people stick to Soylent on the long term or just get bored once the novelty wears off, and return to traditional food consumption.
The problem is that nutrition, at least at this stage, is simply not analyzable, unless we're talking about very large effects - as somebody in a post has explained.
Supposed that, say, soylent, kills people in 30 years of consumption. What's going to happen in the meanwhile?
Or, worse, suppose instead that the effect is subtle, for example, that it causes debilitation in the long term. How's that going to come out?
Sadly, some nutritionist will make 50.6 people run for 25.3 minutes on a treadmill, then come up with the conclusion that there is no significant negative effect, which is going to be trumpeted on mainstream publications.
Let's talk about iron. One problem with vegetarians is that some fall very ill if the don't eat meat, even if they take iron injections. How nutritions science explains that? Unfortunately, it can't. (actually, this is a serious doubt in vegetarian circles. There is the suspect that some big vegetarian advocates are secretly eating meat because of this or similar problems).
The big problem is that products like soylent carry the underlying message that science has a clear idea of how the human body works, while in reality, it doesn't, and this is a very, very serious problem.
The very long term effects are extremely difficult to assess anyway, and it's not just Soylent, it's everything else you eat or take on a frequent basis out there. Until we have more sensors in our bodies to monitor numerous indicators in real time and understand their significance, it will be very hard to understand if anything is making your body worse in the course of dozens of years.
fidlefodl : i just hate eating 90% of the time
riffraff : ... why do you hate eating most of the time?
ekianjo : [hate eating] two words I have difficulty associating ...
collyw : I really don't understand the enthusiasm for
this product. Eating is one of life's pleasures
I freely admit and acknowledge that some food tastes great, but on the whole, I'd much prefer not to spend the time eating.
I'm honestly surprised so many people are shocked by this concept. I've rarely known people to eat great food, and overly healthy food, for 90% of meals which a healthy appreciation of the whole process.
Most people i know eat "real meals" on random dinners through the week, and everything else is just things getting in there way of doing what they want.
Plus, if Soylent ends up being what they are promising (100% perfect meal in each drink), then you're talking about a meal with zero negative aspects. If you're greedy, this lets you sort of eat of in reverse.. Rather than spending all week struggling to eat things you can tolerate so that you can eat something you like in a bit of excess (splurging), you can sort of go nuts with every "real food" meal (assuming most meals are Soylent).
There will be very little guilt in having a burger with bacon.. you've had 100% health food for the last 3 days. Go nuts with your burger!
(I would make a bet that if it is launched in Spain, it will fail miserably. People here have a real passion for good food.)
> "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."
Those are the claims they made during the kickstarter.
Those would be unlawful in the UK - I have no idea what the equivalent US regulators would make of those claims if Soylent continued to make them.
Using those misleading deceptive claims to raise money puts them firmly in the sham charlatan space and they thoroughly deserve harsh treatment.
I suspect that the powder may be oat-based. Oats is a very nutritient-rich cereal, and does in fact lower cholesterol. It has high carbohydrate content, but it is also a rich source of minerals and proteins. See http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/cereal-grains-and-pasta/...
If I were to mix my own "soylent", I'd base it on oat porridge, probably some protein supplements, some vitamin and mineral supplement, and a can of fatty fish. At probably a fraction of the soylent price.
Frankly, I doubt you could recreate, or equivalently replace, Soylent-the-product for as little money as it will cost to buy[1], but it's definitely possible to replicate Soylent-the-idea yourself. It's much easier if you don't intend to replace every meal with a Soylent-like, as you can substitute the harder-to-source ingredients with foods that already contain them.
[1] Partly because of economies of scale, partly because some of the ingredients are complicated to source.
"will begin shipments on a rolling basis at the beginning of March"
so, any updates?
This was posted last week, so it seems like they will actually ship next week. http://blog.soylent.me/post/82129644711/weekly-update-4-8
>Update coming today -- starter kits scheduled to start shipping by Friday, first Soylent shipments will be next week, though probably wed/thurs rather than Monday.
- http://discourse.soylent.me/t/soylent-update-4-8/12022/95
So the first shipments should be rolling out of the dock by Apr. 24th. Still no word on speed of delivery, but I'd expect the first shipments to start arriving the week of Apr. 28th - May 3rd.
Oat Flour (110g)
Maltodextrin (165g)
Brown Rice Protein Isolate (102g)
Canola Oil (56g)
Fiber (38g)
[1] http://www.rosalabs.com/about/
[2] http://discourse.soylent.me/t/official-word-on-shelf-life-of...
Why is that crazy?
Can anybody tell the story of this in short words?
I am fearing, that those predicted times will come up, but that somebody would name his product after a product that in a science fiction story was made out of human bodies, is really a little beyond my comprehension. Some kind of self-irony, perhaps? Or reverse marketing?
>I don't know anything about marketing or branding but I'm a big fan of underpromising and overdelivering. You're right it doesn't sound that amazing, but it is to me.
>Soylent is supposed to disrupt the food that is all marketing and nutritionally disastrous. I'd like to differentiate by being honest and up front. Most food sold is all branding and taste. I feel there's a wealth of science and chemistry to food and nutrition that is largely ignored by the main players in the industry. They just make what they know people recognize and want. Fatty, salty food is sold because that's what people demand. There is a serious gap in the market for cheap, convenient, healthy food.
>The name kind of fades in to the background after you say it enough too. My brain has become accustomed to a positive association with the word 'soylent'. If I've had 'real' food for two meals in a row my mouth waters at the mention of the word soylent. Your body learns. The stomach is connected to the brain. Think about 'coffee'. That's a terrible name. It sounds like 'coffin' or 'coughing'. But no one notices because it's become its own idea and most people have formed an association with it, good or bad.
>I own the trademark. It could be sold under a different name in addition to soylent for marketing purposes. That's pretty common. Some conservative people may never be able to get past the name. I considered the name 'manna' but it's heavily trademarked, and a little cheesy. I'm open to suggestion.
- http://discourse.soylent.me/t/changing-the-name-to-something...
I'm also hoping some studio does a Soylent Green reboot soon, reimagined to cash in on the young-adult dystopia trend. The cross-marketing possibilities! (I'd like to see a CGI-reanimated Charlton Heston delivering the line, "You can have my Soylent when you slurp it out of my cold, dead hands... you damn, dirty ape!")
That said, this product is designed for people who don't cook, don't care what their food looks like, and really would rather it didn't take a lot of time to prepare and make much mess. Oh, and people who believe in the apocalypse but they have their own issues.
Personally I like food and eating as recreation way to much to eat this stuff, but there have been times in my past when I was heads down in some project and eating was sort of an after thought. This would be ok in those times.
The concept is not original, there are various sorts of manufactured foods both for folks who are starving, and for folks who are otherwise incapacitated (like in hospitals) but this is the first version of that sort of product for general consumer use.