After months of delay, Soylent finally ships | Hacker News Reader

After months of delay, Soylent finally ships

arstechnica.com

67 pointsavsaro80 comments

How is this any different from mail-order diets and such? Where are the double-blind peer reviewed studies? The original post by Rob Rhinehart sounds no different from the mail-order diet ads that you see on TV. Is it legitimate because it is funded via Kickstarter? Is it legitimate because it is marketed suavely via blogs and such? How does recent research about how differently processed foods are digested differently [1] apply to Soylent?

[1] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-dieting-not-a...

AFAIK, this isn't a diet to lose weight, it's just a meal replacement. What would the double-blind be? Whether you can actually live on this stuff alone?

Because the focus is different. "I don't want to deal with food" rings a different bell than "Eat this and lose weight".

I would say a big factor is that avoiding food just to avoid food is (to my knowledge) unique, helping it gain traction.

And while I certainly wouldn't trust the long term implications of this yet, I can't blame a company for wanting to sell units before spending money on studies, especially given their size.

I think there are multiple differences but in my mind the biggest one is that his post mostly talks about the benefits that he gained himself. There are no promises about what it would do for you.

Now obviously if you're reading critically and you're naturally a bit suspicious of his motives then of course it seems heavily implied that the benefits he feels he's gotten are the ones that you'll get too once you also use Soylent.

There are two (maybe three) ways this can go:

1. He made it all up to launch a startup

2. Everything he says is true

3. He believes everything he says is true

In truth it's not as mutually exclusive as I've presented it. Many of the benefits might be true, he might believe some BS about others, and some of it might be outright fabrications.

I think another hugely contributing factor to the notion that he's not a snake-oil salesman is that the formula seems to be freely available and not patented: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_(food_substitute)

I am not sure how you would do a double blind between a supposedly all-encompassing shake-meal and one that is not. Are you going to purposely malnourish people so that you can see they're malnourished? That's ethically dubious at best.

"3" most likely.

"Are you going to purposely malnourish people so that you can see they're malnourished? That's ethically dubious at best."

Yes, that's what Soylent is currently doing. No suprise the founder got bad news from his cardiologist with an earlier version. "Failing" with their product in this case actually means hurting the customers.

There's a difference between knowingly and willingly malnourishing people and doing so out of ignorance. In order to perform a double-blind you have to do the former. The people making Soylent might accidentally do the latter. Supposing the two are the same sets an impossibly high bar.

Furthermore since it's not a double-blind the people who choose to participate go in with the knowledge that it might not be done yet and that they face risks.

I don't really care about this one way or the other; I think Soylent is an interesting idea but I like eating a variety of food so I'm not participating. But I don't think that the people in charge of Soylent are a hair's breadth from war criminals either, ethically.

This is not about motives. This is about the method of science. There should be scientific evidence to believe such claims as Solyent's, especially since it is possible to do reliable experiments to test many of his claims.

Also, more specifically: he is a single data point. And hardly an objective one.

You are hoping for something similar to all the scientific studies showing how optimal the fast food diets most people eat are?

-- Soylent is not a diet. It's not low-calorie, low-carb or anything like that. The simplest way to describe its nutritional content is that a Soylent "meal" has 33% FDA daily value of everything (including fats, carbs, protein, vitamins, minerals). Also, unlike a diet, you don't have to eat it all the time (or according to any sort of regimen) to benefit from it. It is designed to be nutritious enough to replace one's whole diet if necessary, but this decision is up to the user.

-- True, there aren't double-blind, peer-reviewed studies (give it time, though...). But the product was developed over the course of a year, with the help of ~100 volunteers who beta tested it and offered feedback [1].

-- The article you linked correctly identifies the importance of low-glycemic carbs, but it loses me when it argues that all "processed" foods are high-glycemic. Not only does "processed" strike me as a weasel word here, the person they're citing as an authority on this issue is Dr. Dean Ornish, whom many regard as a quack [2]. Soylent's carbs are designed to be low-glycemic. They use a form of maltodextrin ("low DE") that is designed to be low-glycemic, as well as whole-grain oat flour. These ingredients are indeed "processed." But (forgive me) the proof of the Soylent is in the eating: all the beta testers took regular blood tests, and these were checked for any abnormalities, including blood sugar levels. Rob Rhinehart actually had a glucose monitor implanted in his chest to test Soylent's glycemic index directly. The result: "Soylent has a pretty low GI" [3].

[1] http://blog.soylent.me/post/69009837729/last-month-five-boxe... [2] http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/03/05/dr-dean-ornish-... [3] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1qpjh4/im_rob_rhinehar...

>with the help of ~100 volunteers who beta tested it and offered feedback [1].

Random testing with no controls, oversight or monitoring is useless.

Unfortunately, anecdotes are enough for most people; they have no concept of sound science.

"Random testing with no controls, oversight or monitoring is" how we arrived at the current human diet.

But on many orders of magnitude larger than 100 people.

controls = natural selection, survival of the fittest

oversight, monitoring = culture, language, history

Science has the potential to speed up the process of knowledge acquisition. Our current human diet is the result of thousands of years of trial and error. A scientist attempts to follow cause and effect, minimizing confounding variables that obscure cause and effect.

http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_...

How much does the current diet have in common with two or even one generation ago?

Some cultures have retained traditional diets, some cultures have not retained traditional diets.d

I'll add to that by saying: a year isn't really a long time and I'd argue not nearly long enough to understand what the long term effects this stuff has on ones health, both positive and negative.

They might have had controls, for all we know. The team shared many but not all details of the process, as is their prerogative.

Rhinehart is an engineer by background, and his blog posts ( http://www.robrhinehart.com ) evince a serious respect for the scientific method. Now that version 1.0 has been finalized and is shipping, I think we will definitely see a lot more testing of Soylent from both inside and outside the organization.

It doesn't matter if their blog does lip-service to the scientific method. No pun intended, but the proof is in eating the pudding, that is, in doing science.

It is a food, and is designed to be part of a diet.

Given how poor our knowledge is of nutrition, and how it is still very much an area of active research, I'm very skeptical of any new "foods" that are produced chemically instead of biologically.

Our knowledge of biological systems is extremely limited, we don't have the knowledge to create food at this point, and I think any skepticism about long-term effects is well-warranted given the history of the processed food industry.

Personally, I try to avoid all "foods" that were not around at least a hundred years ago. For something to qualify as food for me, it needs to be composed of ingredients that have evidence of promoting health in the long-term, and I measure the "long-term" by centuries, not years or even decades.

> we don't have the knowledge to create food

Better stop eating then, since any plants or animals you might ingest have been bred by humans over thousands of years. Knowledge of our nutritional needs--this knowledge that we allegedly "don't have"--has completely transformed them.

> any skepticism about long-term effects is well-warranted given the history of the processed food industry

The whole point of Soylent (the creators have basically stated as much) is to take the tools of "processed food" and use them for good, not evil. Seriously, Soylent is not McDonald's. The Atlantic explored this idea in a recent article: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/07/how-junk...

I kind of see @zenbowman's point, though I might reword some things. The biggest difficulty I have with accepting isolated mixes of nutrients and supplements is that when we consume and metabolize food, or anything, we don't do it in isolation. There are hosts of synergistic effects throughout biology that are difficult to understand and accurately replicate.

No I'm not a nutritionist or a biologist, so what I'm saying is admittedly highly qualitative. But I did work for several years on a project to curb improper disposal of pharmaceutical waste (into toilets where it gets into the water system), because I read hundreds of papers and articles about how scientists simply don't understand yet how different pharmacological compounds might mix in water and have synergistic consequences for wildlife, especially as it bioaccumulates up the food chain. (Side note, this will be hard to understand since so much of our studies are focused on isolating on variable and looking for effects ceteris paribus, but this isn't how systems work in reality.)

The difference to me when we breed food is that at least we're still consuming something in an evolutionary context, bred over several generations. Certainly it still could be bad for us, but I think that the plant/ animal itself is surviving is better evidence than just taking its component parts and ingesting them. Isn't it general best practice that the whole gestalt is greater than the sum of its parts?

Soylent is certainly different from McDonalds and the rest of the modern profit-driven food industry, but your first sentence is an insufferable straw man:

> Better stop eating then, since any plants or animals you might ingest have been bred by humans over thousands of years. Knowledge of our nutritional needs--this knowledge that we allegedly "don't have"--has completely transformed them.

Breeding food over the course of many generations is completely different from inventing industrial processes that completely restructure food in a way that no organism has ever been exposed to. It gets worse when science is used to reformulate flavor profiles to make food appealing in a way that fools our bodies about its nutritional content. Pretending like the food system today is the same as early agriculture with selective breeding is intellectually dishonest.

The fact is our knowledge of how the human organism metabolizes food is still extremely rudimentary. The thing that bothers me about Soylent is the founder's utter dismissal of any complexity to the issue at all. He seems to unquestioningly believe this reductionist pseudo-scientific hand waving that a certain subset of geeks subscribes to wherein gaining weight is a simple thermodynamic equation of calories in > calories spent, and nutrition is a question of all the correct molecules passing through one's mouth.

This is an incredibly naive way of thinking, and will not allow Soylent to ever find a healthy formula. Of course, if they do start to take it seriously it will still take many decades to perfect as the necessary scientific knowledge does yet exist. A lot of people are invested in the idea of convenience foods because they make life easier, but the uncomfortable truth is that choosing any convenience food, even one with such good intentions as Soylent, is not a smart bet if you want to be as healthy as possible, and demanding scientific proof otherwise is based more on wishful thinking than solid rationality.

Most of the plants and animals that I eat have been created through selective breeding (a biological process), not synthesis (a chemical process).

Create a hypothesis, do experiments, examine the evidence, revise the hypothesis. Then, restrict your claims to the hypothesis and evidence. 'Knowing anything' is irrelevant and the assertion that 'we know so little about nutrition', etc. in this context is facetious and disingenuous.

I was strongly anti-Soylent during the first few announcements.

Some of the claims they made during the kickstarter were shameful exploitative quackery. The Soylent team seem to have dialed that down a bit now. So, at the moment they're selling glop made from food ingredients that they claim has all the nutrients a healthy average person would need to live, and they are letting people chose how much glop to introduce into their day food routine.

I hope they have some good press materials handy in case some idiot does something weird with the product because the backlash could be fierce.

Now that Soylent have stopped making ridiculous overblown claims I am not so worried about what people chose to put in their bodies.

How would you even double-blind for this? Double blind means neither the participants nor the people running the study knows who is on what.

You give half the people Soylent and the other half -- what?

Designing the experiment is also a problem they have to figure out. A part of the challenge is designing hypotheses that best represent the physical phenomena that are also testable. So instead of going for the whole enchilada, work on parts of the project and build to up to a whole. Solyent is pie in the sky the way Elon Musk's hyper-loop is: a bare minimum sketch (not literally, but in scientific terms) that requires a lot of sub-systems to work and a lot of theories to fall in place to be practical.

Answering your question directly, you could give the control-group a Solyent-type drink that is devoid of nutrients, and to the other group you can give a true Solyent drink. This can test if people report feeling better simply because they are drinking something healthy as opposed to the improvement being caused by the nutrients in the drink.

Wouldn't people in group A.. die?

It's interesting reading about the difficulties Soylent has had in sourcing ingredients -- whenever I think about processed food (which I guess Soylent is taken to an extreme), I assume it's a huge industry with infinite resources -- if they're the largest customer for some of their suppliers, maybe the industry isn't that big, or they're just picking really specialty/premium ingredients.

I guess this is why most processed food is 1) made by huge, fairly vertically integrated firms like ConAgra 2) uses scary ingredients with substitution.

In general I'm happier with the delays to produce a great product than rushing to get something substandard out, at least for Soylent. Should be great for trips.

According to their previous updates, they picked a particular rice protein that apparently has a different mesh size, thanks to an innovation by the manufacturer that has not spread throughout the industry yet. This choice was made to achieve a certain mouthfeel that they couldn't accomplish with other rice proteins. Not exactly a specialty/premium ingredient, but close enough.

They should have used Barley or quinoa. They are much healthier than rice, and tastier too.

Yeah, but they tried hard to keep their price low. Remember that full meal replacements have existed before - one of soylent's differentiators is cost.

How is protein derived from barley or quinoa healthier or tastier than rice protein?

Healthier: barley and quinoa have higher counts for most nutrients and are much higher in protein.

Taste: Rice is quite bland (generally you put something flavourful on it), but barley and quinoa both have nice flavours on their own.

They aren't adding actual rice to the product. They are adding protein derived from rice. So these "other nutrients" and taste don't matter. Deriving protein from barley or quinoa would presumably be roughly the same thing (sub-optimal plant proteins) except a lot more expensive.

What are the Skoda/Seat, VW, Audi, Porsche, Bentley/Lambo, and Bugatti of protein sources?

Rice is cheaper per kilogram but there's much more protein per kg in barley and quinoa.

Different amino acid profiles, not sure about "other nutrients" in protein powder, though - I wouldn't expect much else, other than protein...

Man I love food. I love the engagement with the senses, the stories about its origin ingredients, the way those ingredients get put together into a meal that can be enjoyed with more than one person. Soylent strikes me as something I would've been into before I learned all that.

Not everyone is or wants to be a foodie.

Exactly. I find cooking to be a tiresome, annoying chore that cuts into time I could be using on other pursuits.

This is perfect for me.

Most people are on the middle path here—they love food, putting great meals together with friends, eating at fancy restaurants, etc. But, thinking about this 2-3x a day is a bit much for a lot of modern people.

You don't have to be a foodie to like the taste of food.

Have you ever scarfed down a bagel rushing to work, or eaten lunch at your desk, or heated up mediocre leftovers?

You're forcing a false dichotomy.

Moving your "non hedonic sustantive" eating to soylent or the like doesn't mean you have to abandon "hedonic social" eating.

Great point

Sadly, there's no keto friendly version. Only standard dietary carb loaded stuff.

Of course there isn't--that would involve completely remaking a complex product to satisfy some fad diet a few people follow.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a low carb version if 1.0 gets traction. Soylent itself is a "fad diet a few people [may someday] follow."

True. The intersection of potential Soylent customers and keto-diet people is probably high. It is funny to see this kind of expectation thrown at an untested type of product, though.

Keto isn't (just) a "fad diet". There are people whose health depends on rigorously following a keto diet.

The best DIY keto soylents: http://diy.soylent.me/recipes?q=keto&sort=favoritesCount

As an alternative you could combine Soylent with intermittent fasting to get keto benefits.

At times I've found eating to be a chore and wish I had a supplement like this to allow me to skip a meal. So I'll probably give this a try.

I'm curious what the long term effects are of substituting this for a majority of your meals is though.

There have been a few journalists who tried living exclusively on Soylent for 2-4 weeks to make a story. They've all had consistent results AFAICT. The taste takes some getting used to. But, most liked it after a week and it's easy to add a bit of vanilla or other flavoring. Once you figure out how much you personally need, you feel energized and not hungry or craving. After a few days, your bowel movements get smaller and less frequent. Your jaw gets sore from lack of activity. Taking up chewing gum is recommended. Eventually, the only major, consistent complaint is the social complications. Eating and drinking with other people is very important. And, it's awkward being the guy at the table with no food on his plate...

The likely long term effect is that the person eating it seeks out different foods to eat.

As far as I am aware, every attempted complete synthetic food replacement has failed due to psychological reasons, like texture, palatability, and variety, rather than nutritional sufficiency.

Put simply, people stop eating it, whatever it is, because it does not satisfy the mind along with the body.

Congratulations to the entire Soylent team! I'm an early backer and just received the shipping notice. Soylent has done an excellent job, and all the more so by keeping us all up to date on the progress.

Have a look http://examine.com/blog/soylent-is-made-from-hype/

Bear in mind, this is from a year ago, from early in its development. I'm not positive how much of this is inaccurate, but I know that omega-3 and other ingredients were added to round it out. I'd take this article with a grain of salt.

I think you meant to say "0.05 ml of an aqueous solution of sodium chloride."

I definitely believe that the only reason why Soylent is being successful is because of hype. How does the product they are visioning differ from the food replacement given through a feeding tube? Working in a hospital, I have personally witnessed people with swallowing disabilities living on this stuff for more than a decade!

Are the food replacements palatable to consume without the feeding tube? Commercially available? Vegan option?

Is there a way to try soylent without spending $65 for a week's supply?

I've had trouble with potassium gluconate supplements in the past, so I'd want to make sure my stomach could handle a meal of it before purchasing a large amount.

You could try a DIY soylent customized to your needs.

http://diy.soylent.me/

Some of those look good!

Maybe I haven't looked hard enough but none of those seem to have the same convenience factor. I don't want mix 5+ things every meal, and I don't want to track which ingrdienients I need to order when. (I might as well be cooking)

Kudos to Rob Rhinehart and the team, to see a dream, with all the difficulties they've faced, ship is an incredible effort.

I'm curious to see the effect after a couple of years.

Should make for a good story for Kickstarter as well.

> Should make for a good story for Kickstarter as well.

Actually... I think it might make for a better story for Crowdtilt... since they use them (and not Kickstarter) for their crowdfunding. :)

Ah, I stand corrected.

Easy mistake. I think Kickstarter has already joined the ranks of Kleenex & Bandaid

I would love to follow a Tim Ferriss (well-versed body hacker and author of 4-Hour Body) experiment with Soylent. I've read his book and his analyses convinced me to try a diet for the first time in my life to change my body composition. Now I go through Slow-Carb diet phases a couple times a year. If he had praise for Soylent I'd be willing to give it a try, too.

What kind of results has Soylent had so far? I haven't heard much about it for a year or two. Have the results been encouraging?

*After nearly a year of delay, Soylent finally ships

I ordered a bottle, can't wait to try it out.

I'm not sure replacing your entire meals with any drinks is healthy since chewing improves digestion, but this seem great for a breakfast replacement.

Is it really the act of moving your jaw around that helps you digest better? I would have figured that meant "You can digest food more completely when it's been mushed into tiny pieces before you swallow it," which Soylent has covered pretty well.

When we chew, our body sends a signal to our stomach that it's time to start digesting food.

In addition to that, the digestion process of complex carbohydrates begins with enzymes in your saliva.

Just ship every nutrient slurry with a wad of ham-flavored chewing gum. Problem solved.

Chewing something that also causes you to salivate makes your stomach produce more acid in preparation for digesting whatever it is: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3376919

Huh, interesting. Thanks!

I am currently drinking Ragi Malt[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_millet#As_Beverage]

People in South of India have been drinking this as a breakfast meal for may be thousands of years.

Also its kind of like pretty common in folklore for providing immense health benefits, besides its nutritional value.

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