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It's more like a meal replacement shake than dog food. It's very much like Ensure or Jevity or whatever. All of those do the same basic thing of trying to cover basic nutritional requirements.

The big difference is the marketing. Most of those products assumed you were either unable to eat or trying to lose weight. Soylent is roughly the same product but marketed to people who aren't interested in eating.

I think there's a significant difference in that Ensure and Jevity aren't meant to be sustainable as a long term food source, and don't optimize for cost per meal.

There are very many products that are complete nutrition sources.

The fact that the manufacturers fear the regulators enough to slap disclaimers on the products and to carefully differentiate between over the counter product and specialist medical product should give Soylent users paise for thought.

Those companies, with dietitians and registered nutritionists and years of data from patients know that patients need careful monitoring.

There must be some long term solution that exists already.

Think about people in comas, people who have parts of their jaw removed due to various oral and throat cancers.

If they can get the price down I'd probably try it too. Can't be worse than a protein shake as a post-workout supplement.

people like that are often times under medical care, and have very little physical activity. Nutrition is an easier thing to balance with the aid of daily blood testing and a low caloric requirement.

As someone who experienced the reality of tube feeding, it's not so easy as a single product. I was given supplemental amino acids, fish oils and vitamin boosters which were powdered and mixed with sterile water before use, alongside whatever the meal supplementation was during that day (things similar to ensure)

http://www.amazon.com/s/?&field-keywords=tube+feeding+formul...

It's not exactly expensive, not that I'd recommend trying it.

Yea really, you want to live off of an IV drip and never move?

Go for it, you will probably survive. Just not experiencing a very fulfilling life.

Well, if you have an Oculus Rift, you can jack into the Matrix.

I realize that it's not literally dog food.

By "dog food", I was referring to kibble and how it's made (and demonized in our culture because of it). Nothing more.

   isn't soylent basically just dog food for humans?

Pretty much, but that doesn't turn me off to it - hopefully they make a spinoff breakfast cereal and call it Bachelor Chow.

Apparently that name is already used for a popular DIY variant of Soylent.[1][2]

[1] http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/05/12/140512fa_fact_...

[2] http://diy.soylent.me/recipes/basic-complete-soylent-bachelo...

It hasn't turned me off of the idea, either.

It's just that all of the "high grade dog food" vendors call bloody-murder over the fact that we're feeding our dogs industrial chemicals and that doing so just couldn't possibly be healthy for the dogs.

I'm actually curious to try out "dog food for humans" and if I feel as good or better... I'm stopping the extra time, money and work involved in making my own dog food and feeding her kibble with the occasional piece of meat now and then.

What a relief that would be!

> What happens to the soylent company if I die after ingesting it for a week or a month straight? Even if it wasn't what actually killed me?

What happens if you eat the same thing at the same restaurant for every meal and die after a week?

I'm not aware of any restaurant that claims to be a total replacement for other meals elsewhere.

1) It's a really silly claim, as a restaurant doesn't offer the convenience that people are willing to divide their flavor/food-enjoyment with that Soylent does if you must travel to it.

2) There is little benefit to making claims that can be used against an organization if the claims don't also offer a boost to some other aspect of that organization. "Eat here for every meal" offers little to a restaurant except for the chance to get sued by an unhappy/unhealthy patron.

Hmm, interesting, I ordered month supply (I guess their month consists of 28 days) later in the game and haven't got shipping notification.

Mini-survey: if you ordered, have you got yours already?

I have not, and I ordered more.

The vegans all got their orders first, so the gp could be vegan. Also, some people like Lee Hutchinson at Ars got their order more quickly because they are press and/or work for a business Rosa Labs (Soylent company) has or wants a relationship with. This is not supposition, but stated by their VP of Communication in their online forum.

What country do you live in? Are you using a reshipping service? I thought they weren't mailing out international orders until later in the year.

I live in Canada.

But when I realized there was going to be a delay (and added cost) I had them ship it to a friend in the states whom I regularly visit.

According to their facebook page, you are correct. There is a delay in shipping international orders.

> That's a great writeup.

Seriously ? This was more like one of the numerous rants from bloggers here and there trying solvent. I don't even know what this is doing on Ars, which has usually much better editorial work applied to their articles. This was poor in information and also felt like advertising.