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Comment by stevoo | Hacker News Reader

Although I am not a huge fan of this, I believe that eventually we will end up using this. It might take 5 - 10 years but soylent-type will be used in our daily life. Today with our busy life's cooking something simple takes an hour to complete. Soylent is ready to go in an instant.

Although it will not completely eradicate normal food, as eating is as well a bonding. Here at least in Cyprus, we will have a weekly sit down on Sunday, of 10-20 if not more of family and relatives. This is very important time.

It will take years for population to actually adjust to the idea of drinking there food.

On the plus site, this will eventually be used by astronauts I believe and Mars colonization plans.

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> Today with our busy life's cooking something simple takes an hour to complete. Soylent is ready to go in an instant.

How slow do you have to be at cooking for something simple to take you an hour of your time?

I can prepare a slow-cooked stew in well under 15 minutes, head out for the day and come back to a house that smells wonderful and 5-10 meals worth of food. It won't cost me 50-100 dollars either.

You are right, one should consider preparation time per serving. In your example something like 2 to 3' per serving which is more than reasonable.

When our life became busier (young kids + work), we started to cook 2 hours or so every week end, several recipes at a time. We order vegetables from a local producer (no fancy app, just a excel sheet) on thursday, get them early on saturday, and then cook stews, soups, meals that will feed us for the rest of the week. This requires some planification and organization but makes the whole cooking time argument irrelevant.

The other thing that bothers me with soylent enthusiasts is that they seem to disregard how the ingredients are sourced and their environnemental costs. The website's FAQ "From what is it made" links to the nutrition facts.

If you only eat the leftovers once or twice and factor in grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, and eating time you're probably looking at around an hour a meal.

For people who don't enjoy cooking and/or eating it's as if you had to wash dishes or mow your lawn for 2-3 hours a day just to survive. It's a chore and I really hope Soylent works so I don't have to do it anymore.

So you can peel for 5-10 meals worth of vegetables AND cook it all in under 15 minutes (slow cook it at that)? Well, you must have found a way to bend spacetime or something. I understand one hour is very long, but no need to go overboard in the other direction either.

I think it was the preparation time, not the cooking time. You can prepare a vegetable soup from raw vegetables in less than 15 minutes. With some training you can do that in 5 minutes. You'll need an extra 30 minutes simmering though but no more work after preparation unless you want it mixed. You really can't overcook a vegetable soup. You can even keep it a couple of days in the pan without it getting sour. It's a hassle free meal.

But you are right, the truth lies between 15 minutes and an hour.

Yeah that's prep time, but it really is just 15 minutes. No simmering, just peel and chuck in some veg & spices and a joint of meat.

> So you can peel for 5-10 meals worth of vegetables AND cook it all in under 15 minutes (slow cook it at that)?

I can peel enough veg in that time, yes. That's pretty much it for preparation (which is what I said took 15 minutes) as I'll just drop a joint of meat in.

Beyond that cooking it is sticking it in a slowcooker and turning it on. It takes a long time, but that just means a bit of planning (but hardly much).

I am not that optimist for this kind of food. The biggest problem with right now according to the reviews is that it kills social life. And a lot of people does not like processed food and like to spend one hour to prepare their meal.

I think it would the most interesting for the army or missions like the ones performed by astronauts as you said.

> Today with our busy life's cooking something simple takes an hour to complete.

No, it doesn't. There's plenty of simple things that take a lot less time than that, including inactive cooking time.

As far as I can work out there have been solutions for the too busy problem since around the invention of the restaurant, and another set since the microwave (the "TV dinner" was a US invention).

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