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Comment by gfodor | Hacker News Reader

A. Cheap. B. Healthy. C. Pleasurable. D. Fast/Easy

Pick three.

ABC = Homecooked meals, ACD = fast food, BCD = eating out, ABD = Soylent. Not complicated. Soylent provides a specific set of design tradeoffs that suit certain situations better than the alternatives.

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At this point I'm skeptical that Soylent fulfills B, as healthy diets include a lot more than 30-40 ingredients in the form of enzymes and nutrients that aren't "essential" but aid metabolism. But I appreciate the fact that they're aiming for ABD and hope they can achieve it as the data rolls in over time.

If it tastes like gritty pancake batter, it can't be any worse than a diet of brussels sprouts, turnips, rutabagas, radicchio, eggplant, etc.

I don't know what you are talking about, but all of those vegetables are delicious if cooked properly.

Not necessarily. Individual expression of TAS2Rs is genetically determined and varies considerably[1]; and so the perceived bitterness of sinigrin-containing vegetables like cabbage (B. oleracea) differs from person to person [2,3].

[1] http://chemse.oxfordjournals.org/content/35/2/157.full

[2] http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060918/full/news060918-1.htm...

[3] http://tools.lifetechnologies.com/content/sfs/manuals/qPCR_l...

Apparently I've never cooked any of those properly! Anyway, I'm sure everyone has a few least-favorite veggies that would clear up that sentence (unless they really dislike pancake batter).

Almost any vegetable tastes amazing sautéed in butter with shallots and garlic. You can also add plain breadcrumbs once done. I say this having just made brussel sprouts that way for dinner. Very simple and very delicious. And I used to hate brussel sprouts.

Brussel sprouts used to be more bitter than they are; farmers have actively been breeding better tasting brussels sprouts. Lots of people who used to hate them and didn't eat them for a number of years find them more pleasant when trying them now.

I'm skeptical too, but the point I'm making here isn't about if Soylent meets these criteria but what the intent behind the design is. I think laying out these criteria show why Soylent's use-cases, at least in theory, are orthogonal to those of other ways of consuming food. (Hence arguments about how Soylent can never replace those things is a just tautology and not a real argument.)

I'm Steve, and I'm a healthy eater and cheapskate.

From 2002 to 2005 I researched nutrition and supplements _a lot_. Long story short, what's cheap, healthy, "pleasurable" (non-sexually), and fast/easy to make? Vegetables, whole-wheat bread or brown rice (pasta), an assortment of nuts, a protein shake (protein powder, milk, flax seed powder, spinach, and blueberries), and vitamins/supplements (multivitamin, fish oil, others I take for brain health/performance).

Works great! And when I eat out (again non-sexually) I have chicken breast, turkey, or fish.

disagree- home cooked meals can be all four. it certainly takes practice, cooking infrastructure and foresight, but I think cooking at home can significantly beat all other options as the main source of food.

I've found that people who don't cook regularly often overestimate how difficult it is to cook at home. Sure you can go big and cook extravagant meals that take loads of prep time and cook time, but you can also saute some fish filets and some vegetables in 20 minutes start to finish - and most of that time you're still free to do other things around the house.

Of course this advice might not apply in a 400 sq. ft. NYC studio without two burners and room for two pans, but for most people that's not the issue.

Very true. About 2 years ago I forced myself to learn to cook and it has paid off immensely. I know enjoy it very much, and find cooking a healthy delicious meal to be a quick and painless affair.

I cooked for myself for a while in college. I'm not sure if a mash up of pasta, tomato sauce, frozen veggies, and boiled chicken thighs counts as "healthy", but that's pretty much what I had every day.

I know how to pan sear a fish and stir fry vegetables, but what I didn't know was how to do grocery shopping for 1 without ending up with wasted/spoiled food. For me, it's not the cooking that's hard, it's the grocery shopping/meal planning.

I like that you mentioned foresight and cooking infrastructure. Many people don't realize that making home cooked meals consistently throughout the week actually takes quite a bit of planning and not everyone has mastered this art... probably why the creators of Soylent felt there was a market niche for this product (easy, affordable, and "healthy?").

These are exactly the shortcuts and "cooking infrastructures" we're designing for busy people and families at Meal Garden (http://www.mealgarden.com). If healthy rated meals can easily be procured or prepared we wouldn't need bandaid solutions like Soylent.

I agree that cooking at home is often easier than you might expect, but when comparing cooking at home vs. mixing a drink or ordering from a waiter there's a clear difference on the "effort and time" scales we are talking about.

You need to be a bit more stingy with your 'B' designation. Jury's still out on Soylent. And eating out, restaurants (in general) optimize for taste, not nutrition.

E. Scalable supply. You can do all 4 at a point on the supply curve for blueberries for instance... But there's not enough production to feed a significant percent of the population.

Why is soylent not having a billion dollar DoD contract at this time?

Because troops want more variety not less, and because meal replacement drinks have existed for years. The only major difference with Soylent is their target market.

IIRC one of the big things they had to change with the MREs was to add more variety. Troops get low morale eating the same thing over and over.

My grandfather fought on the front lines in the Pacific Theater during the War.

Being at the very end of the supply chain, they got the worse, least desirable MREs after the variety had been cherry-picked by everyone else upstream. I forget exactly which ones they were but it was pretty grim.

Luckily, it led to the creation of the MRE pizza. Apparently pizza was the #1 most desired MRE.

You'd have a mutiny on your hands if you tried to force all the troops to consume soylent. In no other endeavour is morale more important than the military. These people carry automatic rifles all the time.

Not for the troops, for the detainees.

When I did the service one of the benefits working weekends was extra good food. It is good for moral. Soylent on the otherhand...

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