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Comment by DanBC | Hacker News Reader

Soylent launched with claims of being a total meal replacement.

People mentioned all of the existing similar products.

Soylent supporters said that those products are only supplements, and you could if you wanted live on mothing but Soylent. (Those people are wrong about the other products - you can live on some of them).

Now some Soylent supporters are saying "of course you wouldn't live on it. It's just for supplemental use." In which case, what advantages does Soylent have over all the other products?

Other products come in a range of flavours; you can get unflavoured versions; you can get savoury versions; you can get formulations designed for naso-gastric feeding and, importantly, they've got many dietitians and registered nutritionists working with them. (I realise that Soylent have nutritionists now.)

There are plenty of products available to you today that you could use tha do mot taste like pancake batter. They're not particularly pleasant.

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I am another one who fails to see the need or novelty in this product.

There are some people who loathe eating, and derive zero pleasure from their taste sense. They perceive meals as a chore. Those people are their very small target market for the complete-meal-replacement aspect of their product.

As the article mentions, there are also people who lack the money or time to eat healthy all the time. College students in particular are pretty famous for their ramen meals because they're cheap and easy. They're also not filled with nutrients you need.

Soylent proposes an alternative to cheap $0.50 noodles that is a lot healthier. I know if it was available when I was a college student, it would probably have been in my pantry. I haven't tried Soylent yet, but probably will give it a shot to fill in those meals I can't make due to time constraints.

Since I don't have the cred to edit a comment that's been replied to yet, I'll clarify in a reply:

You are absolutely correct, and I should have been more clear about the complete-meal-replacement aspect. I was referring to the small segment of people that would love to replace every meal with something like Soylent. So maybe "complete-food-replacement" would have conveyed my intended meaning a bit better.

I too ate lots of Ramen in college, but in order to prevent myself from wanting to slit my wrists, I'd usually seek out at least one meal a day with some nutiritional value, and, more importantly, flavor that wasn't just salt water.

Other than those you've heard about specifically in contrast to Soylent, can you name any alternatives intended for individual (not medical) use? (specifically those intended as meal replacement without ulterior motives, IE not Slim-fast which is intended for weight loss)

I certainly can't, and that's the niche Soylent fills. It markets itself to the mass market.

Don't confuse the product that's popular in hospital that it's for medical use exclusively. Hospitals in the U.S. have Boost and Ensure and those are available in grocery stores and pharmacies, but it's not like they say "For medical use only" Boost's box says "Complete Nutritional Drink" Boost is by Nestle, so of course there's chocolate/vanilla and sugar in it. You get about 12 servings for somewhere around 9-12 dollars. College students could easily buy these. Occasionally I've been known to buy a pack when I'm contracting where lunch options are too fastfoody and a better lunch is a boost and maybe a bag of mixed nuts.

My problem with these supplements is the amounts of vitamins for example contained in a product say nothing of absorption, I'm not even sure we have any good information on absorption. I guess you'd have to put people in a lab, control their eating and drinking for a several weeks and weigh and examine their BMs and fluids to know what's being absorbed.

I must agree with you on this one.

It's true, the market has an itch: people are health conscious and want to eat well but they are stretched for time (and money in most cases). But is a nutrient extract meal-replacement the answer?

After investigating the obstacles people in Toronto face with preparing healthy food, this is what we, at Meal Garden (http://www.mealgarden.com), have come to understand:

There's almost always a trade-off between TASTE, CONVENIENCE(time/money), and HEALTH. If the meal satisfies two out of three, most people will opt to eat that meal. But one of those three priorities is compromised - and that is the market itch that Soylent has not been able to scratch. But it doesn't have to be a "two-out-out-of-three" trade-off.

Food should (and can) be healthy, convenient and taste amazing all at the same time. But people need shortcuts and tools to connect them to food providers in their area. As well as a general health guide on what options are healthier than others.

All this can definitely be done given the right amount of time to build these marketplace tools (web and mobile applications to be more specific).

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