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Comment by berberous | Hacker News Reader

I still am optimistic about the idea and principles behind Soylent, but I got to say, I was not impressed with their initial product (v 1.0 and 1.1).

It gives users horrific smelling gas, and honestly, I generally felt worse on Soylent than after any other type of food I have ever eaten, including junk food. (I didn't mind the taste though.)

They are already at v 1.3 though. Here's hoping that this capital influx allows them to rapidly improve the recipe.

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FWIW - I found the 'horrific smelling gas' went away with 1.3.

I honestly can't understand the appeal or novelty in it. Ready meals have been available for years. Vitamin tables have been available for years. Where exactly does the difference lie?

Ready meals are designed for taste and palatability, not for complete daily nutrition. (Except for military MREs, apparently.) The idea of Soylent is that it's an inoffensive, cheap, and simple way to eat healthily.

It has yet to be proven healthy.

The theory is that, unlike ready meals, Soylent is designed to give you all the vitamins and nutrients a healthy, active adult needs to stay health, in a single package. No need to think about anything or worry about if you're missing anything in your diet, just chug it and go.

Total meal replacement products have also been available for many years. These come in a variety of forms - shakes, juice-style drinks, soups. There are versions for normal drinking or for naso-gastric tube feeding. There are versions suitable for a variety of special diet needs.

Most of the products that came before Soylent were either targeting people on a calorie restricted diet, recovering from some medical condition or otherwise had special dietary needs. They were also designed for being used either for limited periods of time or under medical supervision. Soylent was the first product directly targeting healthy active adults without any medical problems or specific dietary needs wanting to permanently replace the need for any other foodstuff in their diet.

Yes, products before soylent were careful not to mis-represent themselves and careful not to make unsubstantiated claims, unlike soylent which claimed it was suitable for everyone as a total meal replacement forever with no medical supervision which would return you to good health.

Look I'm not saying that soylent is a good idea or even that works, and I'm probably as far from a potential soylent customer as it is possible to get. I'm just trying to explain how their stated goals and ambitions make their product somewhat unique in the current landscape of similar products.

It is a completely self-contained eating system. If it works as advertised you just eat that and you're done, no spreadsheets, no calculating up to make sure you're consuming what you should be, and so on. You should be getting everything you need.

You're paying for the 100% system, not 98%, not 99%: 100% that is the USP. The price is only a little more expensive than eating out ($3.33/meal roughly).

Plus most off-the-shelf "Ready meals" are extremely unhealthy. Many contain transfats and other foot preservatives which are quite bad for you.

How can they sell the 100% if we don't have enough knowledge to determine what is the 100%?

I think its based on FDA allotments. I completely agree though that we're still in our scientific infancy of understanding what the body needs and how best to get it those resources.

Totally agree. People have lived for millennia on completely different diets due to their geographical location. To say that one diet has the correct amount ignores this fact completely.

Who the hell has ever used a spreadsheet to ensure they are eating correctly? (OK top athletes, bodybuilders maybe).

And it looks like it is not confirmed that this is especially healthy from comments on this thread.

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