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Comment by kposehn | Hacker News Reader

I'm almost done with my 1.3 and looking forward to 1.4. The big thing for me is the lack of the oil bottle and the sodium (I wasn't getting enough before and would get headaches).

At this point, my body has fully adjusted and I crave Soylent at some times. I use it for ~1/2 my meals and could easily see it taking 2/3. I do enjoy regular food a _lot_ so I doubt I'll ever go full time, but it definitely has helped to balance out my nutrition fully.

I continue to feel that Soylent is the first company that will likely feed the world - literally. Without the oil bottle and the ability to scale manufacturing, it is only a matter of time before we see Soylent as part of humanitarian convoys and/or used in medical settings. The possibilities are quite frankly amazing...

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There are already better products for humanitarian use and for medical use. The medical products come in a wide variety of styles to suit different medical needs. The humanitarian products are much cheaper than soylent and don't require so much water - which is in short supply in the target regions; and they have a more suitable nutrient profile.

It's baffling when people claim soylent could be used for medical or humanitarian purposes, especially when those uses have been debunked on HN everytime they're mentioned.

Not to nitpick, but can you please reference the debunks? I'm all for new information, so I'd appreciate you sharing what you've seen :)

You make good points. One point that is proposed by the pro-soylent groups that you may have overlooked: if soylent were to succeed commercially, economies of scale could develop that would make it price attractive even to the global poor.

Out of curiosity, how much do those products cost?

One product cost $4 to $5 per kg in 2008; treatment lasts 6 to 8 weeks with children eating about 11 kg total: http://irinnews.org/report/83124/malawi-cheaper-recipe-for-t...

High energy biscuits are 12 cents per 100g; micronutrient sprinkles are $3 per hundred sachets; plumpyDoz ration is 20 cents; http://wfp.org/nutrition/special-nutritional-products

This PDF lists the range of products but doesn't have prices: http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/co...

This website talks about what the different products are http://wfp.org/nutrition/how-wfp-fights-malnutrition

Plumpy'nut is one of them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumpy%27nut

In 2010, it was $60 for a 2 month supply for a child (~1 course of treatment).

That matter of time may be a very long time. There are already foods which handle this application well enough. See Citadel spread, Plumpynut, K-Mix-2. The difference is that these provide more calories per weight than soylent and don't require added water (except the K-Mix-2). If they can come up with a high calorie Soylent and eliminate the need to add water (perhaps serve it as a paste) then it would be used in humanitarian convoys. As it is now, that's not likely to happen.

Good point about calories vs. weight.

Unless they bring cost significantly lower (like 10-20fold lower), there's no way you're going to see it for humanitarian aide.

Price is indeed a good point. It does have to drop further to make it hit that angle.

> I continue to feel that Soylent is the first company that will likely feed the world - literally.

I've never seen any coherent reason to believe this, or even anything individual piece relevant to this that Soylent has innovated on.

I have my own reasons, namely the logistics part of the equation.

What initially gained my interest about Soylent was that it seems that they are developing it in such a way as to reduce logistical burden and ensure ingredients can be found and produced with relative ease.

I'm no expert, for sure, but that they immediately gravitated toward the logistics of food as one key area to attack got my interest. I still have more research to do to fully understand the space, but my gut feeling is that they have a massive potential that is slowly being unlocked.

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