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Comment by gfodor | Hacker News Reader

Soylent was originally touted as a meal replacement but I (and others) have found that it works best as a "plan B" to nutrition. It changes the way you look at food if you always have an option to just get the nutrition you need quickly and easily: a lot of meals you'd normally skip you don't, and a lot of meals you eat that are less than nutritious you can either opt-out of or can supplement with proper nutrition with soylent.

I've also found it to be pretty transformative that it turns hunger into something as easily solved as thirst and puts it into the same mental framework.

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Where Soylent falls short in this respect is that it's nutrition is only ideal given that the rest of your diet is Soylent too. It has a ton of carbs, and if you're anything like most Americans, you already have way too many carbs in your diet. Unless you're doing a lot of physical activity and you need those carbs, most people would do better just drinking a regular whey protein shake.

Just in case you aren't aware, the latest update of Soylent (v1.4) has upped the fat. Carbs now account for 43% of the calorie count, which is (slightly) less than you'll see any mainstream source recommending.

Still nothing that counts as "low carb", but not exactly "a ton" either.

The thing that keeps me from really jumping in on Soylent is the lack of a low-carb option. I've made my own LC version, based on recipes online, but it takes a long time and is a pain in the ass, which is a killer considering Soylent's main virtue is that you dump it on the shaker, shake it up, and are done. I'm hopeful that if things keep going well for the company eventually they'll offer a LC version; or maybe a competitor will.

[I know there are things like Keto fuel, but these all require buying a bunch of oil and stuff and mixing it in, which is not the seamless solution I really want.]

multi vitamin/mineral + fish oil capsules (a few depending on quality) + normal decent quality protein powder. If you don't eat any fiber rich foods, add a spoon of fiber (phylum husks or something)

Unless you go 100% soylent (why though?) that will sort pretty much any deficiencies you may have from the rest of your meals.

Soylent and other meal replacement shakes are a lot more than just protein and carbohydrates.

Soylent 1.4 (the most recent formulation) is 40/43/17 fat/carbs/protein and the carbohydrates that is supplies are slow digesting. So I would say supplementation of Soylent to an average diet would improve it overall.

Yeah, but there's no better solution. They could offer versions that correct your diet given a proportion of avg. American diet to Soylent intake, but it would be complicated and very inaccurate.

I found myself using Soylent as a "plan B" and drinking it when I'd normally skip a meal. Within the first two weeks of drinking Soylent I gained five pounds. I've never gained five pounds in the course of two weeks. It turns out skipping those meals was keeping my weight stable. I'm now careful to skip the meals I normally would and now use Soylent to replace the occasional meal I'd otherwise eat.

5 pounds in two weeks comes out to around 1,250 extra calories a day, or 2.5 Soylent meals. Are you sure you were using the correct serving sizes?

Each pouch (one days worth) is 4 servings at 500 calories each so it's not that difficult to over eat when using Soylent as a supplement.

So, here's a question; If you're using it as a supplement rather than a total meal replacement, why spend the exorbitant amount for Soylent specifically when you could get 90% of the way by getting some whey, mixing in a bit of cheap oil, and taking a multivitamin?

I wouldn't call Soylent "exorbitant". It works out to like $3 a meal.

Right, but whey protein is less than a dollar per serving.

You should probably look at the nutrition information in Soylent (or similar) and compare it to your notional proposal. If your proposal is better, give it a go and do a write-up on it.

From a quick look-see, whey protein seems to carry only ~100 calories per serving, offers almost no carbohydrates or fiber and provides almost no other vitamins or minerals. So you'd need about six servings to hit a meal's worth of calories, still have to make up for the lack of carbs and fiber sources and still have to find a good multi to take with.

If a serving is $1, then we're already at around $5-6 per meal with whey protein.

With meal replacements, convenience is the killer feature. Buying whey protein, some oil, and a multivitamin is undoubtedly cheaper, but there's the non-negligible overhead of purchasing the ingredients (instead of just a Soylent subscription), and measuring ingredients for every serving.

And a supplement at best -- not a meal.

What's the distinction?

A supplement is something you take to complete the nutrition an otherwise incomplete meal provides.

Isn't the entire point of Soylent that it's just a mixture of supplements with the appropriate calorie content?

And that's what makes it a meal (replacement). You can't survive on whey protein shakes alone. If the malnutrition doesn't kill you, the smell of your farts surely will.

Many do. People eat official Soylent because the convenience, specifically, is worth it to them.

However easy your recipe is, mixing a bag of powder with a pitcher of water is still faster, easier, and less to pay attention to.

Good question. Nature usually favours diversity so I'm skeptical at how convenient this really is at a Molecular Biology level.

It's cheap enough for me I don't think about it, what you describe sounds like work to do properly and at parity with soylent's nutrition label. (Other people seem to do DIY soylent, not me.)

Soylent just shows up at my door every couple of weeks, I throw it in the soylent cabinet, and I can make and drink one in about 2 minutes.

You forgot the carbs

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