But Soylent is supposed to be consumable on a daily basis, so long-term effects are important. Remember the documentary Super Size Me, which tested long term effects of food from a certain fast-food restaurant? [1]
I have to agree with the above poster. I don't understand the hate directed at Soylent, and I don't understand what folks expect them to do. The company is very transparent as well, which is exactly what you'd hope for a company trying to develop a product like this. In many cases, the folks who say the problem Soylent is tackling is borderline impossible are the same ones who expect them to find a perfect formula right out of the gate and see any stumbling blocks as vindication that the whole effort is doomed. These expectations seem grossly at odds to me.
For what it's worth, many people absolutely do eat restaurant food on a daily or nearly daily basis. In the past year of eating a mixture of food from restaurants, home-cooked meals, and Soylent, I've only ever gotten sick (severely so, at that) from restaurant food.
Also, as for that documentary, he just lived off fast food for a month, right? That's hardly long-term. Plenty of folks have effectively repeated exactly the same experiment with Soylent many times over at this point. He also didn't just eat fast food, but intentionally overconsumed (hence the title of the documentary), which is quite contrary to the purpose of Soylent (given that each bottle is just 400 kcal).
You can actually get a balanced daily diet out of mcdonalds if you ask for unsalted fries and get one of their salads once in a while.
Honestly sodium aside the only thing you need to do not to over eat at MC is to get water instead of soda and just regular sized burger.
It will be around 600-700 cals per meal with fries which means you can eat 3 of those a day and maintain weight or even lose some depending on your age, sex, bodymass and daily regiment.
I did this myself around the same time as Super Size Me for a handful of reasons, none of which were to prove a point. I had good results from it. Would I have been even better off if I wasn't eating fast food for every meal? Probably. But I certainly wasn't worse off for eating that way and it scratched the itches which led me to that path in the first place.
This suggests not that they were careless in choosing their formulation or research, but that there was an error in the manufacturing process. This is something that can happen to any company, and has many times. Should they fix it? Yes. But I don't think they should be held to a higher standard here than anyone else.
My feeling? You want to beta-test that with your health, I won't stop you, but I won't join you either.
You don't need to chug slurry 24/7, or eschew all carbs to achieve it. Avoid too much of any one thing, avoid too much processed crap (not because it's inherently bad, but because it's usually loaded with salt and sugar), and learn to cook. It's hardly a science, but you have large historical samples of people living that way, compared to a couple years of someone telling you that you can spend the rest of your days drinking the latest gray sludge.
Ignore the bulk of nutrition "research" which is after all, crap, and focus on the few things that are relatively sound. High fiber, healthy weight, good blood levels, get your nutrients. It's not that hard.
FWIW, on the topic of healthy weight, the Soylent forum has many anecdotes of people who have used the product to lose (or gain!) weight because it allows them to easily count calories without having to spend time scanning products into MyFitnessPal every day and weighing all of their food.
"Eat food, not too much, mostly plants."
And:
"Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food."
A better one might be "Don't eat anything someone's great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food"
The advertising shows combinations of items, the staff offer upsizing for a deal, etc. Their business model clearly takes advantage of upselling and impulse buys.
SSM is a story about what happens to someone who doesn't know any better and just goes to the convenient restaurant, eating the standard portions they sell. It's best viewed with that other documentary, about the guy who got skinny eating at McDs (and exercising!). It's not (strictly) the food that does it, but the portions and lifestyle it encourages.
Slightly OT: in regard to „long-term“ effects of food/diet, I am curious what you consider long-term? Is long-term a defined timeframe? Is it 1 year, 10 years, 1000 years (multiple generations)?