Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by endorphone | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

endorphone

Soylent gets a lot of hype, and invariably the hype follows a predictable pattern-

"Geez, you don't eat only Soylent! It's just an occasional meal replacement!"

"Okay, then how is it interesting when there are dozens of competing products in the meal replacement category?"

"Because those aren't a full dietary replacement. You can't live on only Ensure (insert many other products here)."

"Okay....but you just said..."

I don't get Soylent. Not only is food one of the greatest luxuries in life -- one of the greatest rewards -- it's laughably easy to have a nutritionally complete lifestyle with minimal effort or time. But if I were enfeebled they all sound pretty terrible.

View on HN

Just because I don't intend to replace 100% of all meals with Soylent doesn't mean that its nutritional content is irrelevant. The fact that I could replace all meals with Soylent if I wanted to suggests that it has a better nutrient profile than something like Ensure or Slimfast, which is not intended to replace all meals. If you look at the macronutrient profiles of those three drinks, Soylent comes out head and shoulders above the others. Even though I don't want to bother making breakfast, a 200 kcal shake isn't going to cut it for me on a regular basis.

Soylent has a very high glycemic index, and isn't far off of eating a bowl of sugar. From that angle alone I would categorize it as an extremely poor choice (and indeed this whole discussion is a little surreal -- Soylent would be categorized as garbage, ultra-processed junk food if it didn't have the VC/valley aura around it). I've never bought into the super-food fantasy, because there is utterly nothing qualifying it.

Having said that, most people -- even very busy people with busy lifestyles and a "poor" food diet -- are not nutritionally deprived (and really, a centrum can alleviate concerns with ease).

There are a lot of valid reasons for products like Soylent. Stocking a bunker, for instance. Or for coping when under low energy (depression, as mentioned elsewhere), or in a critical crunch. But that seems to be such a niche that the presentation on here constantly as if this is the future of food seems like fantasy, and would never get a pass if it weren't that it somehow got bound up in the valley/VC bubble. If Oprah came out and started pushing Soylent, it wouldn't get a mention on here beyond derision.

>Soylent has a very high glycemic index

This is false, particularly for Soylent 2.0. https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/212769503-Glycemic...

I'm not saying Soylent is a super-food, but it is a food that isn't horrible for you (at least not as horrible as you're letting on!)

Soylent 1.6 has a GI of 65. That happens to be the same GI as sucrose (aka sugar). It is literally spot on, so you don't have to say "particularly" regarding 2.0.

> Soylent 1.6 has a GI of 65. That happens to be the same GI as sucrose (aka sugar). ...

Both false and misleading. According to the link provided by the parent poster:

-Soylent 1.6 _powder_ has a GI of 60

-Soylent 2.0 _liquid_ has a GI of 49.

Also, note that common white bread has a glycemic index of 75, which is higher than that of table sugar (65), so your statement, even if you had used the right number, is not as much of an indictment as you make it out to be.

>Both false and misleading

Apologies, I should have said Soylent 1.5. Not sure why you decided to say "both false", however, given that sucrose most certainly has a GI of 65. Further, what is the relevance of saying _powder_. You realize that mixing a powder into water generally doesn't reduce its GI, right?

Further, saying "white bread is worse" is a laughable diversion. White bread is considered the unholy worst case for GI, so being better than it is not a high mark.

> Further, saying "white bread is worse" is a laughable diversion.

I beg to differ. White bread and other baked goods like bagels, pizza, etc are a staple of the western diet, so it is absolutely a valid baseline for comparison. People don't regularly consume plain table sugar.

Moreover, as far as I know, Soylent 1.5 powder isn't even being sold anymore. According to the Soylent site, the current version being sold is 1.8.

Therefore, I think I'm perfectly justified in calling your statements misleading.

Partially agreed, though, I replace two meals a day with the UK equivalent. I suffer from depression and ADHD, so while I generally collect myself enough to make a proper evening meal, prior to Huel I would often skip or forget meals, and binge on junk later in the day. I'm working on 50/50.

From the horses mouth, most use cases I've heard are pretty sensible. Very few users treat it as their entire diet. You've a good point that food is great, and it's good to do it right. I'd hope students would take the opportunity to learn, but they rarely do. Still, Soylent or equiv >>> pizza. Most other arguments against it/characterisations are a little circular at best, or reduction to absurdity at worst.

I've lived off Huel for months on end (3? 4?) with snacks and cheat weekends and never felt better in my life. As in, I felt significantly better than when eating "normal" food.

I would gladly pay twice the amount I pay for Soylent for a "nutritionally complete lifestyle" that I could get in the same amount of time.

I honestly don't think it exists, though. Cooking and preparing food takes time and creativity.

> Not only is good one of the greatest luxuries in life

See, I promised myself I would leave this thread before people started toting out the arguments isomorphic to "you only eat Soylent 100% of the time! You monster!" - and yet here we are :). I thought I made it clear in my OP, but I don't eat Soylent for every meal- just the meals where, in the absence of Soylent, I would have had something worse.

Does that clear things up?

See, I promised myself I would leave this thread before people started toting out the arguments isomorphic to "you only eat Soylent 100% of the time! You monster!"

You announced this at the outset, and remarkably have left a number of comments now. Yet you were the one who keeps bringing up this strawman, and exactly the same circle of argument happens every single time. You, as is the rote cycle, are trying to argue both sides at the same time.

I'm not sure I follow. How is it a straw man if people such as GP literally did exactly what I said they'd do. That's not a straw man, that's the opposite - like a flesh man.

(In my defense I didn't expect my comment to become popular at all. I find it only polite to people asking me direct questions, such as yourself.)

Your comment reminds me of this article an article the guardian wrote about "conspicuous production" being the new way of signaling status[1]. To that end, the consumption of food becomes just another thing to be optimized.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/24/new-statu...

> it's laughably easy to have a nutritionally complete lifestyle with minimal effort or time.

Care to elaborate? I can cook and know how to eat a balanced set of macro-nutrients, but I find it quite difficult to be consistently health concious when eating out all the time and cooking regularly is anything but minimal effort and time.

I get a lot more pleasure out of shopping, meal prepping and cooking without the pressure of having to scramble for crappy food if I get busy when I'm low on food. There have been many times where I'd normally be sheepishly eating Wendy's where instead I'll head straight to the supermarket with a Soylent in my car's cupholder. On a similar note, I love cooking breakfast for myself and my wife, and if anything occasionally being able to take a break for a day or two has sustained my enthusiasm.

So Soylent and real food hardly need to be enemies.

I would much rather do any other enjoyable thing, than stop doing that thing, to eat.

> I don't get Soylent. Not only is food one of the greatest luxuries in life -- one of the greatest rewards

totally agree with this. soylent feels too much like... dog food for humans

How miserable the dogs must be to eat so poorly. They must never have a moment of joy in their lives.

Personally, I think this whole "food fetish" mantra is a ridiculous exaggeration. There are literally thousands of things that bring me more pleasure than food.

Something I always wanted!

I love cooking, I love eating, but cooking well takes time, effort, ingredients, shopping trips, storage, inventory management. I can do all that, but when you get right down to it replacing some of my diet with Huel (a British product in the same niche as Soylent, although the composition is substantially different) just makes my life easier. It's tasty enough, it keeps me going, I can be confident that it's giving me a balanced meal, and on a busy day it's saving me a pile of money too.

Then when I do have time, I cook something ridiculously delicious.

For me, this category is about convenience, and it serves it very well.

Soylent is exactly that - it's kibble for humans.

And there's nothing wrong with that. It's great to enjoy your meals, but you don't always get an opportunity for that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com