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Comment by jonathanjaeger | Hacker News Reader

I hated how most of the critiques on HN were centered around "loving to cook" or "loving food." I think that's a moot point.

I love the idea of Soylent and meal replacements in general. The critique I had for it was that everywhere I looked for the recipe, I saw references to maltodextrin. I don't want to fill my diet with maltodextrin instead of whole weat bread/oats. I hope in the future there are varieties where I can have more control over the carb source I consume a lot of in my daily meals.

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You can already find such recipes on the DIY Soylent sites. There was one based on Chia seeds, peanut butter, and a few things you can find in the grocery store.

Well if it's DIY then it's taking all the time to get the ingredients and put it in a blender. I can make a DIY meal replacement now -- I was just talking in context of Soylent's merits. However, if Soylent can be cheap enough to help solve some issues in terms of world hunger, then I'm all for it.

The World Food Program has several nutrition foods. The problem tends not to be cost (which is already very low) but distribution and awareness.

One of the problems of Soylent is the need for water. About one billion people don't have access to clean drinking water. Problems with water cause very many infant deaths.

It's exciting seeing this get some awareness in tech culture. Maybe people can design and develop easier cheaper better methods of water purification or desalination; or cooking; or whatever.

You can imagine that the cost of the product from this huge NGO is going to have been driven down as far as possible.

https://www.wfp.org/nutrition/how-wfp-fights-malnutrition

http://www.irinnews.org/report/83124/malawi-cheaper-recipe-f...

https://www.wfp.org/nutrition/special-nutritional-products

http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/co...

Here's the WFP in a Syrian camp for refuges http://youtu.be/Ej0vAUsn_o8

About 1 in 8 people are chronically hungry https://www.wfp.org/news/news-release/world-food-day-wfp-say...

Here's some nice feel good photos of children getting school meals. http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/gallery/2013/j...

> One of the problems of Soylent is the need for water. About one billion people don't have access to clean drinking water.

Why does Soylent need water? Could the same ingredients be prepared as a Soylent power bar?

That is a crowded product market, but Soylent might have an interesting pitch. A cashier at Trader Joe's told me that power bars were the store's best selling items.

In combatting world hunger, are you thinking of a factor other than price, like transportability, perishability, predictability, controlability, preparationability?

Given that the cheapest DIY soylent appear to be primarily based traditional staples like rice, oats, peas, soy, and flax seeds, it doesn't seem very likely to be cheaper. The initial price for the official one is $9/day, while the cost of the cheapest DIY based on traditional foods is $2/day.

You can get DIY soylent down to between $5-$6 a day without too much effort. There are some that are a bit lower, but you're not going to beat DIY traditional cooking by any means. It's meant to be a time optimization.

It's meant to be a time optimization.

Who are these destitute people in such a hurry? WTF

Programmers trying to become Ramen-profitable?

That's a good point, I should have calculated the daily price. I was just thinking of the convenience of an all-in-one nutrient rich meal replacement being easier to transport and not go bad.

> Well if it's DIY then it's taking all the time to get the ingredients and put it in a blender.

It's practical to do certain stuff with Soylent that's a little more difficult with traditional food. With the appropriate containers, I can, for example, very easily "package" a week's worth of breakfast and lunch. The only operation involved is measuring dry powders and cleanup is very minimal in comparison to traditional cooking. I can do the same thing with ordinary cooked meals, containers, and a freezer, but that's quite a bit more involved.

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