How Soylent Ships a Trillion Calories per Month | Hacker News Reader

How Soylent Ships a Trillion Calories per Month

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103 pointsvalgreens226 comments

The value prop that people will save money is kind of funny to me. My diet:

Breakfast: Oatmeal, honey, cinnamon $0.20

Lunch: Large Salad(spinach, carrot, tomato, cucumber, mushroom, bell pepper, sometimes almonds) $2.50

Dinner: Steamed Veggies and Seared Tilapia (kale, carrot, tomato, capers, tilapia) $3.50

If people just budged properly they would be fine. That being said, I'm curious to try soylent and have purchased a week supply of it. Could be fun to play with.

I upvoted you because I agree that it is actually pretty easy to eat healthily for pretty cheap if you are willing to manage it correctly.

I will say that you seem to have a surprising low daily caloric intake, though. I have a high metabolism, but sit in front of computer all day and I still need 2500 calories/day to maintain my weight.

Yeah my roommate has commented on this as well. I'm thinking of adding in more nuts and other calorically dense foods. I've only been doing this for a few months so it's a bit of an experiment.

you probably just have a low natural appetite but most people need far, far more fat in order to feel satisfied and not crave food all day and binge on crap later.

nuts work great, but my personal favorite fat-booster is eggs, followed by lots of olive oil.

Whey protein & milk and he would be fine I think.

At rough estimate, like half the calories most people need: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+cup+oatmeal+%2B+1+tbs...

scaled to the 2000'calories in soylent: 2000/951*$6.20 = $13.04 or 43% more expensive than soylent's $9.11.

shopping and cooking and eating and cleaning for this must take at least around 1/2 hour - hour each day (compared to about 5 minutes for soylent) equals about 3-6% of your waking hours.

Also, for the first time in my adult life, I'm pretty well prepared for natural disaster. before I would only keep a couple days of food in my apt and a lot of that needed refrigeration or cooking. Now I have a couple of weeks worth at the ready.

I think, though that the value prop probably makes far more sense for single people without children. For them, preparing food is far less efficient and they have to coordinate their eating with others less often. Also, it probably makes less sense if your employer provides you with free meals.

I would purchase a days worth but I am not going to toss eighty odd bucks on something I might not like. At least mealsquares has a sample pack at twenty five that is about my threshold for trying specialized food products.

Given that it's sort of bland, I imagine you can easily flavor it and make fun beverages. Part of why I want to get it is to experiment. My coworker drinks soylent and I bet I could make it taste fantastic after playing with it a bit.

Soylent 1.4 has a grainy/nutty taste, similar to almond milk with oats.

If you like those flavors, then you'll probably like Soylent. I spike mine with a healthy amount of chocolate protein powder (Isopure) and coconut oil since I do better with less carbs in my diet.

I've always seen the value proposition as saving time vs cooking yourself and saving money vs buying prepared food.

That takes time to put together. Even if you come back saying, "It only takes XX minutes to do!" that's still time it takes. Soylent is aimed at people who really don't have that time (or think they don't). People who have multiple jobs.

What's your hourly wage? Don't forget an hour of your time!

Not saying that makes it impractical to cook your own food, but we can't act like the only cost in making dinner is the raw materials.

As an aside, it's pretty difficult to maintain those price levels if you'd like to eat more than oatmeal, spinach salad, and tilapia every day.

That only makes sense if you're taking time off work to cook, which most people aren't. Otherwise you weren't getting paid for that hour anyway.

This is hacker news. Why would anyone here ever take time off of work? If you're still employed (and who is?) by some BigCorp you can at least have side projects in your off time. But most of the people here are founding one or more startups while managing a productized consultancy and can probably scale their billable time to something like 22.5 hours per day (assuming 90 minutes of sleep time distributed via the Uberman schedule). So this isn't a fair argument against soylent for most people in software/tech jobs, and probably soon most other jobs as the contractor model becomes more popular and jobs become uberified.

I value my free time too. Significantly, in fact.

sometimes hn can feel like the cheapskate olympics.

i'll easily spend $100 on a trip to the store when i buy high quality pastured eggs, organic protein, local olive oil, fresh vegetables, CHEESE, etc.

sometimes i'll even splurge, and get an overpriced sandwich! can you imagine??? pre-made food... so irresponsible.

i don't go into work every day so i can live like a college student on dry goods and roughage.

> What's your hourly wage? Don't forget an hour of your time!

Compared to how expensive long term health care is, I'll gladly take the 30 minutes to cook my own food.

I have Soylent for around 40% of meals. I know it's more expensive than my regular diet, but it's quick and healthy food. Of course you can argue that your meals are very low effort, but even just grocery shopping and planning meals is something I'm happy I don't have to do now.

It makes my life simpler and more enjoyable and that's worth the price to me.

I haven't seen any compelling evidence that Soylent is healthy, given that there are not even agreed upon RDA for most nutrients or macro nutrients.

Further, not all people are the same, so "healthy" actually varies from person to person. In at least one area this is dramatic: Some people are insulin sensitive and some are insulin resistant. I looked at the nutrition label on soylent. It might be healthy for insulin sensitive people, who generally tend to be naturally skinny.

But this would be a terrible thing for someone who is insulin resistant to consume. It has a very high amount of carbs and fat, which means that your body will see the carbs, blood sugar will spike the insulin will spike very high to compensate (since you're resistant you need more of it to get your blood sugar down) and the high levels of insulin tell the body to start storing fat... consequently making you fatter.

Unfortunately, so much of the diet science assumes everyone is the same, and ignores the insulin sensitivity factor (and I bet there are several other factors going on as well that aren't understood.)

Are you arguing that you haven't seen compelling evidence that /any/ food or diet is healthy, given that there are not even any agreed upon RDA for most nutrients or macronutrients?

I'd suggest comparing the nutrition of Soylent to the nutrition of actual meals we eat when we don't have time for a proper meal. Since that's how many people use it.

For one, there will be a fiber deficiency if you stick with Soylent only. It's like juicing every day - strip fruits of most of the fiber, release immediate sugar into blood and welcome diabetes with open arms!

The whole concept of Soylent feels to me like a typical reductionist approach - let's mix some stuff together and all will be good. It's like trying to control your weight by calories - calories are the roughest, least precise way to decide what you need to eat (are you literally burning your food in fire when you digest it?) and completely ignores your metabolism characteristics and state of your health. It's like measuring programming capabilities by the number of lines written, yet we still somehow stick with it when planning our diets.

Please people, do your research, don't endanger your health by following what look like trendy geeky diets!

>It's like trying to control your weight by calories - calories are the roughest, least precise way to decide what you need to eat

>Please people, do your research

You're being contradictory here. Your body obeys the laws of physics.

Losing weight is LITERALLY calories in < calories out.

Being healthy and losing weight are two different things that often overlap.

>(are you literally burning your food in fire when you digest it?)

What a silly remark ... of course not.

"Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products.[1] Slower oxidative processes like rusting or digestion are not included by this definition." (Wikipedia)

>It's like measuring programming capabilities by the number of lines written, yet we still somehow stick with it when planning our diets.

Comparing apples with oranges.

There's this strange opinion circulating that the calories don't matter. It stems from an observation that some calories 'stick' more readily than others. From that, they leap to the conclusion that calories are meaningless.

I'm with you - physics rules. No matter what calories you consume, fewer is better for weight control. But don't try to argue with these folks. They can't acknowledge even the obvious boundary cases: eating nothing inevitably leads to losing weight.

There is some anecdotal evidence that varying macronutrient levels affect hormone levels in significant ways.

Screwing with hormone levels is a great way to affect the metabolism rate and lipid storage capability of the human body. That's what bodybuilders have been doing for decades. Steroid use is the ultimate manifestation of that school of thought.

The truth is that we know very very little about nutrition because doing controlled double-blind studies on human subjects is very very difficult. Bodybuilders are probably the best population to study because of the self-experimentation angle.

We know this about nutrition: activity burns calories at extremely predictable rates. Food has calories at extremely predictable densities. Physics works.

And see? Even these fundamental facts about physics get disputed/denied by the nutrition nuts.

I'll bite.

We measure calories in food by burning it in a lab and calculating the exact energy given off. Very precise. What we don't measure is how many pieces of that cob of corn I ate for dinner will pass through to my stool.

And I'll accept the comment that activities burn calories at predictable rates (they don't across populations -- look at exercise adaptation) but they can per individual. But treating the consumption of calories and the expenditure of calories as independent variables seems foolish. For an absurd comparison -- do you think my Caloric consumption over the next 24 hours would be identical if I consumed 10 calories of chocolate or 10 calories of amphetamines?

Physics works. A calorie is a calorie. But pretending that the human body treats all calories the same as a calorometer seems foolish.

All correct, agreed. What it means is, there is some level of exercise that will consume enough calories to exhaust ready supply. Then weight loss occurs.

The silliness begins when folks start to bargain. How little exercise can I get away with? How can I eat a lot and not gain weight? Its this lazy concern that occupies everybodys thoughts and behaviors. They write whole books about it.

When in fact, if they'd get off their lazy butts and exercise, really exercise, they could forget about all those details. Physics could work for them.

And by exercise I mean ride that bike 20 miles over the lunch hour. With some stiff hills involved. Really exert yourself. But few want to do that. They want to ride a recumbent 5 miles on the flat and then eat 3 hamburgers. And complain that exercise clearly doesn't work because they're not losing weight.

Its astonishing how little exercise most folks have ever done in their lives. I'd go this far: most folks have never exercised. They've warmed up, and then stopped when they hit the point their muscles feel it. I know this - I've taken folks hill-riding and had them stop. "Something's wrong. I feel funny. My heart rate is up and my muscles are complaining". They'd never gotten aerobic in their entire lives, and were afraid of the feeling.

Exercise is great and all, but diet is faaaaaar more important for weight loss.

Indeed, this chart shows caloric burn for various activities, the body is very efficient:

http://www.thehealthyeatingguide.com/calorie-burning-chart/

It entirely depends on your effort level. To say 'biking' burns 530 calories per hour seems precise. But a racer can burn 5000 calories. And you can burn everywhere in between those numbers, depending on your exertion level and the course.

Agreed - however, cutting caloric intake requires far less effort, and doing so via certain diets is far easier than others.

Apparently not, considering the vast industry around gaming just that activity.

From personal experience, and this was some years ago, I've found that on a high carb, high fat diet e.g. breakfast: beans, bacon, eggs, toast. lunch: sandwich with deli meat, cheese, mayo. supper: bread, veg, and meat, plus a few cups of coffee and a beer thrown in caused pretty rapid weight gain (30lbs.) with what I would call a normal amount of activity, walking a reasonable distance to and from work, intentional exercise 2 - 3 times per week, some activity on the weekends but the rest of the time spent at a desk or on a couch.

After taking a summer job doing manual labour that involved constant, intense activity (lots of shovelling, sweeping, lifting, walking, pushing and pulling) from 8 AM to 1 PM every day I saw a complete reversal in weight while maintaining the same diet.

So from my own experience, it is absolutely possible to eat a fairly heavy diet and lose weight. It all depends on balancing your intake with the amount of energy you consume during the day. The only problem is that it takes a lot of heavy physical work to use those calories and the exercise regimen that most people assume comes no where near to what it takes to use up the amount they take in.

As far as quitting before you actually really start exercising, there was a good quote by Muhammad Ali circulating the other day [1] "I don't count my sit-ups. I only start counting when it starts hurting. That is when I start counting, because then it really counts. That's what makes you a champion."

[1] https://i.imgur.com/ylOAYnR.jpg

While your are correct in a fundamental physics way, you might be ignoring the details of human chemistry and its resulting psychology impact. There's are reasons for the relatively recent obesity epidemic. Those reasons are rooted in the misguided dietary recommendations to reduce fat in favor of increasing carbs.

https://www.thebairs.net/2015/05/recommended-reading-why-we-...

These reasons are rooted in everybody sitting on their butt 23 hours a day, and not really exercising at all even when 'working out'.

You say that as though exercising like a competitive athlete is necessary for good health or weight maintenance. It isn't. It's much simpler to understand the insulin cycle and work with it rather than against it.

You're assuming it's easy to measure "calories out."

I'll hop in, though I'm likely to regret this. Note that I am not only replying to the parent comment here, but also addressing the general conversation descending.

The primary disconnect I see in this sort of disagreement about the importance of calories is what we count as "calories in" and what we count as "calories out". The calories listed on nutrition labels are determined by burning a sample of food in a bomb calorimeter. Since our body does not reach the efficiency of a bomb calorimeter, calories consumed through oral or intravenous ingestion will overstate the number of calories that are used by the human body calories in < calories out. As a stupid example, there is clearly a large amount of energy in wood. A human may ingest wood and "touch" none of the calories contained therein. Should a daily branch of intake count as part of our calories in? Where do we draw the line then? Should we exclude calories from fiber?

The nutrition label gives us an upper limit of what we can consider calories in, but does not, on its own, give us an actual value for this measure.

The other side of the disconnect is how we measure calories out. Some people consider only energy expenditure, or how many calories ingested are turned into energy for useful work in the body. Some may also consider those calories utilized for structural purposes. Protein does not necessarily get utilized for energy; in fact it is the least desirable energy source of the three macronutrients. Some may also consider the caloric value of excrement for measurement of calories out.

So calories in can be calories ingested, or calories "processed" (here loosely defined as anything that doesn't pass straight through to stool or urine). Calories out can be calories utilized for useful work, or anything that exits the body, as energy/heat or excrement.

Here alone we have enough for significant confusion among reasonable people depending on which definition they are using.

I hope this helps those involved in the conversation to clarify what they mean and consider that their conversation partner may be less of a moron than they assume.

Add to this that the only piece of this that we can accurately measure across populations is gross calories ingested, and there is a lot of room for reasonable people to disagree on a "healthy intake".

Please note: I am trying to be neutral in this comment, and to only help shed some light on where we find confusion in words. I am explicitly not making an argument for or against any specific interpretation of these words. If you choose to take issue with any inferred stake I hold, have fun. I am perfectly happy to consider discussion on the potential for confusion in the words we use when discussing the issue of caloric intake, though.

By healthy I mean that for lunch everyday I have 500 calories of something nutritious. This is more healthful than going our for lunch and overeating or grabbing fast food. I might be setting the bar pretty low there, but that was often my habit. Given that it's the habit of of about 80% of my co-workers I don't think that's too out of the ordinary.

I agree with you though, it does concern my that I'm eating powder for 2 meals per day and that might not go well for me in the long term.

This diet for 5 years and you will be dead.

Add more almonds.

There's also an issue of taste. I dislike the taste of many foods considered healthy for me. I try to eat the ones I enjoy but many are expensive depending on the season.

For example, I cannot stomach green beans. Attempting to chew them results in vomiting within my mouth. The smell of them alone is repulsive to me.

If I can have a bland solution to eating healthy - that's a win for me. The only thing preventing me from trying Soylent is the price of buying enough for 2 people, since all of my current meals are shared. Having to buy normal groceries and Soylent would nearly double my monthly cost for foodstuffs.

I'd have a healthier, cheaper diet if I only had to buy food for myself.

Not to mention every "cheap alternative healthy food" to Soylent I see mentioned only targets a small section of nutrients and vitamins and often ignores proteins altogether. They aren't well rounded - even if they're healthier/cheaper than McDonalds. Soylent strikes the "well rounded" healthy food. Without the hassle of having to buy groceries or prepare the food.

> For example, I cannot stomach green beans. Attempting to chew them results in vomiting within my mouth. The smell of them alone is repulsive to me.

Sauté them with butter, it's like a different food.

I don't tend to have butter (or margarine spread) in the house. Not to mention I would have to cook them and clean the dishes :)

I've tried them buttered, steamed, roasted, in a casserole, mixed into Mac&Cheese, and 1,000 different methods my mother tried to sneak green beans into my diet as a child. I struggle to stomach them no matter how they are prepared.

I have little concern for trying foods I dislike. I make an attempt to revisit them every few years (ie. I hated sushi as a child, I absolutely love it as an adult) but don't actively try different recipes or "force myself to like it".

The few foods I eat actively, I eat because I enjoy. The other foods I eat because I guilt trip myself into eating healthy. I'd live off nothing but rigatoni with old-school traditional Ragu sauce day in and day out if I could. But I limit that to once-a-week and figure out more balanced and healthy meals the other 6 days (if I eat at all).

Soylent would likely do wonders for my dietary health.

tarragon, heavily on green beans would be worth a shot.

> For example, I cannot stomach green beans. Attempting to chew them results in vomiting within my mouth. The smell of them alone is repulsive to me.

Maybe you're just really sensitive to lectins and your body is trying to tell you something...

Serious question -- where do you shop that this amount of food for an adult only costs this much?

Well, time = money, so unless you make that every week and have 0 daily prep/cook time, allowing you to amortize the bulk prep time across the week, Soylent probably saves you at least 8 hours a week assuming 20 minute prep/cook time per meal (I feel like, due to slop time, 20 minutes is about the minimum for this, unless you got really, really efficient with how you stored ingredients).

Further, Soylent is about $9/day, and your food system is only a bit less expensive at $6.20/day. In contrast, I've lived for months off of DIY soylents that were $3.50/day.

it depends on where you live, over here a medium sized bunch of organic kale is $2.99 at whole foods by itself, and $0.20 won't get you that many oats, let alone honey or cinnamon.

The advantage of things like Soylent is that the price is the same no matter where you live, whether you are in a small town with great produce where it's cheap or whether you live in an expensive downtown with limited access.

I don't know how anyone can afford to shop at Whole Foods!

If you want fresh veggies and fruit for cheap, go find an Asian supermarket. If you walk in and realize you're the only non-Asian, then you're in the right place.

I can easily buy enough fruits and vegetables to last a week for $15. We're talking multiple serving of both for lunch and dinner for 7 days.

Or at farmers markets! Can't upvote this enough. I go to the indian and asian markets and only buy certain things at costco where the quality is slightly better (fruits) or I get more quantity for the $.

If there's not much of an Asian population, Asian supermarkets aren't nearly as common and so not very convenient.

20 cents wont get you a serving of oats? Oats are like 80 cents a pound, dry! A quarter pound of dry oats is plenty of food for breakfast...

Where I live, buying rolled oats off the shelf from a regular grocery store will run you $0.00244 per gram. A serving of oats as indicated by the packaging is 3/4 cups or 65.7g of oats by weight. That works out to a whopping $0.1647 per serving. Prices are fairly average if not a little higher where I live so yes most people can get oats for $0.20 a serving. The secret is probably not buying at whole foods.

Honey can be a bit more expensive, for me it's about $0.012 per gram when not on sale. I use around a tablespoon in the morning so that's about 21.25g by weight which gives $0.255 in cost. Once again, that's hardly unmanageable on a daily basis. I don't know how much cinnamon you generally put in your oatmeal but a couple of shakes usually does it for me, not sure what it would be if measured but certainly less than 1/4 tsp. and it takes me a long time to go through a bottle (125g) or bag if I buy the cheaper stuff and refill a bottle ;) so the couple dollars I spend on it only gets shelled out every 2 - 3 months.

You can also order those ingredients from amazon:

50lbs bag of rolled oats $57.99 (0.00255/g) [1]

220z x 3 raw honey $28.80 ($0.0154/g) [2]

18oz. ground cinnamon $8.48 ($0.0166/g) [3]

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Regular-Rolled-Oats-Bulk-Pound/dp/B007...

[2] http://www.amazon.com/Y-S-Eco-Bee-Farms-Honey/dp/B000Z93FQC/...

[3] http://www.amazon.com/McCormick-Ground-Cinnamon-18-oz/dp/B00...

That sounds like less than 1000 calories a day. You must be getting more calories than that or you are very atypical.

I spend at least 3x that

Where's the protein and fat? The brain needs both to function correctly.

wow, where do you live?

I just find it totally disturbing. Who are these people who want to eat this because it's faster so they can work more?

It's like a forum of aliens. I have nothing in common with them. It really made me feel repelled by some of the replies.

To be human is to want to eat fine food and to play.

To be inhuman is to want to consume calories so you can work longer. Yuk and yuk.

> Who are these people who want to eat this because it's faster so they can work more?

Or maybe they eat this so they can play more? I just find it totally disturbing that you've chosen eating food as one of your primary sources of entertainment. You must be a really boring person.

Speaking as someone who consumes one and sometimes two meals out of the usual three prepared in a simple liquid form in order to save time on food prep, it has a perfectly rational backing that fits in with most of the other activities engaged in by normal humans. Saving the time I would normally spend preparing and eating breakfast and lunch makes sense because it allows me to work more during that time so that I can finish my overall workload sooner which in turn gives me more time in the evening and on weekends to follow the pursuits that I really enjoy, of which cooking and enjoying fine food is one.

I liken it to having an interest in and owning high performance cars. Driving a beautiful and powerful car in your off-time is a perfectly valid pursuit but using the same car for your daily commute resulting in more time spent in transit and the irritation of bumper to bumper gridlock and delays in exchange for the extra time 'enjoying' your car makes no sense if you can simply jump on a train or subway and skip the traffic even if that experience is rather more bland in comparison.

We shouldn't eat to live and nor should we live to eat.

Come on - as the founder of Soylent wrote, I like to go to movies too. But not three movies a day.

There are many things in life that are interesting and fun. For some its their startup job. Everyone coming to HN should understand that.

Soylent is much cheaper if you make it yourself. It's only expensive if you buy it pre-made.

Late reply... can you estimate the number of hours per week you put into planning, shopping, cooking, and cleanup? If so, and if you can you assign a $ value to that time, it would be an interesting exercise to compare such _total_ costs (averaged per meal) versus the same calculation using Soylent.

I would suppose (based on doing 50% Soylent for a few months) that for an all-Soylent diet, planning and shopping time goes to zero, "cooking" time to 5 min/day (to shake up one bag in the pitcher), cleanup to near-zero (put glass in the sink). Very possibly the reduction in time, valued in dollars, makes Soylent cheaper.

Food is super dead cheap to produce, In most places the bulk of cost of food is transportation and profits accounted for every level in the chain of exchange of goods between farmer and the consumer.

This is largely true in poor and developing countries. The food prices go up when fuel prices go up. I don't see this change even in the case of Soylent.

I notice that the instructions for Soylent stopped mentioning salt problem somewhere between v1.3 and v1.5.

How much sodium to eat is very controversial, but if you're eating sodium, you should know that they took the extreme low-sodium position. The current version contains 1640mg of sodium per pouch, which is about half the typical intake. This creates a risk of deficiency, especially when exercising or in hot weather. The symptoms of sodium deficiency are headaches and lethargy; the test for whether those symptoms are caused by sodium deficiency is to eat salt (~1g mixed with food or water) and see if they go away quickly.

Why would this create a risk of deficiency for most people? Excepting exercise - the maximum daily recommended amount is 2,300mg; for people who have problems with sodium (particularly those with high blood pressure), the recommendation is to limit sodium to 1,500mg/day.

The controversy I refer to is over whether the 1500mg-2300mg range is sensible. If you trust the IOM guidelines, that's fine, but my own reading of primary-source research has come up with nothing but null results and my personal experience has been that more is needed.

there is a lot of literature about how much sodium is too much, it's much harder to find minimum values: I personally due to health issues am on an extremely low sodium diet (< 500mg/day, usually around 400mg) and have been for over two years with apparently no ill effects, but then again my wife seems to not do very well if she goes under 1500, I guess we're all different (which would make it nice for soylent to come with separate sodium so that could be adjusted on an individual basis).

> there is a lot of literature about how much sodium is too much

Is there? I remember reading an article a while back saying that all those claims turned out to be based on a handful of flawed studies, and that for healthy people there is no problem with any halfway reasonable amount of salt intake as long as you drink enough.

Surely it's pretty easy to just add in the extra sodium yourself? 1640 does not sound low to me, that sounds healthy for the average person.

Sodium needs vary by person; some people require a low-sodium diet, some average, and some higher than average.

While I find the current Soylent interesting, I'm also looking forward to a future Soylent 2.0 that's customized to a specific person's nutrient needs.

I tried soylent for a while and found the experience fairly unpleasant. I switched to http://www.mealsquares.com/ instead. Warmed up, they taste like a dense brownie. The thinking detailed on their website and the level of care that clearly went into choosing a safe recipe gives me a lot more confidence than soylent did eg

> First, there's nothing especially risky or unusual in MealSquares; they're made from a broad variety of ordinary, healthy whole-food ingredients like milk, rice bran, dates, etc. See our nutrition page for the full list. And unlike many commercial baked goods, MealSquares are free of artificial preservatives and flavoring agents.

They also don't require mixing so they work much better as a camping/climbing food.

Soylent is a different product from MealSquares. MealSquares likes to talk about "whole-food ingredients" but the whole point of Soylent is to get away from that and base the formula on what the body specifically needs... as opposed to what whole food ingredients happen to come close and taste decent together.

Soylent is simple to make, simple to drink, and has a pretty neutral flavor. They tweak it at each new version so the issues with the early versions have been eliminated. Some people won't like that approach and will prefer a "whole food" thing instead, which is just fine.

Their launch comments on hn explained why they believe that using whole foods is a lower risk way to get 'everything the body needs' to actually end up in the body - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7314183

"And that's the problem I see artificially constructed meal replacements running in to--if you do the best you can based on the science available, that still may not be enough."

This is an excellent summary. It's not about a "fad" or being "organic" or something like it.

Nutrition is a very complicated subject and while science has shone a lot of light on the subject we still don't know a lot. So sticking to the "tried and true", that is, what people have actually been eating is safer.

When you don't actually know enough to make an honest assessment, then you can't come to an honest conclusion. Calling "whole food" safer is an emotional response not unlike that which make "non-GMO Himalayan sea salt" a thing people buy.

No, we know people do fine on traditionally healthy food. We do not know whether they do fine on Soylent. My guess is that anyone 100% on Soylent will become malnutritioned either very subtly or over a long time frame. Personally, I think that's fine as the body can handle pretty fucked up diets and no one is really going to go 100% Soylent anyway. Like, I'd replace 80% of my diet with Soylent if they shipped to me and I liked the taste, but I understand why someone would be a little skeptical.

> we know people do fine on traditionally healthy food

This is a valid point to an extent, but we don't know that people do fine on a particular subset of traditionally healthy ingredients. We may discover that Soylent lacks some subtle nutrient, but we could discover the same thing with MealSquares.

The body reflexes to things like mastication, salivation, etc triggered by texture and the presence of actual things in your mouth, so I think the (bias of) argument is more along the lines of reducing the variables away from normal eating. If you look at the military and other people who "starve for a living" (hikers, climbers, explorers etc), these considerations are very self-evident and at the forefront of mind. Its not clear that "wishing them away" (considerations of texture/pallatability) is backed up by any hard science. But I'd be curious to see if there are any leads in that direction.

> No, we know people do fine on traditionally healthy food. We do not know whether they do fine on Soylent.

But we don't really know how far along the scale between dead and in maximum possible health traditionally healthy food gets us. Short of some genuine scientific results, I see no reason to suspect that Soylent is less healthy than traditionally healthy food. It could just as easily be more healthy.

Tens of thousands of years of human history disagree with your assessment.

I don't buy it. Using "natural" ingredients is no less scientifically risky than using "artificially constructed" ingredients, unless of course you have scientific results showing precisely that.

http://www.mealsquares.com/nutrition-facts.html

2000 calories of it is 130% of your daily saturated fat...and 126% of total fat.

Eh. Soylent you could get away with eating it all day [theoretically]. MealSquares you need to supplement with other foods due to the fact content or you'll end up screwing your health with that much saturated fat.

http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/GettingHealthy/NutritionCenter...

Additionally:

> The American Heart Association recommends aiming for a dietary pattern that achieves 5% to 6% of calories from saturated fat. That means, for example, if you need about 2,000 calories a day, no more than 120 of them should come from saturated fats. That’s about 13 grams of saturated fats a day.

Its 6g per square, so you really shouldn't eat more than 2 and get the rest from other sources. At which point, its a minority of the calories you consume.

They actually address this point specifically on their Nutrition page. I am not an expert so I have no basis for comparing your claims to theirs, but it seems like they are at least sensitive to the issue, as it were.

Fats: Those worried about saturated fat content should be assured that our saturated fat (and cholesterol) content derives from healthy sources, not industrially produced fats. Milk, eggs, cocoa butter, and sunflower seeds; these are nutrient-dense and healthy sources of energy. All our sources of fat have shown numerous benefits in long term studies. Lacto-ovo vegetarians have significantly extended life spans compared to people eating normal diets, vegans, and even regular vegetarians. Dark chocolate lowers blood pressure as well as being an antioxidant and nutrient source. Sunflower seeds are a rich source of vitamin E and demonstrate anti-inflammatory properties. Most of our polyunsaturated fat derives from raw sunflower seeds. Given the very high vitamin E content of sunflower seeds, we are confident that our polyunsaturated fat is stable, not oxidized. We will be sourcing our sunflower seeds from the high oleic acid varieties to reduce polyunsaturated fat content further.

The right amount of saturated fat to eat is a major controversy, and I think you're promoting incorrect beliefs here.

So you know better than the NHS, the people who set the guidelines in the US, etc ...?

Yes, but it exceeds the total daily allowance for the NHS, the US equivalent, etc.

There is literally no one that says "Everyone should eat 30g of saturated fat a day"

I don't understand the saturated fat hate. Cultures have existed that have gotten 50% or higher of their total calories from nearly pure animal fat sources. Eskimos (or is the politically correct term Inuit or something else now?) lived on blubber, and only started experiencing the whole heart disease/obesity epidemic when switched to a more "conventional" grain-heavy diet.

I wouldn't trust the USDA to tell me what to eat as far as I can throw them and all of their agriculture lobbyists. RDA's are a joke.

...you mean the people that lived 10+ years less than everyone else, even in the modern era? That is the lifestyle you want to emulate?

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/12/18/inuit_life_exp...

Okay. Enjoy.

Did you even read the article that you linked? It's not a great article, but the reasons listed therein have nothing to do with diet.

It's funny how every single part of nutrition seems to be a major controversy.

Eh, saturated fat isn't great, but it isn't as terrible as we used to think. Check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat#Association_with...

To me the problem is the sugar content. It's easily double, even for a large man, and almost triple for a small woman.

One of the sources is:

http://www.nhs.uk/news/2014/03March/Pages/Saturated-fats-and...

Which suggests as the guideline and inclues a 20g limit (which the squares are still over):

http://www.nhs.uk/livewell/goodfood/pages/fat.aspx

> Cutting down on saturated fats is only one aspect of reducing your risk of heart disease, stroke and other cardiovascular diseases. Other risk factors include eating too much salt and sugar, being overweight, smoking and a lack of physical activity.

Yes, there is disagreement but no I'm not going to take "disagreement" as "HEY LETS GO OVER THE DAILY LIMIT!!!"

The sugar content here does seem higher than ideal, and soylent is about the same.

I'm currently experimenting with making a DIY soylent and I've noticed that if you're trying to get all the carbs from whole-grain, real sources you end up getting a lot of fiber (~50g/day even when doing a relatively low amount of carbs like 35% of your daily calories). A lot of people report feeling bloated and painful from too much fiber. It also adds up in price. So, they supplement with fast-burning carbs like maltodextrin and sugars (soylent is trying out the slower burning sugar isomaltulose).

I'm a little skeptical that something that gets broken down into half fructose and half sucrose exactly like table sugar and HFC is harmless if it just gets digested slowly, that'd be like saying drinking soda is totally healthy as long as you sip on it slowly all day instead of getting too much at once.

If fiber makes you feel bad it means you are not drinking enough water.

Make sure you check out http://www.reddit.com/r/soylent/ and the resources there. Lots of people are experimenting with variations of the Soylent formula/concept.

Why does the sugar content seem too high? It looks right for me based on the usual sources. Perhaps it's too high for a weight loss diet, but I don't think it's intended for that.

65 grams of normal sugar if you ate 5 of these meal squares is double the recommended 25-37.5 grams for an adult male. This isn't even counting the sugar alcohol.

That's 50% more expensive than soylent, and has a significantly shorter shelf life. If you want something approaching food while backpacking etc. you may want to just go for MRE's.

Also xylitol, lactase, potassium citrate, rice bran, and vegetable glycerin are not really 'whole foods' by most definitions.

I tried MREs for a while - they are fine for camping but too high in sugar and salt for regular eating. They are also very bulky (two of these per day - http://usarmy.vo.llnwd.net/e2/c/images/2013/05/30/298090/siz...) and leave behind a lot of trash.

I tried out MealSquares when they were first available. Ate three of them before I ended up throwing the rest of the package in the trash. Really unappetizing and inedible, unless they've changed the recipe since then.

I got a chance to try one recently (last month), and, unfortunately, I have to echo the sentiment. The best comparison I can make to the taste and texture is something like an extremely dense and gritty version of a very dark rye bread. Despite the creators' comparisons to muffins or brownies and how people say they have too much sugar, there was no sweetness to it at all.

I use soylent when I have appetite issues because drinking is easier than eating when I don't feel hungry.

Mealsquares is probably healthier, but it's also much more expensive at $20 for 2,000 calories, vs $9 for Soylent. They're priced like energy bars (Clif bars, probars etc.).

I think it is $6 per 2000 calories. Can you redo the math?

It's $15/2000 cal for 30 squares or $17.86 for 7 (the sample pack).

It's 90 dollars for 30 squares. That's 133.33 cals/dollar, or 15 dollars / 2000 calories.

I've recently become a Soylent convert. I originally got it just as a quick breakfast replacement. It's not life changing, but here's what I think of it and why I use it:

- It's quick and cheap. About $3 a meal, and I prepare a whole pouch at a time (just make sure to drink it all within 48 hours). Meal prep and clean-up time amortized across 3 meals is something like 20 seconds per meal. Even microwaves taquitos aren't that fast.

- It's almost guaranteed to be better for me than anything else that's quick and cheap. I personally think it's probably about as good as food science can get in terms of providing complete nutrition. There may some kind of micro-nutrients or some such that it may not be the best for. But considering the garbage I would normally eat on the run, I'm pretty sure I'm coming out on the positive side of things.

- I stay satiated on a solo cup full of it for about 2-3 hours longer than I do even with a gut splitting meal. I sometimes skip lunch entirely.

- When I get around to eating a regular meal, but appetite is about 50% of what it is normally. This is an amazing side-effect that's zero effort on my part.

- I can mix it with other ingredients/foods have it as part of a meal or an entire meal.

- my blood sugar feels more evened out during the day, so I don't go through sugar highs and sleepy lows as much

Downsides:

- a fully prepared container goes bad super fast, even in the fridge. I chalk this up to being full of nutrients, it's kind of like the opposite of McDonald's French Fries -- which will stay in good shape for months, even away from refrigeration.

- if I go above 50% Soylent for my meals, I get ultra-intense dreams -- often about eating meat. They aren't nightmares, but they're unpleasant.

- the satiation can sometimes feel a little like bloating

I'm considering also switching most of my lunches to it, but I also enjoy regular foodstuffs so much, and I actually do like the mid-day downtime during lunch.

> if I go above 50% Soylent for my meals, I get ultra-intense dreams -- often about eating meat

I wonder if people who do have nightmares would get the same effect. For $5 a day, replace your nightmares with nightmeats!

I've checked around various forums and I've found a number of reports that indicate drinking lots of Soylent can bring on intense dreams - I wonder how much more common it is.

That's weird. Sounds like someone should take a look at it. Anything interfering with neurotransmitters? Too little or too much of something? 50% of your diet is rather low for such an effect. Are the molecules perhaps different than they are supposed to be, in some way? I'm just thinking of Thalidomide and the chirality problem.

Some people think it might be increased B6, which some people claim can enhance dreaming.

Anecdotal but I've known people who have been on severely restricted diets that have also reported intense dreams about food, particularly meat.

> - a fully prepared container goes bad super fast, even in the fridge. I chalk this up to being full of nutrients, it's kind of like the opposite of McDonald's French Fries -- which will stay in good shape for months, even away from refrigeration.

Just remember that potatoes are supposed to store energy for the plant for months, so they are naturally resistant to rotting. (Cutting them reduce the durability, but frying them and adding salt increase the durability.) If you put the French Fries in a blender with some water, the mix will get rot in a few days.

Not to mention that it's not just McDonald's Fries that don't rot: it's all fries. The experiment failed to use a control, but one guy didn't, and posted the video of homemade fries with salt also not rotting.

I also got the dreams.

And you didn't mention the flatulence. The first time I did an all-Soylent day was for a full day bus ride. I felt so sorry for the people sitting near me... Sorry folks, I didn't know!

Weird, I have horrible gas, but when I drink mostly soylent then it goes away.

I came on board with 1.4 and haven't noticed more than normal flatulence. But I also tend to have a fiber rich diet so...

That "bloating" is indigestion. There's still something there they haven't figured out. It's not just flatulence, it's heartburn, acid reflux, etc.

> I get ultra-intense dreams -- often about eating meat.

I have these naturally, without solylent, and also when I am awake...

I think they mean "billion", not "trillion", two words that are sadly very close together. A typical person might consume 60,000 calories a month, so a trillion calories a month is the equivalent of 17,000,000 people consuming nothing but Soylent. Soylent's not that popular.

They're not wrong, just misleading. A typical person consumes 60,000 kilogram calories a month, AKA 60 million gram calories.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie

Maybe they are using the physics definition of calorie rather than the dietary definition of calorie (a 1000x difference).

calories vs kilocalories, I suppose.

OK, so that's about 17,000 users, or maybe twice that many orders if the typical order is the 2-week size. That's about 1000 transactions a day, or about 2 transactions a minute.

That transaction volume could be handled on a shared server with CGI programs. Why do they need so much computer infrastructure?

Exactly!

This is very interesting and strange to me. Cooking and eating tasty and new food in the company of other people is a major source of enjoyment in my life. I understand that most people may not enjoy cooking, but surely most people enjoy eating tasty food. Why would you give that up for Soylent?

The dumb thing is it's really not hard to do fine nutritionally without cooking. You don't need to buy a weird powder, or whatever. Buy a case of canned, pasteurized orange juice and a lot of cheddar cheese. You're gonna be fine eating nothing but that for at least a couple months before you have a problem. There are dozens of easy combinations of food. This is simply not a hard problem that calls for a complicated nerd powder.

Uhh... "orange juice and a lot of cheddar cheese" for "at least a couple months" is not doing "fine nutritionally".

You probably won't die...

*probably

You're wrong about this. Nutritional deficiencies only really crop up after years of a low quality diet. If you build a diet around a couple high quality foods like dairy and fruit you could go years. A weekly serving of calf's liver would probably cover absolutely anything else you might be short on. Eating what you biologically need is not the big, complicated problem people are pretending. The "tolerances" are not at all tight.

Are you suggesting to make your dietary plans around something that will end in nutritional deficiency in some number of years? That doesn't sound like a good plan to me, not to mention the cost of doing something like soylent instead of OJ and cheddar cheese is pretty low. I think I'll take that sacrifice.

Soylent will kill you over the years, certainly before the dairy and fruit only diet I mentioned above. Soylent is loaded with oxidized cholesterols and rancid poly unsaturated fats, as well as toxic gumming agents. I'll also bet a lot of people don't do well on so much oats.

[citation needed]

You don't. You just drink it instead of meals when you don't expect to have a a culinary and social experience. Surely not every meal you eat is such a delight. An awful lot of food is just calorie stuffing to maintain energy. Replace those with Soylent and you're also probably getting better nutrition.

Then when you want to have a regular old meal experience just don't drink the Soylent.

It's not a lifestyle choice, it's just a convenient meal replacement.

> Surely not every meal you eat is such a delight. An awful lot of food is just calorie stuffing to maintain energy.

It is? Not really for me and people I know. You can still make calorie stuffing enjoyable. Even if I'm alone I can whip up a 10 minute meal that tastes damn nice compared to what Soylent is supposed to taste like. E.g. heat a wok with a bit of oil, dump in a package of pre sliced wok vegetables and a handful of cashew nuts. While that is going soak some noodles. After a couple of minutes add soy sauce, rice vinegar, ginger syrup and the noodles, and you are done. With some practice you can make this in 5 minutes. I don't understand why somebody would rather save 3 minutes (roughly 1/500 of a day) and drink Soylent. Can't you sleep 3 minutes less instead?

I've always thought of food like sex. It keeps you healthy, but that's not why we do it. Optimizing food (or sex) to minimize the time spent while ignoring the enjoyment completely misses the point for me, so that's why I find it interesting and incomprehensible that Soylent is so successful.

> Even if I'm alone I can whip up a 10 minute meal that tastes damn nice compared to what Soylent is supposed to taste like. E.g. heat a wok with a bit of oil, dump in a package of pre sliced wok vegetables and a handful of cashew nuts.

Your lack of empathy for others' lifestyles is outstanding. Not everyone has access to a kitchen at lunch, or wants to deal with the grocery buying and washing dishes that come with cooking from scratch (which you excluded from your time calculation). Soylent replaces shitty convenience eating like McDonalds, not home cooked meals. Your argument can (and should) be aimed more at fast food, which is both pricier and less healthy than Soylent.

My argument can't be aimed at fast food because most people find that it tastes nice. You could indeed make a different argument based on price and health against it. The point of my argument is that you don't need to choose between healthy and fast (Soylent), or tasty and fast (fast food), or healthy and tasty (elaborate home cooking). With just a little bit of know-how and practice you can have all three.

I'm not talking about making this for lunch, but for dinner. Which lunch is available to you of course depends on where you work (though even in that case you can take something with you, like muesli+yogurt+fruit or a sandwich, but I can understand why some people might prefer Soylent in that case). Unless you eat 100% Soylent you are not going to save much time on grocery shopping because you have to go to the supermarket anyway, so you might as well take a few packages of vegetables with you. If I understand it correctly then Soylent requires washing a blender and a glass, not much different than washing a wok and a plate (and you don't even need the plate).

I make my soylent in the pitcher they sent me, so when it is empty I rinse it a couple times and make up the next batch. I guess you could use a blender, but it is unnecessary if you spend the 30 seconds they advise shaking it.

> Unless you eat 100% Soylent you are not going to save much time on grocery shopping because you have to go to the supermarket anyway

That's not really true. We're finding that our grocery bills have been cut quite a bit and the amount of ingredients we keep around (especially quick to prepare stuff) has basically gone to zero. Prep-time is virtually zero and cleanup time is rinsing the container when it's empty -- thus our dishwashing has also dropped quite a bit.

And we still eat great dinners prepared with fresh ingredients from our garden.

And it's still healthier than even your quite good sounding 10 minute meal.

As a fun challenge for yourself, see if you can assemble a 5 minute meal that's as nutritious and balanced as one serving of Soylent. And i don't mean guesswork, run the numbers, compare to FDA guidelines and see what you come up with. (then please share the recipe because I'd love to eat it!)

You're right, I can't come up with a single meal that is as nutritious and balanced as one serving of Soylent. The thing is that unlike with Soylent you're not eating the exact same meal every time. If there's one thing we've learned the last couple of years it's that a lot of food science is bogus, and that we really don't know much about nutrition. The safe thing to do is to eat a large variety of foods. Is it safe to eat Soylent every day or almost every day? Maybe. Is it healthier than eating a different reasonably healthy meal every day? Unlikely. Consider the reports by people who have flatulence, food nightmares, extreme craving of certain foods. That last point is likely an indication that your body is missing something. Maybe not all humans work well on exactly the same diet, but it depends on their genetics and activities. Our body gives us feedback about what it needs needs by making us crave certain foods. Most people also start to crave variety after eating the same food for several days, even if they do like that food. I think there's a reason for that. So here's the value proposition that I see:

1. It's quite likely less healthy than eating a variety of foods. 2. It tastes bad. 3. It saves 10 minutes per day.

How much time do you spend maintaining your garden?

> Is it healthier than eating a different reasonably healthy meal every day? Unlikely.

run the numbers! don't guess!

I also agree that if you're going to eat food, eat a wide variety of stuffs. It's about the only way to accumulate the best possible nutrition, and it keeps it from getting boring. I personally prefer lots of variety in food, but I really want to spend the time to enjoy it when I sit down to eat it.

> 3. It saves 10 minutes per day.

No, it saves 10x3 + cleanup (let's say 10minutes per meal) or 1 hour per day if you eat it for every meal (I don't).

Actually for my use-case it saves 0 minutes per day since I was just grabbing donuts at the coffee shop or breakfast bars or whatever on the way out the door in the morning. So in this case, it's not any less convenient, while it's far more nutritious.

> 2. It tastes bad.

It tastes "meh". But so do most things. One thing I've started to appreciate even more since getting Soylent is how "meh" most meals are, no matter where they're from or how they're made. I think sometimes we just have different kinds of meals just because it's "different" even if it's not better or even good.

> How much time do you spend maintaining your garden?

More than I'd like to, but not so much it's a huge burden. We grow long peppers, lettuce, perilla (just now starting to get good flavor), green onions. The lettuce and onions are from seed, the rest from sprouts. We're thinking of squash and cucumbers for next year. We've tried tomatoes but they're super fussy and you end up fighting with the stupid plant half the time. I'd like to get into garlic and potatoes.

>run the numbers! don't guess!

you can't just run numbers. none of the daily recommended numbers tell us what will happen when you eat the stuff for 100% of your meals for 10 or 20 years. On the other hand, eating a variety of normal has been shown over thousands of years to be mostly reasonable. Soylent may or may not be fine and even better for people, but numbers in a chart simply can't possibly tell us that.

>It tastes "meh". But so do most things.

I think you must have been eating the wrong things. I enjoy pretty much everything I ever eat (and avoid things that I don't like to eat) while sticking as much as possible to "healthy" foods. Frankly I think eating is one of the most enjoyable activities in life, IMO.

Now that being said, I can still see a reasonable argument for using soylent for maybe 1 meal a day, likely breakfast as a time saver. I can't even remotely imagine replacing all meals with it.

I think the issue of variety of food is overlooked. My family back in the countryside has orchards of various fruits. When it's cherry season, everyone is eating pounds of cherries every day... till that 2 week season is over and you don't touch a fresh cherry for another year. I can't help but thing this functions as some natural cleansing process.

For me, something like Soylent reminds me of when I prepared bottles for my baby. An all-in-one food was her primary formulation for the first 6 months of her life. But even in that case, there's more variety: because she breastfed. So her nutrients changed from day to day depending on what my wife ate, and slowly changing over the weeks to match her developmental stages.

To assume that a grown adult can survive on a monotonous diet does not sit well with me. I think this relies on some assumptions that haven't been well understood yet.

So you're around your ingredients, kitchen and cooking equipment 3 meals a day and are able to prepare a variety of delightful, completely nutritious and balanced meals from scratch each of those meals, 7 days a week, 365 days a year?

If not, do you stay within driving distance from your home so you can go there to do this?

Then, I envy your meals, but I don't envy the leash you have on your life. Personally, I travel far enough away from my home every day that were I to follow this pattern, I literally would spend all of my day on the road in between meals.

Or do you ever just grab something to fill an empty stomach and get on to what you need to do? Or just out for a full day somewhere far enough from your kitchen that you can't drive back home to make your meal, and your available choices range from dirty water dogs to chain restaurant? Do you do this more than 2 or 3 times a week because of your busy schedule?

Then Soylent is probably for you. I can almost guarantee it will be the superior alternative for whatever you end up eating in those cases.

I think the standard solution to that problem is to make food ahead of time (maybe large batches) and then pack a lunchbox?

I think you're missing the enjoyment part. I'd rather have a chicken sandwich or a salad from Wendy's than Soylent. As would most people I suspect. It's possible the grilled chicken or salad isn't actually better for me than the Soylent, but it isn't THAT bad, and it tastes so much better.

Wait, you only soak the noodles, don't cook them? Isn't that... crunchy?

(Sorry for derailing the soylent debate, but having a recipe is more interesting to me than debating nutrient transport vehicles :)

It depends on the type of noodles. Some types you can just soak, and then you throw them into the wok to heat them (because eating cold noodles isn't very nice). Some of them you have to soak with boiling or at least hot water to make them soft, and some you do have to cook for a period of time (e.g. spaghetti).

Dry noodles just require hydration and cooking. Soaking and then stir frying takes care of each respectively.

The target audience for Soylent is people for whom the pleasure of "eating tasty food" is weaker than it is for you. If you think of a use of time that you theoretically approve of but rarely feel inclined to choose over other activities (looking at paintings is an example of this for many people), you have a good approximation of what "eating food" feels like for many people.

For what percentage of your meals do you cook and eat tasty new food in the company of other people?

All 3 together? Not that much. At least one of those 3? 99% of the time.

Seriously, what percentage of your meals are "tasty new food in the company of others" vs mundane fare eaten to get a meal in?

Are you missing that much if you don't have your scrambled eggs most mornings or skip that mediocre sandwich from the deli down the street for lunch?

People drinking Soylent typically replace those boring meals that waste time with a bunch of food prep and cleanup while still enjoying new food in the company of others.

Once you have a jug of Soylent in the fridge, it's your choice whether to pour yourself a hassle-free meal or make the extra effort to consume other foods. When you're used to Soylent, you have more choices in life. It's a tremendous tool to have in your meal toolbox.

These advertisement articles are way too common on HN.

I find it a bit frightening that some of these products are marketed as a way to work even more.

Makes me wonder how many stadium pals are owned by the same type of people.

Funny side note; I was trying to remember what the stadium pal was called, based on vague recollections from years before, so I googled "catheter for recreation".

Do not google that. It was a weird, dark hole.

This remembers me of that last paragraph of the chapter about the "Stationary State" of J.S. Mill's Political Economy. The tragedy becomes ever more imaginative and, of course, innovative.

I tried Soylent 1.4 for four days (one meal per day - eased into it). I had incredibly bad headaches. I felt weird, like my vision was impacted. It felt like I was getting a fever, even, although I wasn't. I've never had a "food" have such an immediate, negative impact on me. And it tasted pretty bad. Even if they describe it as "neutral," or like pancake batter, that's not exactly a good experience.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get myself to continue eating it. I would give 1.5 a shot, but only if they had a 1 or 3 pouch demo for cheaper. Not investing another $85.

I've found that I have a tendency to not drink enough water with Soylent. Is it possible you were dehydrated?

Never tried soylent, but as someone who has had a lot of trouble with this in the past, that does sound a lot like dehydration...

But maybe not, who knows!

1.4 tastes terrible. I've been using it, but I've developed a very specific ritual for making it palatable, and it's still not an enjoyable experience.

If 1.5 is anywhere near as tasty as 1.3, then I strongly recommend that you give it another try. You might be able to buy some from Craigslist or something? I don't know if that's still a thing.

For Europeans wanting to try it, check out Joylent[1] as well, a Soylent fork based in Netherlands. They do a few different tastes too (vanilla, strawberry, banana, chocolate and soon mango).

[1] https://joylent.eu

I get a certain amount of joy in the terms in which these products are referred to due to the background of the founder as an engineer and, I assume, the audience that seems to champion it. Something about referring to a food product in terms of version 1.3 vs. 1.4 or a forked (heh) version always gives me a bit of a laugh.

I was also disappointed that Soylent doesn't ship to Europe.

So, I have been drinking Ambronite [1]. It has a similar idea, but it is a bit more expensive, because it is made of real food ingredients.

[1] http://ambronite.com

I was looking for a way to purchase Soylent in Europe. Thanks for the link!

I must say though, their videos make me a bit worried, I can understand they are trying to make them fun and entertaining but to me they just come off as unprofessional.

I've found veetal.de very good.

Why is molybdenum at 4x RDI, though? According to Wikipedia, too much molybdenum is rather bad.

Wikipedia states that:

> Although human toxicity data is unavailable, animal studies have shown that chronic ingestion of more than 10 mg/day of molybdenum can cause diarrhea, growth retardation, infertility, low birth weight and gout

According to the Joylent website. One bag of Joylent contains 207µg of Molybdenum. So if my math is correct (and the animals tested in that study behave the same way as humans) then you would need to ingest about 37 bags of Joylent per day to reach that amount. Perhaps it would be a good idea for them to lower the amount of Molybdenum, just in case.

Do they ship to the U.S. by chance? Their quantities per order look much more approachable than Soylent's.

Yeah, looks like they ship internationally: https://www.joylent.eu/shipping-costs

For Europeans there is also Mana [1]. Haven't tried them yet, waiting for my order..

[1] http://mana.menu

So this is an article about how Soylent's small ecommerce site runs?

How... underwhelming.

"a Trillion Calories" -- what a fantastic way to represent what they do in a way that sounds HUGE but is also both true and not hyperbolic sounding.

That is a lot no matter how you look at it though. If you assume someone eats 2,000 calories a day and 60,000 calories a month of only this one product, that would still be providing a month worth of food for 15 billion people.

I think a person eats 2,000 kilocalories a day and 2,000,000 calories per day.

When one person eats 2M calories a day, selling trillions of calories is suddenly not so hard!

Ah, perhaps you're right. I assumed by the uppercase 'C' it was kilocalories, but maybe it was just how it was formatted.

Has anyone tried the drink? Is it good?

It's alright, sort of tastes like bland vanilla rice.

Had to stop 'cause the girlfriend is celiac and they can't guarantee gluten free.

Wasn't it enough for your girlfriend not to drink it?

Not really, we share a lot of meals and we maintain a gluten-free household.

Actually they do seem to be gluten-free now, fwiw.

According to their FAQ they are not gluten-free.

https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/201274745-Vegan-Or...

In 2014 they wrote: "Soylent is vegetarian but does contain fish oil. While no ingredients by nature contain gluten a preliminary test has shown gluten present at around the FDA limit of 20ppm, likely from the oats. We are working on sourcing certified GF oats but for now cannot claim to be fully GF."

So, they were GF by the US definition of gluten free, but not fully as in certified GF.

It tastes just like the more pleasant protein powder drinks. No awful aftertaste. It's also not sweet, they are going for as neutral a taste as possible.

I like the idea but unfortunately I don't do well with oats. They've been decreasing it over time but I still get major indigestion from it that I don't get from other food. I'm in the minority on that, though. I'll try again with v1.5 which was just announced.

I had some acid reflux from Soylent about 2/3 of the time. This decreased as I continued to use it and then has gone away completely now that I put a bunch of protein powder and coconut oil in it to get a protein/fat/carb balance that I'm happier with.

I like it, but can certainly see where some wouldn't. Tastes like slightly sweeter and thinner oatmeal.

Reddit has a good amount of discussion and is probably a better place than HN for it: http://reddit.com/r/soylent

I've gotten some great information from that reddit subgroup, especially on some of the variants of Soylent that people have created.

I have some Keto Chow on order to see how that goes.

Haven't tried it myself, but this month's Oh No Ross and Carrie was all about Soylent http://ohnopodcast.com/investigations/2015/6/3/ross-and-carr...

I came here to mention exactly this. A lot of the comments on this thread also seem to corroborate their general reaction to it (assessment of taste, bodily response, etc.).

It's simultaneously neutral and filling—sort of like the fullness you get when you have a big bite of oatmeal (except it's a liquid, of course). I compare the taste to pancake batter, but might be in the minority on that.

My new thing is to mix it with 1:1:1 coffee:soylent:water (normally it's 1:2 soylent:water) and have it for breakfast, which I've found rather pleasant.

Do you use instant coffee or just mix in a cup of regular 'ol coffee?

I use standard coffee because I get it free at work. But I've heard instant coffee is also good.

I've been using Soylant as my daily lunch meal for several months now. Enjoy the convenience. Taste and texture are acceptable. Not in any hurry to switch to Soylant for all my meals -- just enjoying the lunchtime convenience.

I think that's how most people do it, and the founder has implied in the past that it's kind of how he intends/expects it.

The biggest criticism of Soylent seems to be "Who would ever want to give up food for all meals forever?" when that's not really what the point is.

Well then what is the point? If you're eating one or two balanced real meals a day, eating something ready-made for the calories is very easy and cheap. There's no need for anything like soylent. Have a coke and a pickled egg for lunch everyday.

I think the point is that Soylent also accounts for all the various nutrients you would want in a balanced diet, and does so conveniently and affordably.

I would have to consult my doctor, but my guess is that a Coke and pickled egg would meet those requirements.

Actually eggs contain a lot of the things you need. They are mainly missing carbs (his coke) and fibre. His meal suggestion does not appeal to me. However, as part of an otherwise balanced diet it could be perfectly healthy.

A Coke and a pickled egg isn't exactly healthy.

The founder said in his first blog post about the subject that, prior to pursuing his Soylent idea, he was eating a lot of fast food and frozen burritos.

Of course, if you're just looking for a cheap, quick hunger fix, those things will work. As will a candy bar, bag of chips, etc. But if you're trying to eat healthy, it's kinda tough to find something that's also quick, convenient, and filling. Soylent solves that problem.

A coke and an egg is perfectly healthy. A coke is ~150 allergen free calories, with a useful dose of sodium and some caffeine. An egg is a good bolus of protein, minerals, and vitamins. The only way I'd consider that combo unhealthy is if the person in question happens to have an egg albumin allergy. On the other hand, soylent has glaring problems with its ingredient list. I would never eat it and consider it garbage.

Imagine mixing oatmeal flour in water until you get the texture of pancake mix. Taste is very neutral. I add flavored whey protein which makes it taste better. [Oh -- I forgot to mention -- looks a little like baby barf -- don't think baby barf when you drink it and you'll be fine].

> don't think baby barf when you drink it and you'll be fine

While you're at it, be sure not to think of a purple elephant ....

I've been having Soylent for breakfast for 6 months. Super easy, I just put a scoop in a bottle with some protein powder, shake and drink. Tastes fine. A very easy way to get 500 calories in the morning between gym and work. Sometimes I'll do half a cup at night if I'm hungry. It's nice to know that there's a quick meal option that's perfectly balanced nutrition wise.

It tastes like liquid pancake batter. You get used to it pretty quickly. But I wouldn't call it "good".

As someone who very much enjoys the taste of pancake batter, you and I seem to have differing definitions of the word "good".

Vice video on soylent - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8NCigh54jg

I feel like this entire operation could run on one box...

Engineering is not purely technical prowess, it's the balance of technology, economy, organization and other variables.

I see no mention of cost in this article; is this infrastructure friendly to the future of the business?

Man, how about a startup that just teaches people how to cook. How about an app that teaches you to cook with and while on a date?

Why is a CTO only in charge of engineers who work on software? I would assume that the people doing anything molecular are also engineers. Sorry if this sounds strange but I hate it when talking to software folks I somehow have to remind them that before computers existed there were these other, strange professions also called engineers.

I've been making my own "Soylent" for many years for much less money.

8oz skim milk

1/2 cup oats

25g milk protein isolate

1 banana

1 tbsp natural peanut butter (or almond butter)

Dash of good cinnamon

Multivitamin

Takes only a few minutes to make, tastes better than Soylent and is cheaper.

Four of these per day are still less than half the appropriate fiber intake for a grown man.

Why don't they simply measure the grains of powder sold? That will certainly be an even bigger and more useless metric!

Any alternatives for Canadians?

A lot of people don't like it and sell their stuff on eBay so you could try there.

I would be worried of buying food secondhand. Nobody can prove for sure that I'm buying Soylent powder and not ... powdered caffeine mixed with whey and anthrax

You buy food second hand every time you shop at a grocery store.

A kid in the store room replacing your pancake powder with caffeine, whey and anthrax is about as likely as someone selling a box of Soylent on eBay.

On that note, pancakes made of caffeine and whey would be... interesting, to say the least.

maple syrup

Isn't it unhealthy to drink your food, sugar, and nutrients?

For discussion: instead of EBT/food-stamps, how about a Soylent subscription? Everything a body needs, relatively inexpensive, no allegations of abuse (lobster, cigarettes, junk food).

Captive audiences create bad incentives. As soon as the users don't have a choice, the supplier no longer has an incentive to maintain quality.

Maximum food stamp benefit is $189/month. Soylent subscription is $255/4 weeks.

i'd rather eat insects grown in a lab.

Remember water? How you used to drink it? So tedious right? You have to gulp so many times and sometimes it dribbles down to your chin ruining your shirt. Don't you wish you could just snort water? I mean now you can! One line of water is equivalent to drinking 3 cups of water. Why waste time drinking water like an idiot when you can snort it and get the same amount? I mean it's a no brainer honestly if you think about it. Obviously, this level of ingenuity comes at a price. What? Of course it's more expensive than water you can get anywhere, because you can snort it.

Have you already started a kickstarter campaign? The time savings alone would make me 10x more productive!

Oh wow, I missed that Heroku now supports Docker. I've been messing around with Elastic Beanstalk and Kubernetes for Flask deployments and now I'm tempted to see whether Heroku is worth exploring.

It's not. They're introducing a "better" (read: worse) pricing structure, and they have a reputation for deliberately making their platform worse (see also: the switch from intelligent to random load-balancing on dynos).

If anything, migrating away from Heroku to EB, Kubernetes, Cloud66, etc. would be a better strategy.

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