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My question is why you chose Soylent over more tried and trued meal replacements like Ensure?
by rblatz 11y ago
My question is why you chose Soylent over more tried and trued meal replacements like Ensure?
- saturdaysaint 11y agoI thought was an interesting question, so I Googled, and there are actually some pretty convincing replies on Soylent's forums - http://discourse.soylent.com/t/comparing-soylent-to-existing-nutritional-products/431 http://discourse.soylent.com/t/comparing-soylent-to-existing...
- rblatz 11y agoThanks, I'll check it out.
- dsp1234 11y agoCompare the Ensure[0] nutrition facts with Soylent 2.0[1]. Note specifically that 1 Ensure is 220 calories vs Soylent's 400, so you'll need to basically double everything on the Ensure's nutrition facts page. I don't take either Ensure or Soylent (and I'm not sure that USDA recommendations for a 2k calorie diet are that good). It appears that Ensure tries to match a 100% USDA recommendation for caloric profile (at 9 servings per day fat/carbohydrates almost add up to 100%), while providing way over the recommendations on vitamin/minerals (~225% for most, close to 500% for a couple). On the flip side, Soylent appears to try to hit the vitamins/minerals 100%, while having a high fat, low carbohydrate profile (175% fat, 60% carbohydrates). On the whole, it looks like they are not really replacements for each other, other than in the broad category of "meal replacements" since the caloric profile, and serving sizes are so far away from each other. Personally, I'd go with the high fat, low carbohydrate version since I've found that those types of meals (in general, not specifically for "meal replacements") tend to keep me more satiated for longer periods of time. [0] - https://ensure.com/nutrition-products/ensure-original#vanilla https://ensure.com/nutrition-products/ensure-original#vanill... [1] - http://files.soylent.com/pdf/soylent-nutrition-facts-2-0-en.pdf http://files.soylent.com/pdf/soylent-nutrition-facts-2-0-en....
- iopq 11y agoSoylent actually has all the nutrients required for an adult human, while Ensure does not. Ensure assumes you eat SOME other food to make up for nutritional deficiencies, while Soylent aims to provide a 100% replacement for all of your meals if you desire it.
- gburt 11y agoHow could you possibly know this? Where is this comprehensive prescient list of "all the nutrients required for an adult human"?
- Retric 11y agoIt's not black magic, NASA for example has specified exactly what someone eats over long periods so they needed to study this. Historically, Military's have also been interested in this and have developed satisfactory minimum standards ex: http://www.apd.army.mil/pdffiles/r40_25.pdf http://www.apd.army.mil/pdffiles/r40_25.pdf That does not mean such things are Ideal just that they work acceptably well for young healthy people.
- chillwaves 11y agoNutritional sciences are far from comprehensive. It's only within the last 50 or so years that we even began to understand the importance of micronutrients to your diet. You could definitely pull a paper from the 1940s that showed researches thought they understand what humans need from a nutrition point of view -- and it would be very, very wrong.
- baddox 11y agoWell, how could anyone possibly know that the diet of traditional food they eat is any better?
- Tiquor 11y agoIt's called research. There are good well researched standards of diet for use by prisons, the military and space exploration that have enough real world use to have some level of verification.
- emmab 11y agoI used to drink Ensure before I switched to soylent. I couldn't stand how sweet Ensure tasted, it's kind of disgusting.