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I noticed something interesting about Soylent recently when I looked at the list of ingredients: it contains badly absorbed forms of several vitamins and minera

I noticed something interesting about Soylent recently when I looked at the list of ingredients: it contains badly absorbed forms of several vitamins and minerals. Vitamin D2 instead of D3 magnesium oxide instead of one of the several well absorbed forms like magnesium citrate calcium carbonate instead of calcium citrate zinc sulfate instead of zinc picolinate, zinc gluconate, or zinc citrate chromium chloride instead of chromium picolinate selenium as sodium selenite instead of selenomethionine In particular, magnesium oxide has very low bioavailability, and I would suspect that if Soylent is your only source of magnesium, you could potentially become deficient to some degree. There are other ingredients that are not optimal, but those are perhaps less serious.

puredemo 11y ago
Such a great analysis, and truly depressing that such a hyped-up "meal replacement drink" maker hasn't done the bare basics of due diligence to ensure they aren't harming their customers. Typical.
- PhantomGremlin 11y ago
  Whatever you do, don't make any negative comments in one of our regularly occurring Soylent threads. You'll be voted down into oblivion.
- skybrian 11y ago
  Sadly typical to see people make these accusations without even doing a Google search. Answers to least two of these are in the FAQ: https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/203962069-Vitamin-D https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/203962069-Vitamin-... https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/204547005-Magnesium https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/204547005-Magnesiu... I'm not enough of a nutritionist to say whether that's really sufficient, but they do consult with nutritionists, so it seems likely they've at least thought about all this stuff. Proving there's something wrong with Soylent is going to take more research than anyone's likely to casually do for an Internet discussion.
  - puredemo 11y ago
    Did you read the reason why vitamin D2 was chosen? Simply because it didn't contain animal products, not because it was any better. Similar for the Magnesium, it was chosen for a neutral taste rather than based on bio-availability. Even though Magnesium Oxide is barely processed by the human body at all. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2407766 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2407766
    - skybrian 11y ago
      In general, I think it's okay to make design tradeoffs like that, because higher levels of vitamins beyond what you really need aren't necessarily better. But you could certainly ask them about it. I'm not going to get into it because this stuff gets complicated really fast [1] and two non-scientists debating it on the Internet gets silly. [1] https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Magnesium-HealthProfessional/ https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Magnesium-HealthProfession...
wycx 11y ago
How can you put magnesium in as MgO and ever expect it to be available? MgO: good for making furniture for a 1400°C furnace, not so good as a source of magnesium. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2407766 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2407766
- insertnickname 11y ago
  It also works well as a laxative.

puredemo 11y ago

Such a great analysis, and truly depressing that such a hyped-up "meal replacement drink" maker hasn't done the bare basics of due diligence to ensure they aren't harming their customers. Typical.

PhantomGremlin 11y ago
Whatever you do, don't make any negative comments in one of our regularly occurring Soylent threads. You'll be voted down into oblivion.
skybrian 11y ago
Sadly typical to see people make these accusations without even doing a Google search. Answers to least two of these are in the FAQ: https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/203962069-Vitamin-D https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/203962069-Vitamin-... https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/204547005-Magnesium https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/204547005-Magnesiu... I'm not enough of a nutritionist to say whether that's really sufficient, but they do consult with nutritionists, so it seems likely they've at least thought about all this stuff. Proving there's something wrong with Soylent is going to take more research than anyone's likely to casually do for an Internet discussion.
- puredemo 11y ago
  Did you read the reason why vitamin D2 was chosen? Simply because it didn't contain animal products, not because it was any better. Similar for the Magnesium, it was chosen for a neutral taste rather than based on bio-availability. Even though Magnesium Oxide is barely processed by the human body at all. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2407766 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2407766
  - skybrian 11y ago
    In general, I think it's okay to make design tradeoffs like that, because higher levels of vitamins beyond what you really need aren't necessarily better. But you could certainly ask them about it. I'm not going to get into it because this stuff gets complicated really fast [1] and two non-scientists debating it on the Internet gets silly. [1] https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Magnesium-HealthProfessional/ https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Magnesium-HealthProfession...

wycx 11y ago

How can you put magnesium in as MgO and ever expect it to be available? MgO: good for making furniture for a 1400°C furnace, not so good as a source of magnesium. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2407766 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2407766

insertnickname 11y ago
It also works well as a laxative.