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Soylent Coffee: Nootropics, fat, carbs, protein
- tener 10y agoI saw the photo of two guys standing in the lab. Somehow I thought it is from Breaking Bad or some other show (I'm not watching it so wasn't sure...). Then I read the description: > Soylent scientists at work in the food labs refining Coffiest's flavor. Well, not even close.
- desireco42 10y agoI like that they are experimenting, seems expensive coffee like beverage.
- chris_va 10y agoSoylent White, it's still people! ... I am not the only one bothered by their naming decisions, right?
- soylentcola 10y agoI'm certainly not.
- chris_va 10y agoKudos sir
- gervase 10y agoMy current hypothesis is that them majority of their target market (like their CEO) weren't even born in 1973 when the original movie was released. Even if they've heard of the movie, I doubt they've seen it. From a marketing perspective, it probably has very little impact either way.
- astrange 10y agoThe movie was based on a book where soylent wasn't made from people.
- WorldMaker 10y agoNo, that twist exists in the book, too. That twist is even spoiled in the book's title: "Make Room! Make Room!". Soylent Green is always people, book or movie. (It's a sci-fi exploration of Swift's "A Modest Proposal". It always has been.) (ETA: Yes, Soylent Red is not people. But the point of the book and movie is Soylent Green's "easy" solution to famine.)
- thefastlane 10y agoreferring to caffeine as a nootropic seems to be broadening the term 'nootropic' quite a lot. am i misunderstanding what a nootropic is? edit: i'm referring to the quote saying "So we have two mild nootropics" which i read as counting caffeine as one of them
- johncoogan 10y ago>Coffiest also includes 75 mg of L-theanine per bottle to promote relaxation without drowsiness and works in concert with caffeine to boost cognitive performance.
- thatswrong0 10y agoLet's go by Wikipedia: > Nootropics (pronunciation: /noʊ.əˈtrɒpᵻks/ noh-ə-TROP-iks)—also called smart drugs or cognitive enhancers—are drugs, supplements, or other substances that improve cognitive function, particularly executive functions, memory, creativity, or motivation, in healthy individuals. I think it would fall under that definition. Then again, so would adderall.
- iaw 10y agoResearch has shown that the most powerful cognition and memory enhancing drug we have available to us as a specie is caffeine.
- the_watcher 10y agoCaffeine seems to be generally accepted by the nootropic community as falling into that category. There's at least as much clinical evidence of caffeine improving cognitive function as many nootropics, so it seems reasonable to me. The list of nootropics is somewhat fluid, as much of the science behind them is either recent or currently occurring.
- sxates 10y agoI've been mixing Trader Joes Coffee Concentrate with Soylent for breakfast for months. This seems like a no-brainer.
- crypticlizard 10y agoCare to comment on the flavour?
- itake 10y agoI have just started doing it with Starbucks coffee + 1.6. I really like it. It tastes way better than fatty creamers.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- vinchuco 10y agoSausages are a ground mix of meats. Is there an equivalent for a mix of vegetables, fruits, grains, meat, etc? It would make more sense as a complete cheap meal than a powder, except for being perishable. It brings to mind the 'diet problem' http://www.neos-guide.org/content/diet-problem http://www.neos-guide.org/content/diet-problem for which, if optimizing for price only, often suggests that you eat mainly potatoes.
- axlee 10y agoIsn't it simply an energy bar?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- bryanlarsen 10y agoA smoothie? Smoothies fill some of the same niche as soylent, in aiming to be healthy, easy and quick to drink on the go.
- Blaaguuu 10y agoThe closest that I have come across would probably be MealSquares - which still contain a good deal of animal products (milk, eggs) - but they seem to be going for a similar goal as Soylent, but making a 'solid' final product, and using whole ingredients. They last a good month in the fridge/freezer, and about 2 days on the counter. http://www.mealsquares.com/nutrition-facts.html http://www.mealsquares.com/nutrition-facts.html
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- brians 10y agofield roast grain meat sausages, actually. I, an omnivore, use them all the time. They're seitan with vegetables. And there is the venerable Dillburito.
- nradov 10y ago
- MicroBerto 10y agoOnce again, Soylent's team is relatively behind the curve in terms of supplementation, quality, and "dietary trends" (some of us just call them fads). But one thing they sure get right is how to market to a niche: all you guys and readers of tech news sites. It'll be successful, but let's not make it out to be something pioneering, because it's most definitely not. Anyone who's doing full-Soylent really needs to read this massive meta-analysis: http://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g4490 http://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g4490
- danielvinson 10y agoI don't understand what that study has anything to do with this. Their conclusion was that fruit and vegetable consumption reduces risk of death and does not mention anything about the why the fruits and vegetables reduce risk OR that said benefits are not reproducible through other nutritional systems.
- MicroBerto 10y agoBecause we don't know why. Just like we didn't understand omega fatty ratios a couple decades ago. So this has everything to do with it. There's more to diet than numbers, yet if you're on a pure Soylent diet, you're clearly not getting some relatively-unknown things that are almost conclusively beneficial to your body. Absence of proof is not proof of absence. Eat your fruits and vegetables or, statistically speaking, your cardiovascular system will eventually suffer. Soylent's marketing puts a lot of otherwise smart people at serious long-term health risk.
- kbd 10y ago> yet if you're on a pure Soylent diet... Soylent's marketing puts... people at serious long-term health risk. Even Rosa Labs doesn't recommend a pure Soylent diet. I liked Soylentconor's comment on reddit the other day, pointing out that the right way to look at Soylent is that it's "just food"[1] I'm obviously not arguing Soylent is perfect, but it's almost certainly better than what most people eat most of the time, and humanity got here subsisting on, on average, much worse. > Eat your fruits and vegetables or, statistically speaking, your cardiovascular system will eventually suffer. You seem awfully certain given that you can't say what "relatively unknown [but] conclusively beneficial" things Soylent is missing. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/soylent/comments/4wowtp/why_is_that_other_soylent_like_products_dont/d68rbrm https://www.reddit.com/r/soylent/comments/4wowtp/why_is_that...
- matthewwiese 10y agoI'm glad to hear Soylent has broadened their product category with this addition. It seems (to me at least) to be a perfect solution for a morning routine; when we usually have a cup of coffee with breakfast, why not just roll that into Soylent and "save some time" (negligible imo but still a consideration) not to mention it will hopefully improve the taste tenfold. Ever since I've heard about Soylent I've wanted the company to do well -- I love cooking but oftentimes when I'm hungry I hate having to do prep work and cleanup because it feels like I'm procrastinating the work I actually have to do (and I can't skip eating because being hungry while working just gives sub par performance). I can't afford Soylent consistently as a student and so have used soy milk and other [gross] concoctions in the past; but, I might have to use this news as inspiration (also taking note from u/sxates to stop by Trader Joes and give their concentrate a shot).
- iqisracist 10y agoNot negligible at all. I have to wake up 30 minutes earlier to have a bowl of breakfast before going to work.
- toasterlovin 10y agoI have great news for you: you don't need to afford Soylent because healthy, cheap, easy to prepare food already exists. Whole milk is my favorite, but if you can't handle milk, cheese, nuts, and yogurt are all zero prep time and much cheaper per calorie than Soylent.
- Kalium 10y agoThose also mostly require storage infrastructure not always so readily available - I've lived out of a hotel room with no fridge before. Maybe the person is lactose-intolerant - some friends of mine are. Maybe they are OK with the cost increment for the amount of time it buys them. Or possibly they simply make personal choices about what they put in their own personal bodies differently than you.
- toasterlovin 10y ago
- etaty 10y agoIn Europe, you can try : https://www.joylent.eu/ https://www.joylent.eu/ https://www.joylent.eu/products/wake-up-joylent https://www.joylent.eu/products/wake-up-joylent And they also sale bars now! There are other competitor like Queal or Huel
- lima 10y agoHow do all of these compare?
- etaty 10y agoI am using Joylent for 4 months now, for breakfast and sometimes dinner. I had no problem so far.
- bambax 10y agoI did try Joylent. I managed to drink one "meal" but couldn't go through the second one. It's the most disgusting thing I have ever encountered. I eat a lot of things many people would consider unsavory, including snails, oysters, cheese, etc., things way past their expiration date, and very bad (cheap) Chinese food. But this, no. I had bought 40 bags of the stuff that sit unused in my cupboard. Maybe Soylent is way different, I don't know, I didn't try it. But a small pill would be fantastic.
- zackbloom 10y agoA pill is probably pretty close to impossible. Even pure fat only has 9 calories per gram. 2000 calories is about 8 fl oz which you could (theoretically) drink, but would be a whole lot of pills.
- bambax 10y ago8 fl oz = 25 cl, size of one serving of a small coke. That would be drinkable in 2-3 gulps so even if it's disgusting it's manageable... Maybe...
- ryanSrich 10y ago
- diyseguy 10y agoSoylent explains all the missing over 40yo engineers
- ben_jones 10y agoPeople take sides on Soylent but I'm so glad a company like this exists to just attack the notion of what a meal is. It has such an impact on so many parts of our society including many of the glaring issues like poverty and nutrition. Personally (and I've tried it) I didn't like their initial strategy of being a 100% meal replacement and feel strongly like it makes a great supplement. I think their new products are more aligned with this and will likely renew my subscription today.
- jostmey 10y agoThey had to use a scene from "Breaking Bad" as a joke because they probably have no scientist, laboratories, or equipment. That's no joke.
- egypturnash 10y ago"...here's what makes this campaign great in my estimation - each sample of Coffiest contains three milligrams of a simple alkaloid. Nothing harmful. But definitely habit-forming. After ten weeks the customer is hooked for life. It would cost him at least five thousand dollars for a cure, so it's simpler for him to go right on drinking Coffiest - three cups with every meal and a pot beside his bed at night, just as it says on the jar." - Fred Pohl and C.M.Kornbluth, "The Space Merchants", 1952. I am glad to see that Soylent is continuing to name their products after Sci-Fi Future Foodstuffs Of Dubious Safety.
- chjohasbrouck 10y agoOne problem with products like Soylent is that the nutrition label is used for marketing, and as a result they consciously engineer the product to optimize for that. Nutrition facts labels and recommended daily intakes vary by country, and they're backed up by a lot of bad science and guessing games. Consider that the USDA recently lifted their recommended maximum intake of cholesterol from 300mg/day (1.5 eggs/day) to no upper limit at all (after 50 years), or that study after study has failed to find any significant benefit from taking daily multivitamins (and to the contrary has found that taking too many, or the wrong kind, can cause liver damage), or that every sugary breakfast cereal and energy drink would seem quite healthy if all you looked at was the nutrition facts label. I don't think nutrition facts labels are particularly meaningful, so a product sold almost entirely on the basis of how strictly it conforms to those government recommendations isn't of much interest to me. If you're Soylent, you also have to lean heavily on government recommendations as a form of insurance against lawsuits. There's a lot of risk in encouraging people to eat only your food for every meal of the day, and being able to tell a judge that your product closely adhered to government recommendations is undoubtedly helpful in various litigation scenarios, but I don't think that necessarily forms a good foundation for what people should be eating.
- antisthenes 10y ago> that every sugary breakfast cereal and energy drink would seem quite healthy if all you looked at was the nutrition facts label. That is factually false, since their labels do quite accurately reflect that they consist of nothing more than carbs (and a bit of protein, for some cereals). I'm not sure how one would come to a conclusion that energy drinks are good for you from their nutrition label, unless you're assuming sugars, artificial colorings, taurine and caffeine are all healthy compounds.
- dpritchett 10y agoSome people don't balk at the sight of a mostly-grain ingredients list. Lots of people aren't into macronutrients.
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- Applejinx 10y agoWow. That name is literally from Frederik Pohl's 'The Space Merchants'. Now that's cojones (Pohl died in 2013). I see I'm not the first to notice this, but it's worth noticing. I'd try the stuff, if they didn't put 1,6-Dichloro-1,6-dideoxy-β-D-fructofuranosyl-4-chloro-4-deoxy-α-D-galactopyranoside in it. (the brand name is 'sucralose'). That stuff gets everywhere, but I have a nasty reaction to it and really don't appreciate the company lobbying to have it treated like some kind of safe 'sucra' or 'ose'.
- ac29 10y ago>if they didn't put 1,6-Dichloro-1,6-dideoxy-β-D-fructofuranosyl-4-chloro-4-deoxy-α-D-galactopyranoside in it. Some people prefer it over (2R,3R,4S,5S,6R)-2-[(2S,3S,4S,5R)-3,4-dihydroxy-2,5-bis(hydroxymethyl)oxolan-2-yl]oxy-6-(hydroxymethyl)oxane-3,4,5-triol (IUPAC name for sucrose aka table sugar). There isn't really any purpose in using full chemical names in informal discussion. Most organic chemicals are pretty complicated, so using the full names just makes it seem like you are trying to scare people who don't know any better.
- unprepare 10y agoif you really want to avoid calling it sucralose (why?) why dont you just call it chlorinated sugar?
- yladiz 10y agoI guess it's good that they're branching out beyond their initial Soylent brand and trying to get more consumers, especially breakfast users who are used to coffee, but I still don't appreciate the notion that this is somehow better or more efficient than making a meal for yourself, when it's not been proven that it's any better (and may be worse, it's hard to know because it's so new). To me the Soylent brand just seems like a startup version of the supplement shakes that I saw my mom drink when I was a kid, and marketed to a different demographic.