7 ms·

Are that kind of drinks popular in North America and if, then why..? I'm having problems understanding why would anyone want to consume something like that.

cal5k 9y ago
Well here's an example - I'm having jaw surgery tomorrow and will be on a liquid diet for a week. I stocked my fridge up with Soylent so that I'd have something decent-tasting and relatively nutritious to drink while I'm feeling like garbage. I also will make shakes, but sometimes soylent is just easier.
- legostormtroopr 9y ago
  Why not buy a commercially made meal replacement product that has been on the market for decades and is endorsed by nursing and medical professions and is used in hospitals? Its not like no one had ever done meal-replacement foods before Soylent came along. Its not new, its not cheaper, its not as well regulated, its not as flavorful. Seriously, why would you buy Soylent (which has had numerous beta 'failures') over a something like Ensure/
  - tree_of_item 9y ago
    Ensure in particular is a bad example. I'm sure it is used in lots of hospitals but it shouldn't be: https://storiesbycarrol.wordpress.com/2015/09/01/food-or-vile-glop/ https://storiesbycarrol.wordpress.com/2015/09/01/food-or-vil...
    - rblatz 9y ago
      Everyone is all about trusting science and medical professionals right up until it comes to dietitians... Then suddenly random bloggers and cherry picked studies come flying out of the wood work, much like the anti-vaccine crowd. And I say this with the belief that Americans eat too many carbs, and a higher fat/lower carb diet would be better for people. I just don’t understand this disconnect.
      - TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
        > Everyone is all about trusting science and medical professionals To counter this, I'v been reading a lot lately about how science has a publish-or-perish problem / unreproducible results problem / influence by industry problem. And the medical profession / pharmaceutical industry is complicit in the opium epidemic. Many of the medical drugs, doctors use, outside of infectious disease control, don't actually work in the sense that you take them for a period of time and are cured. It is the fault of government department dietitians, and their political overlords, that we are in this obesity / diabetes / heart disease mess. Given the traditional dietary advice of "eat less fat, start your day will a bowl full of sugar and milk" is wrong, is it any wonder people are making so much noise?
        dragonwriter 9y ago
        > Given the traditional dietary advice of "eat less fat, start your day will a bowl full of sugar and milk" is wrong It's also not traditional dietary advice; at least living in the US my whole life, I've only seen it as “advice” in advertisements from people selling the sugary products in question.
        TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
        Yes, that's a fair point. I admit I misrepresented the facts. Here's what the Dietitians Association of Australia[1] recommends: - A bowl of whole grain cereal with milk, a dollop of yoghurt and sliced fresh fruit. Try adding a sprinkle of nuts for extra crunch! - A delicious smoothie made from milk, fresh fruit and yoghurt - A toasted slice of sourdough with some cheese, baked beans or avocado - Untoasted muesli or rolled oats - Poached eggs on whole grain toast with tomato, mushrooms or spinach That seams reasonable to me, except maybe that every one of the recommendations includes grains. Although I don't see why breakfast can't be 100 grams of slow cooked / steamed meat with a bowl of steamed vegetables / a salad. 1. https://daa.asn.au/smart-eating-for-you/smart-eating-fast-facts/breakfast-how-to-eat-brekkie-like-a-boss/ https://daa.asn.au/smart-eating-for-you/smart-eating-fast-fa...
        ch4s3 9y ago
  - jnwatson 9y ago
    I thought that too, but I was wrong. Before Soylent and the other meal replacements that came up behind them, there wasn't anything out there. One 8 oz bottle of Ensure has 220 calories and 33g of carbs, 15g of which is just sugar. You might as well just have a coke and some protein powder.
  - novia 9y ago
    Milk allergies or veganism?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - squeaky-clean 9y ago
    Ensure is extremely sweet. Living off Ensure, you'd either have to get the zero carb version, or you'll have 2x the sugars of Soylent. It's also just disgusting to drink more than 3 of something so sugary before needing something else. The original Soylent flavor I can have for weeks before feeling like I need a change. If a cheaper competitor emerges that doesn't taste like a milk shake, I'd switch to that. But so far no one has offered a reasonable alternative.
  - cal5k 9y ago
    Ensure tastes awful. If I had to live on that for a week I'd go bonkers.
QAPereo 9y ago
Outside of SV and offline, most people have never heard of Soyoent and find it freakish more often than not. Edit: I’m not judging myself, just reporting. I think it probably does the job for people who want it, and doesn’t harm the rest of us.
- 52-6F-62 9y ago
  Frankly, I've always wondered why in the hell they'd name it after Soylent Green. Sometimes it seems like we've arrived at maximum saturation of irony in North America.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    The target market thinks it’s clever.
always_good 9y ago
It's a somewhat bland, filling drink that tastes pretty good blended with a banana on the way out the door. Have you ever eaten anything unhealthy in a pinch? I'm sure Soylent is better than Cheetos in that situation. Go to the frozen section of the grocery store to see all sorts of, imo, weirder shit that people eat regularly and feed their kids.
- ghaff 9y ago
  Pretty much. If Soylent were marketed as a sometimes meal replacement for when you’re too busy to eat a proper meal as an alternative to grabbing fast food or a bag of potato chips it would be utterly unobjectionable. Instead it plays like a parody of all things SV.
username223 9y ago
Are you the type of being that thinks food is too complicated and time-consuming to deal with, and would rather crush a couple of caffeine pills into a bland nutrient slurry, to be poured into your intake port a few times a day? If not, then this is probably not for you.
pumpaction 9y ago
It made me fart like crazy when I tried it. Felt very bloated and had some dire shits. And on top of all that, it had a rather unsatisfactory taste. I wouldn't recommend it.
- KitDuncan 9y ago
  I experimented with drinking Soylent only for a week and experienced no issues at all. But I am already vegan, so my gut may have been adjusted.
- sigstoat 9y ago
  FWIW if you were trying it when they were putting algal products in (1.6? 1.7?) I had similar issues, but they weren't there before the algal stuff, and went away when the algal products were removed.
freeflight 9y ago
> I'm having problems understanding why would anyone want to consume something like that. Nothing of what Soylent Green does is new, companies like Fresenius, Nestle, Abbot and whatnot have been manufacturing balanced liquid nutrition for medical needs for decades. I'm far more surprised these established players in the enteral nutrition market haven't started their own push for something like this, trying to sell their medical products as convenience lifestyle products. I guess they wouldn't want to cannibalize their own profits from the medical sales by offering a more affordable non-medical lifestyle alternative. As somebody who works with this kind of stuff, parenteral and enteral nutrition, I think there's a real market here. But I'd vastly prefer offerings from established companies, rather than some random guys buying bulk ingredients on Amazon and mixing them up in moldy warehouses.
- floatingatoll 9y ago
  Soylent is innovating in “as bland as possible”, which is really quite amazing after decades of crappy over-sweet protein shakes.
- d0lph 9y ago
  Do you have any examples of products that are meant to be a meal replacement, and that contain all necessary nutrients? > random guys buying bulk ingredients on Amazon and mixing them up in moldy warehouses Is this based on something, because I highly doubt they are sourcing ingredients from amazon, this is needlessly inflammatory. And moldy warehouses, do you really have so little to say about Soylent you have to make things up?
  - mrgoldenbrown 9y ago
    Soylent has had multiple, well publicized problems with mold and at least one instance of journalists finding rats running around the factory floor. https://www.google.com/search?q=soylent+moldy https://www.google.com/search?q=soylent+moldy https://www.google.com/search?q=soylent+rats https://www.google.com/search?q=soylent+rats
    - 9y ago
Nition 9y ago
The idea is essentially maximizing nutrition while minimizing preparation. It's not really a way of buying food so much as a way of buying time.
- YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
  In that case, why is it any better than just ordering some takeaway?
  - fernly 9y ago
    One, real convenience: a bottle in the fridge versus choosing, ordering, waiting, tipping. Two, takeaway WHAT? The common carry-out foods are not models of balanced nutrition. Often people who talk about Soylent say it saves them from a frequent round of pizza, hot wings, pre-made sandwiches, burger'n'fries.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
patcon 9y ago
I've always thought of it as a minimally perishable thing you could toss in your go-bag, to pull out when no time for a real meal -- saves you money when the alternative would otherwise be expensive restaurant food
beebmam 9y ago
Soylent actually tastes really good. It's like cheerios milk. Their other flavors are pretty good too.
whipoodle 9y ago
We’re at the part of late-stage capitalism where people find eating food to be too much work.
nunez 9y ago
They are popular amongst people that don’t know of other options. Meal replacements have been around since forever. Every grocery store out there carries Slimfast, for example. Abbott and Labrada Labs, amongst many others, also make them. IMO Soylent tastes gross, too. Kind of like soggy cereal.
- Klathmon 9y ago
  Slimfast (and many of the alternatives) are diet tools, I drink Soylent for the opposite reason, so I get calories. As someone that doesn't really take pleasure in eating on my own, cooking, cleaning, and even eating is a chore that I'll skip if I'm busy or stressed. Soylent lets me easily grab something that won't have too strong of a taste and isn't as bad for me as skipping a meal, or eating half a bag of goldfish.
  - nunez 9y ago
    There are “mass gainers” (basically diet drinks with more carbs and protein) that accomplish the same thing and are more cost efficient if you’re looking for alternatives. Lean Body is one.
- fernly 9y ago
  I did a detailed comparison of Soylent and its clones to Ensure here[0]. There are striking differences in the macronutrient ratios and in the prices. Soylent (Huel, etc) are much closer to the USDA recommended macro ratios, and have much less sugar. Only Ensure Original is less expensive than Soylent, all the other Ensure products (there are several) are much more expensive per calorie. [0] http://futurefood.hellobox.co/soylent-is-not-ensure-and-why/2017-05-26 http://futurefood.hellobox.co/soylent-is-not-ensure-and-why/...
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > Soylent (Huel, etc) are much closer to the USDA recommended macro ratios No, by your numbers, Ensure (pretty much all of the various versions) are closer than any others the center of the USDA ranges. > Only Ensure Original is less expensive than Soylent Your own analysis shows all of the Ensure products except High Protein as less expensive than Soylent 2.0, and only Ensure Plus (not Original) is cheaper than Soylent 1.8.
floatingatoll 9y ago
I have various sensory disorders, so being able to drink a glass of chocolate milk when I couldn’t otherwise eat normal food has been a godsend for not randomly missing meals as often. It’s not a substitute for social food, but if/when you eat alone, it’s certainly a viable choice. (I can’t drink most diet and protein shakes because they’re so aggressively sweetened that they set off the sensory issues.)

cal5k 9y ago

Well here's an example - I'm having jaw surgery tomorrow and will be on a liquid diet for a week. I stocked my fridge up with Soylent so that I'd have something decent-tasting and relatively nutritious to drink while I'm feeling like garbage. I also will make shakes, but sometimes soylent is just easier.

legostormtroopr 9y ago
Why not buy a commercially made meal replacement product that has been on the market for decades and is endorsed by nursing and medical professions and is used in hospitals? Its not like no one had ever done meal-replacement foods before Soylent came along. Its not new, its not cheaper, its not as well regulated, its not as flavorful. Seriously, why would you buy Soylent (which has had numerous beta 'failures') over a something like Ensure/
- tree_of_item 9y ago
  Ensure in particular is a bad example. I'm sure it is used in lots of hospitals but it shouldn't be: https://storiesbycarrol.wordpress.com/2015/09/01/food-or-vile-glop/ https://storiesbycarrol.wordpress.com/2015/09/01/food-or-vil...
  - rblatz 9y ago
    Everyone is all about trusting science and medical professionals right up until it comes to dietitians... Then suddenly random bloggers and cherry picked studies come flying out of the wood work, much like the anti-vaccine crowd. And I say this with the belief that Americans eat too many carbs, and a higher fat/lower carb diet would be better for people. I just don’t understand this disconnect.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
      > Everyone is all about trusting science and medical professionals To counter this, I'v been reading a lot lately about how science has a publish-or-perish problem / unreproducible results problem / influence by industry problem. And the medical profession / pharmaceutical industry is complicit in the opium epidemic. Many of the medical drugs, doctors use, outside of infectious disease control, don't actually work in the sense that you take them for a period of time and are cured. It is the fault of government department dietitians, and their political overlords, that we are in this obesity / diabetes / heart disease mess. Given the traditional dietary advice of "eat less fat, start your day will a bowl full of sugar and milk" is wrong, is it any wonder people are making so much noise?
      - dragonwriter 9y ago
        > Given the traditional dietary advice of "eat less fat, start your day will a bowl full of sugar and milk" is wrong It's also not traditional dietary advice; at least living in the US my whole life, I've only seen it as “advice” in advertisements from people selling the sugary products in question.
        TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
        Yes, that's a fair point. I admit I misrepresented the facts. Here's what the Dietitians Association of Australia[1] recommends: - A bowl of whole grain cereal with milk, a dollop of yoghurt and sliced fresh fruit. Try adding a sprinkle of nuts for extra crunch! - A delicious smoothie made from milk, fresh fruit and yoghurt - A toasted slice of sourdough with some cheese, baked beans or avocado - Untoasted muesli or rolled oats - Poached eggs on whole grain toast with tomato, mushrooms or spinach That seams reasonable to me, except maybe that every one of the recommendations includes grains. Although I don't see why breakfast can't be 100 grams of slow cooked / steamed meat with a bowl of steamed vegetables / a salad. 1. https://daa.asn.au/smart-eating-for-you/smart-eating-fast-facts/breakfast-how-to-eat-brekkie-like-a-boss/ https://daa.asn.au/smart-eating-for-you/smart-eating-fast-fa...
      - ch4s3 9y ago
- jnwatson 9y ago
  I thought that too, but I was wrong. Before Soylent and the other meal replacements that came up behind them, there wasn't anything out there. One 8 oz bottle of Ensure has 220 calories and 33g of carbs, 15g of which is just sugar. You might as well just have a coke and some protein powder.
- novia 9y ago
  Milk allergies or veganism?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- squeaky-clean 9y ago
  Ensure is extremely sweet. Living off Ensure, you'd either have to get the zero carb version, or you'll have 2x the sugars of Soylent. It's also just disgusting to drink more than 3 of something so sugary before needing something else. The original Soylent flavor I can have for weeks before feeling like I need a change. If a cheaper competitor emerges that doesn't taste like a milk shake, I'd switch to that. But so far no one has offered a reasonable alternative.
- cal5k 9y ago
  Ensure tastes awful. If I had to live on that for a week I'd go bonkers.

QAPereo 9y ago

Outside of SV and offline, most people have never heard of Soyoent and find it freakish more often than not. Edit: I’m not judging myself, just reporting. I think it probably does the job for people who want it, and doesn’t harm the rest of us.

52-6F-62 9y ago
Frankly, I've always wondered why in the hell they'd name it after Soylent Green. Sometimes it seems like we've arrived at maximum saturation of irony in North America.
- ghaff 9y ago
  The target market thinks it’s clever.

always_good 9y ago

It's a somewhat bland, filling drink that tastes pretty good blended with a banana on the way out the door. Have you ever eaten anything unhealthy in a pinch? I'm sure Soylent is better than Cheetos in that situation. Go to the frozen section of the grocery store to see all sorts of, imo, weirder shit that people eat regularly and feed their kids.

ghaff 9y ago
Pretty much. If Soylent were marketed as a sometimes meal replacement for when you’re too busy to eat a proper meal as an alternative to grabbing fast food or a bag of potato chips it would be utterly unobjectionable. Instead it plays like a parody of all things SV.

username223 9y ago

Are you the type of being that thinks food is too complicated and time-consuming to deal with, and would rather crush a couple of caffeine pills into a bland nutrient slurry, to be poured into your intake port a few times a day? If not, then this is probably not for you.

pumpaction 9y ago

It made me fart like crazy when I tried it. Felt very bloated and had some dire shits. And on top of all that, it had a rather unsatisfactory taste. I wouldn't recommend it.

KitDuncan 9y ago
I experimented with drinking Soylent only for a week and experienced no issues at all. But I am already vegan, so my gut may have been adjusted.
sigstoat 9y ago
FWIW if you were trying it when they were putting algal products in (1.6? 1.7?) I had similar issues, but they weren't there before the algal stuff, and went away when the algal products were removed.

freeflight 9y ago

> I'm having problems understanding why would anyone want to consume something like that. Nothing of what Soylent Green does is new, companies like Fresenius, Nestle, Abbot and whatnot have been manufacturing balanced liquid nutrition for medical needs for decades. I'm far more surprised these established players in the enteral nutrition market haven't started their own push for something like this, trying to sell their medical products as convenience lifestyle products. I guess they wouldn't want to cannibalize their own profits from the medical sales by offering a more affordable non-medical lifestyle alternative. As somebody who works with this kind of stuff, parenteral and enteral nutrition, I think there's a real market here. But I'd vastly prefer offerings from established companies, rather than some random guys buying bulk ingredients on Amazon and mixing them up in moldy warehouses.

floatingatoll 9y ago
Soylent is innovating in “as bland as possible”, which is really quite amazing after decades of crappy over-sweet protein shakes.
d0lph 9y ago
Do you have any examples of products that are meant to be a meal replacement, and that contain all necessary nutrients? > random guys buying bulk ingredients on Amazon and mixing them up in moldy warehouses Is this based on something, because I highly doubt they are sourcing ingredients from amazon, this is needlessly inflammatory. And moldy warehouses, do you really have so little to say about Soylent you have to make things up?
- mrgoldenbrown 9y ago
  Soylent has had multiple, well publicized problems with mold and at least one instance of journalists finding rats running around the factory floor. https://www.google.com/search?q=soylent+moldy https://www.google.com/search?q=soylent+moldy https://www.google.com/search?q=soylent+rats https://www.google.com/search?q=soylent+rats
  - 9y ago

Nition 9y ago

The idea is essentially maximizing nutrition while minimizing preparation. It's not really a way of buying food so much as a way of buying time.

YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
In that case, why is it any better than just ordering some takeaway?
- fernly 9y ago
  One, real convenience: a bottle in the fridge versus choosing, ordering, waiting, tipping. Two, takeaway WHAT? The common carry-out foods are not models of balanced nutrition. Often people who talk about Soylent say it saves them from a frequent round of pizza, hot wings, pre-made sandwiches, burger'n'fries.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

patcon 9y ago

I've always thought of it as a minimally perishable thing you could toss in your go-bag, to pull out when no time for a real meal -- saves you money when the alternative would otherwise be expensive restaurant food

beebmam 9y ago

Soylent actually tastes really good. It's like cheerios milk. Their other flavors are pretty good too.

whipoodle 9y ago

We’re at the part of late-stage capitalism where people find eating food to be too much work.

nunez 9y ago

They are popular amongst people that don’t know of other options. Meal replacements have been around since forever. Every grocery store out there carries Slimfast, for example. Abbott and Labrada Labs, amongst many others, also make them. IMO Soylent tastes gross, too. Kind of like soggy cereal.

Klathmon 9y ago
Slimfast (and many of the alternatives) are diet tools, I drink Soylent for the opposite reason, so I get calories. As someone that doesn't really take pleasure in eating on my own, cooking, cleaning, and even eating is a chore that I'll skip if I'm busy or stressed. Soylent lets me easily grab something that won't have too strong of a taste and isn't as bad for me as skipping a meal, or eating half a bag of goldfish.
- nunez 9y ago
  There are “mass gainers” (basically diet drinks with more carbs and protein) that accomplish the same thing and are more cost efficient if you’re looking for alternatives. Lean Body is one.
fernly 9y ago
I did a detailed comparison of Soylent and its clones to Ensure here[0]. There are striking differences in the macronutrient ratios and in the prices. Soylent (Huel, etc) are much closer to the USDA recommended macro ratios, and have much less sugar. Only Ensure Original is less expensive than Soylent, all the other Ensure products (there are several) are much more expensive per calorie. [0] http://futurefood.hellobox.co/soylent-is-not-ensure-and-why/2017-05-26 http://futurefood.hellobox.co/soylent-is-not-ensure-and-why/...
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Soylent (Huel, etc) are much closer to the USDA recommended macro ratios No, by your numbers, Ensure (pretty much all of the various versions) are closer than any others the center of the USDA ranges. > Only Ensure Original is less expensive than Soylent Your own analysis shows all of the Ensure products except High Protein as less expensive than Soylent 2.0, and only Ensure Plus (not Original) is cheaper than Soylent 1.8.

floatingatoll 9y ago

I have various sensory disorders, so being able to drink a glass of chocolate milk when I couldn’t otherwise eat normal food has been a godsend for not randomly missing meals as often. It’s not a substitute for social food, but if/when you eat alone, it’s certainly a viable choice. (I can’t drink most diet and protein shakes because they’re so aggressively sweetened that they set off the sensory issues.)