7 ms·

> Society just wont change to support it. Maybe this is just me, but I would happily change my diet to be around 50% Soylent or other meal replacement if the c

> Society just wont change to support it. Maybe this is just me, but I would happily change my diet to be around 50% Soylent or other meal replacement if the cost was cheaper. Currently I eat around 2400 calories a day, with Soylent that costs me $20 a day. I can get Chipotle for ~$15 per day, and between the two Chipotle clearly wins on taste. From what I can tell meal replacements are often far more environmentally friendly, there might be an environmental win here if the price drops.

novok 6y ago
It also will wreck metabolic havoc since it's processed and often uses PUFAs, non bioavaiable versions of nutrients and and other such things. You think we have an obesity crisis now? Wait until it's near mandatory to only eat things like cheap-edition soylent.
istorical 6y ago
The price for Soylent you quoted is for pre-prepared bottles. You can get the add-water-only version for much cheaper. In fact, you can get a day's worth of calories for about $10 even with better quality formulation competing products such as Huel 3.0 or Plenny Active. You literally scoop the powder into the provided bottle with the provided scoop they give you, fill it with water, shake it up for 30 seconds, and it's ready to drink. A bit more of a fair comparison just in case anyone reading this is curious on the development of this space.
- neckardt 6y ago
  I hadn't heard of Plenny Active before, looks like you're right about the price. I'll have to give that a try, thanks for the suggestion!
- kinghtown 6y ago
  $10 for a daily subscription to Ensure 2.0? You can eat eggs, slow cooker cuts of meat, seasonal fruit vegetables, rice, beans, flour, salt, yeast.. etc for $10 a day easy. As long as one is not too allergic to washing a few dishes, that is. Soylent is too expensive. It's a very attractive solution for me but the price point is higher than real food. Soylent needs to be like $1 a meal, with super duper high protein, if it wants to compete with home cooking. I can make a fine French dining quality 4-6 egg omelette, with a reheated beans and vegetables on the side, for like $2 a plate. A big plate, too.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
    Yeah, this. A couple years back I shifted my diet around to be more sustainable. I still eat meat, but stick to chicken and pork, and more occasionally rather than every meal. I use sous vide to batch cook and freeze stuff like chicken plus a curry base. Then per meal I can just thaw a portion and spend less than 10 minutes combining it with some fresh produce and final seasoning in a skillet. I costed out one of the thai curries I do this way out of curiosity the other day. Even using some more pricey seasonings like thai basil, kaffir lime leaves, lemon grass, and decent produce it still comes out below $2 per serving. Id say at this point I'm about 3/4ths of the way to the quality I get at local restaurants. A basic rice, beans, and green veg meal comes out to less than $0.50, and that's including some pork sausage to flavor the beans. I do gumbo occasionally and it's at about the same price. If you have the time/space/ability to cook, you can eat quite well shockingly cheap, even in places with relatively high cost of living. For me the key was to just ban myself from takeout, period, for about a year. It worked. My cooking is good enough now I prefer it to takeout, whereas when I was in my 20s I was a pretty typical tech bro that ate out every single meal.
    - kinghtown 6y ago
      Key insight for me was learning how to use my freezer. So much stuff freezes well which most people wouldn't consider freezing. For example, I run my own small baked goods business and do a ton of baking. 95% of anything you could buy in a bakery can be frozen and no one can tell the difference. In fact, bakeries already freeze most of what they are selling to people and no one can tell the difference. I don't expect normal people to make their own puff pastry or cronuts by hand but I really do think everyone should try to bake their own bread at least once a year. Most people don't want to make their own kneaded bread because you have like 15-30 mins active labour plus about four hours waiting time (mixing, kneading, bulk fermentation, proofing, baking, cooling). But you can make three loaves at once, and freeze them. The time and labour involved in making three loaves is very close to making one. But most people would turn their nose up at freezing bread, as though it completely destroys the crumb and ruins it. But most people's instincts are wrong, once again. Bread freezes extremely well. I was thinking that we really need to teach children how to be poor. Poor people need to cook and be smart about buying and storing their own food, but most people do not know how to do this. We spend so much time teaching children how to find a job in the most shallow way (how to write a resume, etc) but kids need help with knowing what to do when the economy is bad or they just can't find a good job, even if they are trying to. This sort of thing is political suicide because of national pride and this unshakable notion in the mainstream that people are poor because they are lazy or on drugs, their fault basically. Anyways, I agree with you on all counts. It is shocking when I realized that eating well is actually pretty cheap. If only I learned that at a younger age.
the_af 6y ago
What about people who enjoy eating? Cheese, meat, vegetables, wine, etc? Let's not forget eating is a pleasurable activity, not only a source of energy and protein.
- neckardt 6y ago
  I enjoy eating too, I don't think I would ever switch to meal replacements completely. But I would consider switching my default from my own terrible cooking to a meal replacement and eat out for my other meals.
  - zabzonk 6y ago
    Learn to cook, read some good cookbooks - for example anything by Madhur Jaffery - it really isn't difficult. The thought of educated people eating crap like Soylent and paying for it, when they could be eating really good food, which completely uneducated people all over the world manage to cook easily, is quite upsetting to me.
    - rdtwo 6y ago
      I agree we have people here making 200+k a year eating chipotle burritos and soylent as meals. These people are truly missing out.
- makerofspoons 6y ago
  People find drugs and alcohol pleasurable as well, but we find good reasons to regulate them because they have externalities for society that we need to control.
- coffeefirst 6y ago
  I don't get the people who jump straight to dystopian goo foods. There's no shortage of culinary traditions that relied on less meat and are actually food. Have they never seen a black bean taco?
- bluntfang 6y ago
  braces for downvotes some people enjoy pedophilia, but we don't accommodate them because we've decided that it's too damaging for society.
user5994461 6y ago
$20 a day is shocking. Eat rice, beans, potato, tomato, cereals. That will be an order of magnitude cheaper while tastier.
01100011 6y ago
I'd be happy to eat Soylent if I wasn't allergic to it. Unfortunately my mom fed me soymilk as a baby and triggered a life-long reaction to soy protein. Too bad... I love tofu, but it does not love me. One-size fits all meal approaches need to keep in mind that individuals have different needs and restrictions.
8ytecoder 6y ago
Huel is also cheaper
tzs 6y ago
Due to COVID, I put most of my food at home in a spreadsheet to track inventory so I could figure out how much I had to buy on each shopping trip to last for a week or two. At the moment I have 54938 calories of food on hand (not counting tomatoes, lettuce, and onions that I do not track because I only use them as sandwich toppings or for small salads where they contribute negligible calories). This cost $171.44. That works out to $7.49 for 2400 calories. Most of this is heat and serve stuff. E.g., there are some mini deep dish pizzas, some frozen breakfast sandwiches (think Sausage McMuffin clones), Hormel "Compleats" entrees, instant rice cups, add water and nuke mashed potatoes, canned soup, and such. Another big group is things for sandwiches: bread, sliced meats, condiments. An assortment of things that don't require any cooking or prep, such as protein bars and potato chips. Finally, ham steaks, liquid egg substitute, and frozen mixed vegetables. It turns out I'm spending somewhere between 1/2 to 1/3 of what I spent on food pre-COVID. The interesting thing is that it is not a hassle. I always knew I could eat a lot cheaper if I cooked at home, but that also took a lot more time. But for most of what I'm keeping now, cooking is really just putting it in the microwave or in a frying pan for a while. That doesn't really take much time at all. When COVID is done I will go back to getting take out--but only now and then for variety. I don't think it will ever go back to being my main food source. I will probably gradually add more things made at home from lower level ingredients, which should bring the cost down some more, and can probably be done without adding much more time.
- Gieskanne 6y ago
  Thats just a crazy habit to have :) I feel already bad when i order food twice a month. It even never occurred to me to do takeout all the time. I have already feel guilty when i see all the packaging for take out and regret it at the moment.
- bmurphy1976 6y ago
  >It turns out I'm spending somewhere between 1/2 to 1/3 of what I spent on food pre-COVID. The interesting thing is that it is not a hassle. I always knew I could eat a lot cheaper if I cooked at home, but that also took a lot more time. But for most of what I'm keeping now, cooking is really just putting it in the microwave or in a frying pan for a while. That doesn't really take much time at all. I always cook more than I need and always have leftovers. This is a great way to cut down on the amount of time spent in the kitchen (I care more about the time lost than the money saved). You don't have to immediately eat the leftovers, you can freeze most of it and rotate what you made a week or two ago to keep some variety.
mFixman 6y ago
Why can't you get vegan Chipotle?

novok 6y ago

It also will wreck metabolic havoc since it's processed and often uses PUFAs, non bioavaiable versions of nutrients and and other such things. You think we have an obesity crisis now? Wait until it's near mandatory to only eat things like cheap-edition soylent.

istorical 6y ago

The price for Soylent you quoted is for pre-prepared bottles. You can get the add-water-only version for much cheaper. In fact, you can get a day's worth of calories for about $10 even with better quality formulation competing products such as Huel 3.0 or Plenny Active. You literally scoop the powder into the provided bottle with the provided scoop they give you, fill it with water, shake it up for 30 seconds, and it's ready to drink. A bit more of a fair comparison just in case anyone reading this is curious on the development of this space.

neckardt 6y ago
I hadn't heard of Plenny Active before, looks like you're right about the price. I'll have to give that a try, thanks for the suggestion!
kinghtown 6y ago
$10 for a daily subscription to Ensure 2.0? You can eat eggs, slow cooker cuts of meat, seasonal fruit vegetables, rice, beans, flour, salt, yeast.. etc for $10 a day easy. As long as one is not too allergic to washing a few dishes, that is. Soylent is too expensive. It's a very attractive solution for me but the price point is higher than real food. Soylent needs to be like $1 a meal, with super duper high protein, if it wants to compete with home cooking. I can make a fine French dining quality 4-6 egg omelette, with a reheated beans and vegetables on the side, for like $2 a plate. A big plate, too.
- jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
  Yeah, this. A couple years back I shifted my diet around to be more sustainable. I still eat meat, but stick to chicken and pork, and more occasionally rather than every meal. I use sous vide to batch cook and freeze stuff like chicken plus a curry base. Then per meal I can just thaw a portion and spend less than 10 minutes combining it with some fresh produce and final seasoning in a skillet. I costed out one of the thai curries I do this way out of curiosity the other day. Even using some more pricey seasonings like thai basil, kaffir lime leaves, lemon grass, and decent produce it still comes out below $2 per serving. Id say at this point I'm about 3/4ths of the way to the quality I get at local restaurants. A basic rice, beans, and green veg meal comes out to less than $0.50, and that's including some pork sausage to flavor the beans. I do gumbo occasionally and it's at about the same price. If you have the time/space/ability to cook, you can eat quite well shockingly cheap, even in places with relatively high cost of living. For me the key was to just ban myself from takeout, period, for about a year. It worked. My cooking is good enough now I prefer it to takeout, whereas when I was in my 20s I was a pretty typical tech bro that ate out every single meal.
  - kinghtown 6y ago
    Key insight for me was learning how to use my freezer. So much stuff freezes well which most people wouldn't consider freezing. For example, I run my own small baked goods business and do a ton of baking. 95% of anything you could buy in a bakery can be frozen and no one can tell the difference. In fact, bakeries already freeze most of what they are selling to people and no one can tell the difference. I don't expect normal people to make their own puff pastry or cronuts by hand but I really do think everyone should try to bake their own bread at least once a year. Most people don't want to make their own kneaded bread because you have like 15-30 mins active labour plus about four hours waiting time (mixing, kneading, bulk fermentation, proofing, baking, cooling). But you can make three loaves at once, and freeze them. The time and labour involved in making three loaves is very close to making one. But most people would turn their nose up at freezing bread, as though it completely destroys the crumb and ruins it. But most people's instincts are wrong, once again. Bread freezes extremely well. I was thinking that we really need to teach children how to be poor. Poor people need to cook and be smart about buying and storing their own food, but most people do not know how to do this. We spend so much time teaching children how to find a job in the most shallow way (how to write a resume, etc) but kids need help with knowing what to do when the economy is bad or they just can't find a good job, even if they are trying to. This sort of thing is political suicide because of national pride and this unshakable notion in the mainstream that people are poor because they are lazy or on drugs, their fault basically. Anyways, I agree with you on all counts. It is shocking when I realized that eating well is actually pretty cheap. If only I learned that at a younger age.

the_af 6y ago

What about people who enjoy eating? Cheese, meat, vegetables, wine, etc? Let's not forget eating is a pleasurable activity, not only a source of energy and protein.

neckardt 6y ago
I enjoy eating too, I don't think I would ever switch to meal replacements completely. But I would consider switching my default from my own terrible cooking to a meal replacement and eat out for my other meals.
- zabzonk 6y ago
  Learn to cook, read some good cookbooks - for example anything by Madhur Jaffery - it really isn't difficult. The thought of educated people eating crap like Soylent and paying for it, when they could be eating really good food, which completely uneducated people all over the world manage to cook easily, is quite upsetting to me.
  - rdtwo 6y ago
    I agree we have people here making 200+k a year eating chipotle burritos and soylent as meals. These people are truly missing out.
makerofspoons 6y ago
People find drugs and alcohol pleasurable as well, but we find good reasons to regulate them because they have externalities for society that we need to control.
coffeefirst 6y ago
I don't get the people who jump straight to dystopian goo foods. There's no shortage of culinary traditions that relied on less meat and are actually food. Have they never seen a black bean taco?
bluntfang 6y ago
braces for downvotes some people enjoy pedophilia, but we don't accommodate them because we've decided that it's too damaging for society.

user5994461 6y ago

$20 a day is shocking. Eat rice, beans, potato, tomato, cereals. That will be an order of magnitude cheaper while tastier.

01100011 6y ago

I'd be happy to eat Soylent if I wasn't allergic to it. Unfortunately my mom fed me soymilk as a baby and triggered a life-long reaction to soy protein. Too bad... I love tofu, but it does not love me. One-size fits all meal approaches need to keep in mind that individuals have different needs and restrictions.

8ytecoder 6y ago

Huel is also cheaper

tzs 6y ago

Due to COVID, I put most of my food at home in a spreadsheet to track inventory so I could figure out how much I had to buy on each shopping trip to last for a week or two. At the moment I have 54938 calories of food on hand (not counting tomatoes, lettuce, and onions that I do not track because I only use them as sandwich toppings or for small salads where they contribute negligible calories). This cost $171.44. That works out to $7.49 for 2400 calories. Most of this is heat and serve stuff. E.g., there are some mini deep dish pizzas, some frozen breakfast sandwiches (think Sausage McMuffin clones), Hormel "Compleats" entrees, instant rice cups, add water and nuke mashed potatoes, canned soup, and such. Another big group is things for sandwiches: bread, sliced meats, condiments. An assortment of things that don't require any cooking or prep, such as protein bars and potato chips. Finally, ham steaks, liquid egg substitute, and frozen mixed vegetables. It turns out I'm spending somewhere between 1/2 to 1/3 of what I spent on food pre-COVID. The interesting thing is that it is not a hassle. I always knew I could eat a lot cheaper if I cooked at home, but that also took a lot more time. But for most of what I'm keeping now, cooking is really just putting it in the microwave or in a frying pan for a while. That doesn't really take much time at all. When COVID is done I will go back to getting take out--but only now and then for variety. I don't think it will ever go back to being my main food source. I will probably gradually add more things made at home from lower level ingredients, which should bring the cost down some more, and can probably be done without adding much more time.

Gieskanne 6y ago
Thats just a crazy habit to have :) I feel already bad when i order food twice a month. It even never occurred to me to do takeout all the time. I have already feel guilty when i see all the packaging for take out and regret it at the moment.
bmurphy1976 6y ago
>It turns out I'm spending somewhere between 1/2 to 1/3 of what I spent on food pre-COVID. The interesting thing is that it is not a hassle. I always knew I could eat a lot cheaper if I cooked at home, but that also took a lot more time. But for most of what I'm keeping now, cooking is really just putting it in the microwave or in a frying pan for a while. That doesn't really take much time at all. I always cook more than I need and always have leftovers. This is a great way to cut down on the amount of time spent in the kitchen (I care more about the time lost than the money saved). You don't have to immediately eat the leftovers, you can freeze most of it and rotate what you made a week or two ago to keep some variety.

mFixman 6y ago

Why can't you get vegan Chipotle?