6 ms·

Soylent: Gruel today, gruel tomorrow

32 points by fjk 13y ago

MostAwesomeDude 13y ago
Wait, wait, wait. Are you saying that the kid that came up with this stuff only eats it five days a week? I feel cheated.
- dnautics 13y ago
  Yes, that's what he does now. For the first two months he ate it 7 days a week. Eventually, doing stuff like hanging out with friends at restaurants, etc, winds up being important in your life, and you do want to try other flavors and textures from time to time.
- alemhnan 13y ago
  If I recall correctly he did mention that somewhere in a post blog.
adriand 13y ago
This product is a sad example of the lengths to which some people will go in order to avoid spending time on tasks which are generally necessary and often quite enjoyable and rewarding. Cooking certainly fits this description: it's an enjoyable process, a rewarding skill, and something that others will love you for if you do it well. The constant focus on saving time and increasing personal productivity is a recipe for mental illness, in my opinion. Most people would do well to slow down, tune out, and make themselves a decent meal. I suspect that some and perhaps many of the people obsessed with personal productivity and life hacking will at some point suffer from a stress or anxiety disorder and will realize that life is short and there's no point in trying to hurry through it. This trend towards saving time by sacrificing basic requirements like eating and sleeping is increasingly absurd. In a year or two, I'll open Hacker News and there'll be an article in the top ten that describes how you, too, can Avoid Wasting Time Due To Lengthy Bowel Movements. Don't believe the hype. Have a good night's rest, followed by a leisurely shit and a tasty, gruel-free breakfast you made yourself, and you'll be a better person for it.
- sp332 13y ago
  The point of Soylent isn't to never think about food again. It's just a default so when you're not thinking about food, you don't start eating badly. The creator says he goes to get really good sushi a few times a week because he does enjoy it. But if you're preoccupied or pressed for time for some or most of your meals, you can just have Soylent instead of defaulting to fast food or whatever crap is laying around your apartment.
- Cushman 13y ago
  Paraphrasing from their pitch video: "If you can eat out with friends, you should. I love food. But I don't eat twenty-one good meals a week." I've seen before this idea that people would lose the ability to enjoy cooking or eating if it weren't literally required to survive. It's utterly nonsensical to me. Where does that idea come from?
  - genwin 13y ago
    Not from anyone I've known.
  - stephengillie 13y ago
    It's a slippery slope argument. A logical fallacy, but identifying logical fallacies in casual argument is rude at best.
  - h3st 13y ago
    There are some people who just don't seem to enjoy food, and who go for repetitive and bland meals. It's sort of like people who don't enjoy music, or books, or films, or ... you get the idea. Generally they're perceived as a little odd. Even here in Norway, where food is advertised as "mild" (euphemism for "bland" if there ever was one) people have some concepts of tasty food. You probably know some people who don't enjoy spicy food? Now imagine someone who thought plain bell peppers were too hot (there's no capsaicin in bell peppers). As for the origin of this culinary anhedonia, Idunno. Maybe poor people who were able to live off gruel without grumbling had better reproductive fitness in the past?
- everyone 13y ago
everyone 13y ago
I do wonder what the long term effects of eating this would be. Ive read some of the creators blog posts and I get the impression he doesn't know what hes doing. He has no education or experience in nutrition. He seems to have this reductionist view of the human body and eating. For instance he will say I was feeling a little X today so I added a few grams more Y and today I'm fine! Basically he is being incredibly unscientific about it.
kumarski 13y ago
Haters gonna hate, builders gonna build. When's the last time the economist was correct with a prediction of the future?
jacques_chester 13y ago
Sometimes, leaving stuff to experts is wise. http://examine.com/blog/soylent-is-made-from-hype/ http://examine.com/blog/soylent-is-made-from-hype/ We complain when non-programmers tell us how to do our jobs because it takes a lot of study and experience to do it properly.
- jckt 13y ago
  I understand Rob Rhinehart just playing around, some initial self-experimentation, that kinda thing. There's no reason to get the experts from the get-go. But when he got serious and made started his crowdfunding, and hired a bunch of marketers and finance people, a customer relations guy and only one scientist that isn't even a food scientist, you wonder -- is he really serious about the nutrition thing? His team might as well have been hand-picked for a social-networking startup. Not saying that it's impossible for people outside the relevant field can't make breakthroughs, but to assume that such a result were a much more than improbable possibility, such that you didn't even need to hire one guy with the relevant credentials? That's chutzpah. Good luck with the 300k. Hopefully they hire a few food scientists/nutritionists.
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    You don't get it. He read some freshmen textbooks and noodled around on pubmed, that makes him the expert. /s
  - DanBC 13y ago
    > is he really serious about the nutrition thing? His team might as well have been hand-picked for a social-networking startup They were a traditional tech startup. They pivoted when that market collapsed. http://blog.soylent.me/ http://blog.soylent.me/ > YC accepted our original idea, to build affordable wireless networks for developing countries, for the summer 2012 batch. We spent the entire summer prototyping our technology and looking for a customer. By demo day, we had a white space radio with a Bill of Materials (BOM) of $70 operating around Silicon Valley. We didn’t have customers and were facing an intimidating set of regulatory hurdles. We spoke with some of the valley’s top VC’s but failed to raise. Instead of pushing for investment that wasn’t there, we went back to focusing on acquiring customers and finishing our product as soon as possible. We never found a customer. It is irresponsible for them to launch a product, with massive publicity, and claim the product is safe for everyone (diabetics? pregnant women? People with Crohn's? Anorexics?) and to claim there is much evidence to support safety.
jonathanjaeger 13y ago
There's a ton of maltodextrin in this according to the nutrition facts. Can we really say it's a good idea to have that much maltodextrin for carbs compared to whole wheat breads, whole grain/whole wheat pastas, or other "cleaner" carb sources? I'm no nutritionist, but all those bodybuilding supplements and nutritional drinks that are full of maltodextrin don't get a good rep from the health community. Correct me if I'm wrong.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  Maltodextrin is used in bodybuilding supplements because it's quickly digested. It causes an insulin spike which might help shuttle protein into muscle tissue.
  - jonathanjaeger 13y ago
    Right exactly. It's used as a postworkout supplement often (possibly with dextrose) and it's pretty cheap. I wouldn't want a quickly digested carb as my main carb source in Soylent.
aristus 13y ago
I'm curious why no one mentions Unimix, memorably described by Roy Blount Jr as "Purina Famine Chow", made and distributed by disaster relief organizations. This stuff has been done before. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unimix http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unimix
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  It gets mentioned most times that soylent is raised. The thing is that soylent is a perfect storm of PR. Lone genius has brilliant insight, develops perfect food. Just like those 60s pulp SF novels where people eat food in pill form! Why did nobody think of this before? Lots of things that become popular or widespread do so because of the narrative they fit into. For example, which story will get published: "22 year old PhD student corrects famous scientist" or "14 year old student corrects famous scientist". People correct famous scientists all the time, that's how science works. But it is the narrative (brilliant youngster vs establishment) that makes it a story worth printing. And if a story is good enough, journalists won't look too hard at it. They're called "Too Good to Check" stories.
DaniFong 13y ago
I think the most interesting thing about this whole experiment is that it took this long for someone to do it. You would assume there'd be a wealth of information from military studies of battle-ready rations, or something.
DanBC 13y ago
Some people want to try liquid feed. Here are some already existing companies making liquid feeds: http://ensure.com/ http://ensure.com/ Ensure https://www.nutricia.co.uk/fortisip// https://www.nutricia.co.uk/fortisip// Fortisip http://www.complan.com/ http://www.complan.com/ Complan http://abbottnutrition.com/brands/abbott-brands http://abbottnutrition.com/brands/abbott-brands Abbott Nutrition Brands http://www.medifast1.com/index.jsp http://www.medifast1.com/index.jsp Medifast http://www.optifast.com/Pages/index.aspx http://www.optifast.com/Pages/index.aspx Optifast http://www.slim-fast.com/products/ http://www.slim-fast.com/products/ Slimfast Soylent make some claims about world hunger. As the article mentions Soylent is currently expensive. Their crowdfunding level was food replacement at about $7 per day. That's way outside the range of the 20% of the world population living on less than $1.25 per day. The main ingredient of Soylent is water. Unfortunately, about a billion people do not have access to clean drinking water. Hopefully with mass manufacturing they can get the cost down. And they could plow back some of the profits into providing clean water. There are other worrying things about Soylent. > For anyone who struggles with allergies, heartburn, acid reflux or digestion, has trouble controlling weight or cholesterol, or simply doesn't have the means to eat well, soylent is for you. > Soylent frees you from the time and money spent shopping, cooking and cleaning, puts you in excellent health, and vastly reduces your environmental impact by eliminating much of the waste and harm coming from agriculture, livestock, and food-related trash. From (https://campaign.soylent.me/soylent-free-your-body https://campaign.soylent.me/soylent-free-your-body) Lots of 'problems with digestion' are going to be serious illness for which liquid feeds are used. It is irresponsible for Soylent to claim to be safe for those people without extensive testing. There's no evidence that a liquid feed replacing all meals will put anyone in excellent health. The product uses agricultural products. As the article mentions, milk proteins are significant impact. Soylent also claims to have a shelf life of years. I'm still very curious about this. Many micronutrients will not have a shelflife of years. vitamin C needs to be kept in the dark, in an airtight container, away from heat and moisture. It was a mild irritant when it was one guy experimenting on himself (but giving out the recipe for other people to follow along). Launching a product from that with these claims, especially that there's "much evidence", is irresponsible.

32 points by fjk 13y ago

Wait, wait, wait. Are you saying that the kid that came up with this stuff only eats it five days a week? I feel cheated.

dnautics 13y ago
Yes, that's what he does now. For the first two months he ate it 7 days a week. Eventually, doing stuff like hanging out with friends at restaurants, etc, winds up being important in your life, and you do want to try other flavors and textures from time to time.
alemhnan 13y ago
If I recall correctly he did mention that somewhere in a post blog.

adriand 13y ago

This product is a sad example of the lengths to which some people will go in order to avoid spending time on tasks which are generally necessary and often quite enjoyable and rewarding. Cooking certainly fits this description: it's an enjoyable process, a rewarding skill, and something that others will love you for if you do it well. The constant focus on saving time and increasing personal productivity is a recipe for mental illness, in my opinion. Most people would do well to slow down, tune out, and make themselves a decent meal. I suspect that some and perhaps many of the people obsessed with personal productivity and life hacking will at some point suffer from a stress or anxiety disorder and will realize that life is short and there's no point in trying to hurry through it. This trend towards saving time by sacrificing basic requirements like eating and sleeping is increasingly absurd. In a year or two, I'll open Hacker News and there'll be an article in the top ten that describes how you, too, can Avoid Wasting Time Due To Lengthy Bowel Movements. Don't believe the hype. Have a good night's rest, followed by a leisurely shit and a tasty, gruel-free breakfast you made yourself, and you'll be a better person for it.

sp332 13y ago
The point of Soylent isn't to never think about food again. It's just a default so when you're not thinking about food, you don't start eating badly. The creator says he goes to get really good sushi a few times a week because he does enjoy it. But if you're preoccupied or pressed for time for some or most of your meals, you can just have Soylent instead of defaulting to fast food or whatever crap is laying around your apartment.
Cushman 13y ago
Paraphrasing from their pitch video: "If you can eat out with friends, you should. I love food. But I don't eat twenty-one good meals a week." I've seen before this idea that people would lose the ability to enjoy cooking or eating if it weren't literally required to survive. It's utterly nonsensical to me. Where does that idea come from?
- genwin 13y ago
  Not from anyone I've known.
- stephengillie 13y ago
  It's a slippery slope argument. A logical fallacy, but identifying logical fallacies in casual argument is rude at best.
- h3st 13y ago
  There are some people who just don't seem to enjoy food, and who go for repetitive and bland meals. It's sort of like people who don't enjoy music, or books, or films, or ... you get the idea. Generally they're perceived as a little odd. Even here in Norway, where food is advertised as "mild" (euphemism for "bland" if there ever was one) people have some concepts of tasty food. You probably know some people who don't enjoy spicy food? Now imagine someone who thought plain bell peppers were too hot (there's no capsaicin in bell peppers). As for the origin of this culinary anhedonia, Idunno. Maybe poor people who were able to live off gruel without grumbling had better reproductive fitness in the past?
everyone 13y ago

everyone 13y ago

I do wonder what the long term effects of eating this would be. Ive read some of the creators blog posts and I get the impression he doesn't know what hes doing. He has no education or experience in nutrition. He seems to have this reductionist view of the human body and eating. For instance he will say I was feeling a little X today so I added a few grams more Y and today I'm fine! Basically he is being incredibly unscientific about it.

kumarski 13y ago

Haters gonna hate, builders gonna build. When's the last time the economist was correct with a prediction of the future?

jacques_chester 13y ago

Sometimes, leaving stuff to experts is wise. http://examine.com/blog/soylent-is-made-from-hype/ http://examine.com/blog/soylent-is-made-from-hype/ We complain when non-programmers tell us how to do our jobs because it takes a lot of study and experience to do it properly.

jckt 13y ago
I understand Rob Rhinehart just playing around, some initial self-experimentation, that kinda thing. There's no reason to get the experts from the get-go. But when he got serious and made started his crowdfunding, and hired a bunch of marketers and finance people, a customer relations guy and only one scientist that isn't even a food scientist, you wonder -- is he really serious about the nutrition thing? His team might as well have been hand-picked for a social-networking startup. Not saying that it's impossible for people outside the relevant field can't make breakthroughs, but to assume that such a result were a much more than improbable possibility, such that you didn't even need to hire one guy with the relevant credentials? That's chutzpah. Good luck with the 300k. Hopefully they hire a few food scientists/nutritionists.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  You don't get it. He read some freshmen textbooks and noodled around on pubmed, that makes him the expert. /s
- DanBC 13y ago
  > is he really serious about the nutrition thing? His team might as well have been hand-picked for a social-networking startup They were a traditional tech startup. They pivoted when that market collapsed. http://blog.soylent.me/ http://blog.soylent.me/ > YC accepted our original idea, to build affordable wireless networks for developing countries, for the summer 2012 batch. We spent the entire summer prototyping our technology and looking for a customer. By demo day, we had a white space radio with a Bill of Materials (BOM) of $70 operating around Silicon Valley. We didn’t have customers and were facing an intimidating set of regulatory hurdles. We spoke with some of the valley’s top VC’s but failed to raise. Instead of pushing for investment that wasn’t there, we went back to focusing on acquiring customers and finishing our product as soon as possible. We never found a customer. It is irresponsible for them to launch a product, with massive publicity, and claim the product is safe for everyone (diabetics? pregnant women? People with Crohn's? Anorexics?) and to claim there is much evidence to support safety.

jonathanjaeger 13y ago

There's a ton of maltodextrin in this according to the nutrition facts. Can we really say it's a good idea to have that much maltodextrin for carbs compared to whole wheat breads, whole grain/whole wheat pastas, or other "cleaner" carb sources? I'm no nutritionist, but all those bodybuilding supplements and nutritional drinks that are full of maltodextrin don't get a good rep from the health community. Correct me if I'm wrong.

jacques_chester 13y ago
Maltodextrin is used in bodybuilding supplements because it's quickly digested. It causes an insulin spike which might help shuttle protein into muscle tissue.
- jonathanjaeger 13y ago
  Right exactly. It's used as a postworkout supplement often (possibly with dextrose) and it's pretty cheap. I wouldn't want a quickly digested carb as my main carb source in Soylent.

aristus 13y ago

I'm curious why no one mentions Unimix, memorably described by Roy Blount Jr as "Purina Famine Chow", made and distributed by disaster relief organizations. This stuff has been done before. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unimix http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unimix

jacques_chester 13y ago
It gets mentioned most times that soylent is raised. The thing is that soylent is a perfect storm of PR. Lone genius has brilliant insight, develops perfect food. Just like those 60s pulp SF novels where people eat food in pill form! Why did nobody think of this before? Lots of things that become popular or widespread do so because of the narrative they fit into. For example, which story will get published: "22 year old PhD student corrects famous scientist" or "14 year old student corrects famous scientist". People correct famous scientists all the time, that's how science works. But it is the narrative (brilliant youngster vs establishment) that makes it a story worth printing. And if a story is good enough, journalists won't look too hard at it. They're called "Too Good to Check" stories.

DaniFong 13y ago

I think the most interesting thing about this whole experiment is that it took this long for someone to do it. You would assume there'd be a wealth of information from military studies of battle-ready rations, or something.

DanBC 13y ago

Some people want to try liquid feed. Here are some already existing companies making liquid feeds: http://ensure.com/ http://ensure.com/ Ensure https://www.nutricia.co.uk/fortisip// https://www.nutricia.co.uk/fortisip// Fortisip http://www.complan.com/ http://www.complan.com/ Complan http://abbottnutrition.com/brands/abbott-brands http://abbottnutrition.com/brands/abbott-brands Abbott Nutrition Brands http://www.medifast1.com/index.jsp http://www.medifast1.com/index.jsp Medifast http://www.optifast.com/Pages/index.aspx http://www.optifast.com/Pages/index.aspx Optifast http://www.slim-fast.com/products/ http://www.slim-fast.com/products/ Slimfast Soylent make some claims about world hunger. As the article mentions Soylent is currently expensive. Their crowdfunding level was food replacement at about $7 per day. That's way outside the range of the 20% of the world population living on less than $1.25 per day. The main ingredient of Soylent is water. Unfortunately, about a billion people do not have access to clean drinking water. Hopefully with mass manufacturing they can get the cost down. And they could plow back some of the profits into providing clean water. There are other worrying things about Soylent. > For anyone who struggles with allergies, heartburn, acid reflux or digestion, has trouble controlling weight or cholesterol, or simply doesn't have the means to eat well, soylent is for you. > Soylent frees you from the time and money spent shopping, cooking and cleaning, puts you in excellent health, and vastly reduces your environmental impact by eliminating much of the waste and harm coming from agriculture, livestock, and food-related trash. From (https://campaign.soylent.me/soylent-free-your-body https://campaign.soylent.me/soylent-free-your-body) Lots of 'problems with digestion' are going to be serious illness for which liquid feeds are used. It is irresponsible for Soylent to claim to be safe for those people without extensive testing. There's no evidence that a liquid feed replacing all meals will put anyone in excellent health. The product uses agricultural products. As the article mentions, milk proteins are significant impact. Soylent also claims to have a shelf life of years. I'm still very curious about this. Many micronutrients will not have a shelflife of years. vitamin C needs to be kept in the dark, in an airtight container, away from heat and moisture. It was a mild irritant when it was one guy experimenting on himself (but giving out the recipe for other people to follow along). Launching a product from that with these claims, especially that there's "much evidence", is irresponsible.