5 ms·

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

by 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
The idea is not to "sacrifice" food as you put it. Soylent is food and is probably fairly healthy. Eating traditional healthy food can be very expensive as fresh fruit and vegetables are usually expensive and also go bad quickly. If you dont feel like cooking dinner I believe soylent would be a much healthier and cheaper alternative to a take away pizza or frozen lasagna or somesuch.
geetee 13y ago
I love to cook, but it can be extremely time consuming, especially when paired with the time to cleanup. A lot of dishes also require an amount of inactive time that is simply impossible for a weekday meal that you need to squeeze between coming home from work and going to sleep. In a perfect world, I have time to shop for and prepare elaborate meals. I'd be able to sit down and enjoy these meals with loved ones. Reality is a bit different for many of us. I'm fortunate enough to have the financial means to eat or take out every day if I wanted, but that's not a terribly healthy solution. The fact is, most of my meals are "utility" meals where I am eating to live. That said, it does not preclude me from living to eat. Food would never cease to be one of life's joys, for me at least. I am pro-Soylent, but I won't participate any time soon. I want to see how it plays out, because putting my body on the line is not in the cards. I hope it works out, because getting back an hour or two every day sounds fantastic.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  You're creating a false dichotomy between Perfect Cooking and No Cooking. Many tasty meals can be prepared quickly. Many can be prepared without supervision. You can also prepare meals in bulk and reheat them when you need them. Are some meals elaborate and time-consuming? Yes. Just don't make those ones.
  - genwin 13y ago
    Yep. Frozen veggies with pesto is under 1 minute to get into the microwave. After heating, sprinkle on some cashews.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  - geetee 13y ago
    It's true that many tasty meals can be rather quick. I used phrases like "it can be" and "a lot of dishes" specifically to avoid creating a false dichotomy. Sometimes I get bored of pan-seared salmon filet with sauce-of-the-week and microwave-steamed fresh broccoli. After the umpteenth time, I'm not deriving pleasure from the cooking process. The cook in bulk recommendation is front-loading a time commitment for the kind of freedom something like Soylent would permit without sacrificing part of your weekend. I cook in bulk every so often, but blow half my weekend every week? Not a chance.
1qaz2wsx3edc 13y ago
Cooking being enjoyable/rewarding is subjective. I could find it neither. Recipe for mental illness? One could argue the potential time-savings could prevent some illness(s). Maybe soylent-enfused-polyphasic-sleep-pomodoro-lifestyles suit the Hacker of Tomorrow. Devil's advocate aside, we need long term studies & regulation around these products. And, well, regulation should be up to your local government.
cgag 13y ago
I feel like people probably said this same sort of thing about making fires or washing clothes by hand. Cutting on sleep is bad I agree, but cooking doesn't feel like something worth thinking about on a regular basis.
bksenior 13y ago
Youre bias is substantially more harmful and ignorant than anything in soylent. This may be snake oil with protein, but the idea that someone is challenging a very deeply ingrained accepted truth (humans need food) creates a process that leads scientific progress and promotes at least an opportunity for innovation. Not to be harsh, but your diatribe is exactly the opposite of what HackerNews stands for. Your armchair quarterback position offers nothing That said I am passing on this until there is way more information.
- Falling3 13y ago
  >Not to be harsh, but your diatribe is exactly the opposite of what HackerNews stands for. Says who?
kstenerud 13y ago
In many places, people of a minimum level of affluence hire maids, cooks, and butlers to handle the day-to-day tasks involved in running a household. Finding alternative means to offload tasks you're not interested in doing is not a bad thing if it allows you to employ your time and resources more productively. Mental illness? Give me a break! Just because YOU don't like it doesn't mean that everyone else must meet your arbitrary standards.
fc2 13y ago
Totally man, we should go back to traveling by horse while we are at it.
pbreit 13y ago
I disagree pretty emphatically. Not having to cook every meal is just one benefit of the product. Other benefits include cost, weight level, mental acuity, stamina, skin. You could eat soylent 14 times a week and still make a nice meal every day. And in fact, the creator suggested that he enjoyed regular food meals even more after being on soylent.
onan_barbarian 13y ago
It's a long time back (1023 days, actually), and I can't find a reference to the article itself, but I do believe we had an article about how to take a poo by none other than Zed Shaw. At least I felt moved to comment thusly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1596830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1596830 I don't recall whether Zed was optimizing for speed or comfort.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
therandomguy 13y ago
You could say this about anything and everything. Walking 8 miles to work instead of driving, washing clothes by hand instead of using the washer, buying meat from the store instead of hunting etc.
snogglethorpe 13y ago
> ...and a tasty, gruel-free breakfast Hey, I love gruel! I just wish I had more time to make it...
philwelch 13y ago
> 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. As it happens, it's much healthier for your colon to squat and have a nice quick shit rather than sitting on the toilet and taking your time. Unfortunately, no one does this in some places because they don't really have squatting toilets.

by adriand 13y ago

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

The idea is not to "sacrifice" food as you put it. Soylent is food and is probably fairly healthy. Eating traditional healthy food can be very expensive as fresh fruit and vegetables are usually expensive and also go bad quickly. If you dont feel like cooking dinner I believe soylent would be a much healthier and cheaper alternative to a take away pizza or frozen lasagna or somesuch.

geetee 13y ago

I love to cook, but it can be extremely time consuming, especially when paired with the time to cleanup. A lot of dishes also require an amount of inactive time that is simply impossible for a weekday meal that you need to squeeze between coming home from work and going to sleep. In a perfect world, I have time to shop for and prepare elaborate meals. I'd be able to sit down and enjoy these meals with loved ones. Reality is a bit different for many of us. I'm fortunate enough to have the financial means to eat or take out every day if I wanted, but that's not a terribly healthy solution. The fact is, most of my meals are "utility" meals where I am eating to live. That said, it does not preclude me from living to eat. Food would never cease to be one of life's joys, for me at least. I am pro-Soylent, but I won't participate any time soon. I want to see how it plays out, because putting my body on the line is not in the cards. I hope it works out, because getting back an hour or two every day sounds fantastic.

jacques_chester 13y ago
You're creating a false dichotomy between Perfect Cooking and No Cooking. Many tasty meals can be prepared quickly. Many can be prepared without supervision. You can also prepare meals in bulk and reheat them when you need them. Are some meals elaborate and time-consuming? Yes. Just don't make those ones.
- genwin 13y ago
  Yep. Frozen veggies with pesto is under 1 minute to get into the microwave. After heating, sprinkle on some cashews.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- geetee 13y ago
  It's true that many tasty meals can be rather quick. I used phrases like "it can be" and "a lot of dishes" specifically to avoid creating a false dichotomy. Sometimes I get bored of pan-seared salmon filet with sauce-of-the-week and microwave-steamed fresh broccoli. After the umpteenth time, I'm not deriving pleasure from the cooking process. The cook in bulk recommendation is front-loading a time commitment for the kind of freedom something like Soylent would permit without sacrificing part of your weekend. I cook in bulk every so often, but blow half my weekend every week? Not a chance.

1qaz2wsx3edc 13y ago

Cooking being enjoyable/rewarding is subjective. I could find it neither. Recipe for mental illness? One could argue the potential time-savings could prevent some illness(s). Maybe soylent-enfused-polyphasic-sleep-pomodoro-lifestyles suit the Hacker of Tomorrow. Devil's advocate aside, we need long term studies & regulation around these products. And, well, regulation should be up to your local government.

cgag 13y ago

I feel like people probably said this same sort of thing about making fires or washing clothes by hand. Cutting on sleep is bad I agree, but cooking doesn't feel like something worth thinking about on a regular basis.

bksenior 13y ago

Youre bias is substantially more harmful and ignorant than anything in soylent. This may be snake oil with protein, but the idea that someone is challenging a very deeply ingrained accepted truth (humans need food) creates a process that leads scientific progress and promotes at least an opportunity for innovation. Not to be harsh, but your diatribe is exactly the opposite of what HackerNews stands for. Your armchair quarterback position offers nothing That said I am passing on this until there is way more information.

Falling3 13y ago
>Not to be harsh, but your diatribe is exactly the opposite of what HackerNews stands for. Says who?

kstenerud 13y ago

In many places, people of a minimum level of affluence hire maids, cooks, and butlers to handle the day-to-day tasks involved in running a household. Finding alternative means to offload tasks you're not interested in doing is not a bad thing if it allows you to employ your time and resources more productively. Mental illness? Give me a break! Just because YOU don't like it doesn't mean that everyone else must meet your arbitrary standards.

fc2 13y ago

Totally man, we should go back to traveling by horse while we are at it.

pbreit 13y ago

I disagree pretty emphatically. Not having to cook every meal is just one benefit of the product. Other benefits include cost, weight level, mental acuity, stamina, skin. You could eat soylent 14 times a week and still make a nice meal every day. And in fact, the creator suggested that he enjoyed regular food meals even more after being on soylent.

onan_barbarian 13y ago

It's a long time back (1023 days, actually), and I can't find a reference to the article itself, but I do believe we had an article about how to take a poo by none other than Zed Shaw. At least I felt moved to comment thusly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1596830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1596830 I don't recall whether Zed was optimizing for speed or comfort.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

therandomguy 13y ago

You could say this about anything and everything. Walking 8 miles to work instead of driving, washing clothes by hand instead of using the washer, buying meat from the store instead of hunting etc.

snogglethorpe 13y ago

> ...and a tasty, gruel-free breakfast Hey, I love gruel! I just wish I had more time to make it...

philwelch 13y ago

> 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. As it happens, it's much healthier for your colon to squat and have a nice quick shit rather than sitting on the toilet and taking your time. Unfortunately, no one does this in some places because they don't really have squatting toilets.