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Soylent International
- DiabloD3 13y agoDoesn't sound very Paleo to me.
- schabernakk 13y agoI really like the idea but am hesitant at this early stage to buy soylent. If the general impression is still good after it has been on the market for quite a while I am pretty sure I will order. I don't think I could switch completely, but it sounds like the perfect food to have when you just don't want to invest time to cook something. This would definately be better than to just have a pizza.
- jgrahamc 13y agoI'd be interested in seeing a comparison of Soylent against Ensure Complete. They seem to be very similar in intent: http://ensure.com/products/ensure-complete-shakes http://ensure.com/products/ensure-complete-shakes and based on the nutrition information for Ensure Complete from that page and the rough description of Soylent (http://robrhinehart.com/?p=424 http://robrhinehart.com/?p=424) I do not see a major difference. It would appear that to get the same nutrients as Soylent I would need to drink 4 bottles of Ensure Complete per day. From the Abbott store they are $41.99 for 16 bottles: a week's supply works out at $73.48. Very close to Soylent pricing. What makes Soylent better?
- scott_karana 13y agoLooking at Ensure, I don't get the impression that you're supposed to be able to live entirely on it. It looks more like a meal substitute (liquid nutrition bar) than a food substitute.
- uncoder0 13y agoFrom the Ensure FAQ @ http://ensure.ca/en/faq/ http://ensure.ca/en/faq/ " >For how long can I use Ensure? Ensure products deliver complete and balanced nutrition that is always beneficial. There is no time limit to using Ensure products. In fact, long-term use is encouraged if you’re at a nutritional risk (for example, if you’re an older adult). >Can Ensure replace a meal? Yes. Ensure products are complete and balanced, when used in appropriate amounts they can be used to replace meals. " I believe it is also used in hospitals with a feeding tube for long term sustenance however, I'm not finding a great source for that with a quick google.
- jjoonathan 13y agoWell, here's a source for that (they use it in Guantanamo): http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/04/29/3370916/more-navy-medics-arrive-at-guantanamo.html http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/04/29/3370916/more-navy-medi...
- kefs 13y agoI wonder how the creator of Ensure (or Soylent) would feel knowing that they're products were being used in this way..
- DanBC 13y agoThe creator of Ensure know that the products are used for force-feeding. It happens with anorexics all the time. EDIT: But kefs makes a good point; you think you're making food and then you find out it's being used for something that you strongly disagree with. what do you do? Take the money? Or don't sell to certain markets?
- jckt 13y agoI doubt they really care about HN's opinion given the vast number of criticisms put forward, but I do really hope that they'd post more product information, perhaps more of the science, more of the research. Again, as I've said before, hiring a few more relevant scientists would help with their credibility, and might it be possible? -- improve their product. That is all. May there be no more flamewars. (Granted, I've stopped following this story, so my information might be way out of date)
- jljljl 13y agoI believe in a previously shared blog post, the founder mentioned that he was planning a "large-scale controlled trial". However, I haven't seen any additional details about these plans. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5815108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5815108
- schabernakk 13y agoI just skimmed through their discussion board for a while, and it seems they are planning to employ a couple of industry experts (whatever that means) fulltime or for consultation with the money they made from their crowdfunding campaign.
- t0 13y agoDoesn't this require monitoring of blood levels? How could an average person order it and know they're healthy?
- troels 13y agoWhy on earth would they name their company/product that? Or am I just missing the joke here?
- tasuki 13y agoNot impressed. I manage to eat a healthy (and tasty) diet cheaper than that, while spending minimal amount of my time in the kitchen. Vegetables steamed in the microwave take less than 5 minutes to prepare. (More on my eating habits: http://blog.tasuki.org/how-i-didnt-stop-eating-food/ http://blog.tasuki.org/how-i-didnt-stop-eating-food/) I think eating only Soylent exposes you to a significant risk of missing something vital that we usually get incidentally from regular food.
- zeroexzeroone 13y agoI agree. I buy local from the farmer's market and I buy raw and fresh, I have lost more weight just eating like a caveman than any fad diet has done for any of my co-workers or friends. The following is ideal for me: 1. raw/fresh food 2. general fitness every day 3. intermittent fasting once or twice a week Food has a lasting effect on the body, some of which science is yet to understand, I'll stick with what I can hunt and pick from the wild.
- aroch 13y ago>Scrambled eggs are pushing it, preparation takes like 15 minutes and there’s the dirty pan left afterwards. But sometimes I still enjoy them. How the hell does it take 15mins to prep scrambled eggs? It should take less than 5 and your cleanup should take all of a minute 1. Put Small/medium saucepan on stove 2. Add 1/2 Tbsp butter 3. Crack 2 eggs into pan (Do no beat beforehand) 4. Put pan on mid-low flame and stir briskly for 2-3mins or until eggs are at a runny-curds texture (soft but "together"). 5. Plate
- jack-r-abbit 13y agoSome people prefer a few other things in their eggs. So if you need to chop some onion or peppers or meat that will add to the prep and the clean up.
- aroch 13y agoGiven OP's other "recipes" it seems unlikely that this is the case. Even if it were, it'd hardly add another 10minutes
- tokenadult 13y agoThis is perhaps the worst example of people who learn their science and medicine from reading Reddit that I have yet seen in the Hacker News community. It illustrates the fallibility of human nature behind every new business scheme, and shows that a business doesn't have to be a big, multinational publicly traded corporation to engage in business with little regard for customer safety or public benefit. AFTER EDIT: I have read the numerous stories submitted here about this YC-affiliated company before, and, yes, I am painfully aware of the company founder's appalling lack of background in nutrition and medicine. http://blog.soylent.me/post/51007573199/the-biggest-pivot-in-yc-history http://blog.soylent.me/post/51007573199/the-biggest-pivot-in...
- jamesaguilar 13y agoYeah, I'm pretty sure that you don't actually know where this guy learned his science and medicine. Let people experiment on themselves. IMO there are enough humans that if a few get slightly ill from this, it is worth it for the chance that it does work (which seems significant given the experimentation he did on himself, the presence of similar, competing products, etc.).
- jessedhillon 13y agoI agree with the first part of your comment. But let's not play up his self-experimentation as anything more than whimsical. His result are not significant in any way. Ffs he has been on it for how long? Months? Maybe a year? And n=1 as well.
- jamesaguilar 13y agoRight, for me "chance that this does work" is valued somewhere around 5-25% right now. It is worth that chance for more people to try it and really see.
- MDS100 13y agoHis research is terrible. He is missing several key ingredients.
- ChikkaChiChi 13y agoI was interested when it was one guy on a mission for himself. I've become less so now that its clear he wanted to go worldwide with this as soon as possible. I do not wish the project ill will, but I won't be signing on at this time unless things (re: testing) get a lot more transparent.
- ctdonath 13y agoWhen huge numbers of people take intense interest in your hobby and keep shouting "shut up and take my money!", to the tune of millions of dollars, it kinda motivates you to go worldwide with it as soon as possible. You know, what ycombinator is all about.
- ChikkaChiChi 13y agoI never thought about it that way...
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- tocomment 13y agoSo they're not shipping to the US or am I reading it wrong?
- Afforess 13y agoThey were always shipping to the US. They are adding international locations.
- yellowapple 13y agoIs it people?
- superkamiguru 13y agoI'm not liking how they are going about this at all. They should ensure it is safe first before trying to sell everywhere. I don't like the perception of their intents.
- Afforess 13y agoAnd you need money to do that. Or is crowdfunding now not cool?
- superkamiguru 13y agoThey aren't crowdfunding with the intent of verifying the safety of their product. They are just crowdfunding to make ample amount of product to start the cycle of selling. The fact that they already have anticipated shipping dates shows that verifying the use of this product from a health standpoint is secondary to their goals. Why soylent has intrigued me since this first started out. The way they are going about everything makes it feel so much like snake oil...
- axefrog 13y agoHow the heck are people enthusiastic about this? Are there really that many people that take no enjoyment from the flavours, colours, textures and smells of the food they eat? And that's not to mention the fact that the body craves variety, the need for which it manifests by making you feel sick of eating the same thing over and over again.
- Afforess 13y agoYep. I hate cooking, and honestly I end up eating like the same exact 5 meals every week. Apparently there are $500000 worth of us, so there's a market.
- zxcdw 13y agoCare to cite how the body makes one feel sick for eating the same again and again granted that the food delivers required nutrients with no deficiencies? I have no personal experience nor have I ever heard of this occuring, although I have never heard of someone actually following such a diet either.
- nostromo 13y agoI just can't get over the name. If someone tells you, "hey, the cook spit in your food" -- it doesn't matter if the cook actually did, you're going to be grossed out by the food because you're in an icky state of mind. So, while I know Soylent is not made out of people, it just makes the product less appetizing than it would otherwise be. However, maybe this is just a problem for people who dig old scifi.
- jack-r-abbit 13y agoSoylent Green was made from people. Soylent Red and Soylent Yellow were not. This is Soylent Grey if that makes you feel better. lol
- olgeni 13y agoNot sure how anybody could actually survive without a balanced diet of hot dogs and pretzels.
- mapt 13y agoHere's how you create a Soylent without losing the DIY aesthetic: 1) You make it an open source project under an open license, OpenSoylent 2) You leave any health claims to be made by the OpenSoylent community. If this is unsatisfactory, you put out a bounty for MetaMed to write an independent report on the OpenSoylent wiki with references. 3) You accept people's patches to OpenSoylent 4) You create a separate, unaffilliated company to provide Soylent(tm), an implementation of OpenSoylent, with zero health claims, in a commercial kitchen, and link back to the OpenSoylent wiki for more information Whether the above is legal or not, I'm not certain, but A) it's a hell of a lot closer than the present situation, and B) it doesn't offend geeks who apply critical thought to businesses that blog.
- brownbat 13y agoI'd really get behind an Open Soylent project. More power to Soylent to monetize this, become a business just like Ensure or Slim Fast (succumbing to all the commercial pressures such products face, like, "Y'know, let's drop pricey molybdenum and just encourage people to have normal food once a day.") I guess I was way more excited about the project when I thought he was starting a discussion where we can all pool information on self experimentation to help each other generate a cheap, nutritionally complete chemical sludge.
- mixmastamyk 13y agoI wish the guys at soylent well. But, please get a nutritionist on staff so we don't have to listen to the same complaints every time. Also, I think the difficulty in preparing food part is overblown. Haven't any of these guys heard of Trader Joe's?
- DanBC 13y agoSoylent have mentioned world hunger. Here's how the World Food Programme tackle it: (https://www.wfp.org/nutrition/how-wfp-fights-malnutrition https://www.wfp.org/nutrition/how-wfp-fights-malnutrition) Here's the list of WFP food products (https://www.wfp.org/nutrition/special-nutritional-products https://www.wfp.org/nutrition/special-nutritional-products) - especially look at the price. I guess they're making full use of charitable status and economies of scale. Here's Plumpy'Nut, a fortified food product for starving children (http://www.irinnews.org/report/83124/malawi-cheaper-recipe-for-treating-hungry-children http://www.irinnews.org/report/83124/malawi-cheaper-recipe-f...) EDIT: And even here micronutrient powders are nothing new. See the link to DSM embedded in WFP page above. Here's their corporate page (http://www.dsm.com/corporate/investors.html http://www.dsm.com/corporate/investors.html). They're pretty big. Note that an important part of Soylent, which is offloaded onto the consumer, is a source of clean water. Much of the world, especially in the target hungry world market, does not have access to clean water. I think people would criticise Soylent for that, so it's something for them to be thinking about. I have no idea how Soylent is in anyway "disruptive" to that market. Ignoring the "fixing world hunger" bit, liquid foods are not new. Here's a list: (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 Again - I have no idea how Soylent are disruptive. Selling into other markets is interesting. I hope they've put disclaimers on some of the more outrageous claims, or they may find resistance. For example "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." contains medical claims which are treated very differently in the UK than they are in the US. I see no evidence that Soylent have done any research at all.
- mdisraeli 13y agoI've checked with someone in the industry[1], and yes, Soylent would be required to be regulated by the FDA and the like. [1] Conflict of interest, as they work for a potential competitor in the market. However they come from a medical background, and put patient health first. Surprising exactly how important nutrition is, actually!