7 ms·
Nutraloaf
- DanBC 13y agoThere are many single sources of nutrition that are cheaper than Soylent. Have a look at the WFP information here (https://www.wfp.org/nutrition/special-nutritional-products https://www.wfp.org/nutrition/special-nutritional-products) and here (http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/communications/wfp255508.pdf http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/co...) And the manufacturer page for some of these products here (http://www.dsm.com/corporate/home.html http://www.dsm.com/corporate/home.html) This report from IRIN shows the extreme need to lower costs with these foods - they're aiming at $4 per kg. (http://www.irinnews.org/report/83124/malawi-cheaper-recipe-for-treating-hungry-children http://www.irinnews.org/report/83124/malawi-cheaper-recipe-f...)
- freejack 13y agoWith apologies to the original... "You tell everybody. Listen to me. Hatcher. You've gotta tell 'em! SOYLENT IS MARKETING SPIN! We gotta stop them! Somehow! Listen! Listen to me… PLEASE!!!" I'm not judging and I wish the creators well - there's just not a lot of real new thinking in Soylent - most of its promise is just pure marketing, like most products I suppose ;-)
- DanBC 13y agoIt is remarkably effective marketing. We've been able to walk into any drugstore and buy equivalent products for many years, so for Soylent to generate the buzz they have is amazing. It's certainly a good thing to put on their resume.
- kirualex 13y agoSoylent success was not due to a Marketing campaign, but to one blog article that buzzed at the time (when Soylent was not even considered being marketed) : http://robrhinehart.com/?p=298 http://robrhinehart.com/?p=298 The Soylent compaign was launch purely because of its success, not the other way around.
- kirualex 13y agoThere are two types of foods I find depicted in those documents : - "Emergency" foods used to prevent malnutrition - Supplements in order to balance an unhealthy diet and/or reach individual needs It seems that these goals are completely different from the one of Soylent, which is to provide a food replacement altogether (meaning people will expect it to taste good, make them feel replenished and won't use it as part of a treatment).
- jacques_chester 13y agoThen buy a commercial MRP. There are cheap ones around.
- kirualex 13y agoMost of the MRP I found are ultra-high on protein and overall aimed toward muscle development. A comparison with Soylent (once its out) could be very interesting though.
- jacques_chester 13y agoIf you're eating at a deficit, high protein is good idea, actually. It helps preserve lean mass, which has important downstream health effects.
- kirualex 13y agoI'm not eating about any deficit eating, but normal eating. And high protein is not always a good idea. Everybody doesnt have the same needs. Also there can be long term effect, some of which are still being studied. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/high-protein-diets/AN00847 http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/high-protein-diets/AN00847
- DanBC 13y agoThere are a wide variety of meal replacement products. Some have high protein, others don't. Some have high calories, some have even higher calories, some don't. There is plenty of variety in the meal replacement product marketplace. Here are the brands made by one company (http://abbottnutrition.com/brands/abbott-brands http://abbottnutrition.com/brands/abbott-brands) - they cover just about anything you'd need.
- kitcar 13y agoSoylent is not a new concept - in hospitals it is a quite common need to provide patients with most / all their nutritional needs in liquid form. Off the top of my head, famous brands in the field of "meal replacements in liquid or powdered form" are Abbott Ensure ( http://ensure.com/products/ensure-powder http://ensure.com/products/ensure-powder ) and Nestle's Boost - ( http://www.boost.com/healthcare-professionals http://www.boost.com/healthcare-professionals ).
- asdasf 13y agoThose are more expensive though, not less.
- DanBC 13y agoThey're made by people who know what they're doing, in clean factories, with quality ingredients. I'm not surprised that products created by people who don't know what they're doing, in a kitchen, using god knows what ingredients, mixed in unsuitable ways, to be cheaper.
- asdasf 13y agoSoylent is made by people who know what they're doing, in clean factories, with quality ingredients. You seem to have a really deep emotional investment in strawmanning soylent, why is that?
- DanBC 13y agoWhere has all the product they've shipped so far been made, and by who?
- vinceguidry 13y agoThey have not shipped any product. They have shipped prototype mixtures to interested, unpaid volunteers that they have mixed in the kitchen, but no product.
- wingerlang 13y agoSlightly off topic. On the soylent funding-website it says you can 'buy' one weeks worth of soylent for $65, that's $260 for a month. Is this not an insanely high cost for a months worth of food? When I was living by myself I spend waaay less than this (although I was in Sweden if that matters) Or am I missing something.
- Retric 13y agoI spend about 700-1000$ on food a month because I don't like to cook or eat low quality food. If I swapped to a meal replacement a few days a week I would save quite a bit even at those prices. IMO, There may be a lot of ready to eat foods out there from soup to frozen food etc, but if you actually consider how much salt and preservatives are in most of them there really not healthy. Existing meal replacement shakes etc are heather, but tend to be focused on dieters vs direct meal replacement. So, IMO there is plenty of room for Soylent, but I fear there going to get the taste or nutrition wrong as it's a vary hard problem.
- rangibaby 13y agoWhat do you eat that costs that much? I spend ~¥25,000 ($250) a month on food for two people (not including eating out once a week or so) and that's making no special attempt to save money on food. We eat a lot of fresh veges, fish and meat.
- dagw 13y agoGiven that you eat out only once a week and buy lots of fresh veg and fish I take it you like to cook, which is exactly what the original poster claimed he wanted to avoid. How much do you think it would cost you to eat as well as you do now, but with almost all meals eaten at restaurants? I imagine that $1000 a month isn't too unreasonable.
- jacques_chester 13y agoWell if you're eating out a lot, you're getting bombarded with salt anyhow. Cooking is pretty simple, FWIW. With a slow cooker and a rice cooker you can pretty much eat as much as you want with 10 minutes of actual prep a day.
- neonhomer 13y agoMy question is why don't prisons ONLY serve nutraloaf? Probably healthier than the pink slime stuff they serve in public schools.
- kirualex 13y agoI saw that article a while back, it explains why : http://www.ireallylikefood.com/760978972/is-prison-food-torture/ http://www.ireallylikefood.com/760978972/is-prison-food-tort...
- sp332 13y ago"Pink slime" isn't served straight up. It's used as an extra-lean filler and generally isn't more than 25% of the food. It's made by extracting lean meat from low-grade trimmings like cartilege, and treated with citric acid or ammonia to kill bacteria.
- billybob255 13y agoThe prisoners would go crazy from the lack of variety. Nutraloaf sucks, and as bad as prison food is the same bland loaf of crap day in and day out will just make everyone angry. People aren't robots, and putting at least a little effort towards keeping prisoners from causing trouble is well worth it.
- jacques_chester 13y agoPlus, if it's the baseline, how do you use it for punishment?
- jacques_chester 13y agoHere's a cheap alternative from an actual dietian: http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/1jvsie/the_man_who_thinks_he_never_has_to_eat_again_is/cbj3120 http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/1jvsie/the_man_w... Spoiler: he doesn't think highly of either Soylent or its creator.
- kirualex 13y agoI don't think it's actually a safer alternative to base your diet on a reddit comment. Just saying.
- jacques_chester 13y ago... as opposed to a random blog post?
- kirualex 13y agoI don't think it can be considered as random once a whole million dollar compaign was launched around it (compared to a reddit comment I mean, whatever is written still means nothing till you have a product). And I kind of find Rhinehart post a little more detailed : http://robrhinehart.com/?p=424 http://robrhinehart.com/?p=424
- jacques_chester 13y ago> I don't think it can be considered as random once a whole million dollar compaign was launched around it. This is an argument for relying on existing products, which have development budgets in the tens of millions, decades of research and experience and dozens of dietitians and scientists working on perfecting them.
- jetru 13y agoI don't think it's actually a safer alternative to base your diet on a powdered formulation of anything. Just saying.
- deleted 13y ago
- manishsharan 13y agoLearn cooking ! Its a great way to unwind and take your mind off things. Get a COSCTO membership and a Pasta/Rice cooker. You will eat healthy, impress your dates. Nobody will remember or care about how you sacrificed your well-being/health to put in extra effort at work. Except your body and it will remind you of this as you grow older.
- mbrock 13y agoCooking is a stressor for many people. Sorry, can't go to the movies tonight, have to make lunch for tomorrow. No time to read books, have to shop, prep, cook and clean every evening after work. Food enthusiasts love it and are good at it and paint this idyllic picture of it all that's not really in sync with the daily reality for many people who work full time jobs and aren't particularly interested in cooking. Me, I do like to cook, but it takes a LOT of time, and I would love to have more time for other stuff without paying a fortune to eat out.
- dpapathanasiou 13y agoSoylent is amusing, but it ignores the fact that people take pleasure from eating food, a payoff which is hard-wired in our brains. No supplement, whatever its nutritional value, is going to be able to fill that need.
- clavalle 13y agoThe creator of Soylent addresses this. He says he now treats eating 'real food' like he does drinking alcohol -- an enhancement for social activity. I am curious to try Soylent or something like it just for that 'Oh, this is unusual! What a pleasure!' kind of effect when eating regular food.
- jacques_chester 13y agoAnother way to achieve this is to try different foods. You might also be interested in reading about "Mindfulness-Based Eating". It seems a bit woo-y to me but psych friends of my acquaintance say it shows promise.
- clavalle 13y agoI am lucky enough to live in a city with a large variety of food both from grocery stores and restaurants and I take advantage of that, perhaps too much. Even with all of that variety the closest I seem to come to mindfulness while eating is when I pay a lot or go out to eat with foodie friends (but I repeat myself). It comes from a very utilitarian approach to food that I've (perhaps foolishly) taken my whole life. Eat fast and get on with important work. That's probably another reason a Soylent type product appeals to me. I am curious about the book but trying to maintain mindfulness while eating every meal, frankly, seems like an extravagance. Of course, that is just a guess on the advice it contains based on the title.
- jacques_chester 13y agoOh, is there a book by that title? She just told me about the idea at some point; apparently it's an up and comer in the food / eating psychology world. Her research and therapeutic work is focused on eating disorders. I understand the utilitarian approach. I've done it myself. My current diet is goal-directed. But that doesn't mean I think I'm smarter or better than dietitians who read more than the abstracts on pubmed. I haven't entirely replaced food. I just have a dozen or so meals that I can make quickly, scale up or down, which have known macronutrient breakdowns and which I can rotate according to my daily whims and tastes.
- batemanesque 13y agoloving that some mod changed the headline from "A cheaper alternative to Soylent?" to "Nutraloaf", thereby removing the satire - wouldn't want to offend our investor overlords. of course, there's no record of the edit, & my name is still attached to the article. nice to see Paul Graham's as ethical & self-aware as ever.