20 ms·

Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks

341 points by rjsamson 13y ago

graeme 13y ago
I just posted this to Tim's Blog: --------------------- It seems probable that soylent is better than much of the manufactured food on the market. It also seems unlikely that soylent is better than quality whole food. I take Nassim Taleb's approach. We don’t know what we don’t know about food. I’d like to address two of Shane’s points. I'm listing the objections Shane raises, then his reply: Shane's first point: Objection: The body needs whole foods, not atomic nutrients; the synergy between diverse ingredients is what matters in nutritional uptake. Shane's reply –> This sounds nice, but has not been scientifically proven. (Shane links to the naturalistic fallacy) My reply: It’s true that nature doesn’t prove something is good. We can nonetheless have a strong presumption that the body does best on whole foods. We have thousands of years of history of humans doing well on whole foods, and zero evidence that the human body can do as well on artificial foods. Nassim Taleb would tell us there is a presumption in favour of natural system that has stood the test of time. Human biology is very, very complex. If whole foods serve it well, they may do so for reasons we can fathom. One problem for Soylent is that it would have to prove itself safe on the timescale of a human lifetime. That’s very, very hard to do. Shane’s second point Objection: We don’t know what we don’t know about nutrition (i.e. Soylent might be unexpectedly harmful). Shane's reply —> That’s not a good reason to not try to innovate. Why not do some tests? My reply: See my point above. How can you test that Soylent is better than whole foods? There is a massive potential for false positives. With natural foods, if something seems effective, it probably is. We would have discovered poisonous or second order effects long ago. With an artificial food like soylent, it could appear effective for, say, ten years, while introducing a variety of malignant effects. Or maybe it is totally healthy. I have no idea. How can we know? You can’t prove a good is safe without using it for a long, long time. That said, I would expect soylent to be better than a diet of pure artificial junk food, as many americans eat. They’re also engineered foods, but in that case we can positively identify the harm. One additional problem of soylent: the designers assume we need a steady inejection of the same macronutrients every time we eat. We know positively that this is false. Bodybuilders have long known that carbohydrates are more effective after a workout. As with increased protein after a workout.
- bsbechtel 13y ago
  >That’s not a good reason to not try to innovate. Innovation only really works if you're solving a problem. I don't really see much of a problem with our food/nutrition system as is. Yes, there are parts of the world where people are starving, so maybe there is an application for this there, but if the aim is to test this product out in the Bay Area, I don't really see it going anywhere. I could be wrong, but that's my 2 cents.
  - nbouscal 13y ago
    You may not see a problem, but over 10,000 backers (myself included) do. I'd be happy to go into more detail about why if you would like.
    - krrrh 13y ago
      I'm curious. Specifically about what you think Soylent offers that the wide variety of MRPs rhat have been on the market dor decades don't. Is it the concept of literally replacing all of your meals? To me it seems that there are dozens of existing MRPs that beat Soylent on price, flavor, and quality. But I have rarely seen any manufacturer claim that you can replace every meal with their product, and when they do its been controversial, and only suggested for limited times while convalescing or cutting. What's the appeal?
      - nbouscal 13y ago
        The main difference for me between Soylent and the other options on the market is the specific goals of the products. There are a variety of other options, but as you said, the majority aren't intended as replacements for your entire diet (those ones also tend to beat Soylent on flavor only by being chock full of sugar). There are a few that are complete diet replacements, mostly used for medical purposes, but the fact that they're designed for patients who can't eat means that there is a lot of room for improvement given Soylent's different target market. To be more concise, Soylent is specifically designed to be used as I intend to use it, and none of the other products are. That said, I don't intend to replace all of my meals. Eating is often more for social reasons than it is for nutritive ones, and in some cases I'll still be happy to eat conventional food for that reason. I expect to replace most of my meals, but I don't plan to swear off conventional food entirely. Maybe once or twice a week I'll have lunch or dinner with friends.
lingben 13y ago
More pseudo-science from Tim. Sigh.
- graeme 13y ago
  Did you read Tim's comments at the bottom? He's hardly endorsing Soylent. From the post: ------------------ Among the Soylent claims Shane outlined, there are the below. I’ve added my comments: Soylent provides all the energy and nutrients the body needs. [TIM: I'm not convinced Soylent can prove this.] The body can absorb all the nutrients Soylent provides. [TIM: I'm not convinced Soylent can prove this.] Soylent makes one more alert. [TIM: If measured, this could potentially be demonstrated.] Soylent can help people cut fat and maintain good body weight. [TIM: Be wary of any structure or function claims. Reword.] Soylent saves time and money. [TIM: Provable compared to another defined group (e.g. eating at Chipotle), but not across the board.] And at the end of the day: Soylent isn’t dangerous. [TIM: I'm not convinced Soylent can prove this. Where are the data? Safe for how long?]
  - anigbrowl 13y ago
    No, he's just featuring it on his blog to draw traffic. It's the equivalent of the mainstream media staple 'Could X help you lose weight, avoid cancer, and enjoy better sex?'
    - graeme 13y ago
      I don't understand your criticism. Virtually every post that hits the HN front page was designed to draw traffic. If you've followed Tim Ferriss, it's clear this is something he'd be interested in. His first company was a sports supplement manufacturer, and he's written two books that touch on nutrition. I don't see this as a shallow post aimed at promoting a product. Did you even read it?
      - anigbrowl 13y ago
        I don't see this as a shallow post aimed at promoting a product. Did you even read it? Not what I said, and yes I did. I know why he'd be interested in it, or more to the point I know why his readership would. Having someone else do the (unscientific) experiment pulls all the traffic while allowing TF to look objective without investing anything. It's shallow in that (as shown above) the medical claims made are quite meaningless. http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
cup 13y ago
Soylent aside, im amazed at how terrible his traditional normal days meal is? I mean hes eating a processed breakfast subsitute in the morning, take away mexican food with a soft drink for lunch and more take away for dinner. You don't need to be a nutritionist to know thats going to have a terrible impact on his life later down the track. Postnote: Now that Ive read the whole article, I wonder if all the benefits he attributes to Soylent could actually be attributed to cutting so much crap out of his diet?
- tocomment 13y ago
  Is a protien shake for breakfast really that bad? I have not been able to find a breakfast food that's quick, tastes ok, and isn't high in carbs.
  - oftenwrong 13y ago
    Is your definition of "breakfast food" too narrow? Any food can be a breakfast food.
  - joering2 13y ago
    This is a good summary from someone credible (IMO): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExyNf3u7iQg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExyNf3u7iQg
  - katbyte 13y ago
    I for a while had this http://myvega.com/product/vega-one-nutritional-shake/ http://myvega.com/product/vega-one-nutritional-shake/ every morning for a while and i rather enjoyed the berry flavor after a few days. However it isn't exactly cheap.
  - jimbokun 13y ago
    How about a banana?
    - foobarbazqux 13y ago
      Bananas are mostly carbs. In Africa, plantains and bananas provide over 25% of carbohydrate requirements for 70 million people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantain_%28cooking%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantain_%28cooking%29
alphaoverlord 13y ago
I'm all for people having the freedom to eat whatever they want and I really like the quantified self aspect of seeing how diet affects how they feel and metrics of health, but I have to say the author grossly does not understand the medical tests he had done and misinterprets the data. I'm not going to comment on the drink, but rather on his misunderstanding of medicine. First, EGFR is not "Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor", rather is it estimated glomerular filtration rate, which is a metric of kidney function and is derived entirely from age, sex, and Cr. Second, all his labs are normal, well within the range of normal and stay normal after two weeks. There is normal daily fluctuation (for example, my Cr will probably go from 1 to 1.2 just by not drinking water for a day) which the labs show. All the changes he mention in his metabolic panel does not even register to me as changes and most likely would happen had he ate a regular diet. Third, the body is a powerfully homeostatic system, even had he not ate for two weeks, most of the labs he got would stay the same. Recently, on HN there was the article of the guy who didn't eat for a year - his BMP would have been similar. The only potentially reasonable medical test to get would have been the lipid panel, which stayed grossly the same. Finally, a DEXA scan is really silly in this scenario. It's for old ladies and others at risk for osteoporosis. Your bones are a large of reservoir that it wouldn't put a dent on your Ca levels even if you had no Ca for two weeks, and even if it did, it would not show up as a meaningful change on a DEXA scan.
- ekianjo 13y ago
  > First, EGFR is not "Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor" I LOLed at that one. He clearly didn't get the acronym and went for one of the cancer mutation indicator seen in several lung cancers.
  - typicalrunt 13y ago
    Even funnier, the first sentence in the Wikipedia entry for EGFR states: This article is about a cell surface receptor. For estimated measure of kidney function (eGFR), see Glomerular filtration rate. The author could have taken a few minutes to research both the EGFR for cell surface receptor and the kidney function measure and come to a reasonably good conclusion as to which one is used on the lab tests. Instead...
ekianjo 13y ago
You don't just do a test for 2 weeks and expect to find something significant out of it. Go for one year, 2 years and then let's find out what really happens then.
- zobzu 13y ago
  eating right shows visible results in a week (ie physical change and mental changes), every time - IMO thats significant. 2 years shows if this is sustainable/etc. note: i'm not saying solyent is eating right. its hard to define what eating right is, but basically no soda, no processed foods (well, solyent sort of is:P), etc.
  - ekianjo 13y ago
    As said somewhere else this does not prove anything. This could just happening as well if you fast. People fasting for a couple of weeks have reported better mental abilities as well. Nothing of what was written is unheard of, and besides you have to realize there is a placebo effect since the guy knows he is going to take Soylent and expects something out of it (even if he does not realize it himself). Placebo effect can be extremely powerful. So this kind of first hand report has close to zero credibility.
- __xtrimsky 13y ago
  you die.
tsumnia 13y ago
I'm still reading this, but this paragraph just made me incredibly frustrated: "...The white stuff that was mixed into the tan stuff was floating to the top and congealing together... So I just started just scooping them out... I’m pretty sure the white chunks were the rice protein, and perhaps something else important." You're the first review of Soylent, and you throwing away blobs because ...? It looked icky? This is a meal replacement focused on giving you exactly what your body needs, and it just seems like a terrible move to throw 'what your body needs' away.
- ohWhatever 13y ago
  Yeah, but so what? I mean, consider how much that honestly could have amounted to. 100 calories, distributed across 10 grams of nutrients per shake? He still drank a shake, and at no point does he claim to have reformulated the mix by adding to it, or deliberately attempting to chemically alter it, or switch to different products. Anyway, human nutrition must be capable of tolerating human error and envionmental hazards. It's not like this is some kind of a high-powered pharmaceutical. If anything, there should be room for that kind of error, because an inability to tolerate mistakes would actually be worse when it comes to food. You really don't want a casual fumble to cascade into some unforgivable and horrific, punishing mistake. You want to have some flexibility for spills, or maybe drinking an extra shake here and there, if you skipped dinner and breakfast one friday night/saturday morning. If this behavior actually did introduce augmented outcomes, then consider this an important caveat of the product. This means it's sensitive to specific mixing habits, and is prone to user error. This would be an important detail to shake out during trials. If the powder settles oddly during shipping, or mixes unevenly, and demands thorough mechanized blending, those are important instructions to communicate explicitly. Otherwise, if a bag lasts two weeks, and all the fine particles of vitamin powder settles at the bottom, leaving the fiber at the top, and you don't mix and shake the bag, it might take you a week to reach the bottom of the bag, and you'll inadvertantly be overdosing yourself with fiber one week and vitamins the next, when you try to finish off the bag.
  - jcrites 13y ago
    The loss of those blobs may have been more than just calories. The blobs, of a composition such that they accumulate at the top in this way, may have been /all of/ some particular nutrients in the mix. I'm just speculating, but when consuming Soylent I would assume that one needs to eat all of it (or rather, all of the dose, if that's the right term).
russellallen 13y ago
I enjoy eating more than I enjoy most other things I do, so saving time by not eating in order to spend more time doing other stuff doesn't really appeal... Oh well. I guess there must be people out there who spend all their time doing things more fascinating and enjoyable than eating a tasty meal.
jerf 13y ago
“Last night I had a dream that I ate a brownie, and halfway through the brownie realized that I was only supposed to be eating Soylent for the next two weeks.” I'm 35, and I've known I have Celiac disease for about five years now. I still have that dream about every month or two, excepting of course that I realize I'm going to be very sick instead of being supposed to eat/drink/consume only Soylent.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
malbs 13y ago
The guy claim himself to be a "mildly out of shape 28 year old", and then state: "I consider myself a pretty health-conscious person. No alcohol. No meat. Slow-carbs when possible. Run three miles, three times a week. Pull-ups, push-ups on the days I don’t run" which indicates he's more active than 90% of the population (I just made that stat up) I was irritated from that point on-wards.
- tsax 13y ago
  Yeah no meat! That makes me so healthy! Oh look at me!
- graeme 13y ago
  You can do all that and be 'mildly out of shape'. It depends on what your model is. Compared to the average person, he's more fit, but the average person is rather unfit, so it's a poor comparison. I think 'out of shape' out to be an objective measure, not a relative measure.
  - ars_technician 13y ago
    >I think 'out of shape' out to be an objective And you would be wrong. It's completely subjective. There is no quantifiable definition of 'in shape' other than fat %.
    - caw 13y ago
      I'm pretty sure there's some more objective measures, like mile run times. There's charts for how long it should take you. There should be some more standard benchmarks for other activities. I'd also like to suggest it's possible to be "mildly out of shape" and active. For example, if he was "out of shape" and recently started working out. On the subjective lines, it's possible to be out of shape for certain activities due to the musculature you've built for the activities you do frequently. If all you do is bench weights, you'd be out of shape when you go to run a mile. I'm like 8-10% body fat if I calculate it (electronic things say about 13%), would you consider me "in shape"? I wouldn't, not in any sort of normal means (running, lifting weights, whatever else).
damian2000 13y ago
How different is Soylent from some existing protein shake products (eg. muscle milk)? these also contain fats, carbs, protein and vitamins.
- jimbokun 13y ago
  What's the benefit of Muscle Milk over the same amount of Cow Milk? Is there some science demonstrating Muscle Milk is better?
  - damian2000 13y ago
    I believe muscle milk doesn't contain lactose. So I suppose soy milk might be equivalent to muscle milk.
    - platz 13y ago
      muscle milk isn't milk
Reventon 13y ago
With the plethora of well known and well researched meal replacement solutions out there, why is Soylent getting so much attention?
- juskrey 13y ago
  It is not getting much attention. It is you reading too much hacker news.
- KingdomSprite 13y ago
  Soylent is affordable. Many other complete food supplements which are primarily used by hospitals and other care facilities, will cost significantly more. Other than that, it's a "fun" experiment as it has not been clinically proven to be either healthful or harmful, though the ingredients are FDA approved.
  - curuinor 13y ago
    Soylent is $65 for 21 meals Jevity is $40 for a case of 24 cans http://www.amazon.com/Jevity-1-2-Cal-8-oz-case/dp/B002HQMBZM/ref=sr_1_22?s=hpc&ie=UTF8&qid=1377058675&sr=1-22&keywords=jevity http://www.amazon.com/Jevity-1-2-Cal-8-oz-case/dp/B002HQMBZM...
    - hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
      To be fair, I believe you wouldn't have an entire diet based only on Jevity, while that's their goal for Soylent.
- pbreit 13y ago
  Can you name 2 or 3 (1?) that are marketed for 15-20 meals per week? Ensure Complete (but not any other versions of Ensure) is sorta close but marketed as a supplement.
  - hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
    None are marketed for 15-20 meals because the manufacturers know it's not feasible. It's quite different with fundraising, where you can claim whatever you want since it's all still fantasy.
sirsar 13y ago
I have a big problem with the "you might miss unknown-to-science micronutrients" argument. If that's the case with Soylent, it should also be the case for the average person's diet, which is far from optimal. I'd rather get all my protein, fat, carbs, vitamins, etc and potentially miss an unknown nutrient than eat what I currently do.
- hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
  > I have a big problem with the "you might miss unknown-to-science micronutrients" argument. If that's the case with Soylent, it should also be the case for the average person's diet (...) And it is the case. But because most people vary their diets, the deficiencies are not so severe. For instance, most diets lack magnesium, but on average, people also rarely go long periods without eating something like fish or sea food, which provide a good amount in one meal and keep the person above dysfunctional levels for some more time (it will still be a problem later in life). This is why restrictive diets (vegetarian, vegan, zero-[something]) and other fads should never be taken lightly. Nutritional deficiencies compound over time and wreck havoc on your body. That includes concoctions like Soylent (and even the ones used on patients in critical condition, which cost way more, are more complete, and still are not advertised as perfect meal replacements).
  - enscr 13y ago
    Are you saying that vegetarian diet is a fad. You need to step out from underneath that rock.
    - hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
      "restrictive diets AND other fads".
FrankBlack 13y ago
He didn't stop eating. He stopped chewing.
- pertinhower 13y ago
  Thank you. I was a bit confused by that myself. Why say you're not eating when you've just changed what you're eating? Shock value maybe? Helping to make the whole expedition feel more important?
mathattack 13y ago
He lost weight, but his body fat % went up. D'oh! Seems like a lot of water loss. And losing 3% of your dry (muscle) mass seems worrying, especially since he got enough protein. Perhaps these measurements aren't very specific?
reillyse 13y ago
First time I've read the whole way through a blog post in a long long time. Nice writing!
deathanatos 13y ago
Has anyone considered the cultural implications of something like this? Meals, to me, are not just about eating — they offer a valuable break in the day to interact with people. I'm not sure that'll be the same if we're all eating grey goo. (Just stick a needle in me then…) The meal can often be a source of conversation — at least, if it isn't the same thing, every day. I'm thinking co-workers, and going to lunch: will soylent-users decline invites for lunch, because they have their grey goo? (They could potentially bring it with them, but wasn't the whole point to be lazy?) I also, on occasion, find cooking to be a good way to de-stress. I get to make something that nobody else will ever care about. (My SO just loves that I made something, so in a sense, I'm fulfilling the soylent's "too lazy to cook" … but my way is tastier.) I get to snack (I regularly sample the (safe!) raw ingredients, the partially cooked meal…). I get time to just think to myself. Eating the same thing every day would be depressing. Mouse said it well: > Dozer: It's a single cell protein combined with synthetic aminos, vitamins, and minerals. Everything the body needs. > Mouse: It doesn't have everything the body needs. (I'm also of the mindset that cooking isn't hard. Boiling water can make a lot of things, requires little oversight, and is dead simple. And oh so much tastier. That said, I know someone who would sign up for something like this…)
- __--__ 13y ago
  they offer a valuable break in the day to interact with people. I laughed when I read this. I'm an introvert, so meals offer me a valuable break in the day to NOT interact with people. :)
krallja 13y ago
Cutting caffeine probably caused the big changes in heart rate.
jyu 13y ago
Soylent is quickly becoming a great case study on marketing and human behavior. These guys have definitely hit on something people want. However, I do not have confidence that this team can deliver on Soylent's promises. There are many other reasons to be skeptical of Soylent, even from a cursory read on Wikipedia, the website, and Kickstarter page. First, the diet has caused Rob Rhinehart anemia, tachylcardia, arrhythmia, and joint pain from taking Soylent (from Wikipedia, Economist article). While the formula has changed since, do you trust a diet that only months ago caused the creator serious health ailments? Secondly, even if Rob Rhinehart has no nutrition background, and neither does anyone else on the Soylent team. I would expect someone on the team that knows something about nutrition. Looking on the website the Soylent team includes no mention of a nutritionist or dietician or foods manufacturing expert; key people in developing a new meal replacement product. Thirdly, anything to do with creating a new, stand alone meal replacement product requires someone know about the foods business or operations or something along those lines. It is not clear that their current team understands how far you can go with marketing claims, how to test medical claims, nutrient interactions, etc. This is not the first time people have been skeptical of Soylent, and certainly not the last. There are so many red flags from just a quick search and gut checking against their claims that I would definitely not recommend it to anyone I know, let alone trying it out myself.
c0rtex 13y ago
It would be very exciting to see some long-term study results on this. Also: Q: As long as we're food hacking, why not open-source it and post it on GitHub? A: It's a liquid. You can't fork it. But seriously, the open-source version of this could be the nutritional version of the OLPC.
- gnoway 13y ago
  see discourse.soylent.me. This is more or less happening already.
Semiapies 13y ago
If this is something someone could live on, why does this guy's experience eating it sound exactly like a fast?
zekenie 13y ago
Even with all the data he's recorded, you just can't draw any sort of conclusions from this. The diet's effects on health can take years to take effect. Just because his standard blood panels are normal for two weeks doesn't mean it isn't causing problems. Specifically, the bioavailibility of the supplements in soylent may not be high. I think it could be really dangerous to eat this stuff as your primary source of food for a long period of time. Eating it from time to time, though, could be convenient and nutritious.
siculars 13y ago
What I get out of this and, by proxy, a lot of successful crowd funding is that it is a market validator. This guy will no doubt make some money on selling Soylent, but what will also happen is that a large multinational will swoop in with more credible competition.
curuinor 13y ago
This is all a bit silly. Here's an advertisement for a bunch of full meal replacements for people of normal health or crappier: http://www.abbottnutrition.ca/static/cms_workspace/en_CA/content/document/DIR134A08.pdf http://www.abbottnutrition.ca/static/cms_workspace/en_CA/con... As you can see, they've been on the market for decades, and people have been using them as sole-source nutrition for decades.
- sirsar 13y ago
  Unless Amazon is really overpriced, it seems 1500 calories of Ensure Regular is $36, while 2400 calories of Soylent is $9
secstate 13y ago
When are people going to start appreciating the biology of the human species for the miracle that it is? I'm not talking faith-based logic here ... but consider for a moment that the placebo effect exists. That's it. Game over for nutrition science. You can convince someone's mind to change physical attributes of their body using psychology. Who's to say this guy's brain wasn't really excited about the prospect of a new diet that he was told by a really smart dude was going to make him more productive and healthier? Hook, line, sinker. This also doesn't address any of the social rituals associated with food. Personally, for me, breakfast is the only meal that is removable, but that's because I'm not a morning person. I telecommute and have a family. Sitting down to lunch with my kids and wife (or just wife, joy when the kiddos are in school), is a great break in my day. And dinner ... don't even get me started. I love sitting down to dinner. Makes me really just feel sorry for single folks whose lives revolve around productivity to such an extent.
dinkumthinkum 13y ago
So, I see a lot of people excited about this Soylent stuff here and that's great but to those that actually excited by this and are very interested in replacing all your meals and "don't understand what the big deal is about food, other than the not dying part" ... do you all expect anyone to take you seriously as human beings? I mean that in the most sincere way possible. It just looks so ridiculous and honestly, somewhat pretentious: "Oh I would never waste my time with food." Maybe I'm the crazy one.
theboss 13y ago
This soylent discussion that I constantly see on HN is what happens when computer nerds who know nothing about nutrition (and a couple who do) talk about health. This guy is going to make a ton of money but I think that people should be thinking, "Do I really want to live a life where I don't have time for food or I don't enjoy preparing and eating it". Personally I think it is kind of sad and hope in the future that 'Eating' doesn't become what 'face-to-face communication' or 'playing outside' has become today.....
chmike 13y ago
Ask author: did you kept regular "eating" times or did you sip here and there from the bottle ? How did the eating time socialization worked out ? Did you zap them ? How would you explain the fact that you seamed intellectually more alert ? Do you think it can only be the food ? Or could the fitness you did contribute to it ?
saejox 13y ago
I will never understand why would anyone eat the same food everyday. Eating is fun, more fun than anything i know of.
- peterwwillis 13y ago
  > Eating is fun, more fun than anything i know of. I think you're doing sex wrong.
stiff 13y ago
It's very, very naive to think that you can simply put all the recommended dosages of vitamins and macro-/micro- elements into a single shake and have it fulfil all the nutritional needs. You need enzymes to digest food, specific enzymes and specific chemical conditions for absorbing specific nutrients, and you can not intake all nutrients from a single portion of food because, well, physics happens. There is a fundamental need of the human body for variety in food intake. You can get some idea of how complicated this gets from reading papers on some commonly known patterns of nutrient interaction, like copper+zinc: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3625315 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3625315 http://jn.nutrition.org/content/130/5/1378S.full http://jn.nutrition.org/content/130/5/1378S.full
bparsons 13y ago
Most people's diets are horrible. It is really hard to eat anything even close to balanced-- especially if you eat out at different restaurants quite often. So, even if these guys don't really know what they are doing, even someone with the most basic understanding of nutrition could concoct something, that if consumed in the prescribed portion each day, would be better than what 90% of the population is eating. Users are controlling their calories, getting a mix of micro-nutrients, with their ratio of macro-nutrients set up at a reasonable proportion. If this business continues, I would imagine that different proportions of macro and micro nutrients would be offered depending on the consumers health profile and nutrition goals.
rdl 13y ago
What I don't get about all the criticism of Soylent is that people seem to be comparing it to a perfect diet of conventional food -- the most likely alternative for most of the users is far worse than that, and probably worse than even the most naive form of Soylent. I'd love to try something like Soylent when away from my kitchen for weeks at a time. I'm going to be in the Nevada desert for two weeks doing something I enjoy (NOT Burning Man! A bunch of shotgun/pistol classes at Frontsight next month!), and not having to deal with food when waking up at 0430 and going to bed at 2230 every day would be really nice. It looks a bit too heavy on carbs and too light on protein for my taste, but it wouldn't be hard to cut it with protein powder or something. The biggest practical problem I see is "tastes best at <42F". Powders, especially with fat and protein, mix poorly in cold water, and cold water isn't always available. Something which worked better at 60-80F would be ideal. (As it is, the most practical thing for me is probably beef jerky, fiber and vitamin pills, lots of water, and a few trips to steakhouses. Maybe some Capriotti's sandwiches in a cooler.)
helgeman 13y ago
The main issue i have with this is not wether it works or not. Even if it would be as healthy as the healthiest foods you could cook and it would therefore "work" i still would despise this. Why? First off I think somethings simply do not need to be fixed. The making, eating and sharing of food is one of life's greatest pleasures. It is like saying .. well how can i fix this this sex thing? its taking too much of my time away. I know there are indeed people who don't have much time because they are very busy. My suggestion is indeed .. fix your time management and/or your schedule instead of fixing your food. If you dont enjoy food than i would suggest there is something wrong with you. Because we were all programmed to enjoy it .. like sex .. it is one of our main motivators in life.
- precisioncoder 13y ago
  The great thing about life is that we can make our own choices. I don't think judging other people based on the decisions they make is a healthy attitude. The more we provide new options for people the more diversity in human experience we create and that is often beneficial. Guess who didn't choose to partake in sex despite plenty of opportunity: Nikola Tesla. Of course he never did anything important...
  - helgeman 13y ago
    I am not sure where you are coming from or if you got my point. If you do not enjoy food/sex or whatever doesnt mean you are not a genius and can actually be important. The one thing doesnt have anything to do with the other. I would still argue that these people are a minority and that there is actually something wrong with them, instead of there is something wrong with our consumption of food. Of course if you dont find pleasures in these activities you wont feel sick or bad about it. But you should consider that this is not a problem that a lot of people face because most of them actually enjoy eating.
    - precisioncoder 13y ago
      Saying "If you don't enjoy what I enjoy there is something wrong with you" is a value judgement. Not seeing eating, or sex, or other commonly enjoyed activities as enjoyable (or simply not as priorities) does not mean you need to be fixed. Personally I love eating, but I would gladly have a substitute to take care of the nutrition aspect so I didn't have to bother about it and could eat a few times a week purely for pleasure.
conjectures 13y ago
Medical issues aside, do I really want to buy a food substitute named after a dodgy scifi flick about industrial scale cannibalism?
redacted 13y ago
"Rob is a Y Combinator alumnus with professional experience in electrical engineering, computer science and entrepreneurship. Lacking the means to produce cheap energy, he invented a form of fusion as a more efficient approach to powering his home and hopes to use it to reduce the global disparity of electrification." On one hand, the entire field of nutritional science (and several associated topics), coupled with a wealthy and powerful nutrition industry who, despite literally decades of research, have never succeeded in creating a total meal replacement. Oh, and don't forget the world's militaries, who throw enormous amounts of money at research groups for anything even remotely useful and for who full meal replacements would be a holy grail. On the other, this one computer hacker dude who is going to 'disrupt' the expert opinion and hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution. He read some papers guys! Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And yet the sum total evidence is 'Me and my friends haven't died yet, and we feel good'. His company still has no staff with biology experience, and the blog sells more merchandise than science. Still, otherwise incredibly smart and driven people on HN eat this up.
- kamaal 13y ago
  >>Lacking the means to produce cheap energy, he invented a form of fusion as a more efficient approach to powering his home and hopes to use it to reduce the global disparity of electrification. I wonder what that is, and if he has written about it some where?
- gwern 13y ago
  > Oh, and don't forget the world's militaries, who throw enormous amounts of money at research groups for anything even remotely useful and for who full meal replacements would be a holy grail. Not a good objection, because for military purposes, Soylent is completely unacceptable. How well do the ingredients tolerate extremes of heat and cold, no access to a kitchen, being stored in crates for months or years...? Not too well. And those are just the obvious requirements for an MRE.
nazgulnarsil 13y ago
I'll keep bumping my open source, whole food, cheaper alternative as long as soylent remains popular. I've been using this as about 40% of my calories for about a year now and my blood panel numbers are great. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjA38cUd4BZBdGZYM012N0JZTzEtVk05MVF4dlZyZ2c https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjA38cUd4BZBdGZ...
- tocomment 13y ago
  That's pretty cool. How does it taste? How long does it last after prepared? Have you considered olive oil?
  - nazgulnarsil 13y ago
    Olive oil is something you can add to alter the macro breakdown, but I'm happy with the fat content of the whole milk as it stands. It tastes good to me, though the marmite and potassium make it taste strange to some. I always drink it immediately, and reports say it separates too much if left to sit in the fridge. Though I suppose one could use a magic bullet and reblend right before drinking.
ogig 13y ago
When Soylent is talked about here i'm surprised by the amount of people who seems to like the idea. I couldn't understand why would anyone, at anytime pick a Soylent meal over something else. Then i read this article and see the picture of the author's normal everyday food, and reading the comments here others say this is in fact an average American diet. I don't want to sound harsh, but you are missing something big about life if you dismiss the pleasure of tasty food, the social moment of eating, and health benefits of a varied, natural diet. I'm from Spain, eating is important here. It's something beyond nutrition, is about people. You sit at the table while chatting and enjoying the taste of the seasonal ingredients. There are gastronomic events during the whole year, and having conversations about this or that thing you ate, or a new restaurant found, is common. Some of my life "best moments" were around a table. To my eyes Soylent proposal is akin to replace the sexual act from reproduction just because it's a waste of time.
- Widdershin 13y ago
  I think a lot of the people on HN who support it aren't necessarily suggesting that one should replace all meals with it, but simply as an alternative to cut down on some of the efforts involved in preparing meals. Personally, I love food, and I do enjoy cooking, but I also wish that I didn't have to do it all the time. To elaborate on your sex metaphor, you could consider Soylent masturbation. Low effort, low consequence sexual gratification. That doesn't mean you can't still have awesome sex when you want. (I definitely agree with you in regards to the people who would forgo food completely in favor of Soylent)
enscr 13y ago
Soylent completely discounts the act of chewing. It's not needed for the mechanical action, but for its chemical benefits. Maybe they can ship a chewing toy or something with the crinky bags :) http://whfoods.org/genpage.php?tname=dailytip&dbid=337 http://whfoods.org/genpage.php?tname=dailytip&dbid=337
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
lsiebert 13y ago
So where are the animal tests?
theorique 13y ago
What does soylent give you that a vitamix and a fridge full of fresh fruit, vegetables, and nuts does not?
- djt 13y ago
  Sense of adventure, by the looks of it.
  - namdnay 13y ago
    and an empty wallet...
pond_lilly 13y ago
I am amazed this crap made of GMO soy is even taken seriously enough to write about.
OhHeyItsE 13y ago
Wow! A meal replacement powder! Groundbreaking! Why are we talking about this again? Oh right. Because Tim Ferris is talking about it.
pothibo 13y ago
Most of what he described in the first days could have been caused by fructose withdrawal syndrome.
smcl 13y ago
The pictures he takes reminds me of those deceptive "before" and "after" shots from makeover shows (dour, poorly lit shot before, and lovely smiling pic after). It starts with him looking a bit peaky with his face illuminated by artificial light and ends with him grinning in the sunshine.
Shorel 13y ago
More people are hacking their diet, in other ways than simply changing the base ingredients but keeping the same macro ratios, and keeping the accepted nutrition guidelines. In other words, it is not much of an improvement over the status quo that's making the USA fat. If Soylent fails, it is also because of the inherent failure with the accepted nutrition guidelines. The other people who are hacking their diets, with great success, are commonly referred as the Keto community. We don't have “tired headaches” like the poster. For us, 45g of fat and 400g of carbohydrates seem way too unhealthy. Make it the other way around and we can talk.

341 points by rjsamson 13y ago

I just posted this to Tim's Blog: --------------------- It seems probable that soylent is better than much of the manufactured food on the market. It also seems unlikely that soylent is better than quality whole food. I take Nassim Taleb's approach. We don’t know what we don’t know about food. I’d like to address two of Shane’s points. I'm listing the objections Shane raises, then his reply: Shane's first point: Objection: The body needs whole foods, not atomic nutrients; the synergy between diverse ingredients is what matters in nutritional uptake. Shane's reply –> This sounds nice, but has not been scientifically proven. (Shane links to the naturalistic fallacy) My reply: It’s true that nature doesn’t prove something is good. We can nonetheless have a strong presumption that the body does best on whole foods. We have thousands of years of history of humans doing well on whole foods, and zero evidence that the human body can do as well on artificial foods. Nassim Taleb would tell us there is a presumption in favour of natural system that has stood the test of time. Human biology is very, very complex. If whole foods serve it well, they may do so for reasons we can fathom. One problem for Soylent is that it would have to prove itself safe on the timescale of a human lifetime. That’s very, very hard to do. Shane’s second point Objection: We don’t know what we don’t know about nutrition (i.e. Soylent might be unexpectedly harmful). Shane's reply —> That’s not a good reason to not try to innovate. Why not do some tests? My reply: See my point above. How can you test that Soylent is better than whole foods? There is a massive potential for false positives. With natural foods, if something seems effective, it probably is. We would have discovered poisonous or second order effects long ago. With an artificial food like soylent, it could appear effective for, say, ten years, while introducing a variety of malignant effects. Or maybe it is totally healthy. I have no idea. How can we know? You can’t prove a good is safe without using it for a long, long time. That said, I would expect soylent to be better than a diet of pure artificial junk food, as many americans eat. They’re also engineered foods, but in that case we can positively identify the harm. One additional problem of soylent: the designers assume we need a steady inejection of the same macronutrients every time we eat. We know positively that this is false. Bodybuilders have long known that carbohydrates are more effective after a workout. As with increased protein after a workout.

bsbechtel 13y ago
>That’s not a good reason to not try to innovate. Innovation only really works if you're solving a problem. I don't really see much of a problem with our food/nutrition system as is. Yes, there are parts of the world where people are starving, so maybe there is an application for this there, but if the aim is to test this product out in the Bay Area, I don't really see it going anywhere. I could be wrong, but that's my 2 cents.
- nbouscal 13y ago
  You may not see a problem, but over 10,000 backers (myself included) do. I'd be happy to go into more detail about why if you would like.
  - krrrh 13y ago
    I'm curious. Specifically about what you think Soylent offers that the wide variety of MRPs rhat have been on the market dor decades don't. Is it the concept of literally replacing all of your meals? To me it seems that there are dozens of existing MRPs that beat Soylent on price, flavor, and quality. But I have rarely seen any manufacturer claim that you can replace every meal with their product, and when they do its been controversial, and only suggested for limited times while convalescing or cutting. What's the appeal?
    - nbouscal 13y ago
      The main difference for me between Soylent and the other options on the market is the specific goals of the products. There are a variety of other options, but as you said, the majority aren't intended as replacements for your entire diet (those ones also tend to beat Soylent on flavor only by being chock full of sugar). There are a few that are complete diet replacements, mostly used for medical purposes, but the fact that they're designed for patients who can't eat means that there is a lot of room for improvement given Soylent's different target market. To be more concise, Soylent is specifically designed to be used as I intend to use it, and none of the other products are. That said, I don't intend to replace all of my meals. Eating is often more for social reasons than it is for nutritive ones, and in some cases I'll still be happy to eat conventional food for that reason. I expect to replace most of my meals, but I don't plan to swear off conventional food entirely. Maybe once or twice a week I'll have lunch or dinner with friends.

lingben 13y ago

More pseudo-science from Tim. Sigh.

graeme 13y ago
Did you read Tim's comments at the bottom? He's hardly endorsing Soylent. From the post: ------------------ Among the Soylent claims Shane outlined, there are the below. I’ve added my comments: Soylent provides all the energy and nutrients the body needs. [TIM: I'm not convinced Soylent can prove this.] The body can absorb all the nutrients Soylent provides. [TIM: I'm not convinced Soylent can prove this.] Soylent makes one more alert. [TIM: If measured, this could potentially be demonstrated.] Soylent can help people cut fat and maintain good body weight. [TIM: Be wary of any structure or function claims. Reword.] Soylent saves time and money. [TIM: Provable compared to another defined group (e.g. eating at Chipotle), but not across the board.] And at the end of the day: Soylent isn’t dangerous. [TIM: I'm not convinced Soylent can prove this. Where are the data? Safe for how long?]
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  No, he's just featuring it on his blog to draw traffic. It's the equivalent of the mainstream media staple 'Could X help you lose weight, avoid cancer, and enjoy better sex?'
  - graeme 13y ago
    I don't understand your criticism. Virtually every post that hits the HN front page was designed to draw traffic. If you've followed Tim Ferriss, it's clear this is something he'd be interested in. His first company was a sports supplement manufacturer, and he's written two books that touch on nutrition. I don't see this as a shallow post aimed at promoting a product. Did you even read it?
    - anigbrowl 13y ago
      I don't see this as a shallow post aimed at promoting a product. Did you even read it? Not what I said, and yes I did. I know why he'd be interested in it, or more to the point I know why his readership would. Having someone else do the (unscientific) experiment pulls all the traffic while allowing TF to look objective without investing anything. It's shallow in that (as shown above) the medical claims made are quite meaningless. http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

cup 13y ago

Soylent aside, im amazed at how terrible his traditional normal days meal is? I mean hes eating a processed breakfast subsitute in the morning, take away mexican food with a soft drink for lunch and more take away for dinner. You don't need to be a nutritionist to know thats going to have a terrible impact on his life later down the track. Postnote: Now that Ive read the whole article, I wonder if all the benefits he attributes to Soylent could actually be attributed to cutting so much crap out of his diet?

tocomment 13y ago
Is a protien shake for breakfast really that bad? I have not been able to find a breakfast food that's quick, tastes ok, and isn't high in carbs.
- oftenwrong 13y ago
  Is your definition of "breakfast food" too narrow? Any food can be a breakfast food.
- joering2 13y ago
  This is a good summary from someone credible (IMO): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExyNf3u7iQg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExyNf3u7iQg
- katbyte 13y ago
  I for a while had this http://myvega.com/product/vega-one-nutritional-shake/ http://myvega.com/product/vega-one-nutritional-shake/ every morning for a while and i rather enjoyed the berry flavor after a few days. However it isn't exactly cheap.
- jimbokun 13y ago
  How about a banana?
  - foobarbazqux 13y ago
    Bananas are mostly carbs. In Africa, plantains and bananas provide over 25% of carbohydrate requirements for 70 million people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantain_%28cooking%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantain_%28cooking%29

alphaoverlord 13y ago

I'm all for people having the freedom to eat whatever they want and I really like the quantified self aspect of seeing how diet affects how they feel and metrics of health, but I have to say the author grossly does not understand the medical tests he had done and misinterprets the data. I'm not going to comment on the drink, but rather on his misunderstanding of medicine. First, EGFR is not "Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor", rather is it estimated glomerular filtration rate, which is a metric of kidney function and is derived entirely from age, sex, and Cr. Second, all his labs are normal, well within the range of normal and stay normal after two weeks. There is normal daily fluctuation (for example, my Cr will probably go from 1 to 1.2 just by not drinking water for a day) which the labs show. All the changes he mention in his metabolic panel does not even register to me as changes and most likely would happen had he ate a regular diet. Third, the body is a powerfully homeostatic system, even had he not ate for two weeks, most of the labs he got would stay the same. Recently, on HN there was the article of the guy who didn't eat for a year - his BMP would have been similar. The only potentially reasonable medical test to get would have been the lipid panel, which stayed grossly the same. Finally, a DEXA scan is really silly in this scenario. It's for old ladies and others at risk for osteoporosis. Your bones are a large of reservoir that it wouldn't put a dent on your Ca levels even if you had no Ca for two weeks, and even if it did, it would not show up as a meaningful change on a DEXA scan.

ekianjo 13y ago
> First, EGFR is not "Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor" I LOLed at that one. He clearly didn't get the acronym and went for one of the cancer mutation indicator seen in several lung cancers.
- typicalrunt 13y ago
  Even funnier, the first sentence in the Wikipedia entry for EGFR states: This article is about a cell surface receptor. For estimated measure of kidney function (eGFR), see Glomerular filtration rate. The author could have taken a few minutes to research both the EGFR for cell surface receptor and the kidney function measure and come to a reasonably good conclusion as to which one is used on the lab tests. Instead...

ekianjo 13y ago

You don't just do a test for 2 weeks and expect to find something significant out of it. Go for one year, 2 years and then let's find out what really happens then.

zobzu 13y ago
eating right shows visible results in a week (ie physical change and mental changes), every time - IMO thats significant. 2 years shows if this is sustainable/etc. note: i'm not saying solyent is eating right. its hard to define what eating right is, but basically no soda, no processed foods (well, solyent sort of is:P), etc.
- ekianjo 13y ago
  As said somewhere else this does not prove anything. This could just happening as well if you fast. People fasting for a couple of weeks have reported better mental abilities as well. Nothing of what was written is unheard of, and besides you have to realize there is a placebo effect since the guy knows he is going to take Soylent and expects something out of it (even if he does not realize it himself). Placebo effect can be extremely powerful. So this kind of first hand report has close to zero credibility.
__xtrimsky 13y ago
you die.

tsumnia 13y ago

I'm still reading this, but this paragraph just made me incredibly frustrated: "...The white stuff that was mixed into the tan stuff was floating to the top and congealing together... So I just started just scooping them out... I’m pretty sure the white chunks were the rice protein, and perhaps something else important." You're the first review of Soylent, and you throwing away blobs because ...? It looked icky? This is a meal replacement focused on giving you exactly what your body needs, and it just seems like a terrible move to throw 'what your body needs' away.

ohWhatever 13y ago
Yeah, but so what? I mean, consider how much that honestly could have amounted to. 100 calories, distributed across 10 grams of nutrients per shake? He still drank a shake, and at no point does he claim to have reformulated the mix by adding to it, or deliberately attempting to chemically alter it, or switch to different products. Anyway, human nutrition must be capable of tolerating human error and envionmental hazards. It's not like this is some kind of a high-powered pharmaceutical. If anything, there should be room for that kind of error, because an inability to tolerate mistakes would actually be worse when it comes to food. You really don't want a casual fumble to cascade into some unforgivable and horrific, punishing mistake. You want to have some flexibility for spills, or maybe drinking an extra shake here and there, if you skipped dinner and breakfast one friday night/saturday morning. If this behavior actually did introduce augmented outcomes, then consider this an important caveat of the product. This means it's sensitive to specific mixing habits, and is prone to user error. This would be an important detail to shake out during trials. If the powder settles oddly during shipping, or mixes unevenly, and demands thorough mechanized blending, those are important instructions to communicate explicitly. Otherwise, if a bag lasts two weeks, and all the fine particles of vitamin powder settles at the bottom, leaving the fiber at the top, and you don't mix and shake the bag, it might take you a week to reach the bottom of the bag, and you'll inadvertantly be overdosing yourself with fiber one week and vitamins the next, when you try to finish off the bag.
- jcrites 13y ago
  The loss of those blobs may have been more than just calories. The blobs, of a composition such that they accumulate at the top in this way, may have been /all of/ some particular nutrients in the mix. I'm just speculating, but when consuming Soylent I would assume that one needs to eat all of it (or rather, all of the dose, if that's the right term).

russellallen 13y ago

I enjoy eating more than I enjoy most other things I do, so saving time by not eating in order to spend more time doing other stuff doesn't really appeal... Oh well. I guess there must be people out there who spend all their time doing things more fascinating and enjoyable than eating a tasty meal.

jerf 13y ago

“Last night I had a dream that I ate a brownie, and halfway through the brownie realized that I was only supposed to be eating Soylent for the next two weeks.” I'm 35, and I've known I have Celiac disease for about five years now. I still have that dream about every month or two, excepting of course that I realize I'm going to be very sick instead of being supposed to eat/drink/consume only Soylent.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

malbs 13y ago

The guy claim himself to be a "mildly out of shape 28 year old", and then state: "I consider myself a pretty health-conscious person. No alcohol. No meat. Slow-carbs when possible. Run three miles, three times a week. Pull-ups, push-ups on the days I don’t run" which indicates he's more active than 90% of the population (I just made that stat up) I was irritated from that point on-wards.

tsax 13y ago
Yeah no meat! That makes me so healthy! Oh look at me!
graeme 13y ago
You can do all that and be 'mildly out of shape'. It depends on what your model is. Compared to the average person, he's more fit, but the average person is rather unfit, so it's a poor comparison. I think 'out of shape' out to be an objective measure, not a relative measure.
- ars_technician 13y ago
  >I think 'out of shape' out to be an objective And you would be wrong. It's completely subjective. There is no quantifiable definition of 'in shape' other than fat %.
  - caw 13y ago
    I'm pretty sure there's some more objective measures, like mile run times. There's charts for how long it should take you. There should be some more standard benchmarks for other activities. I'd also like to suggest it's possible to be "mildly out of shape" and active. For example, if he was "out of shape" and recently started working out. On the subjective lines, it's possible to be out of shape for certain activities due to the musculature you've built for the activities you do frequently. If all you do is bench weights, you'd be out of shape when you go to run a mile. I'm like 8-10% body fat if I calculate it (electronic things say about 13%), would you consider me "in shape"? I wouldn't, not in any sort of normal means (running, lifting weights, whatever else).

damian2000 13y ago

How different is Soylent from some existing protein shake products (eg. muscle milk)? these also contain fats, carbs, protein and vitamins.

jimbokun 13y ago
What's the benefit of Muscle Milk over the same amount of Cow Milk? Is there some science demonstrating Muscle Milk is better?
- damian2000 13y ago
  I believe muscle milk doesn't contain lactose. So I suppose soy milk might be equivalent to muscle milk.
  - platz 13y ago
    muscle milk isn't milk

Reventon 13y ago

With the plethora of well known and well researched meal replacement solutions out there, why is Soylent getting so much attention?

juskrey 13y ago
It is not getting much attention. It is you reading too much hacker news.
KingdomSprite 13y ago
Soylent is affordable. Many other complete food supplements which are primarily used by hospitals and other care facilities, will cost significantly more. Other than that, it's a "fun" experiment as it has not been clinically proven to be either healthful or harmful, though the ingredients are FDA approved.
- curuinor 13y ago
  Soylent is $65 for 21 meals Jevity is $40 for a case of 24 cans http://www.amazon.com/Jevity-1-2-Cal-8-oz-case/dp/B002HQMBZM/ref=sr_1_22?s=hpc&ie=UTF8&qid=1377058675&sr=1-22&keywords=jevity http://www.amazon.com/Jevity-1-2-Cal-8-oz-case/dp/B002HQMBZM...
  - hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
    To be fair, I believe you wouldn't have an entire diet based only on Jevity, while that's their goal for Soylent.
pbreit 13y ago
Can you name 2 or 3 (1?) that are marketed for 15-20 meals per week? Ensure Complete (but not any other versions of Ensure) is sorta close but marketed as a supplement.
- hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
  None are marketed for 15-20 meals because the manufacturers know it's not feasible. It's quite different with fundraising, where you can claim whatever you want since it's all still fantasy.

sirsar 13y ago

I have a big problem with the "you might miss unknown-to-science micronutrients" argument. If that's the case with Soylent, it should also be the case for the average person's diet, which is far from optimal. I'd rather get all my protein, fat, carbs, vitamins, etc and potentially miss an unknown nutrient than eat what I currently do.

hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
> I have a big problem with the "you might miss unknown-to-science micronutrients" argument. If that's the case with Soylent, it should also be the case for the average person's diet (...) And it is the case. But because most people vary their diets, the deficiencies are not so severe. For instance, most diets lack magnesium, but on average, people also rarely go long periods without eating something like fish or sea food, which provide a good amount in one meal and keep the person above dysfunctional levels for some more time (it will still be a problem later in life). This is why restrictive diets (vegetarian, vegan, zero-[something]) and other fads should never be taken lightly. Nutritional deficiencies compound over time and wreck havoc on your body. That includes concoctions like Soylent (and even the ones used on patients in critical condition, which cost way more, are more complete, and still are not advertised as perfect meal replacements).
- enscr 13y ago
  Are you saying that vegetarian diet is a fad. You need to step out from underneath that rock.
  - hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
    "restrictive diets AND other fads".

FrankBlack 13y ago

He didn't stop eating. He stopped chewing.

pertinhower 13y ago
Thank you. I was a bit confused by that myself. Why say you're not eating when you've just changed what you're eating? Shock value maybe? Helping to make the whole expedition feel more important?

mathattack 13y ago

He lost weight, but his body fat % went up. D'oh! Seems like a lot of water loss. And losing 3% of your dry (muscle) mass seems worrying, especially since he got enough protein. Perhaps these measurements aren't very specific?

reillyse 13y ago

First time I've read the whole way through a blog post in a long long time. Nice writing!

deathanatos 13y ago

Has anyone considered the cultural implications of something like this? Meals, to me, are not just about eating — they offer a valuable break in the day to interact with people. I'm not sure that'll be the same if we're all eating grey goo. (Just stick a needle in me then…) The meal can often be a source of conversation — at least, if it isn't the same thing, every day. I'm thinking co-workers, and going to lunch: will soylent-users decline invites for lunch, because they have their grey goo? (They could potentially bring it with them, but wasn't the whole point to be lazy?) I also, on occasion, find cooking to be a good way to de-stress. I get to make something that nobody else will ever care about. (My SO just loves that I made something, so in a sense, I'm fulfilling the soylent's "too lazy to cook" … but my way is tastier.) I get to snack (I regularly sample the (safe!) raw ingredients, the partially cooked meal…). I get time to just think to myself. Eating the same thing every day would be depressing. Mouse said it well: > Dozer: It's a single cell protein combined with synthetic aminos, vitamins, and minerals. Everything the body needs. > Mouse: It doesn't have everything the body needs. (I'm also of the mindset that cooking isn't hard. Boiling water can make a lot of things, requires little oversight, and is dead simple. And oh so much tastier. That said, I know someone who would sign up for something like this…)

__--__ 13y ago
they offer a valuable break in the day to interact with people. I laughed when I read this. I'm an introvert, so meals offer me a valuable break in the day to NOT interact with people. :)

krallja 13y ago

Cutting caffeine probably caused the big changes in heart rate.

jyu 13y ago

Soylent is quickly becoming a great case study on marketing and human behavior. These guys have definitely hit on something people want. However, I do not have confidence that this team can deliver on Soylent's promises. There are many other reasons to be skeptical of Soylent, even from a cursory read on Wikipedia, the website, and Kickstarter page. First, the diet has caused Rob Rhinehart anemia, tachylcardia, arrhythmia, and joint pain from taking Soylent (from Wikipedia, Economist article). While the formula has changed since, do you trust a diet that only months ago caused the creator serious health ailments? Secondly, even if Rob Rhinehart has no nutrition background, and neither does anyone else on the Soylent team. I would expect someone on the team that knows something about nutrition. Looking on the website the Soylent team includes no mention of a nutritionist or dietician or foods manufacturing expert; key people in developing a new meal replacement product. Thirdly, anything to do with creating a new, stand alone meal replacement product requires someone know about the foods business or operations or something along those lines. It is not clear that their current team understands how far you can go with marketing claims, how to test medical claims, nutrient interactions, etc. This is not the first time people have been skeptical of Soylent, and certainly not the last. There are so many red flags from just a quick search and gut checking against their claims that I would definitely not recommend it to anyone I know, let alone trying it out myself.

c0rtex 13y ago

It would be very exciting to see some long-term study results on this. Also: Q: As long as we're food hacking, why not open-source it and post it on GitHub? A: It's a liquid. You can't fork it. But seriously, the open-source version of this could be the nutritional version of the OLPC.

gnoway 13y ago
see discourse.soylent.me. This is more or less happening already.

Semiapies 13y ago

If this is something someone could live on, why does this guy's experience eating it sound exactly like a fast?

zekenie 13y ago

Even with all the data he's recorded, you just can't draw any sort of conclusions from this. The diet's effects on health can take years to take effect. Just because his standard blood panels are normal for two weeks doesn't mean it isn't causing problems. Specifically, the bioavailibility of the supplements in soylent may not be high. I think it could be really dangerous to eat this stuff as your primary source of food for a long period of time. Eating it from time to time, though, could be convenient and nutritious.

siculars 13y ago

What I get out of this and, by proxy, a lot of successful crowd funding is that it is a market validator. This guy will no doubt make some money on selling Soylent, but what will also happen is that a large multinational will swoop in with more credible competition.

curuinor 13y ago

This is all a bit silly. Here's an advertisement for a bunch of full meal replacements for people of normal health or crappier: http://www.abbottnutrition.ca/static/cms_workspace/en_CA/content/document/DIR134A08.pdf http://www.abbottnutrition.ca/static/cms_workspace/en_CA/con... As you can see, they've been on the market for decades, and people have been using them as sole-source nutrition for decades.

sirsar 13y ago
Unless Amazon is really overpriced, it seems 1500 calories of Ensure Regular is $36, while 2400 calories of Soylent is $9

secstate 13y ago

When are people going to start appreciating the biology of the human species for the miracle that it is? I'm not talking faith-based logic here ... but consider for a moment that the placebo effect exists. That's it. Game over for nutrition science. You can convince someone's mind to change physical attributes of their body using psychology. Who's to say this guy's brain wasn't really excited about the prospect of a new diet that he was told by a really smart dude was going to make him more productive and healthier? Hook, line, sinker. This also doesn't address any of the social rituals associated with food. Personally, for me, breakfast is the only meal that is removable, but that's because I'm not a morning person. I telecommute and have a family. Sitting down to lunch with my kids and wife (or just wife, joy when the kiddos are in school), is a great break in my day. And dinner ... don't even get me started. I love sitting down to dinner. Makes me really just feel sorry for single folks whose lives revolve around productivity to such an extent.

dinkumthinkum 13y ago

So, I see a lot of people excited about this Soylent stuff here and that's great but to those that actually excited by this and are very interested in replacing all your meals and "don't understand what the big deal is about food, other than the not dying part" ... do you all expect anyone to take you seriously as human beings? I mean that in the most sincere way possible. It just looks so ridiculous and honestly, somewhat pretentious: "Oh I would never waste my time with food." Maybe I'm the crazy one.

theboss 13y ago

This soylent discussion that I constantly see on HN is what happens when computer nerds who know nothing about nutrition (and a couple who do) talk about health. This guy is going to make a ton of money but I think that people should be thinking, "Do I really want to live a life where I don't have time for food or I don't enjoy preparing and eating it". Personally I think it is kind of sad and hope in the future that 'Eating' doesn't become what 'face-to-face communication' or 'playing outside' has become today.....

chmike 13y ago

Ask author: did you kept regular "eating" times or did you sip here and there from the bottle ? How did the eating time socialization worked out ? Did you zap them ? How would you explain the fact that you seamed intellectually more alert ? Do you think it can only be the food ? Or could the fitness you did contribute to it ?

saejox 13y ago

I will never understand why would anyone eat the same food everyday. Eating is fun, more fun than anything i know of.

peterwwillis 13y ago
> Eating is fun, more fun than anything i know of. I think you're doing sex wrong.

stiff 13y ago

It's very, very naive to think that you can simply put all the recommended dosages of vitamins and macro-/micro- elements into a single shake and have it fulfil all the nutritional needs. You need enzymes to digest food, specific enzymes and specific chemical conditions for absorbing specific nutrients, and you can not intake all nutrients from a single portion of food because, well, physics happens. There is a fundamental need of the human body for variety in food intake. You can get some idea of how complicated this gets from reading papers on some commonly known patterns of nutrient interaction, like copper+zinc: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3625315 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3625315 http://jn.nutrition.org/content/130/5/1378S.full http://jn.nutrition.org/content/130/5/1378S.full

bparsons 13y ago

Most people's diets are horrible. It is really hard to eat anything even close to balanced-- especially if you eat out at different restaurants quite often. So, even if these guys don't really know what they are doing, even someone with the most basic understanding of nutrition could concoct something, that if consumed in the prescribed portion each day, would be better than what 90% of the population is eating. Users are controlling their calories, getting a mix of micro-nutrients, with their ratio of macro-nutrients set up at a reasonable proportion. If this business continues, I would imagine that different proportions of macro and micro nutrients would be offered depending on the consumers health profile and nutrition goals.

rdl 13y ago

What I don't get about all the criticism of Soylent is that people seem to be comparing it to a perfect diet of conventional food -- the most likely alternative for most of the users is far worse than that, and probably worse than even the most naive form of Soylent. I'd love to try something like Soylent when away from my kitchen for weeks at a time. I'm going to be in the Nevada desert for two weeks doing something I enjoy (NOT Burning Man! A bunch of shotgun/pistol classes at Frontsight next month!), and not having to deal with food when waking up at 0430 and going to bed at 2230 every day would be really nice. It looks a bit too heavy on carbs and too light on protein for my taste, but it wouldn't be hard to cut it with protein powder or something. The biggest practical problem I see is "tastes best at <42F". Powders, especially with fat and protein, mix poorly in cold water, and cold water isn't always available. Something which worked better at 60-80F would be ideal. (As it is, the most practical thing for me is probably beef jerky, fiber and vitamin pills, lots of water, and a few trips to steakhouses. Maybe some Capriotti's sandwiches in a cooler.)

helgeman 13y ago

The main issue i have with this is not wether it works or not. Even if it would be as healthy as the healthiest foods you could cook and it would therefore "work" i still would despise this. Why? First off I think somethings simply do not need to be fixed. The making, eating and sharing of food is one of life's greatest pleasures. It is like saying .. well how can i fix this this sex thing? its taking too much of my time away. I know there are indeed people who don't have much time because they are very busy. My suggestion is indeed .. fix your time management and/or your schedule instead of fixing your food. If you dont enjoy food than i would suggest there is something wrong with you. Because we were all programmed to enjoy it .. like sex .. it is one of our main motivators in life.

precisioncoder 13y ago
The great thing about life is that we can make our own choices. I don't think judging other people based on the decisions they make is a healthy attitude. The more we provide new options for people the more diversity in human experience we create and that is often beneficial. Guess who didn't choose to partake in sex despite plenty of opportunity: Nikola Tesla. Of course he never did anything important...
- helgeman 13y ago
  I am not sure where you are coming from or if you got my point. If you do not enjoy food/sex or whatever doesnt mean you are not a genius and can actually be important. The one thing doesnt have anything to do with the other. I would still argue that these people are a minority and that there is actually something wrong with them, instead of there is something wrong with our consumption of food. Of course if you dont find pleasures in these activities you wont feel sick or bad about it. But you should consider that this is not a problem that a lot of people face because most of them actually enjoy eating.
  - precisioncoder 13y ago
    Saying "If you don't enjoy what I enjoy there is something wrong with you" is a value judgement. Not seeing eating, or sex, or other commonly enjoyed activities as enjoyable (or simply not as priorities) does not mean you need to be fixed. Personally I love eating, but I would gladly have a substitute to take care of the nutrition aspect so I didn't have to bother about it and could eat a few times a week purely for pleasure.

conjectures 13y ago

Medical issues aside, do I really want to buy a food substitute named after a dodgy scifi flick about industrial scale cannibalism?

redacted 13y ago

"Rob is a Y Combinator alumnus with professional experience in electrical engineering, computer science and entrepreneurship. Lacking the means to produce cheap energy, he invented a form of fusion as a more efficient approach to powering his home and hopes to use it to reduce the global disparity of electrification." On one hand, the entire field of nutritional science (and several associated topics), coupled with a wealthy and powerful nutrition industry who, despite literally decades of research, have never succeeded in creating a total meal replacement. Oh, and don't forget the world's militaries, who throw enormous amounts of money at research groups for anything even remotely useful and for who full meal replacements would be a holy grail. On the other, this one computer hacker dude who is going to 'disrupt' the expert opinion and hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution. He read some papers guys! Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And yet the sum total evidence is 'Me and my friends haven't died yet, and we feel good'. His company still has no staff with biology experience, and the blog sells more merchandise than science. Still, otherwise incredibly smart and driven people on HN eat this up.

kamaal 13y ago
>>Lacking the means to produce cheap energy, he invented a form of fusion as a more efficient approach to powering his home and hopes to use it to reduce the global disparity of electrification. I wonder what that is, and if he has written about it some where?
gwern 13y ago
> Oh, and don't forget the world's militaries, who throw enormous amounts of money at research groups for anything even remotely useful and for who full meal replacements would be a holy grail. Not a good objection, because for military purposes, Soylent is completely unacceptable. How well do the ingredients tolerate extremes of heat and cold, no access to a kitchen, being stored in crates for months or years...? Not too well. And those are just the obvious requirements for an MRE.

nazgulnarsil 13y ago

I'll keep bumping my open source, whole food, cheaper alternative as long as soylent remains popular. I've been using this as about 40% of my calories for about a year now and my blood panel numbers are great. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjA38cUd4BZBdGZYM012N0JZTzEtVk05MVF4dlZyZ2c https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjA38cUd4BZBdGZ...

tocomment 13y ago
That's pretty cool. How does it taste? How long does it last after prepared? Have you considered olive oil?
- nazgulnarsil 13y ago
  Olive oil is something you can add to alter the macro breakdown, but I'm happy with the fat content of the whole milk as it stands. It tastes good to me, though the marmite and potassium make it taste strange to some. I always drink it immediately, and reports say it separates too much if left to sit in the fridge. Though I suppose one could use a magic bullet and reblend right before drinking.

ogig 13y ago

When Soylent is talked about here i'm surprised by the amount of people who seems to like the idea. I couldn't understand why would anyone, at anytime pick a Soylent meal over something else. Then i read this article and see the picture of the author's normal everyday food, and reading the comments here others say this is in fact an average American diet. I don't want to sound harsh, but you are missing something big about life if you dismiss the pleasure of tasty food, the social moment of eating, and health benefits of a varied, natural diet. I'm from Spain, eating is important here. It's something beyond nutrition, is about people. You sit at the table while chatting and enjoying the taste of the seasonal ingredients. There are gastronomic events during the whole year, and having conversations about this or that thing you ate, or a new restaurant found, is common. Some of my life "best moments" were around a table. To my eyes Soylent proposal is akin to replace the sexual act from reproduction just because it's a waste of time.

Widdershin 13y ago
I think a lot of the people on HN who support it aren't necessarily suggesting that one should replace all meals with it, but simply as an alternative to cut down on some of the efforts involved in preparing meals. Personally, I love food, and I do enjoy cooking, but I also wish that I didn't have to do it all the time. To elaborate on your sex metaphor, you could consider Soylent masturbation. Low effort, low consequence sexual gratification. That doesn't mean you can't still have awesome sex when you want. (I definitely agree with you in regards to the people who would forgo food completely in favor of Soylent)

enscr 13y ago

Soylent completely discounts the act of chewing. It's not needed for the mechanical action, but for its chemical benefits. Maybe they can ship a chewing toy or something with the crinky bags :) http://whfoods.org/genpage.php?tname=dailytip&dbid=337 http://whfoods.org/genpage.php?tname=dailytip&dbid=337

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

lsiebert 13y ago

So where are the animal tests?

theorique 13y ago

What does soylent give you that a vitamix and a fridge full of fresh fruit, vegetables, and nuts does not?

djt 13y ago
Sense of adventure, by the looks of it.
- namdnay 13y ago
  and an empty wallet...

pond_lilly 13y ago

I am amazed this crap made of GMO soy is even taken seriously enough to write about.

OhHeyItsE 13y ago

Wow! A meal replacement powder! Groundbreaking! Why are we talking about this again? Oh right. Because Tim Ferris is talking about it.

pothibo 13y ago

Most of what he described in the first days could have been caused by fructose withdrawal syndrome.

smcl 13y ago

The pictures he takes reminds me of those deceptive "before" and "after" shots from makeover shows (dour, poorly lit shot before, and lovely smiling pic after). It starts with him looking a bit peaky with his face illuminated by artificial light and ends with him grinning in the sunshine.

Shorel 13y ago

More people are hacking their diet, in other ways than simply changing the base ingredients but keeping the same macro ratios, and keeping the accepted nutrition guidelines. In other words, it is not much of an improvement over the status quo that's making the USA fat. If Soylent fails, it is also because of the inherent failure with the accepted nutrition guidelines. The other people who are hacking their diets, with great success, are commonly referred as the Keto community. We don't have “tired headaches” like the poster. For us, 45g of fat and 400g of carbohydrates seem way too unhealthy. Make it the other way around and we can talk.