7 ms·

Soylent: Operations Update

50 points by rwissmann 13y ago

Carlee 13y ago
How on Earth is ten days enough to test anything in regards to diet? Pretty sure humans don't notice much change in that time, let alone enough to measure? Day to day numbers fluctuate by a lot, so wouldn't it have to be tested over a longer period for it to be valid?
- rsynnott 13y ago
  In general they don't seem so bothered about the scientific method.
- thisishugo 13y ago
  They're at the point of making changes to "taste, texture, and smell" - the dietary side of the formula is nailed down already, and I am willing to believe was tested more rigorously.
  - mratzloff 13y ago
    Why are you willing to believe that?
  - ceejayoz 13y ago
    > I am willing to believe was tested more rigorously. Really? Their site launched with a FAQ on safety that essentially read "well, we haven't died yet..."
- gnoway 13y ago
  They are probably treating it like more of a smoke test. In 10 days you can certainly get a good idea about changes in flavor, texture, preparation, etc. You also ought to get some feedback on whether a formula change resulted in any immediate health concerns.
  - mratzloff 13y ago
    They aren't getting any feedback on immediate health concerns in just 10 days unless they decide to add peanuts or arsenic to the mix.
    - gnoway 13y ago
      Keep in mind that this may be the only form of nutrition the 'beta testers' are getting, and possibly have been getting, for a significant amount of time. If you're eating normal food then some deficiency in one component of one meal may be masked by a surplus in another, and in particular if you eat a varied diet then that deficiency could start and stop within one meal. If instead your sole source of nutrition is suddenly deficient, it's not a stretch to think that you could notice a difference within 10 days. I'm not trying to defend the product, I just don't think it's inconceivable that 10 days is long enough to notice a big problem with a formulation change.
- ig1 13y ago
  I would assume they mean testing it for factors like taste, etc. which would be immediate rather than doing it for nutritional testing.
  - gabemart 13y ago
    Why would you ask doctors or dietitians for advice about the taste of the preparation?
    - weego 13y ago
      I assume he meant that the input from doctors etc is for nutritional reasons but when they ship out to testers they are taking the nutrition changes at face value and are only concerned about feedback from testers on whether it affected the taste/consistency/gives them gas etc.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
- gabemart 13y ago
  I was also alarmed by that paragraph. > Various doctors, dietitians, and food scientists > have been reviewing our formula and providing > suggestions as they see fit. We have been listening > to them and testing these changes in our beta > program. Each modification requires making a new > batch of Soylent by hand, shipping them to our > beta testers, and gathering their feedback, a > process that takes at least 10 days per revision. The idea that the dietary advice of a doctor could meaningfully be tested in a few weeks by a beta program of laypeople with no scientific controls is utterly ridiculous. Even if you had a large beta program and ran each revisions for 100 days, the feedback would be garbage unless you had proper controls and measurements in place.
  - voidlogic 13y ago
    >The idea that the dietary advice of a doctor could meaningfully be tested in a few weeks by a beta program of laypeople with no scientific controls is utterly ridiculous. But you are assuming the purpose of the test is to test the merit of the dietary motivator for the change, the testing described here might just be user acceptance tasting. That is, does this this change make it taste bad? Give you gas? etc
- sdoering 13y ago
  Even the (not very scientific) test from the EU Food-Safety-Agency make 90-days trials on animals (and that does not tell a lot imho). If you want to know, if you are allergic, a short test should be sufficient. If you wanna know, if allergies might be initiated from the food, 10 days don't do much good. If you want to know, if some known things (nutrition, et al) are missing from the "food" 10 days won't do you much good and might only be detected in really rigorous blood-tests. If you want to check for problems with unknown unknowns (and there are a lot of things we yet do not know, regarding food and our bodies) 10 days are nothing more then a nice joke. (Sorry, but living with a biologist make me quite cynical, when it comes to things, that might just endanger us.) A really scientific method is something else. They might stumble upon some things, but I'd like to know, if every beta-tester gets his blood-work done before and after every test. How does the testing process in the first place look like (blood tests as said? just taste? subjective feeling after n-days of new soylent version? and so on). > so everyone will get their complete amino acid profile No everyone will get a one size fits all amino acid profile. And then comes the problem, that humans aren't "one size fits all". They will probably get a solution, that fits one, two or probably max. three sigma of the targeted population. To be fair, I love food, so soylent would not be for me. I really think, that a cheap food-replacement that does give most people mostly everything they need in terms of nutrition, might really do a lot of good, if distributed in times of disaster or in regions with problematic food distribution (third world). But that is not the targeted audience as I see it. It seems to be people who do not value food, but have enough money on their hand, to replace it with this product.
  - mratzloff 13y ago
    (This is completely off-topic, but you only needed about 1/3 of the commas you used. For instance, "if you wanna know, ..." does not need a comma. Your final sentence does not need any commas. Etc.)
- kbutler 13y ago
  Here's a classic deficiency case: "The onset of symptoms of scurvy depends on how long it takes for the person to use up their limited stores of vitamin C. For example, if the diet includes no vitamin C at all, the average onset of symptoms is about four weeks" http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Scurvy http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pag...
corresation 13y ago
Even though it isn't for me (I actually like food, finding it one of the greatest pleasures in life), the Soylent story still presents an interesting storyline to me. But I've always wondered: Why the name Soylent? Aren't there some negative connotations to that? Is it...made of people? An aspect of Soylent that I don't get is the assumption that it gets you out of the drudgery of eating, for those people for whom it is such a chore: the idea of chugging multiple cups of gray, sludgy drink daily sounds like an enormous burden that would grow tiring really quickly. It sounds like something that would make you dread the passing of the day, as another cup of slurry draws ever closer. I speak at least a bit from experience, as one stage in my life had me working out daily, starting each with a big protein drink. Over time I realized that I was dreading, if not even skipping, the workout because of the protein drink that went with it.
- Blahah 13y ago
  I've been doing DIY soylent for a few months now. I have to say it really does liberate much of the day, and it isn't at all a chore. It's easy to drink, I just sip it throughout the day. It has only a vague taste, and is a bit like drinking thick water. It might sound like it would be unpleasant or boring, but it isn't. I still have normal meals in the evening, but more and more I've come to feel like going all-soylent.
  - tocomment 13y ago
    Can you post your recipe?
    - Blahah 13y ago
      I suggest starting with the hacker school soylent recipe [1], but eliminate the flax seed in favour of using xanthan gum and inulin as fibre sources, and make sure you blend the lecithin granules into a fine powder before making up the mix. That gives a smooth, pleasant texture and makes it very easy to drink. I'll post the full recipe on http://www.makesoylent.com/ http://www.makesoylent.com/ this evening. 1: http://www.cookingfor20.com/2013/06/18/hacker-school-soylent-recipe/ http://www.cookingfor20.com/2013/06/18/hacker-school-soylent...
jonathanjaeger 13y ago
I don't know how many different formulas they'll make in the future, but I'd love one with some sort of crushed up powdered oats mix instead of maltodextrin or other not-so-great carb sources. There are very few meal replacements in the supplement market that aren't filled with maltodextrin or sugar alcohols. I'd love something that's the equivalent of a meal I could put in a blender (e.g. banana, natural peanut butter, oats, and maybe some protein powder) without all the added chemicals.
- Blahah 13y ago
  My DIY blend uses oat flour. There are a lot of soylent recipes out there - the hacker school soylent recipe [1] is a nice oat-flour based one with a decent default nutritional profile. 1: http://www.cookingfor20.com/2013/06/18/hacker-school-soylent-recipe/ http://www.cookingfor20.com/2013/06/18/hacker-school-soylent... edit: also note, the only synthesised 'chemicals' most recipes include are potassium gluconate and calcium citrate. Everything else is a food or food extract.
  - jonathanjaeger 13y ago
    Thanks! I'll check it out. And when I was referring to chemicals I was talking about the broader meal replacement supplement market, not Soylent.
wsc981 13y ago
I find this project interesting, especially since it seems to be able to lower my cost of living (currently I buy for around 300 EUR a month of food, using Soylent should be able to lower this to ~220 EUR from what I understand). Yet, at the same time I worry how healthy it would be on the long term. For example, research has shown that vitamin pills are often detrimental to ones health and could even increase the chance of getting cancer. I wonder if Soylent uses much the same ingredients of vitamin pills.
StevePerkins 13y ago
For the life of me, I can't understand why this is such a trendy topic on HN. If you walk into any grocery store or pharmacy, there are at least two aisles stocked with nothing but meal-replacement shakes. One of the aisles is targeted at young people, with marketing themes around bodybuilding or triathlon training. The other aisle is targeted at senior citizens, with marketing themes around osteoporosis or longevity. There might be a third aisle, or a portion of one of the other two, targeting mostly women with themes of weight loss. However, it's pretty much the same stuff in the bottle on any aisle. Soylent looks to be a online aisle, targeting the exact same stuff to tech-savvy hipsters, with themes of lifehacking and and classic sci-fi cinema. I'm sure that your particular Brawndo is special because it has electrolytes, or whatever, but I don't understand why the underlying concept of a meal-replacement shake warrants so much coverage. This concept isn't the least bit novel.
- sker 13y ago
  The main difference is that most of those meal replacements lack many nutrients, that makes them useful as a replacement for a meal or two every now and then. Soylent is attempting to provide every single nutrient required by our bodies, thus making it a permanent replacement for food.
  - MDS100 13y ago
    No you are wrong. MRP companies are just more careful regarding marketing. Taking a "failing is ok, we'll fix it later" approach to your own health is a terribly retarded approach. Especially because long term effects can take months and years to manifest (lack of nutrients).
- bloopletech 13y ago
  You gave the reason yourself: The existing market is segmented, and none of those markets shouts 'average HN user'. Compare the marketing/segmentation of the existing products: Senior citizens: For old people / a worse replacement for regular meals / medical. Women losing weight: I'm fat / unhealthy / a worse replacement for regular meals / temporary, once I've lost the weight I'll switch back. Bodybuilders: DUDE, CHECK OUT MY LATS. I ALWAYS DO 10 x 10 DP SETS AND THEN SLAM DOWN A PROTEIN SHAKE. DUUUUUDE. Soylent: For many people, on many occasions, food is a hassle, especially when trying to eat well. It allows one to enjoy the health benefits of a well balanced diet with less effort and cost. Now which of these is going to attract, and which is going to repel, the stereotypical HN user? Of course these are stereotypes, but this is marketing, and segmenting often uses stereotypes to push people into making different purchasing decisions: As an average HN user, I'm going to feel weird/wrong buying a women's weight loss shake, or a senior citizens medical food, or a gym expert's protein shake, but I'm going to feel great buying Soylent, because I fit into the marketing. My point is that none of the existing products on the market market all these points: * An equal replacement for food, instead of a worse substitute on one axis or another (at least nutritionally); * An all the time replacement, not just for a specific purpose; * Market direct to the consumer (this seems to be the issue with some of the replacements used in hospitals). Now, whether Soylent actually meets these claims, or whether the stereotypes are actually relevant to the contents of the products themselves, is largely irrelevant at this point. This is marketing, and HN users are gullible to it like everyone else. (Personally, I'm rooting for Soylent) Re the name, which a bunch of people who seriously fail to see why that name: because it is rebellious in exactly the way average HN users are suckers for.
fingerprinter 13y ago
I literally cannot fathom how this is 1. interesting to people 2. new and novel and 3. always trending on HN. People can and have lived on liquid food for quite a long time. This isn't new, this isn't particularly interesting or groundbreaking in anyway. Why the fascination on HN? Can someone explain it to me?
- obibring 13y ago
  I could not agree with you more.
- tokenadult 13y ago
  Why the fascination on HN? Isn't this a YC-invested company? Other than that, I agree with you. I'm not interested in Soylent the product, nor am I interested in Soylent the company. I tell my friends to be wary of using the product.
- hermaj 13y ago
  I'm starting to think this has to be a viral marketing campaign / social experiment. It's an interesting premise that people would entrust their long term health to unqualified individuals, who lack the resources to employ qualified individuals, simply for an extra hour everyday.
  - cabalamat 13y ago
    > It's an interesting premise that people would entrust their long term health to unqualified individuals I trust my diet to an unqualified individual (me), as do most people. > simply for an extra hour everyday An hour a day is 6% of your waking life.
    - hermaj 13y ago
      > I trust my diet to an unqualified individual (me), as do most people. If you live in a country which adheres to standards of food safety and has regulatory bodies to protect and promote public health then I disagree. You entrust those bodies and the qualified individuals within them because they ensure what you purchase is what it says it is. Soylent has not reached this level of evaluation. > An hour a day is 6% of your waking life. If Soylent works completely as advertised yes you gain time. Should it lead to any kind of health problems it's more than likely you lose time.
frakkingcylons 13y ago
Has anyone published a post about their experience with Soylent where they didn't use it to replace all their meals, but just maybe one or two of them a day? That's the use case I'm interested in.
- ImprovedSilence 13y ago
  I agree completely, I would think that's the exact use case most of us are interested in. It sounds like the perfect breakfast drink or quick on the go lunch.
- delluminatus 13y ago
  Soylent is probably overkill for this use case. As long as you eat a reasonable healthy real-food meal every day, all you really need from a meal replacement are some macronutrients and maybe electrolytes. I mean, you could drink yoghurt for breakfast every day and be fine. Soylent is designed to completely replace food which is a much harder & much more expensive proposition than simply giving you some energy until dinnertime.
Leander_B 13y ago
In my country this is called a meal replacement. I live in the future..
juice13 13y ago
Here's an interesting analysis of Soylent: http://www.priceplow.com/blog/soylent-subterfuge http://www.priceplow.com/blog/soylent-subterfuge I would think twice before committing to a soylent-only diet.
tokenadult 13y ago
My uncle was born with a digestive tract defect that was not detected until he was of middle age. (The only sign that he had any health problem at all was that he was of only average height, in a family in which all his five brothers were tall.) He was on total parenteral nutrition http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/meds/a601166.html http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/meds/a601166.htm... for something like twenty years before dying last week at the age of ninety-one. It's basic medical background knowledge that keeps me from being impressed by the Soylent shot in the dark, and it is reflecting that human nutrition is both a) mostly a hard problem, and b) mostly a SOLVED problem that keeps me from making gee-whiz comments about the Soylent project here on HN. The great thing about a free-enterprise economy with minimal regulation is that if you like this kind of thing, you can spend your hard-earned money to buy Soylent. If your eating behavior includes experiential or social outcomes better met by eating a variety of foods you cook and chew, you can join me in eating a little of this and a little of that over the course of a year. The Soylent company is YC-invested, as I recall, so press releases from the company will continue to be posted here, but meanwhile I will pursue a variety of micronutrients and a variety of pleasant experiences by eating a varied diet with my family and friends.
Shorel 13y ago
Can we get a Keto version of this? Bonus points for a Paleo friendly version. As it is now, I would never get close to that carbohydrate-based drink.
gavinpc 13y ago
Does anyone remember the early post from this guy where he said that he just wanted to stop spending so much of his time and energy on food? Now it's all he does. He "wakes up every day thinking about it." Now that's ironic.

50 points by rwissmann 13y ago

How on Earth is ten days enough to test anything in regards to diet? Pretty sure humans don't notice much change in that time, let alone enough to measure? Day to day numbers fluctuate by a lot, so wouldn't it have to be tested over a longer period for it to be valid?

rsynnott 13y ago
In general they don't seem so bothered about the scientific method.
thisishugo 13y ago
They're at the point of making changes to "taste, texture, and smell" - the dietary side of the formula is nailed down already, and I am willing to believe was tested more rigorously.
- mratzloff 13y ago
  Why are you willing to believe that?
- ceejayoz 13y ago
  > I am willing to believe was tested more rigorously. Really? Their site launched with a FAQ on safety that essentially read "well, we haven't died yet..."
gnoway 13y ago
They are probably treating it like more of a smoke test. In 10 days you can certainly get a good idea about changes in flavor, texture, preparation, etc. You also ought to get some feedback on whether a formula change resulted in any immediate health concerns.
- mratzloff 13y ago
  They aren't getting any feedback on immediate health concerns in just 10 days unless they decide to add peanuts or arsenic to the mix.
  - gnoway 13y ago
    Keep in mind that this may be the only form of nutrition the 'beta testers' are getting, and possibly have been getting, for a significant amount of time. If you're eating normal food then some deficiency in one component of one meal may be masked by a surplus in another, and in particular if you eat a varied diet then that deficiency could start and stop within one meal. If instead your sole source of nutrition is suddenly deficient, it's not a stretch to think that you could notice a difference within 10 days. I'm not trying to defend the product, I just don't think it's inconceivable that 10 days is long enough to notice a big problem with a formulation change.
ig1 13y ago
I would assume they mean testing it for factors like taste, etc. which would be immediate rather than doing it for nutritional testing.
- gabemart 13y ago
  Why would you ask doctors or dietitians for advice about the taste of the preparation?
  - weego 13y ago
    I assume he meant that the input from doctors etc is for nutritional reasons but when they ship out to testers they are taking the nutrition changes at face value and are only concerned about feedback from testers on whether it affected the taste/consistency/gives them gas etc.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
gabemart 13y ago
I was also alarmed by that paragraph. > Various doctors, dietitians, and food scientists > have been reviewing our formula and providing > suggestions as they see fit. We have been listening > to them and testing these changes in our beta > program. Each modification requires making a new > batch of Soylent by hand, shipping them to our > beta testers, and gathering their feedback, a > process that takes at least 10 days per revision. The idea that the dietary advice of a doctor could meaningfully be tested in a few weeks by a beta program of laypeople with no scientific controls is utterly ridiculous. Even if you had a large beta program and ran each revisions for 100 days, the feedback would be garbage unless you had proper controls and measurements in place.
- voidlogic 13y ago
  >The idea that the dietary advice of a doctor could meaningfully be tested in a few weeks by a beta program of laypeople with no scientific controls is utterly ridiculous. But you are assuming the purpose of the test is to test the merit of the dietary motivator for the change, the testing described here might just be user acceptance tasting. That is, does this this change make it taste bad? Give you gas? etc
sdoering 13y ago
Even the (not very scientific) test from the EU Food-Safety-Agency make 90-days trials on animals (and that does not tell a lot imho). If you want to know, if you are allergic, a short test should be sufficient. If you wanna know, if allergies might be initiated from the food, 10 days don't do much good. If you want to know, if some known things (nutrition, et al) are missing from the "food" 10 days won't do you much good and might only be detected in really rigorous blood-tests. If you want to check for problems with unknown unknowns (and there are a lot of things we yet do not know, regarding food and our bodies) 10 days are nothing more then a nice joke. (Sorry, but living with a biologist make me quite cynical, when it comes to things, that might just endanger us.) A really scientific method is something else. They might stumble upon some things, but I'd like to know, if every beta-tester gets his blood-work done before and after every test. How does the testing process in the first place look like (blood tests as said? just taste? subjective feeling after n-days of new soylent version? and so on). > so everyone will get their complete amino acid profile No everyone will get a one size fits all amino acid profile. And then comes the problem, that humans aren't "one size fits all". They will probably get a solution, that fits one, two or probably max. three sigma of the targeted population. To be fair, I love food, so soylent would not be for me. I really think, that a cheap food-replacement that does give most people mostly everything they need in terms of nutrition, might really do a lot of good, if distributed in times of disaster or in regions with problematic food distribution (third world). But that is not the targeted audience as I see it. It seems to be people who do not value food, but have enough money on their hand, to replace it with this product.
- mratzloff 13y ago
  (This is completely off-topic, but you only needed about 1/3 of the commas you used. For instance, "if you wanna know, ..." does not need a comma. Your final sentence does not need any commas. Etc.)
kbutler 13y ago
Here's a classic deficiency case: "The onset of symptoms of scurvy depends on how long it takes for the person to use up their limited stores of vitamin C. For example, if the diet includes no vitamin C at all, the average onset of symptoms is about four weeks" http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Scurvy http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pag...

corresation 13y ago

Even though it isn't for me (I actually like food, finding it one of the greatest pleasures in life), the Soylent story still presents an interesting storyline to me. But I've always wondered: Why the name Soylent? Aren't there some negative connotations to that? Is it...made of people? An aspect of Soylent that I don't get is the assumption that it gets you out of the drudgery of eating, for those people for whom it is such a chore: the idea of chugging multiple cups of gray, sludgy drink daily sounds like an enormous burden that would grow tiring really quickly. It sounds like something that would make you dread the passing of the day, as another cup of slurry draws ever closer. I speak at least a bit from experience, as one stage in my life had me working out daily, starting each with a big protein drink. Over time I realized that I was dreading, if not even skipping, the workout because of the protein drink that went with it.

Blahah 13y ago
I've been doing DIY soylent for a few months now. I have to say it really does liberate much of the day, and it isn't at all a chore. It's easy to drink, I just sip it throughout the day. It has only a vague taste, and is a bit like drinking thick water. It might sound like it would be unpleasant or boring, but it isn't. I still have normal meals in the evening, but more and more I've come to feel like going all-soylent.
- tocomment 13y ago
  Can you post your recipe?
  - Blahah 13y ago
    I suggest starting with the hacker school soylent recipe [1], but eliminate the flax seed in favour of using xanthan gum and inulin as fibre sources, and make sure you blend the lecithin granules into a fine powder before making up the mix. That gives a smooth, pleasant texture and makes it very easy to drink. I'll post the full recipe on http://www.makesoylent.com/ http://www.makesoylent.com/ this evening. 1: http://www.cookingfor20.com/2013/06/18/hacker-school-soylent-recipe/ http://www.cookingfor20.com/2013/06/18/hacker-school-soylent...

jonathanjaeger 13y ago

I don't know how many different formulas they'll make in the future, but I'd love one with some sort of crushed up powdered oats mix instead of maltodextrin or other not-so-great carb sources. There are very few meal replacements in the supplement market that aren't filled with maltodextrin or sugar alcohols. I'd love something that's the equivalent of a meal I could put in a blender (e.g. banana, natural peanut butter, oats, and maybe some protein powder) without all the added chemicals.

Blahah 13y ago
My DIY blend uses oat flour. There are a lot of soylent recipes out there - the hacker school soylent recipe [1] is a nice oat-flour based one with a decent default nutritional profile. 1: http://www.cookingfor20.com/2013/06/18/hacker-school-soylent-recipe/ http://www.cookingfor20.com/2013/06/18/hacker-school-soylent... edit: also note, the only synthesised 'chemicals' most recipes include are potassium gluconate and calcium citrate. Everything else is a food or food extract.
- jonathanjaeger 13y ago
  Thanks! I'll check it out. And when I was referring to chemicals I was talking about the broader meal replacement supplement market, not Soylent.

wsc981 13y ago

I find this project interesting, especially since it seems to be able to lower my cost of living (currently I buy for around 300 EUR a month of food, using Soylent should be able to lower this to ~220 EUR from what I understand). Yet, at the same time I worry how healthy it would be on the long term. For example, research has shown that vitamin pills are often detrimental to ones health and could even increase the chance of getting cancer. I wonder if Soylent uses much the same ingredients of vitamin pills.

StevePerkins 13y ago

For the life of me, I can't understand why this is such a trendy topic on HN. If you walk into any grocery store or pharmacy, there are at least two aisles stocked with nothing but meal-replacement shakes. One of the aisles is targeted at young people, with marketing themes around bodybuilding or triathlon training. The other aisle is targeted at senior citizens, with marketing themes around osteoporosis or longevity. There might be a third aisle, or a portion of one of the other two, targeting mostly women with themes of weight loss. However, it's pretty much the same stuff in the bottle on any aisle. Soylent looks to be a online aisle, targeting the exact same stuff to tech-savvy hipsters, with themes of lifehacking and and classic sci-fi cinema. I'm sure that your particular Brawndo is special because it has electrolytes, or whatever, but I don't understand why the underlying concept of a meal-replacement shake warrants so much coverage. This concept isn't the least bit novel.

sker 13y ago
The main difference is that most of those meal replacements lack many nutrients, that makes them useful as a replacement for a meal or two every now and then. Soylent is attempting to provide every single nutrient required by our bodies, thus making it a permanent replacement for food.
- MDS100 13y ago
  No you are wrong. MRP companies are just more careful regarding marketing. Taking a "failing is ok, we'll fix it later" approach to your own health is a terribly retarded approach. Especially because long term effects can take months and years to manifest (lack of nutrients).
bloopletech 13y ago
You gave the reason yourself: The existing market is segmented, and none of those markets shouts 'average HN user'. Compare the marketing/segmentation of the existing products: Senior citizens: For old people / a worse replacement for regular meals / medical. Women losing weight: I'm fat / unhealthy / a worse replacement for regular meals / temporary, once I've lost the weight I'll switch back. Bodybuilders: DUDE, CHECK OUT MY LATS. I ALWAYS DO 10 x 10 DP SETS AND THEN SLAM DOWN A PROTEIN SHAKE. DUUUUUDE. Soylent: For many people, on many occasions, food is a hassle, especially when trying to eat well. It allows one to enjoy the health benefits of a well balanced diet with less effort and cost. Now which of these is going to attract, and which is going to repel, the stereotypical HN user? Of course these are stereotypes, but this is marketing, and segmenting often uses stereotypes to push people into making different purchasing decisions: As an average HN user, I'm going to feel weird/wrong buying a women's weight loss shake, or a senior citizens medical food, or a gym expert's protein shake, but I'm going to feel great buying Soylent, because I fit into the marketing. My point is that none of the existing products on the market market all these points: * An equal replacement for food, instead of a worse substitute on one axis or another (at least nutritionally); * An all the time replacement, not just for a specific purpose; * Market direct to the consumer (this seems to be the issue with some of the replacements used in hospitals). Now, whether Soylent actually meets these claims, or whether the stereotypes are actually relevant to the contents of the products themselves, is largely irrelevant at this point. This is marketing, and HN users are gullible to it like everyone else. (Personally, I'm rooting for Soylent) Re the name, which a bunch of people who seriously fail to see why that name: because it is rebellious in exactly the way average HN users are suckers for.

fingerprinter 13y ago

I literally cannot fathom how this is 1. interesting to people 2. new and novel and 3. always trending on HN. People can and have lived on liquid food for quite a long time. This isn't new, this isn't particularly interesting or groundbreaking in anyway. Why the fascination on HN? Can someone explain it to me?

obibring 13y ago
I could not agree with you more.
tokenadult 13y ago
Why the fascination on HN? Isn't this a YC-invested company? Other than that, I agree with you. I'm not interested in Soylent the product, nor am I interested in Soylent the company. I tell my friends to be wary of using the product.
hermaj 13y ago
I'm starting to think this has to be a viral marketing campaign / social experiment. It's an interesting premise that people would entrust their long term health to unqualified individuals, who lack the resources to employ qualified individuals, simply for an extra hour everyday.
- cabalamat 13y ago
  > It's an interesting premise that people would entrust their long term health to unqualified individuals I trust my diet to an unqualified individual (me), as do most people. > simply for an extra hour everyday An hour a day is 6% of your waking life.
  - hermaj 13y ago
    > I trust my diet to an unqualified individual (me), as do most people. If you live in a country which adheres to standards of food safety and has regulatory bodies to protect and promote public health then I disagree. You entrust those bodies and the qualified individuals within them because they ensure what you purchase is what it says it is. Soylent has not reached this level of evaluation. > An hour a day is 6% of your waking life. If Soylent works completely as advertised yes you gain time. Should it lead to any kind of health problems it's more than likely you lose time.

frakkingcylons 13y ago

Has anyone published a post about their experience with Soylent where they didn't use it to replace all their meals, but just maybe one or two of them a day? That's the use case I'm interested in.

ImprovedSilence 13y ago
I agree completely, I would think that's the exact use case most of us are interested in. It sounds like the perfect breakfast drink or quick on the go lunch.
delluminatus 13y ago
Soylent is probably overkill for this use case. As long as you eat a reasonable healthy real-food meal every day, all you really need from a meal replacement are some macronutrients and maybe electrolytes. I mean, you could drink yoghurt for breakfast every day and be fine. Soylent is designed to completely replace food which is a much harder & much more expensive proposition than simply giving you some energy until dinnertime.

Leander_B 13y ago

In my country this is called a meal replacement. I live in the future..

juice13 13y ago

Here's an interesting analysis of Soylent: http://www.priceplow.com/blog/soylent-subterfuge http://www.priceplow.com/blog/soylent-subterfuge I would think twice before committing to a soylent-only diet.

tokenadult 13y ago

My uncle was born with a digestive tract defect that was not detected until he was of middle age. (The only sign that he had any health problem at all was that he was of only average height, in a family in which all his five brothers were tall.) He was on total parenteral nutrition http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/meds/a601166.html http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/meds/a601166.htm... for something like twenty years before dying last week at the age of ninety-one. It's basic medical background knowledge that keeps me from being impressed by the Soylent shot in the dark, and it is reflecting that human nutrition is both a) mostly a hard problem, and b) mostly a SOLVED problem that keeps me from making gee-whiz comments about the Soylent project here on HN. The great thing about a free-enterprise economy with minimal regulation is that if you like this kind of thing, you can spend your hard-earned money to buy Soylent. If your eating behavior includes experiential or social outcomes better met by eating a variety of foods you cook and chew, you can join me in eating a little of this and a little of that over the course of a year. The Soylent company is YC-invested, as I recall, so press releases from the company will continue to be posted here, but meanwhile I will pursue a variety of micronutrients and a variety of pleasant experiences by eating a varied diet with my family and friends.

Shorel 13y ago

Can we get a Keto version of this? Bonus points for a Paleo friendly version. As it is now, I would never get close to that carbohydrate-based drink.

gavinpc 13y ago

Does anyone remember the early post from this guy where he said that he just wanted to stop spending so much of his time and energy on food? Now it's all he does. He "wakes up every day thinking about it." Now that's ironic.