7 ms·

Call me an anti-foodie I only eat because I'm hungry; the taste, as long as it's bearable, is always an afterthought. I find grocery shopping, cooking and espe

Call me an anti-foodie I only eat because I'm hungry; the taste, as long as it's bearable, is always an afterthought. I find grocery shopping, cooking and especially doing the dishes to be insanely inconvenient in my daily life, and eating out is far too expensive. My wife asked me the other day, "It's not that you expect me to make dinner for you, it's just that if I didn't, you'd likely eat either a frozen pizza or boil some pasta every night, right?" I would absolutely love for this Soylent project to become a reality. The convenience of getting a well balanced diet served in one small dose is something I only dreamed of coming true; fingers crossed they can pull it off.

toomuchtodo 13y ago
If they make Soylent In A Can, you can have my entire yearly grocery/restaurant budget.
cylinder 13y ago
The chopping, prep, cooking part and eating I enjoy. It's the work involved in buying ingredients, bringing them to my home, as well as cleaning up the kitchen and doing dishes (even with a dishwasher!) afterwards that are the real inconvenience. Selecting which ingredients to buy and what dish to prepare also take up a lot of mental bandwidth. I don't like ordering/eating out excessively because it's too expensive, often unhygienic, with poor quality ingredients. I grew up on high-quality home cooked meals so I'm simply not used to it.
goostavos 13y ago
When Soylent was first a guy's "garage project," I too wanted it to work, or, to be clear, I do still want the idea of Soylent to work. However, Soylent went from being a simple meal replacement, to a snake oil miracle food nearly overnight. Once the internet buzz started swimming around their milkshake idea, it felt like the developers saw green and threw their standards out the window. Their Kick Starter page read like something out of the Patent Medicine era of the early 1900's. "Do feel tired, groggy, or have ailment X?" Soylent with cure it! Obviously, I'm a cranky minority, but the absolute lack of intellectual honesty and rigor presented in the claims on their Kick Starter put a sour taste in my mouth over the whole thing.
- KevinEldon 13y ago
  You're saying you liked Soylent because it was a "garage project", but you no longer like it because it's using marketing and has become popular? But you'd like the product if it weren't associated with the marketing? Does like == buy here or is this just fashion for ideas?
  - cube13 13y ago
    There's a difference in the claims. Soylent as a simple meal replacement makes quite a bit of sense. It's the same as Weight Watcher shakes and the like-something you can eat to replace a meal once a day at most. That product can get away with not being perfectly nutritionally balanced because it's not meant to be eaten every meal. You can use the other meals to fill the nutritional holes left by it, even if you're using it to replace one meal a day. Soylent as a total food replacement brings a LOT more scrutiny. It means that they have to prove that it IS perfectly nutritionally balanced, and that there aren't any adverse side effects for long-term consumption. That's where the snake oil responses come in, because the burden of proof is so much higher.
    - KevinEldon 13y ago
      The post I responded to treated a business with a real product as fashion. They liked Soylent because it was "garage" and then didn't when it became popular... it's the cliched hipster who only likes bands you've never heard of. I am probably frustrated with the the consumer vs critic chasm. I will probably purchase Soylent when it's available, at least to try it out. It will probably never replace all of my meals (I don't think they really suggest that it SHOULD, although they may suggest that it COULD) but I'd try. The post I responded to was purely critical and only focused on the presentation of the product not the use of the product.
      - goostavos 13y ago
        >They liked Soylent because it was "garage" and then didn't when it became popular... sigh I can only conclude that you read the first sentence of my comment, and fired off a response before bothering to read the rest. It's fine if you want to argue against one of my opinions, but at least make it about an opinion that I actually hold! ;)
DanBC 13y ago
I genuinely don't understand why you think Soylent is anything new or unique. Is it just the marketing buzz that Soylent created?
- pbreit 13y ago
  From what I can tell, it's fairly new and unique. The closest thing I'm aware of both feature-wise and marketing-wise is "Ensure Complete" which was announced less than a year ago and still isn't marketed in quite the same way.
  - Steko 13y ago
    Powdered shake meal replacements are all over Amazon. Moreover we've already seen Soylent's alternate pitch as a two meal replacement product which makes it little different than the Slim Fast delicious shake for breakfast, another for lunch and whatever you want for dinner that Tommy Lasorda and other people have hawked on TV for decades.
    - pbreit 13y ago
      Meal replacement is almost always marketed as missing an occasional meal or up to 1 or (max) 2 meals in a day for up to a few consecutive days. Soylent is marketing 14-21 meals/week for several/many/all? months.
      - DanBC 13y ago
        I think that's the worrying thing about Soylent. I really wish they'd kept it experimental, or pushed it as suitable for daily use but not all meals, or some such.
      - pbreit 13y ago
        But then it really would be, as you critique, not new.
      - Steko 13y ago
        "Soylent is marketing 14-21 meals/week" I'm pretty sure this was exactly my point. Soylent's original angle was as a total replacement and they've already started moving the goalposts to 14. 14 meals a week is the same thing that Slim Fast has pitched since the late 70's and no this wasn't just for occasional meals or 2-3 days at a time, customers were encouraged to follow Slim Fast's 2 shakes a day as a long term solution.
mortenjorck 13y ago
I am more or less a foodie, and yet am watching Soylent intently for exactly the opposite reason: I could conceivably only eat when I'm able to have an excellent meal. Maybe that means setting aside time to cook an exquisite dinner a few times a month, and only going out to eat when I want to try a new restaurant or to socialize. I could actually see Soylent as the hardcore foodie's dream come true: Never eat a boring meal again, because you don't have to eat until your next feast.
- Pxtl 13y ago
  Good point. Nobody has the time, money, and energy to construct perfectly-sourced and meticulously prepared meals three times a day. I cook a lot and I get to do a fun experimental food project maybe every second week - most of the time I'm falling back to the grind of stand-by stuff since I've got a family of 5 to take care of. Obviously it wouldn't work for my case because there's no way I'd feed this stuff to my kids, but I can't really blame folks - even food-lovers - for wanting to just skip the effort with a big chunk of their meals.
  - kjjw 13y ago
    Bad point. Make time for cooking.
- genwin 13y ago
  Can't you already use Ensure, the stuff people drink after they have stomach surgery and the like? I thought people could survive indefinitely on that.
  - pbreit 13y ago
    It's generally not marketed that way and it's unclear if it would work like that. Possibly the relatively new "Ensure Complete" (announced less than a year ago) might work.
- ssharp 13y ago
  I'm not sure if anyone is so binary with their food that they will only give themselves a choice between an exquisite meal or powdered, bland goop. Maybe I'm just not "hardcore" enough. I can crack a few eggs in the morning, toss in some veggies and have a hot, delicious breakfast to enjoy with plenty of protein and it all cooks in just a few minutes. For the most part with "weekday cooking", the most time consuming part is the prep work and that stuff can be easily batched as long as you plan ahead. I just don't see how anyone who would consider themselves as foodies could be happy drinking this stuff for the majority of their meals.
nsxwolf 13y ago
If you can't make a tasty meal out of pasta or a frozen pizza, I would suggest the possibility that you are doing something wrong. All frozen pizzas are not created equal. Shop around and try different brands and styles. Do not microwave them. Pasta should be an exciting meal every time. You are probably using a low quality sauce, or overcooking it, or rinsing it after draining it (never do this). Use enough salt. You can also doctor things up. A cheap box of macaroni and cheese is transformed by crumbling a couple slices of high quality bacon onto it. You can dress up a frozen pizza with some extra toppings. Even canned black olives make a difference.
- gohwell 13y ago
  They reach for pasta or frozen pizza out of convenience and it's not the healthiest option if eaten every day.
kjjw 13y ago
Yawn.
Steko 13y ago
"convenience of getting a well balanced diet served in one small dose" Drinking a whole 2 liter pitcher of soylent is not easy. Really, go read the day by day reviews from Ars. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/08/ars-does-soylent-day-1-embrace-the-chalky-weird-sweetness/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/08/ars-does-soylent-day-... I'm not sure I'd use the word convenient either. Your protypical cheap bachelor microwave meal of pizza, burritos or pot pies beats soylent on both prep and cleanup. It also tastes better and is cheaper. A bowl of cereal or oatmeal ties on cleanup and price but wins on prep and taste. Energy bars for a lunch snack win on all counts.
- idProQuo 13y ago
  At the end of day 2, he says that Rhinehart encouraged him to only eat as much as he needs, and only when hungry. The logs of days 3, 4 and 5 are much more positive once he starts eating only when he's hungry.
hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
If you want it so much, you don't have to wait for Soylent, there are other, proven supplements on the market today. I make use of one daily. But, guess what... it isn't cheap because they've actually researched this stuff and got it past FDA.
- mrjatx 13y ago
  And.. what is it? Medifast?

toomuchtodo 13y ago

If they make Soylent In A Can, you can have my entire yearly grocery/restaurant budget.

cylinder 13y ago

The chopping, prep, cooking part and eating I enjoy. It's the work involved in buying ingredients, bringing them to my home, as well as cleaning up the kitchen and doing dishes (even with a dishwasher!) afterwards that are the real inconvenience. Selecting which ingredients to buy and what dish to prepare also take up a lot of mental bandwidth. I don't like ordering/eating out excessively because it's too expensive, often unhygienic, with poor quality ingredients. I grew up on high-quality home cooked meals so I'm simply not used to it.

goostavos 13y ago

When Soylent was first a guy's "garage project," I too wanted it to work, or, to be clear, I do still want the idea of Soylent to work. However, Soylent went from being a simple meal replacement, to a snake oil miracle food nearly overnight. Once the internet buzz started swimming around their milkshake idea, it felt like the developers saw green and threw their standards out the window. Their Kick Starter page read like something out of the Patent Medicine era of the early 1900's. "Do feel tired, groggy, or have ailment X?" Soylent with cure it! Obviously, I'm a cranky minority, but the absolute lack of intellectual honesty and rigor presented in the claims on their Kick Starter put a sour taste in my mouth over the whole thing.

KevinEldon 13y ago
You're saying you liked Soylent because it was a "garage project", but you no longer like it because it's using marketing and has become popular? But you'd like the product if it weren't associated with the marketing? Does like == buy here or is this just fashion for ideas?
- cube13 13y ago
  There's a difference in the claims. Soylent as a simple meal replacement makes quite a bit of sense. It's the same as Weight Watcher shakes and the like-something you can eat to replace a meal once a day at most. That product can get away with not being perfectly nutritionally balanced because it's not meant to be eaten every meal. You can use the other meals to fill the nutritional holes left by it, even if you're using it to replace one meal a day. Soylent as a total food replacement brings a LOT more scrutiny. It means that they have to prove that it IS perfectly nutritionally balanced, and that there aren't any adverse side effects for long-term consumption. That's where the snake oil responses come in, because the burden of proof is so much higher.
  - KevinEldon 13y ago
    The post I responded to treated a business with a real product as fashion. They liked Soylent because it was "garage" and then didn't when it became popular... it's the cliched hipster who only likes bands you've never heard of. I am probably frustrated with the the consumer vs critic chasm. I will probably purchase Soylent when it's available, at least to try it out. It will probably never replace all of my meals (I don't think they really suggest that it SHOULD, although they may suggest that it COULD) but I'd try. The post I responded to was purely critical and only focused on the presentation of the product not the use of the product.
    - goostavos 13y ago
      >They liked Soylent because it was "garage" and then didn't when it became popular... sigh I can only conclude that you read the first sentence of my comment, and fired off a response before bothering to read the rest. It's fine if you want to argue against one of my opinions, but at least make it about an opinion that I actually hold! ;)

DanBC 13y ago

I genuinely don't understand why you think Soylent is anything new or unique. Is it just the marketing buzz that Soylent created?

pbreit 13y ago
From what I can tell, it's fairly new and unique. The closest thing I'm aware of both feature-wise and marketing-wise is "Ensure Complete" which was announced less than a year ago and still isn't marketed in quite the same way.
- Steko 13y ago
  Powdered shake meal replacements are all over Amazon. Moreover we've already seen Soylent's alternate pitch as a two meal replacement product which makes it little different than the Slim Fast delicious shake for breakfast, another for lunch and whatever you want for dinner that Tommy Lasorda and other people have hawked on TV for decades.
  - pbreit 13y ago
    Meal replacement is almost always marketed as missing an occasional meal or up to 1 or (max) 2 meals in a day for up to a few consecutive days. Soylent is marketing 14-21 meals/week for several/many/all? months.
    - DanBC 13y ago
      I think that's the worrying thing about Soylent. I really wish they'd kept it experimental, or pushed it as suitable for daily use but not all meals, or some such.
    - pbreit 13y ago
      But then it really would be, as you critique, not new.
    - Steko 13y ago
      "Soylent is marketing 14-21 meals/week" I'm pretty sure this was exactly my point. Soylent's original angle was as a total replacement and they've already started moving the goalposts to 14. 14 meals a week is the same thing that Slim Fast has pitched since the late 70's and no this wasn't just for occasional meals or 2-3 days at a time, customers were encouraged to follow Slim Fast's 2 shakes a day as a long term solution.

mortenjorck 13y ago

I am more or less a foodie, and yet am watching Soylent intently for exactly the opposite reason: I could conceivably only eat when I'm able to have an excellent meal. Maybe that means setting aside time to cook an exquisite dinner a few times a month, and only going out to eat when I want to try a new restaurant or to socialize. I could actually see Soylent as the hardcore foodie's dream come true: Never eat a boring meal again, because you don't have to eat until your next feast.

Pxtl 13y ago
Good point. Nobody has the time, money, and energy to construct perfectly-sourced and meticulously prepared meals three times a day. I cook a lot and I get to do a fun experimental food project maybe every second week - most of the time I'm falling back to the grind of stand-by stuff since I've got a family of 5 to take care of. Obviously it wouldn't work for my case because there's no way I'd feed this stuff to my kids, but I can't really blame folks - even food-lovers - for wanting to just skip the effort with a big chunk of their meals.
- kjjw 13y ago
  Bad point. Make time for cooking.
genwin 13y ago
Can't you already use Ensure, the stuff people drink after they have stomach surgery and the like? I thought people could survive indefinitely on that.
- pbreit 13y ago
  It's generally not marketed that way and it's unclear if it would work like that. Possibly the relatively new "Ensure Complete" (announced less than a year ago) might work.
ssharp 13y ago
I'm not sure if anyone is so binary with their food that they will only give themselves a choice between an exquisite meal or powdered, bland goop. Maybe I'm just not "hardcore" enough. I can crack a few eggs in the morning, toss in some veggies and have a hot, delicious breakfast to enjoy with plenty of protein and it all cooks in just a few minutes. For the most part with "weekday cooking", the most time consuming part is the prep work and that stuff can be easily batched as long as you plan ahead. I just don't see how anyone who would consider themselves as foodies could be happy drinking this stuff for the majority of their meals.

nsxwolf 13y ago

If you can't make a tasty meal out of pasta or a frozen pizza, I would suggest the possibility that you are doing something wrong. All frozen pizzas are not created equal. Shop around and try different brands and styles. Do not microwave them. Pasta should be an exciting meal every time. You are probably using a low quality sauce, or overcooking it, or rinsing it after draining it (never do this). Use enough salt. You can also doctor things up. A cheap box of macaroni and cheese is transformed by crumbling a couple slices of high quality bacon onto it. You can dress up a frozen pizza with some extra toppings. Even canned black olives make a difference.

gohwell 13y ago
They reach for pasta or frozen pizza out of convenience and it's not the healthiest option if eaten every day.

kjjw 13y ago

Yawn.

Steko 13y ago

"convenience of getting a well balanced diet served in one small dose" Drinking a whole 2 liter pitcher of soylent is not easy. Really, go read the day by day reviews from Ars. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/08/ars-does-soylent-day-1-embrace-the-chalky-weird-sweetness/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/08/ars-does-soylent-day-... I'm not sure I'd use the word convenient either. Your protypical cheap bachelor microwave meal of pizza, burritos or pot pies beats soylent on both prep and cleanup. It also tastes better and is cheaper. A bowl of cereal or oatmeal ties on cleanup and price but wins on prep and taste. Energy bars for a lunch snack win on all counts.

idProQuo 13y ago
At the end of day 2, he says that Rhinehart encouraged him to only eat as much as he needs, and only when hungry. The logs of days 3, 4 and 5 are much more positive once he starts eating only when he's hungry.

hcarvalhoalves 13y ago

If you want it so much, you don't have to wait for Soylent, there are other, proven supplements on the market today. I make use of one daily. But, guess what... it isn't cheap because they've actually researched this stuff and got it past FDA.

mrjatx 13y ago
And.. what is it? Medifast?