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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 fr

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! ;)
- goostavos 13y ago
  Well, No. I didn't say anything like that. In fact, I'm not quite sure how you got that interpretation from what I wrote (assuming you read the whole thing, and not just the first sentence). For clarification, the problem is not that it's now being marketed, it's that it is marketed along with unverified medical claims.

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! ;)
goostavos 13y ago
Well, No. I didn't say anything like that. In fact, I'm not quite sure how you got that interpretation from what I wrote (assuming you read the whole thing, and not just the first sentence). For clarification, the problem is not that it's now being marketed, it's that it is marketed along with unverified medical claims.