5 ms·

Incidentally, Soylent is a perfect example of something that some people really love and others dismiss as a toy. Not that that is a perfect predictor of succe

by pg 13y ago

Incidentally, Soylent is a perfect example of something that some people really love and others dismiss as a toy. Not that that is a perfect predictor of success. If only. But it is at least a positive sign. (Come to think of it, maybe I shouldn't worry so much about middlebrow dismissals floating to the top of HN threads. They probably do have some predictive value.)

jonathanjaeger 13y ago
I hated how most of the critiques on HN were centered around "loving to cook" or "loving food." I think that's a moot point. I love the idea of Soylent and meal replacements in general. The critique I had for it was that everywhere I looked for the recipe, I saw references to maltodextrin. I don't want to fill my diet with maltodextrin instead of whole weat bread/oats. I hope in the future there are varieties where I can have more control over the carb source I consume a lot of in my daily meals.
- stcredzero 13y ago
  You can already find such recipes on the DIY Soylent sites. There was one based on Chia seeds, peanut butter, and a few things you can find in the grocery store.
  - jonathanjaeger 13y ago
    Well if it's DIY then it's taking all the time to get the ingredients and put it in a blender. I can make a DIY meal replacement now -- I was just talking in context of Soylent's merits. However, if Soylent can be cheap enough to help solve some issues in terms of world hunger, then I'm all for it.
    - DanBC 13y ago
      The World Food Program has several nutrition foods. The problem tends not to be cost (which is already very low) but distribution and awareness. One of the problems of Soylent is the need for water. About one billion people don't have access to clean drinking water. Problems with water cause very many infant deaths. It's exciting seeing this get some awareness in tech culture. Maybe people can design and develop easier cheaper better methods of water purification or desalination; or cooking; or whatever. You can imagine that the cost of the product from this huge NGO is going to have been driven down as far as possible. https://www.wfp.org/nutrition/how-wfp-fights-malnutrition https://www.wfp.org/nutrition/how-wfp-fights-malnutrition http://www.irinnews.org/report/83124/malawi-cheaper-recipe-for-treating-hungry-children http://www.irinnews.org/report/83124/malawi-cheaper-recipe-f... https://www.wfp.org/nutrition/special-nutritional-products https://www.wfp.org/nutrition/special-nutritional-products http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/communications/wfp255508.pdf http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/co... Here's the WFP in a Syrian camp for refuges http://youtu.be/Ej0vAUsn_o8 http://youtu.be/Ej0vAUsn_o8 About 1 in 8 people are chronically hungry https://www.wfp.org/news/news-release/world-food-day-wfp-says-investment-nutrition-key-unlocking-better-future-0 https://www.wfp.org/news/news-release/world-food-day-wfp-say... Here's some nice feel good photos of children getting school meals. http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/gallery/2013/jun/06/global-school-feeding-programmes-in-pictures http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/gallery/2013/j...
      - cpeterso 13y ago
        > One of the problems of Soylent is the need for water. About one billion people don't have access to clean drinking water. Why does Soylent need water? Could the same ingredients be prepared as a Soylent power bar? That is a crowded product market, but Soylent might have an interesting pitch. A cashier at Trader Joe's told me that power bars were the store's best selling items.
    - scottjad 13y ago
      In combatting world hunger, are you thinking of a factor other than price, like transportability, perishability, predictability, controlability, preparationability? Given that the cheapest DIY soylent appear to be primarily based traditional staples like rice, oats, peas, soy, and flax seeds, it doesn't seem very likely to be cheaper. The initial price for the official one is $9/day, while the cost of the cheapest DIY based on traditional foods is $2/day.
      - stcredzero 13y ago
        You can get DIY soylent down to between $5-$6 a day without too much effort. There are some that are a bit lower, but you're not going to beat DIY traditional cooking by any means. It's meant to be a time optimization.
        001sky 13y ago
        It's meant to be a time optimization. Who are these destitute people in such a hurry? WTF
        stcredzero 13y ago
        Programmers trying to become Ramen-profitable?
        deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
      - jonathanjaeger 13y ago
        That's a good point, I should have calculated the daily price. I was just thinking of the convenience of an all-in-one nutrient rich meal replacement being easier to transport and not go bad.
    - stcredzero 13y ago
      > Well if it's DIY then it's taking all the time to get the ingredients and put it in a blender. It's practical to do certain stuff with Soylent that's a little more difficult with traditional food. With the appropriate containers, I can, for example, very easily "package" a week's worth of breakfast and lunch. The only operation involved is measuring dry powders and cleanup is very minimal in comparison to traditional cooking. I can do the same thing with ordinary cooked meals, containers, and a freezer, but that's quite a bit more involved.
jwoah12 13y ago
A lot of the criticism I've seen is not people dismissing Soylent as a toy, but instead being worried that it may actually have unknown negative effects on health, since it lacks any long-term clinical trials.
- pg 13y ago
  That's how you dismiss a food as a toy.
  - llamataboot 13y ago
    The Soylent folks brought it on themselves by making completely unverified claims on their Kickstarter (and other) pages. Had they presented themselves and what they were doing in a more honest fashion, there wouldn't be near as much criticism. As it is they have presented themselves as having far more research behind them than they do. Frankly, if they were doing something other than food, it probably wouldn't be an issue either. They are playing with people's health and wellbeing.
  - a-priori 13y ago
    Perhaps, but my fear is that Soylent's cavalier attitude is how you cause the next asbestos or thalidomide: things that seemed great, were rolled out extensively, and ended up being huge health disasters.
  - DanBC 13y ago
    I have vigorously criticised Soylent in the past. I've tried hard to turn that down. The reason I hate Soylent is, as several other people mention in this thread, the over-blown claims made in their crowd-funding drive. Before any work with nutritionists or dietitians the Soylent team were claiming: > "You can finally join the easy, healthy, and affordable future of nutrition." > "What if you never had to worry about food again?" > "For anyone that struggles with allergies, heartburn, acid reflux or digestion, has trouble controlling weight or cholesterol, or simply doesn't have the means to eat well, soylent is for you." > "Soylent frees you from the time and money spent shopping, cooking and cleaning, puts you in excellent health," > "By taking years to spoil" > "there is much evidence that it is considerably healthier than a typical diet." Some of these are just enthusiastic US marketing. I'm in the UK where we have stricter rules for advertising, so there's some cultural clash there. But some of them are sleazy and not truthy. That bad-feeling is retained by many people, even though the Soylent team are now working with real food scientists and being more careful with the claims.
stcredzero 13y ago
> middlebrow dismissals Are HN users going to get a "brow height" indicator sometime?
defen 13y ago
It seems like you'd want to see scientific evidence of the potential harm of Soylent in order to count a comment as a non-middlebrow dismissal. But it shouldn't be on the doubters to prove that this stuff is healthy - can you give us a non-middlebrow reason to support it, other than "well, there's no proof that it's harmful in our small self-selected self-administered non-blinded non-controlled study, so let's give it a shot and market this thing to the whole world as a healthy long-term replacement for traditional food."
- lsc 13y ago
  The middlebrow objection is not that it's somehow dangerous, but that it's not new or unique or worth getting excited over. It's just another meal-replacement shake, just marketed to a different group. I'm sure that if you use it sensibly. ("a shake for breakfast, a shake for lunch, then a sensible dinner" as the ultra slim-fast guy would say.) it won't hurt you. I mean, as long as the stuff isn't actively and aggressively poisonous, and as long as you get lawyers or something to mealy mouth your way out of the claims that you can live entirely on soylent, you are fine. I guess... that's not really all that much of an objection, from a business perspective. With all this hype, I'd say it has a reasonable chance of making money. It does seem to be marketed well, and it's timed right But, I think most of the 'middlebrow dismissals' are more a response to the hype. I mean, meal-replacement shakes are an old product; certainly at first glance, if you dismiss the fantastic claims about soylent, like the idea that you can eat it and nothing else, it looks a lot like any other meal-replacement shake packaged for a particular market. The problem is that the group they are targeting, generally speaking, identifies as more skeptical than most, and they are using the traditional snake-oil style pitch that you normally use to get a product off the ground. On an emotional level, I (and I think many in their target demographic) find that pretty offensive[1]. I think that negative emotional response to obvious hype is the core of the resistance you see here. [1]or rather, responding positively to something sold using overly-enthusiastic sales techniques would... conflict with my self-image.
- netcan 13y ago
  non-middlebrow reason to support* it: A significant number of people seem to like/want it. *i'm not sure what you mean by support, but I'll take it as 'pay attention' or 'not dismiss.'
simonebrunozzi 13y ago
pg, nice reference to Chris Dixon's talk at Startup School. Agree. However, in this case we're "playing" with human health, and the good/bad effects of Soylent can take years to be clear. I have the feeling that Soylent, or this particular area of business, is going to be huge in the coming years. Not surprisingly, A16Z has invested in it :)
- pg 13y ago
  That wasn't a reference. (https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Apaulgraham.com+dismiss+toy https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Apaulgraham.com+dismis...)
  - simonebrunozzi 13y ago
    Ha. Then he was referencing you :)

by pg 13y ago

jonathanjaeger 13y ago

I hated how most of the critiques on HN were centered around "loving to cook" or "loving food." I think that's a moot point. I love the idea of Soylent and meal replacements in general. The critique I had for it was that everywhere I looked for the recipe, I saw references to maltodextrin. I don't want to fill my diet with maltodextrin instead of whole weat bread/oats. I hope in the future there are varieties where I can have more control over the carb source I consume a lot of in my daily meals.

stcredzero 13y ago
You can already find such recipes on the DIY Soylent sites. There was one based on Chia seeds, peanut butter, and a few things you can find in the grocery store.
- jonathanjaeger 13y ago
  Well if it's DIY then it's taking all the time to get the ingredients and put it in a blender. I can make a DIY meal replacement now -- I was just talking in context of Soylent's merits. However, if Soylent can be cheap enough to help solve some issues in terms of world hunger, then I'm all for it.
  - DanBC 13y ago
    The World Food Program has several nutrition foods. The problem tends not to be cost (which is already very low) but distribution and awareness. One of the problems of Soylent is the need for water. About one billion people don't have access to clean drinking water. Problems with water cause very many infant deaths. It's exciting seeing this get some awareness in tech culture. Maybe people can design and develop easier cheaper better methods of water purification or desalination; or cooking; or whatever. You can imagine that the cost of the product from this huge NGO is going to have been driven down as far as possible. https://www.wfp.org/nutrition/how-wfp-fights-malnutrition https://www.wfp.org/nutrition/how-wfp-fights-malnutrition http://www.irinnews.org/report/83124/malawi-cheaper-recipe-for-treating-hungry-children http://www.irinnews.org/report/83124/malawi-cheaper-recipe-f... https://www.wfp.org/nutrition/special-nutritional-products https://www.wfp.org/nutrition/special-nutritional-products http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/communications/wfp255508.pdf http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/co... Here's the WFP in a Syrian camp for refuges http://youtu.be/Ej0vAUsn_o8 http://youtu.be/Ej0vAUsn_o8 About 1 in 8 people are chronically hungry https://www.wfp.org/news/news-release/world-food-day-wfp-says-investment-nutrition-key-unlocking-better-future-0 https://www.wfp.org/news/news-release/world-food-day-wfp-say... Here's some nice feel good photos of children getting school meals. http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/gallery/2013/jun/06/global-school-feeding-programmes-in-pictures http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/gallery/2013/j...
    - cpeterso 13y ago
      > One of the problems of Soylent is the need for water. About one billion people don't have access to clean drinking water. Why does Soylent need water? Could the same ingredients be prepared as a Soylent power bar? That is a crowded product market, but Soylent might have an interesting pitch. A cashier at Trader Joe's told me that power bars were the store's best selling items.
  - scottjad 13y ago
    In combatting world hunger, are you thinking of a factor other than price, like transportability, perishability, predictability, controlability, preparationability? Given that the cheapest DIY soylent appear to be primarily based traditional staples like rice, oats, peas, soy, and flax seeds, it doesn't seem very likely to be cheaper. The initial price for the official one is $9/day, while the cost of the cheapest DIY based on traditional foods is $2/day.
    - stcredzero 13y ago
      You can get DIY soylent down to between $5-$6 a day without too much effort. There are some that are a bit lower, but you're not going to beat DIY traditional cooking by any means. It's meant to be a time optimization.
      - 001sky 13y ago
        It's meant to be a time optimization. Who are these destitute people in such a hurry? WTF
        stcredzero 13y ago
        Programmers trying to become Ramen-profitable?
        deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
    - jonathanjaeger 13y ago
      That's a good point, I should have calculated the daily price. I was just thinking of the convenience of an all-in-one nutrient rich meal replacement being easier to transport and not go bad.
  - stcredzero 13y ago
    > Well if it's DIY then it's taking all the time to get the ingredients and put it in a blender. It's practical to do certain stuff with Soylent that's a little more difficult with traditional food. With the appropriate containers, I can, for example, very easily "package" a week's worth of breakfast and lunch. The only operation involved is measuring dry powders and cleanup is very minimal in comparison to traditional cooking. I can do the same thing with ordinary cooked meals, containers, and a freezer, but that's quite a bit more involved.

jwoah12 13y ago

A lot of the criticism I've seen is not people dismissing Soylent as a toy, but instead being worried that it may actually have unknown negative effects on health, since it lacks any long-term clinical trials.

pg 13y ago
That's how you dismiss a food as a toy.
- llamataboot 13y ago
  The Soylent folks brought it on themselves by making completely unverified claims on their Kickstarter (and other) pages. Had they presented themselves and what they were doing in a more honest fashion, there wouldn't be near as much criticism. As it is they have presented themselves as having far more research behind them than they do. Frankly, if they were doing something other than food, it probably wouldn't be an issue either. They are playing with people's health and wellbeing.
- a-priori 13y ago
  Perhaps, but my fear is that Soylent's cavalier attitude is how you cause the next asbestos or thalidomide: things that seemed great, were rolled out extensively, and ended up being huge health disasters.
- DanBC 13y ago
  I have vigorously criticised Soylent in the past. I've tried hard to turn that down. The reason I hate Soylent is, as several other people mention in this thread, the over-blown claims made in their crowd-funding drive. Before any work with nutritionists or dietitians the Soylent team were claiming: > "You can finally join the easy, healthy, and affordable future of nutrition." > "What if you never had to worry about food again?" > "For anyone that struggles with allergies, heartburn, acid reflux or digestion, has trouble controlling weight or cholesterol, or simply doesn't have the means to eat well, soylent is for you." > "Soylent frees you from the time and money spent shopping, cooking and cleaning, puts you in excellent health," > "By taking years to spoil" > "there is much evidence that it is considerably healthier than a typical diet." Some of these are just enthusiastic US marketing. I'm in the UK where we have stricter rules for advertising, so there's some cultural clash there. But some of them are sleazy and not truthy. That bad-feeling is retained by many people, even though the Soylent team are now working with real food scientists and being more careful with the claims.

stcredzero 13y ago

> middlebrow dismissals Are HN users going to get a "brow height" indicator sometime?

defen 13y ago

It seems like you'd want to see scientific evidence of the potential harm of Soylent in order to count a comment as a non-middlebrow dismissal. But it shouldn't be on the doubters to prove that this stuff is healthy - can you give us a non-middlebrow reason to support it, other than "well, there's no proof that it's harmful in our small self-selected self-administered non-blinded non-controlled study, so let's give it a shot and market this thing to the whole world as a healthy long-term replacement for traditional food."

lsc 13y ago
The middlebrow objection is not that it's somehow dangerous, but that it's not new or unique or worth getting excited over. It's just another meal-replacement shake, just marketed to a different group. I'm sure that if you use it sensibly. ("a shake for breakfast, a shake for lunch, then a sensible dinner" as the ultra slim-fast guy would say.) it won't hurt you. I mean, as long as the stuff isn't actively and aggressively poisonous, and as long as you get lawyers or something to mealy mouth your way out of the claims that you can live entirely on soylent, you are fine. I guess... that's not really all that much of an objection, from a business perspective. With all this hype, I'd say it has a reasonable chance of making money. It does seem to be marketed well, and it's timed right But, I think most of the 'middlebrow dismissals' are more a response to the hype. I mean, meal-replacement shakes are an old product; certainly at first glance, if you dismiss the fantastic claims about soylent, like the idea that you can eat it and nothing else, it looks a lot like any other meal-replacement shake packaged for a particular market. The problem is that the group they are targeting, generally speaking, identifies as more skeptical than most, and they are using the traditional snake-oil style pitch that you normally use to get a product off the ground. On an emotional level, I (and I think many in their target demographic) find that pretty offensive[1]. I think that negative emotional response to obvious hype is the core of the resistance you see here. [1]or rather, responding positively to something sold using overly-enthusiastic sales techniques would... conflict with my self-image.
netcan 13y ago
non-middlebrow reason to support* it: A significant number of people seem to like/want it. *i'm not sure what you mean by support, but I'll take it as 'pay attention' or 'not dismiss.'

simonebrunozzi 13y ago

pg, nice reference to Chris Dixon's talk at Startup School. Agree. However, in this case we're "playing" with human health, and the good/bad effects of Soylent can take years to be clear. I have the feeling that Soylent, or this particular area of business, is going to be huge in the coming years. Not surprisingly, A16Z has invested in it :)

pg 13y ago
That wasn't a reference. (https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Apaulgraham.com+dismiss+toy https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Apaulgraham.com+dismis...)
- simonebrunozzi 13y ago
  Ha. Then he was referencing you :)