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Soylent: Manufacturing Update
- rfnslyr 13y agoAs a bodybuilder/powerlifter, I would kill to have packages geared towards my sport with the proper macronutriets. Would be cool if you could customize as well based on meal frequency and macro-nutrient requirements. For example, I need to eat 6 meals a day @ 40g protein / 40g carbs / 20g fat in each meal.
- djcapelis 13y agoSo grab some ingredients and make your own.
- hellopat 13y agoIt takes time to prepare, including calculating all the supplemental nutrients. I think he's looking for an instant solution.
- MarcusVorenus 13y agoYou only need to make the calculations once though. Preparation time is 5 minutes tops if you use pills instead of pure powder to achieve your micros.
- rfnslyr 13y agoI do, but it's not as efficient as it can be.
- cvburgess 13y agoI totally second this. Customizable "meals" based on your activity level, age, and weight goals (among other factors) should be a goal for the Soylent team down the road.
- alex_doom 13y agoSo far they've got 2 for male/female. I'd imagine it could be feasible to create several variants for different goal types.
- pogden 13y agoYou could supplement Soylent with maltodextrin, rice protein and olive oil. That or cheeseburgers. Meal frequency adjustments can be accomplished with a measuring cup.
- 001sky 13y agoI need to eat 6 meals a day @ 40g protein / 40g carbs / 20g fat in each meal. This is why god invented excel. So you can eat real food. Just read the labels...
- iMark 13y agoI've been trying to put on some muscle mass over the last 6 months, and simply trying to consume enough protein throughout the day is one of the hardest parts. I can certainly sympathise with someone looking for a simpler solution - it would interest me too.
- adwf 13y agoNot to mention that when you find one particular solution that works (eg. 6 chicken breasts a day), it gets very boring, very quickly. Although I doubt that drinking Soylent everyday is going to help with the boredom!
- iMark 13y agoFor me it varies. There are some foods I can eat on a daily basis without ever tiring, but some others I go off very quickly. So far I've found one protein shake I can stomach for long periods of time, the others I get sick off after about 2 weeks.
- Zancarius 13y ago> So far I've found one protein shake I can stomach for long periods of time, the others I get sick off after about 2 weeks. Which is that, if you don't mind my asking on matters of personal curiosity? I have similar eating habits insofar as finding some foods off putting if I eat them too regularly.
- iMark 13y agoGold Standard double chocolate. I tried their cookies and cream first, and was fine for a couple of weeks before I just couldn't stomach it any more. I've tried a couple of other brands and flavours with similar results.
- Eliezer 13y agoThe obvious solution would be if we could get Soylent Powder or Soylent Base containing all the nitty-gritty little vitamins and minerals and choline and whatever, and then add whatever fats, carbs, and protein we wanted. I wrote them about that (I've already ordered in the Kickstarter, just to support them) but haven't received an answer yet. BTW does anyone know the current composition of the latest Soylent?
- papa_bear 13y agoMaking it easy to do this is my goal with Eat This Much (http://www.eatthismuch.com http://www.eatthismuch.com), and before that, with http://www.Swole.me http://www.Swole.me (the name being more bodybuilding focused before I added recipes and improved the algorithm to make something that would appeal to a normal, well adjusted person :) If Soylent got popular enough, it would pretty much make my service obsolete. I doubt that'll happen anytime soon, but I'm still a huge supporter of what Soylent is trying to accomplish with taking the thinking out of what I should eat. You can actually use the two in conjunction pretty well by adding Soylent as a "custom food" on Eat This Much, making it take up about 80% of your daily calories, locking it in place, and then running the meal plan generator to fill in the last 20% of your calories with real food. Here's an example where I added Soylent similar to one of their initial recipes, each serving being 1/4 of their daily recommendation (and a higher calorie target so I don't atrophy into nothing): http://www.eatthismuch.com/diet/802429276 http://www.eatthismuch.com/diet/802429276
- anthonycerra 13y agoIf Soylent got popular enough, it would pretty much make my service obsolete. Don't count yourself out just yet. Some people will always prefer to eat real food.
- papa_bear 13y agoHaha of course, hence the "I doubt that'll happen anytime soon." Though I wouldn't be surprised if it became commonplace for people to swap out their breakfasts for something like Soylent in the near future. I already do something similar by throwing milk, protein powder, ground up oatmeal, and flax seeds into a blender every morning. The convenience is pretty overwhelming, and it has a much better nutrition profile than a bowl of cereal.
- anthonycerra 13y agoI do the same for breakfast, but I feel more comfortable doing so because most of those foods are regulated. I don't believe protein powder is, which is a little scary considering how often it's consumed. If Soylent is to be treated as a supplement (lack of regulation) that is consumed exclusively, it's even more unnerving. PS - Are you Louis? We had a quick email convo last year. If you need help implementing some of the marketing aspects of EatThisMuch, let me know.
- mtrimpe 13y agoI once had my personal trainer cook me the 6 properly balanced meals I needed a day. I got 6 tupperware boxes each day and it was heaven, apart from the price tag. I've been dreaming of starting a healthy micro-meal delivery service ever since. You even get the perfect distribution point for free: the gym.
- rfnslyr 13y agoThat's a pretty good idea. Have you made any headway with it? Yeah I stack 35 tupperware containers of food a week. 5 in the freezer, take out a new days worth 24 hours.
- mtrimpe 13y agoI haven't made any headway as my main startup takes precedence right now. Feel free to take the idea and run with it ;)
- caublestone 13y agoCan you share how much this cost you?
- mtrimpe 13y agoAn arm and a leg. I did it together with a daily (on workdays) personal training routine for €100 per day. It was amazingly effective and I'm glad I did it but, unsurprisingly, it was just too expensive to maintain in the long run.
- MarcusVorenus 13y agoYou could make yourself a DIY Soylent customized for your needs. There's an app to make things easy for you: http://diy.soylent.me/ http://diy.soylent.me/
- jimzvz 13y ago>For example, I need to eat 6 meals a day @ 40g protein / 40g carbs / 20g fat in each meal. The importance of meal frequency is pretty much regarded as bro-science these days.
- ericd 13y agoRegardless, it can be hard to pack enough protein and calories away for that kind of nutritional load if you're not constantly eating.
- caycep 13y agothis is actually nice in how it gives a picture of what the ops/regulatory side of this sort of business is like...totally alien from my nerd side of the world...
- alex_doom 13y agoDammit! Now it's January? I hope it doesn't keep slipping. It was supposed be August in the beginning but then popularity pushed it down to November, then December...I want wanna drink some fancy science!
- adamwong246 13y agoI feel your pain every time I go to the grocery store.
- alex_doom 13y agoI've even been trying various powder things that nutritional shops sell. They all leave me feeling hungry after an hour and I end up eating a sandwich anyway. :/
- danjayh 13y agoI might eat this as snack food, or to replace an occasional meal, but the idea of eating exactly the same thing every single meal scares me a little bit. I guess I just don't have confidence that modern science has fully quantified everything that's needed in a complete human diet. Don't get me wrong - I'm sure Soylent is great stuff - I just think that I wouldn't want to completely give up 'normal' food for it (besides the worry factor, it also seems really boring).
- j2d3 13y agoNot sure, but I think this is the expected use case. Soylent is supposed to be something you can eat exclusively, but also, I don't think even soylent creators expect their users to eat it and nothing else ever. I plan to replace "mindless" meals with it, but eat delicious, healthy non soylent meals when I have time and inclination. Many times I eat stuff I dont want that isn't healthy due to time constraints.
- j2d3 13y agoactually, I take it back... what you're saying is not the expected use case. you want to use it as a snack food (maybe), when really its intended to be a default food, but that doesn't mean you should only eat soylent ever. They want to make something that you can eat exclusively workout endangering your health. I don't think they actually expect everyone uses it to only use it exclusively.
- nazgulnarsil 13y agowhy make your own from real food when you can have powders mixed by an idiot for twice the price? http://lesswrong.com/lw/h2h/soylent_orange_whole_food_open_source_soylent/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/h2h/soylent_orange_whole_food_open_s...
- sneak 13y agoThat's a lot more ingredients than "1", and many of those things spoil very quickly. Soylent is exactly one thing to buy, and keeps for >6 months, meaning that you can stockpile it and not worry about running out. I already basically live on milk-based shakes now, and it's a pain having to replenish my milk supply twice a week. Soylent would solve that nicely.
- nazgulnarsil 13y agoYou are incapable of buying more milk? Bananas can be frozen, everything else has a shelf life of months.
- sneak 13y agoI buy more milk twice a week, so no. I am capable of buying every single item in soylent individually and combining them. I am also capable of going to a farmer's market every single morning and cleaning, preparing, and cooking three fresh, square, delicious, healthy, nutritious meals every single day. I just don't fucking want to. Optimizing is saying no to things. I think the creator of soylent put it best: "less time cooking and cleaning means more time for music and math".
- shtylman 13y agoGlad to hear you have never bought anything that was pre-made and can live your entire life assembling everything you need from parts yourself.
- baddox 13y agoYou're asking why anyone would pay money to have a service performed for them?
- crisnoble 13y agoAs a former Process Engineer in the Food Industry, I never thought I would see the day RFI would be mentioned in an article linked from HN.
- gojomo 13y agoI would like to see a controlled trial of Soylent against the all-raw-and-rotting-meat diet: http://www.vice.com/read/this-guy-has-eaten-nothing-but-raw-meat-for-five-years http://www.vice.com/read/this-guy-has-eaten-nothing-but-raw-...
- aharrison 13y agoOne of my favorite things about Soylent is that it provides a "reasonable" but consistent baseline for doing these sorts of tests. Until Soylent there wasn't a non-medical meal replacement that at least theoretically tried to be everything you need. Once Soylent has been battle tested for awhile, we can start doing actual experiments with controlled variables around diets. If we can get that far without throwing the baby out with the bathwater, we will potentially upend how we do nutritional testing.
- freshhawk 13y ago> Until Soylent there wasn't a non-medical meal replacement that at least theoretically tried to be everything you need As far as I understand it that's because the knowledge to make such a thing does not exist and everyone in the field is confident trying to make such a product would fail. They are waiting for the pure research folks to learn more about human nutrition (either a bit more or a hell of a lot more depending on who you ask). Ensure/Jevity/etc would certainly market their products for non-medical purposes if they could. But they are only used as last resort options during medical interventions precisely because of the results they've seen during those medical interventions. A bunch of volunteers self experimenting is an interesting way to get around this (the ethics of this level of experimentation on human subjects that is). While the data will be too uncontrolled and biased to judge any positive effects you will probably get some very interesting data when someone gets sick (as long as they at least keep a detailed enough log of their diet). Considering the ingredient list now includes snake oil like Ginseng and Ginkgo Biloba I don't trust the makers enough to include myself in those tests but I am interested in how it turns out.
- gojomo 13y agoThat's crazy talk. Plenty of other controlled diets, for which there are decades or centuries of experience, would be better 'baselines' for experiments than novel, radical Soylent. Actual controlled experiments in diet are not currently blocked waiting for "a non-medical meal replacement that at least theoretically trie[s] to be everything you need". In 10 years "eating the Soylent" might have a colloquial meaning very close to "drinking the Kool-Aid".
- derekp7 13y agoDoes anyone know if Soylent actually makes you feel full / satisfied after consuming it? Would the effect be similar to eating a bowl of soup or something? I recall many years ago I used to get something called Instant Breakfast, but I still needed an apple or a couple slices of toast to feel like I actually ate something (might be that psychologically, I need the recent memory of chewing action in order to be convinced that I actually just ate a meal). On a related note, for those that are looking at this class of products due to lack of time / skills to cook at home, would anyone be interested in my list of "bachelor chow" recipes? Basically, this includes anything that can be easily prepared (minimal active preparation time, even if it has to cook all day in a slow cooker), along with the ability to be good leftovers for multiple days. Examples include chicken fried rice, ham/noodle/cheese casserole, "skillet" breakfasts, beef stew, etc.
- ripter 13y agoI've been on a DIY soylent (diy.soylent.me) for over a month now and I feel full. I don't feel stuffed, I'm just not hungry anymore.
- alanctgardner2 13y agoThe stuff that I've mixed up (not real Soylent, but from the HackerSchool recipe) has a significant amount of flour, which makes it very thick. The way I mix it it's more like a milkshake, and it feels very hearty. Whether or not I get hungry after mostly depends on how bored I am - I would have snacked anyways.
- jrpt 13y agoYes, I'd read your bachelor chow recipes. I have a similar question about it. Drinks go super fast into the blood stream. You could try combining it with some celery. I guess that'd work for someone who really, really doesn't want to make meals: use Soylent and celery.
- intelliot 13y ago"Our number-one priority is that every person who has received their Soylent is able to reorder more for immediate delivery." Odd. I'd expect their number-one priority to be "ensure Soylent is healthy and safe".
- nostromo 13y agoThat's unfair. The comment is made within the context of a manufacturing update. Besides, you could respond to anyone that says they have a priority, "I'd expect your number-one priority to be feeding orphans."
- majurg 13y agoIts kinda expensive, $255 for a month?
- quasque 13y agoI'm baffled as to why anyone would want to live off what is essentially tube-fed hospital food. But without even the benefit of medical expertise and monitoring to ensure safety.
- yitchelle 13y agoThis is just nuts to me. Why aren't people doing one of the simple joys of life - cooking and eating delicious food, even simple recipes can result in really delicious food. Come on people, get back to basics!