9 ms·

Soylent hits its 1.0 formula, nears release

44 points by shawndumas 13y ago

dmazin 13y ago
This is exciting, especially the updated texture. I used Soylent because my dinners were so depressing (crumbled tofu with deactivated yeast) that I figured I might as well just gulp liquid nutrition. But, honestly, that was even more depressing. So I just learned to make some nicer simpler dishes, and I've been fine.
jchung 13y ago
This is definitely looking much better. The marketing folks at Soylent seem to have kicked in. The packaging looks sort of like space food. The texture looks more "substantial", and the color is a step up from beige. I wouldn't be surprised to see flavoring coming next, with more color varieties.
- adambard 13y ago
  I believe the color was added by the author for the photo; it still comes beige and unflavored. But, the author also experimented with adding flavoring, too, to reasonable effect.
blhack 13y ago
They've also done a REALLY good job of addressing peoples' critiques. For instance: manufacturing. They've contracted with an experienced, FDA-certified manufacturing facility that Does This Sort of Things. Can't wait to get my soylent! (My girlfriend has been trying to create DIY soylent, so I'm really curious how hers will taste different than the "real" thing. The experiment from last night: soylent flatbread!)
- hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
  The hype around Soylent is unbelievable. You realize you don't need to wait for it if you want, you can just go out and buy Ensure and similars?
  - Shamanmuni 13y ago
    I'm no expert, but as I understand Ensure is a supplement for your meals, Soylent is a replacement for them. You shouldn't consume only Ensure, but you could do it with Soylent. They are completely different products.
    - ceejayoz 13y ago
      > You shouldn't consume only Ensure, but you could do it with Soylent. [citation needed] Malnutrition can have effects years down the line. A bunch of early-adopters with confirmation bias trying it for a couple months proves little about its long-term safety.
      - Shamanmuni 13y ago
        Sure, but if your regular meals are pizza, hamburguers, instant noodles, junk food and the like then you are on your way to malnutrition already. Soylent could be a very positive change for those people. It's not like meals are an arcane science working some unknown magic on your body, it's about biological needs and chemistry. And it's not like there are chefs cooking healthy food in every home. I don't claim anything about Soylent, I have never consumed it, but it sounds like a possible solution to a big problem. Time will tell.
        tptacek 13y ago
        If you subsist on fast food, you're obviously on your way to health problems, but those problems might not include malnutrition because even fast food inputs are complex compared to something engineered from the most primitive possible inputs to specific macronutrient ratios.
        ceejayoz 13y ago
        > Soylent could be a very positive change for those people. It could also be worse. Without long-term, scientifically valid studies, no one knows for sure. > It's not like meals are an arcane science working some unknown magic on your body, it's about biological needs and chemistry. The workings of the body are not fully known, even today. There are many unknowns in nutrition, which is precisely why none of the pharmaceutical companies have a "replace all meals!" product.
shaunxcode 13y ago
Wow this is great news! unless I read wrong it should be totally vegan now as the fish oil is not required? I love the idea of cooking being a collaborative ritualistic experience you engage in for holidays/celebrations and soylent being something you use the rest of the time.
- sp332 13y ago
  The EPA / DHA fatty acids from fish oil are incorporated directly into the oil blend now. Sounds like the fish oil is still there, it's even pre-mixed so you can only avoid it by replacing the oils entirely.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
_fs 13y ago
Hopefully they got all of the rats [1] out of the production facility. [1] http://www.vice.com/motherboard/life-after-food/ http://www.vice.com/motherboard/life-after-food/
- jljljl 13y ago
  They addressed this here http://blog.soylent.me/post/66807143901/this-morning-vices-brian-merchant-published-a http://blog.soylent.me/post/66807143901/this-morning-vices-b... >> We would also like to emphasize the fact that Soylent 1.0, the product for which we have accepted over $1.5M in preorders, will not be manufactured by hand by our executive team. We have signed a purchase order with RFI Ingredients, a contract manufacturer with over 20 years of experience producing FDA-approved food products. I was extremely skeptical of these guys, but they seem to be addressing some of the major concerns I had. I still think there's a lot of testing to be done before this lives up to all the promises, but they get some definite kudos for their quick responses.
Cthulhu_ 13y ago
So, average male's daily need in one 500 gram bag... How much does this cost again? I mean I'd be interested in replacing one or two meals with something like this, but only if it's not too expensive.
- soperj 13y ago
  Why don't you start using some of the ones currently on the market then?? Why wait?
  - georgebashi 13y ago
    Could you link some of these products available for purchase for purchase please? I've heard a few times times that there are soylent equivalents currently available, but from my searching I've only ever been able to find meal supplements and not complete replacements.
    - blhack 13y ago
      There is a section at lots of health food stores for "meal replacement". I bought some a few weeks ago while out sourcing ingredients for some DIY soylent. It was disgusting.
    - gscott 13y ago
      This is one http://www.amazon.com/The-Ultimate-Life-Meal-powder/dp/B00013YYR6/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1386359301&sr=8-12&keywords=meal+replacement http://www.amazon.com/The-Ultimate-Life-Meal-powder/dp/B0001...
      - asdasf 13y ago
        No, that is not one. That is the whole point. Look at the label, you would need to eat 29 scoops of that per day to get your daily potassium. It doesn't even mention all the vitamins and minerals we know we need. That is not a balanced, complete source of nutrition. Every time soylent is mentioned people make this claim, that all sorts of not even close to complete products are already filling the role soylent is intended for. They don't.
widdershins 13y ago
I find the idea of a foodstuff reaching a '1.0 release' somewhat... offputting.
- jbigelow76 13y ago
  Top notch chefs have been doing it for decades just without the gimmicky software versioning nomenclature.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
rblatz 13y ago
I still don't understand the excitement behind this, but apparently everyone here can't stop talking about them. So I guess they are doing something right.
- danudey 13y ago
  It's the ultimate in appeal to the geek crowd. It optimizes away a process which is a balance of expensive, inefficient, time consuming, and often unhealthy. Breakfast and lunch are throwaway meals for me; I eat because I have to in order to live and be productive and healthy, but none of my choices seem optimal. I can eat a fresh, healthy meal at work (expensive), I can reheat yesterday's dinner (microwaved food is less appetizing and often not as healthy), I can grab a quick meal (unhealthy and often expensive), or I can prepare a proper lunch ahead of time (time consuming). The promise of soylent is simple: from now on, you can eat meals because you want to, not because you have to. On top of that, you only get what you need, and not what you don't want. I compare it to, say, Linux. You can compile all your software from scratch, install dependencies, and customize absolutely everything, and some people do that because they enjoy it. Many people don't, and don't want to deal with it, and we have distributions like Ubuntu that take away 80% of what you used to need to do to get a proper Linux distribution running. With Soylent, you still have the option of other meals; it's entirely up to you. You can drink it as your sole nutritional intake, you can have a Friday dinner out, or you can eat dinner with the family and just replace breakfast and lunch.
  - rblatz 13y ago
    They have meal replacement shakes out, and have for years. They have much more attractive sounding names.
RankingMember 13y ago
They really need to redo the source footage of their intro video. The audio is awful and the green-screen they used had some not-great lighting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSkOVkgd8hY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSkOVkgd8hY
ufmace 13y ago
I've been thinking some about Soylent and the criticisms leveled against them, mainly that we still don't know as much as we'd like about exactly what types of food the human body needs to survive. One the one hand, it was my understanding that most nutritional deficiencies are relatively slow to develop, and whatever happens as a consequence of them usually goes away after the sufferer resumes normal eating. So if there is a problem with it, whoever notices it will probably be able to just go back to whatever they were eating before and be no worse off. On the other hand, what better way to learn more about what the human body really needs than to create a food like Soylent and have a bunch of people try to live off of it long-term? If it turns out that there's some vitamin or something that we need a little bit of every so often and didn't know about, then we'll find out about it from people eating Soylent, and they'll add that to it and keep going. So good for them on actually getting out there and trying it, instead of talking about how impossible they think it is.
- stcredzero 13y ago
  A really big contribution to the effort to get to Mars and other destinations farther from Earth would be to have a bunch of people try to eat nothing but stabilized foodstuffs for a period of time like 2 years. It would be something like: nothing but Soylent and MREs for two years.
  - kazagistar 13y ago
    Seems like they have plenty of people willing to give it a try already. If you wanna try it now you can. If you wanna wait a few years to see if it is safe, you can do that too.
powertower 13y ago
> One is that the carbohydrate mixture has been nailed: one 500g bag of Soylent will contain 210g of oat flour and 132g of maltodextrin. The protein mix has also shifted—our beta Soylent contained a mix of rice and pea protein, but production Soylent will contain 102g of brown rice protein isolate. Anyone else tried Brown Rice protein, and found it's undrinkable, harsh, and indigestible, probably because they use also the bran and germ to derive the protein from? Maltodextrin pretty much made me feel terrible and weak when I took it in the past. And eating oats in the morning these days for some reason messes with my ability to fall asleep later on. > This has been simplified, with the main oil switching from grapeseed to canola. I consider grapeseed oil to be the perfect oil. It's light and easily digestible. All other oils have been known to give people headaches and migraine that have sensitive digestive systems. Especially when mixed with whatever you're eating - causing digestive issues with that food. They've turned their product into 1 big allergen for me. Though that's just me, you might not have any problems with it.
- danudey 13y ago
  But in any complex system there can be various factors that lead to things being out of balance. I know someone who can't take multivitamins because there's too much iron in them and it upsets her system. If she were getting too much iron somewhere else, though, and cut that back, then they would be fine. The point I guess is that perhaps these things aren't bad for you, but rather they're bad for you in the current context of your environment, health, and current dietary intake. On the other hand, maybe they're just a bunch of things that are awful for your specific metabolism. Given the issues you posted, I probably wouldn't want to try it out if I were you.
mixmastamyk 13y ago
I've been supportive of the idea of soylent, but this article actually made me worried, is it accurate? Only rice protein? Not complete... there's a reason it is usually paired with beans. That amount of carbs does not match the early human diet, but rather the modern one. Not the end of the world, though. Also a physician isn't a dietitian/nutritionist. The fact they've brought the former on board instead of the latter is another unfortunate red flag re: cluelessness. Hopefully I've missed something.
- asdasf 13y ago
  Wow, where to start. You are seriously repeating the protein combining myth? In 2013? Protein is measured by scaling its amino acid profile compared to the ideal for a human. 100g of rice protein provides 100g of usable protein for a human, the same as 100g of beef protein does. That 100g of rice protein is just significantly more than 100g of raw ingredient, as there's a bunch of "wasted" amino acids. We have little to no evidence to support the paleo fad. Human beings have consumed grains for at least 100,000 years. A physician is not a dietitian or a nutritionist. They are far more qualified. A dietitian requires simply a bachelor's degree in pretty much anything (social sciences is fine) and then a short internship where you learn to repeat what the book says. Nutritionist is just something anyone can call themselves with absolutely no qualifications whatsoever. Picking a doctor over those options is not a red flag.
  - mixmastamyk 13y ago
    As a sole nutrition source as soylent is, the increased biological value of vegetable protein combining would be a valuable improvement in efficiency. The "myth" is that micromanaging every meal is necessary (it's not), ... unless of course you are on a meal replacement product for weeks at a time. A higher number of nutrition sources is better than a single one... a varied diet. Grains, not in large quantity. Agriculture is about 10,000 years old. Yes, the diet of ~4 million years is a "fad" while the one 400 times shorter is normal. Taken to extreme, the modern diet, where everything is pumped full of sugar has lead to an obesity epidemic. Also, physicians are far more qualified in other subjects and take only a fraction of the nutrition courses a dietitian would. There's a reason a doctor will refer you to one--it's not because they are less qualified.
crististm 13y ago
"Dr F. Xavier Pi-Sunyer, a professor of medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and senior attending physician at St Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital and the New York-Presbyterian Hospital." - that's one handful of buzzwords and reinforcement degrees to hush the infidels
patrickg_zill 13y ago
It is absolutely ridiculous - if you want a real cutting edge diet, check out keto or paleo. Too many carbs, too processed, not enough (or any? not sure) animal protein. That he would be quoted talking about "saturated fat" as if it is evil, shows how clueless he is.
- psychometry 13y ago
  Soylent is not a diet; it is a food product. I don't think you understand the problem they're trying to solve. I can't go online and order a supply of keto, can I?
  - anonymoushn 13y ago
    You can go online and order a supply of 50/30/20 carbs/fat/protein, though.
    - psychometry 13y ago
      Again, that is not the same thing as ordering Soylent.
      - anonymoushn 13y ago
        You could do it by ordering Soylent, so it would be exactly the same thing. You could also just order Ensure, if you don't have as much of a desire to risk your health. The macro balance might be slightly different, though.
    - kazagistar 13y ago
      Which I can poor into a blender and make and consume as a meal in less then 5 min? Is it cheap? Does it require minimal consideration on my part? Then you are pushing something totally different and irrelevant.
      - anonymoushn 13y ago
simplemath 13y ago
Anyone who would willingly forgo food for Soylent on any kind of ongoing basis should have their Homo Sapiens card revoked. Eating healthy, delicious food (not mutually exclusive, for the record) is one of the simplest, most fundamental joys of existence.
- tlb 13y ago
  Like sex, delicious food is a fundamental joy of existence. But also like sex, eating 3 delicious meals a day is past the point of diminishing rewards. I find I enjoy life most when I eat real, delicious, handmade food a few times a week in a relaxed setting with friends or family, and something quick and healthy I don't have to think about the rest of the time. Currently I alternate tuna+beans with protein shakes for the quick meals, but I can't wait for my Soylent to get here. (I'm a Soylent investor)
  - simplemath 13y ago
    Eating 3 delicious meals a day is diminishing returns only if you consistently prepare one off meals with no leftovers. I understand using Soylent as an an occasional meal replacement, but Soylent's message has consistently been one of "food replacement" which while certainly provocative, I find antithetical to optimizing enjoying being alive
- kazagistar 13y ago
  So is gardening. And running. And napping. And a million other things that people enjoy but whose importance is entirely opinion based.
  - simplemath 13y ago
    I'd being willing to go out on a limb and say that eating cuts a little closer to instinct than anything on your list. Napping is pretty damn great, however.
awestroke 13y ago
I'm concerned about the macronutritient ratio... I mean, 50% carbonhydrates? Half of which (132g of 500g, according to the article) is maltodextrin (which has a higher glucemic index than SUGAR)? I don't consider a diet healthy if it consists of 25% sugar. If they changed the ratio to perhaps 20/50/30 or similar and elimitated the sugar, I'd be interested.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
maxk42 13y ago
Like many of you, I have some pretty serious concerns about soylent. I encourage you to check out http://diy.soylent.me/ http://diy.soylent.me/ and consider mixing your own formula or trying one of the others that have been developed in an open-source manner.

44 points by shawndumas 13y ago

This is exciting, especially the updated texture. I used Soylent because my dinners were so depressing (crumbled tofu with deactivated yeast) that I figured I might as well just gulp liquid nutrition. But, honestly, that was even more depressing. So I just learned to make some nicer simpler dishes, and I've been fine.

jchung 13y ago

This is definitely looking much better. The marketing folks at Soylent seem to have kicked in. The packaging looks sort of like space food. The texture looks more "substantial", and the color is a step up from beige. I wouldn't be surprised to see flavoring coming next, with more color varieties.

adambard 13y ago
I believe the color was added by the author for the photo; it still comes beige and unflavored. But, the author also experimented with adding flavoring, too, to reasonable effect.

blhack 13y ago

They've also done a REALLY good job of addressing peoples' critiques. For instance: manufacturing. They've contracted with an experienced, FDA-certified manufacturing facility that Does This Sort of Things. Can't wait to get my soylent! (My girlfriend has been trying to create DIY soylent, so I'm really curious how hers will taste different than the "real" thing. The experiment from last night: soylent flatbread!)

hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
The hype around Soylent is unbelievable. You realize you don't need to wait for it if you want, you can just go out and buy Ensure and similars?
- Shamanmuni 13y ago
  I'm no expert, but as I understand Ensure is a supplement for your meals, Soylent is a replacement for them. You shouldn't consume only Ensure, but you could do it with Soylent. They are completely different products.
  - ceejayoz 13y ago
    > You shouldn't consume only Ensure, but you could do it with Soylent. [citation needed] Malnutrition can have effects years down the line. A bunch of early-adopters with confirmation bias trying it for a couple months proves little about its long-term safety.
    - Shamanmuni 13y ago
      Sure, but if your regular meals are pizza, hamburguers, instant noodles, junk food and the like then you are on your way to malnutrition already. Soylent could be a very positive change for those people. It's not like meals are an arcane science working some unknown magic on your body, it's about biological needs and chemistry. And it's not like there are chefs cooking healthy food in every home. I don't claim anything about Soylent, I have never consumed it, but it sounds like a possible solution to a big problem. Time will tell.
      - tptacek 13y ago
        If you subsist on fast food, you're obviously on your way to health problems, but those problems might not include malnutrition because even fast food inputs are complex compared to something engineered from the most primitive possible inputs to specific macronutrient ratios.
      - ceejayoz 13y ago
        > Soylent could be a very positive change for those people. It could also be worse. Without long-term, scientifically valid studies, no one knows for sure. > It's not like meals are an arcane science working some unknown magic on your body, it's about biological needs and chemistry. The workings of the body are not fully known, even today. There are many unknowns in nutrition, which is precisely why none of the pharmaceutical companies have a "replace all meals!" product.

shaunxcode 13y ago

Wow this is great news! unless I read wrong it should be totally vegan now as the fish oil is not required? I love the idea of cooking being a collaborative ritualistic experience you engage in for holidays/celebrations and soylent being something you use the rest of the time.

sp332 13y ago
The EPA / DHA fatty acids from fish oil are incorporated directly into the oil blend now. Sounds like the fish oil is still there, it's even pre-mixed so you can only avoid it by replacing the oils entirely.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

_fs 13y ago

Hopefully they got all of the rats [1] out of the production facility. [1] http://www.vice.com/motherboard/life-after-food/ http://www.vice.com/motherboard/life-after-food/

jljljl 13y ago
They addressed this here http://blog.soylent.me/post/66807143901/this-morning-vices-brian-merchant-published-a http://blog.soylent.me/post/66807143901/this-morning-vices-b... >> We would also like to emphasize the fact that Soylent 1.0, the product for which we have accepted over $1.5M in preorders, will not be manufactured by hand by our executive team. We have signed a purchase order with RFI Ingredients, a contract manufacturer with over 20 years of experience producing FDA-approved food products. I was extremely skeptical of these guys, but they seem to be addressing some of the major concerns I had. I still think there's a lot of testing to be done before this lives up to all the promises, but they get some definite kudos for their quick responses.

Cthulhu_ 13y ago

So, average male's daily need in one 500 gram bag... How much does this cost again? I mean I'd be interested in replacing one or two meals with something like this, but only if it's not too expensive.

soperj 13y ago
Why don't you start using some of the ones currently on the market then?? Why wait?
- georgebashi 13y ago
  Could you link some of these products available for purchase for purchase please? I've heard a few times times that there are soylent equivalents currently available, but from my searching I've only ever been able to find meal supplements and not complete replacements.
  - blhack 13y ago
    There is a section at lots of health food stores for "meal replacement". I bought some a few weeks ago while out sourcing ingredients for some DIY soylent. It was disgusting.
  - gscott 13y ago
    This is one http://www.amazon.com/The-Ultimate-Life-Meal-powder/dp/B00013YYR6/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1386359301&sr=8-12&keywords=meal+replacement http://www.amazon.com/The-Ultimate-Life-Meal-powder/dp/B0001...
    - asdasf 13y ago
      No, that is not one. That is the whole point. Look at the label, you would need to eat 29 scoops of that per day to get your daily potassium. It doesn't even mention all the vitamins and minerals we know we need. That is not a balanced, complete source of nutrition. Every time soylent is mentioned people make this claim, that all sorts of not even close to complete products are already filling the role soylent is intended for. They don't.

widdershins 13y ago

I find the idea of a foodstuff reaching a '1.0 release' somewhat... offputting.

jbigelow76 13y ago
Top notch chefs have been doing it for decades just without the gimmicky software versioning nomenclature.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

rblatz 13y ago

I still don't understand the excitement behind this, but apparently everyone here can't stop talking about them. So I guess they are doing something right.

danudey 13y ago
It's the ultimate in appeal to the geek crowd. It optimizes away a process which is a balance of expensive, inefficient, time consuming, and often unhealthy. Breakfast and lunch are throwaway meals for me; I eat because I have to in order to live and be productive and healthy, but none of my choices seem optimal. I can eat a fresh, healthy meal at work (expensive), I can reheat yesterday's dinner (microwaved food is less appetizing and often not as healthy), I can grab a quick meal (unhealthy and often expensive), or I can prepare a proper lunch ahead of time (time consuming). The promise of soylent is simple: from now on, you can eat meals because you want to, not because you have to. On top of that, you only get what you need, and not what you don't want. I compare it to, say, Linux. You can compile all your software from scratch, install dependencies, and customize absolutely everything, and some people do that because they enjoy it. Many people don't, and don't want to deal with it, and we have distributions like Ubuntu that take away 80% of what you used to need to do to get a proper Linux distribution running. With Soylent, you still have the option of other meals; it's entirely up to you. You can drink it as your sole nutritional intake, you can have a Friday dinner out, or you can eat dinner with the family and just replace breakfast and lunch.
- rblatz 13y ago
  They have meal replacement shakes out, and have for years. They have much more attractive sounding names.

RankingMember 13y ago

They really need to redo the source footage of their intro video. The audio is awful and the green-screen they used had some not-great lighting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSkOVkgd8hY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSkOVkgd8hY

ufmace 13y ago

I've been thinking some about Soylent and the criticisms leveled against them, mainly that we still don't know as much as we'd like about exactly what types of food the human body needs to survive. One the one hand, it was my understanding that most nutritional deficiencies are relatively slow to develop, and whatever happens as a consequence of them usually goes away after the sufferer resumes normal eating. So if there is a problem with it, whoever notices it will probably be able to just go back to whatever they were eating before and be no worse off. On the other hand, what better way to learn more about what the human body really needs than to create a food like Soylent and have a bunch of people try to live off of it long-term? If it turns out that there's some vitamin or something that we need a little bit of every so often and didn't know about, then we'll find out about it from people eating Soylent, and they'll add that to it and keep going. So good for them on actually getting out there and trying it, instead of talking about how impossible they think it is.

stcredzero 13y ago
A really big contribution to the effort to get to Mars and other destinations farther from Earth would be to have a bunch of people try to eat nothing but stabilized foodstuffs for a period of time like 2 years. It would be something like: nothing but Soylent and MREs for two years.
- kazagistar 13y ago
  Seems like they have plenty of people willing to give it a try already. If you wanna try it now you can. If you wanna wait a few years to see if it is safe, you can do that too.

powertower 13y ago

> One is that the carbohydrate mixture has been nailed: one 500g bag of Soylent will contain 210g of oat flour and 132g of maltodextrin. The protein mix has also shifted—our beta Soylent contained a mix of rice and pea protein, but production Soylent will contain 102g of brown rice protein isolate. Anyone else tried Brown Rice protein, and found it's undrinkable, harsh, and indigestible, probably because they use also the bran and germ to derive the protein from? Maltodextrin pretty much made me feel terrible and weak when I took it in the past. And eating oats in the morning these days for some reason messes with my ability to fall asleep later on. > This has been simplified, with the main oil switching from grapeseed to canola. I consider grapeseed oil to be the perfect oil. It's light and easily digestible. All other oils have been known to give people headaches and migraine that have sensitive digestive systems. Especially when mixed with whatever you're eating - causing digestive issues with that food. They've turned their product into 1 big allergen for me. Though that's just me, you might not have any problems with it.

danudey 13y ago
But in any complex system there can be various factors that lead to things being out of balance. I know someone who can't take multivitamins because there's too much iron in them and it upsets her system. If she were getting too much iron somewhere else, though, and cut that back, then they would be fine. The point I guess is that perhaps these things aren't bad for you, but rather they're bad for you in the current context of your environment, health, and current dietary intake. On the other hand, maybe they're just a bunch of things that are awful for your specific metabolism. Given the issues you posted, I probably wouldn't want to try it out if I were you.

mixmastamyk 13y ago

I've been supportive of the idea of soylent, but this article actually made me worried, is it accurate? Only rice protein? Not complete... there's a reason it is usually paired with beans. That amount of carbs does not match the early human diet, but rather the modern one. Not the end of the world, though. Also a physician isn't a dietitian/nutritionist. The fact they've brought the former on board instead of the latter is another unfortunate red flag re: cluelessness. Hopefully I've missed something.

asdasf 13y ago
Wow, where to start. You are seriously repeating the protein combining myth? In 2013? Protein is measured by scaling its amino acid profile compared to the ideal for a human. 100g of rice protein provides 100g of usable protein for a human, the same as 100g of beef protein does. That 100g of rice protein is just significantly more than 100g of raw ingredient, as there's a bunch of "wasted" amino acids. We have little to no evidence to support the paleo fad. Human beings have consumed grains for at least 100,000 years. A physician is not a dietitian or a nutritionist. They are far more qualified. A dietitian requires simply a bachelor's degree in pretty much anything (social sciences is fine) and then a short internship where you learn to repeat what the book says. Nutritionist is just something anyone can call themselves with absolutely no qualifications whatsoever. Picking a doctor over those options is not a red flag.
- mixmastamyk 13y ago
  As a sole nutrition source as soylent is, the increased biological value of vegetable protein combining would be a valuable improvement in efficiency. The "myth" is that micromanaging every meal is necessary (it's not), ... unless of course you are on a meal replacement product for weeks at a time. A higher number of nutrition sources is better than a single one... a varied diet. Grains, not in large quantity. Agriculture is about 10,000 years old. Yes, the diet of ~4 million years is a "fad" while the one 400 times shorter is normal. Taken to extreme, the modern diet, where everything is pumped full of sugar has lead to an obesity epidemic. Also, physicians are far more qualified in other subjects and take only a fraction of the nutrition courses a dietitian would. There's a reason a doctor will refer you to one--it's not because they are less qualified.

crististm 13y ago

"Dr F. Xavier Pi-Sunyer, a professor of medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and senior attending physician at St Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital and the New York-Presbyterian Hospital." - that's one handful of buzzwords and reinforcement degrees to hush the infidels

patrickg_zill 13y ago

It is absolutely ridiculous - if you want a real cutting edge diet, check out keto or paleo. Too many carbs, too processed, not enough (or any? not sure) animal protein. That he would be quoted talking about "saturated fat" as if it is evil, shows how clueless he is.

psychometry 13y ago
Soylent is not a diet; it is a food product. I don't think you understand the problem they're trying to solve. I can't go online and order a supply of keto, can I?
- anonymoushn 13y ago
  You can go online and order a supply of 50/30/20 carbs/fat/protein, though.
  - psychometry 13y ago
    Again, that is not the same thing as ordering Soylent.
    - anonymoushn 13y ago
      You could do it by ordering Soylent, so it would be exactly the same thing. You could also just order Ensure, if you don't have as much of a desire to risk your health. The macro balance might be slightly different, though.
  - kazagistar 13y ago
    Which I can poor into a blender and make and consume as a meal in less then 5 min? Is it cheap? Does it require minimal consideration on my part? Then you are pushing something totally different and irrelevant.
    - anonymoushn 13y ago

simplemath 13y ago

Anyone who would willingly forgo food for Soylent on any kind of ongoing basis should have their Homo Sapiens card revoked. Eating healthy, delicious food (not mutually exclusive, for the record) is one of the simplest, most fundamental joys of existence.

tlb 13y ago
Like sex, delicious food is a fundamental joy of existence. But also like sex, eating 3 delicious meals a day is past the point of diminishing rewards. I find I enjoy life most when I eat real, delicious, handmade food a few times a week in a relaxed setting with friends or family, and something quick and healthy I don't have to think about the rest of the time. Currently I alternate tuna+beans with protein shakes for the quick meals, but I can't wait for my Soylent to get here. (I'm a Soylent investor)
- simplemath 13y ago
  Eating 3 delicious meals a day is diminishing returns only if you consistently prepare one off meals with no leftovers. I understand using Soylent as an an occasional meal replacement, but Soylent's message has consistently been one of "food replacement" which while certainly provocative, I find antithetical to optimizing enjoying being alive
kazagistar 13y ago
So is gardening. And running. And napping. And a million other things that people enjoy but whose importance is entirely opinion based.
- simplemath 13y ago
  I'd being willing to go out on a limb and say that eating cuts a little closer to instinct than anything on your list. Napping is pretty damn great, however.

awestroke 13y ago

I'm concerned about the macronutritient ratio... I mean, 50% carbonhydrates? Half of which (132g of 500g, according to the article) is maltodextrin (which has a higher glucemic index than SUGAR)? I don't consider a diet healthy if it consists of 25% sugar. If they changed the ratio to perhaps 20/50/30 or similar and elimitated the sugar, I'd be interested.

deleted 13y ago

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maxk42 13y ago

Like many of you, I have some pretty serious concerns about soylent. I encourage you to check out http://diy.soylent.me/ http://diy.soylent.me/ and consider mixing your own formula or trying one of the others that have been developed in an open-source manner.