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Why would anyone want to live on Soylent?

52 points by houseofshards 12y ago

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
muhuk 12y ago
From the article: Rhinehart is well aware of the fact that Soylent isn’t the first beverage designed to replace meals. He considered using Ensure for his initial no-eating experiment, but found it much too expensive, too sugary, too unpalatable, and sub-optimal in its ingredient make-up. The differentiating factor seems to be in the intended purpose. Meal-replacement shakes have never been presented as a food — something that you could (or might want to) live on for an extended period.
- canjobear 12y ago
  I hope that the companies making the existing Soylent-like products (though I have yet to find one that is unflavored and isn't targeted to dieting people or to bodybuilders...) take the hype around Soylent as a cue to market their stuff this way. I trust their nutritionists more than I trust the Soylent guys' knowledge, which (as I think I read somewhere) comes from just reading some nutrition textbooks.
  - livingparadox 12y ago
    Currently they have employed an on-staff nutritionist. That part is unfortunately not very well known...
  - aianus 12y ago
    Well, how do you think nutritionists are trained?
- jes5199 12y ago
  Yeah. I have trouble remembering to eat meals regularly - I guess I sort of just don't really like eating? - and Ensure is available at the drug store. It's perfect for that "oh crap I haven't eaten in 24 hours and my problem-solving skills are too compromised by low blood-sugar to figure out how to prepare or buy something that isn't garbage" state that I get into periodically. I'll try Soylent, but I don't see what's revolutionary about it.
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    They address that - Ensure is absolutely not meant as a food replacement. Its just a supplement. Its too sugary and unbalanced to live on for any length of time.
    - DanBC 12y ago
      You are wrong. Ensure comes in different forms and so e of them are total food replacements. You can get them for naso-gastric feeding. Ensure isn't marketed to the public as such because lawyers.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
codezero 12y ago
I'm not sure people will want to live on Soylent, at least the first batch seems to be targeted at people who are intrigued by the idea and want to experiment with it. If that experiment pans out, then maybe there will be a question about why people want to live on it.
argumentum 12y ago
I've been enjoying my first week of Soylent. I eat "regular" dinner, but the rest of the day I drink a cup of soylent every couple hours. The best part about Soylent is it's hackable. I'm looking to gain weight, so I use whole milk instead of water, and add 4 eggs and 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream which also dramatically improves the taste (for me at least). It's almost like drinking melted ice cream, to be honest.
- gmays 12y ago
  Since you're looking to gain weight, try adding a scoop or two True Mass by BSN to a shake after a workout. That took me from 170 to 230. Syntha-6 is the leaner version which you'll want to switch to when you reach your ideal weight.
- johnny99 12y ago
  What's your poop like?
  - argumentum 12y ago
    Fairly normal, maybe a bit paler.
    - johnny99 12y ago
      Thanks for the candid reply. Some juvenile part of me was hoping you'd say it was now a colorless, odorless gel. What prompted the question is the recent spate of articles on gut flora. That was the first thing I thought of when I heard of Soylent--what does it do to your microbiome? If anyone can speak or speculate knowledgeably on the topic, I'm curious.
Thiz 12y ago
Soylent bars sound like a cool idea. No dishes to do, no groceries to shop, no time spent in the kitchen. Pure gain.
yaketysax 12y ago
1. There are a lot of (nonessential) nutrients that you get from plants that you won't get from this drink. 2. Our idea of "everything the body needs" can change. 3. We don't know the long term effects of relying solely on it. The author spends a lot of time on stupid counterarguments. Seriously, do your homework.
- Scoundreller 12y ago
  1. Soylent doesn't seem to be entirely based on fine chemicals. When you go through their ingredients list, "fish oil", "oat flour" and "rice protein" likely contain a lot of the "(nonessential) nutrients" you fear missing out on. I still wouldn't want to be the guinea pig to exclusively live off of Soylent. 2+3. Having said that, there is plenty of research on "Total Parenteral Nutrition" and "Enteral Nutrition" for those that cannot consume regular foods for medical reasons. It isn't exactly a solved problem however, there are still issues.
  - yaketysax 12y ago
    http://www.webmd.com/diet/phytonutrients-faq http://www.webmd.com/diet/phytonutrients-faq "More than 25,000 phytonutrients are found in plant foods. WebMD takes a look at these six important phytonutrients -- and their potential health effects: Carotenoids, Ellagic acid, Flavonoids, Resveratrolm Glucosinolates, Phytoestrogens" Find them in Soylent? It's cute that you put nonessential nutrients in quotes though. It's like this foreign term that only I use.
Zigurd 12y ago
It's possible that living on Soylent is healthier than the way the majority of people eat, maybe a large majority.
patrickdavey 12y ago
I assume if you subsist on a diet of liquids alone that your teeth get upset due to complete underuse. Anyone know if that's true?
- Scoundreller 12y ago
  One also wonders what happens to all that muscle one has to run their digestive system.
- sciguy77 12y ago
  Not a doctor, but I'm wondering what you mean by "upset"? Teeth are calcified body tissue, if I'm remembering HS biology correctly, and I don't know how having them not mashing down on things could damage them. Curious to hear other thoughts on this.
  - carbocation 12y ago
    As a doctor, I'd like to point out that we don't spend much time learning about this kind of thing. I suspect, but have no evidence to support, that veterinarians would actually be your best resources for this type of question.
  - Evgeny 12y ago
    and I don't know how having them not mashing down on things could damage them Stephan Guyenet had a series of rather interesting blog posts on malocclusion. One of the factors he mentioned in conclusion was the toughness of food. http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.dk/2009/12/malocclusion-disease-of-civilization.html http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.dk/2009/12/malocclusion-di... There are three main factors that I believe contribute to malocclusion in modern societies: 1. Maternal nutrition during the first trimester of pregnancy. Vitamin K2, found in organs, pastured dairy and eggs, is particularly important. We may also make small amounts from the K1 found in green vegetables. 2. Sucking habits from birth to age four. Breast feeding protects against malocclusion. Bottle feeding, pacifiers and finger sucking probably increase the risk of malocclusion. Cup feeding and orthodontic pacifiers are probably acceptable alternatives. 3. Food toughness. The jaws probably require stress from tough food to develop correctly. This can contribute to the widening of the dental arch until roughly age 17. Beef jerky, raw vegetables, raw fruit, tough cuts of meat and nuts are all good ways to exercise the jaws. However, this covers development up to age 17. What would happen to the teeth of a grown up man if he stops using them, I'd also be interested to know (from sheer curiosity)
sciguy77 12y ago
My uncle, who admittedly is pretty weird, used to only eat Costco pasta and peanut butter for 95% of his meals. The other 5% of the time he had lavish dinners with friends and family, and felt free to spend quite a bit. His logic was "I would rather have one amazing meal every now and again instead of a bunch of mediocre meals spread out." This may or may not be insane to you in terms of philosophy, but the biggest flaw is that he only ate two kinds of food for weeks on end. I imagine Soylent would be perfect for people like this: on a limited budget they can enjoy the occasional lavish meal without sacrificing nutrition for all their other meals. From the people I know who like the product, it seems to me that Soylent caters to people whose eating patters are already strange. I find it appealing because I tend to obsess over making sure I'm getting all the right nutrients and food groups (I never am). I like the idea of drinking Soylent every morning as an insurance policy, I know I'm at least getting all the nutrients I need once a day.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Almost everyones' eating habits are strange. Unless you pay close attention to what you eat (which a subculture does, but that's the vast minority) then you're eating randomly. Soylent beats that for nutrition.
benguild 12y ago
It seems like a great solution to the “forgetting to eat” issue while hackathoning.
chemmail 12y ago
All this really is, is ground up rice, a vitamin pill, and some oil. No Thanks.
phazmatis 12y ago
Soylent is a huge first step. Henceforth, we'll know "what we don't know" about specific humans, and what is a general baseline throughout. That'll help us (humanity) make directed efforts to automate soylent mixture tweaking. I really can't wait for a device that scans me before each meal and decides what I need. Nutritionists would be in high demand, because who's going to trust a machine? At least for N years until entire generations have been through this system.
jqm 12y ago
Why "live on it"? I don't live on exclusively on anything else. It's a cool idea and I hope it replaces "some" meals because occasionally I just don't have the time and it has to be better (and more convenient) than fast food. Why do we have to take good things to extremes and set up unnecessary "all or nothings"?
- disbelief 12y ago
  This confuses me too! The first time I ever heard about Solyent, it was this guy who decided to live on it for 30 days. I guess it generates better press than: "I occasionally eat Solyent in moderation, and it's pretty good".
gexla 12y ago
The poor hacker's desk delivered lunch. There's so much overhead which goes into putting meals together. Just having to make ONE more decision is a day can totally derail me. That decision could be "what's for breakfast?" Personally, I would rather drink from a bag all day and then throw a fiesta for dinner to make up for bag time.
nether 12y ago
Another "stop liking what I don't like" view. You could make similar arguments against fast food and other products of convenience.
- disbelief 12y ago
  The author is actually coming out mostly in favour of Soylent. The title asks a question and the article tries to answer it.
tiatia 12y ago
Would be perfect for me. Never heard about it. I have a nasty food intolerance (rare from of gluten intolerance) that I was not aware off and made my life miserable. Unconscionably I realized that eating is not good for me when I worked as a scientist and had a heavy workload. Hence I lived on coffee, skipping breakfast, skipping lunch and ate my first meal around 5 or 6pm. One day my feeling for hunger was gone. First you form habits, then they form you I guess. Other people eat because they are hungry. I eat because I know I have to sustain my body. It is often hard for me or even annoying to eat food and I have difficulties getting my calories every day. Yes, I would buy this drink.
JacobJans 12y ago
I'm someone who loves food. I enjoy cooking wonderful meals. Almost every day I spend twenty to thirty minutes making lunch. It's not uncommon for me to spend an hour or two making dinner. Generally, I'm pretty confident that my diet is "healthy." But, when thinking about Soylent, people seem to be comparing it to perfection. Why not compare it to some other things. For example, would it be healthier to have a burger, fries, and a milkshake from McDonalds, or to drink Soylent? Isn't the answer obvious? Even as someone that regularly eats healthy meals, I still occasionally find it hard to have a healthy meal. Whether or not Soylent should be a complete replacement for food, it's probably a great replacement for so much of the garbage junk food that many people eat very, very, regularly. Maybe someday Soylent will put fast food out of business. The benefits would be obvious.
- hueving 12y ago
  >Maybe someday Soylent will put fast food out of business. The benefits would be obvious. Not as long as fast food continues to taste as good as it does. While soylent covers the nutritional portion, it doesn't have the flavors that are in fast food. People like to complain that fast food tastes like crap, but there is a huge chunk of the population (including me) that loves the flavors of burgers, fries, pizza, wings, etc. I rarely choose fast food because of the speed/convenience. Microwavable meals already beat them in that regard.
- DanBC 12y ago
  You make reasonable points. Why do people compare Soylent to perfection? Here's what they said when fund-raising: > "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." Soylent invites comparisons to existing replacement meal products (there are many) and makes false claims.
jeswin 12y ago
> The big-picture implications are also interesting. Rob Rhinehart definitely has grand ambitions for this product and hopes it will play a role in alleviating hunger. Well, this is the part that excites me a lot. Industrial scale production and distribution of a nutritionally sufficient meal could do wonders in the developing world. As of now, even though there are food subsidies for the poor, there are additional expenses (gas, stoves) and wastage involved. And the saved time could be put to work. A different incarnation of solyent could change the world. Last time I said this [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7765697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7765697], I was surprised I got downvoted into oblivion. I was genuinely curious why this isn't a good idea to take up at the governmental level.
- DanBC 12y ago
  Because there is already enough food for the world, that food is just poorly distributed. But concentrating on just the specialist end of disaster nutrition: World Food Programme et al already have products that are vastly cheaper than Soylent. 20% of the world population live on less than $1.25 per day. About one billion people lack access to clean drinking water (the primary ingredient in Soylent). Here's what the world food programme does: https://www.wfp.org/nutrition/how-wfp-fights-malnutrition https://www.wfp.org/nutrition/how-wfp-fights-malnutrition Here's a list of special nutritional products: https://www.wfp.org/nutrition/special-nutritional-products https://www.wfp.org/nutrition/special-nutritional-products Here is the factsheet about existing WFP products (note price and shelf life) : http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/communications/wfp255508.pdf http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/co... Soylent is far far too expensive for this role. It requires clean water. Rob making the claim that Soylent could help world hunger is yet another sensationalist sleazy claim made in ignorance of existing market.
leorocky 12y ago
Maybe "soylent profitable" is the new "ramen profitable" or whatever.
cperciva 12y ago
I'm seriously considering it, at least as an experiment. I have type 1 diabetes, so I'm constantly trying to figure out how much insulin to take -- and I don't always get it right. This is mostly a matter of judging the food I'm consuming, but not completely; there's also endocrine issues which affect blood glucose levels (usually pushing them up), and exercise usually pulls blood glucose levels down. I think having a "standard diet" which takes food out of the picture would make it much easier to figure out how all the other pieces fit together.
- arg01 12y ago
  You'll know how to manage your condition better than others but I'll point out that there is talk about a rather high GI for soylent thanks to the maltodextrin. Which could possibly mean it's not suited for you (or rather you might have to have a lot of smaller meals). Alternatively you could lookup DIY soylent and roll your own more appropriate recipe.
  - cperciva 12y ago
    rather high GI for soylent thanks to the maltodextrin That's certainly a concern, although I think the GI has dropped since the initial version thanks to the introduction of oat flour. But for the purpose of figuring out how all the variables interact, it doesn't really matter if Soylent is good T1D food or bad T1D food... as long as it's consistent. I certainly wouldn't switch to Soylent long-term without seeing how it affects my A1Cs, but as a short-term experiment it might be worth having worse numbers in order to learn how to get better numbers.
meisterbrendan 12y ago
Can folks in the Bay Area pick up Soylent sooner than the 10-12 weeks it takes to ship to new customers? I'd totally be willing to drive to pick up a shipment--I want to try this life hack out NOW (or as close to now as possible).
- cperciva 12y ago
  Aside from "know someone who knows someone" hacks, I don't think so -- the 12 week delay is due to production constraints, not shipping constraints.
papa_bear 12y ago
I think it could find a big market in people who care A LOT about eating specific nutrient proportions. I'm working on the website Eat This Much (http://www.eatthismuch.com http://www.eatthismuch.com) and a huge portion of our audience are people that want to eat EXACTLY 40% of their calories from carbs, 30% from fat, and 30% from protein (that's part of the zone diet, as an example). Our meal plan generator allows you to request those proportions, but sometimes it can't meet the exact targets due to any number of other constraints, and it's a huge source of complaints from our users. It's a pretty complicated problem to solve while trying to give people a varied and interesting diet with real food, but Soylent makes it very simple. I use my own site as much as possible, and I'm excited to have it give me half of my calories from Soylent (probably my breakfast and lunch).
rdmcfee 12y ago
This was touched on in the article but I still feel it's necessary to point out that nutrition is one of the least understood fields in science. The primary reason is that there are almost zero proper clinical trials and interventional studies. We have thousands of cohort studies which prove almost nothing. For example, for 60 years saturated fat has been considered the enemy of cardiovascular health (because of some poorly conducted cohort studies in the 60's and 70's). Just this March, BMJ published a major meta study that showing that there are no proven causal links between saturated fat and heart disease. In fact it is now being suggested that avoiding saturated fat has been detrimental because Americans have replaced fat intake with high glycemic index foods causing obesity and T2D. Personally I have no doubt that Soylent will fail to provide some required nutrient or fail to induce a certain hormonal or chemical response which is obtained via natural food intake. We simply don't understand nutrition well enough to check all the boxes. That said, if Soylent wanted to follow the scientific method and conduct a proper interventional clinical trial with a control group, adequate study population and duration I would be happy to consider the results.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  So by that logic Soylent is exactly as acceptable as any other food eaten regularly. Except Soylent at least tries to cover all the bases, constituting a variety of known food components. While a constant diet of cheeseburgers and waffle fries has not. I've heard folks trot out the "what about the unknown food components?" That's a spurious argument - eating random processed food has no guarantee of including magic mythical food ingredients. And I'm skeptical of imaginary ingredients that are essential to health - how would that work? Man in the wild would die unexpectedly unless consuming some vitamin present only in Zimbabwean ground-nuts? Evolution must have screwed up royally for that to be true.
  - rdmcfee 12y ago
    Soylent could be considered exactly as acceptable as any specific food but most other diets offer a very wide diversity of foods. The current thinking in nutrition science seems to be that diversity in diet gives us a better chance of eating how we should be eating. Because we don't actually know how we should be eating we rely on that diversity. It's naive to think that the definition of "nutritionally complete" (which Soylent adheres to) isn't going to change over the coming decades. A traditional diet will still have a chance of being "nutritionally complete" under future requirements whereas Soylent's exact formula almost ensures that it won't. I think what's even more important are some of more complex functions of digestion and nutrition response. For example, what is the glycemic response of Soylent? In December Annals of Internal Medicine published a study (1) showing that a daily multivitamin has no benefit to the longevity and health of the average American but we do know that dietary interventions which increase dietary intake of certain vitamins via actual foods are beneficial to health. Scientists are still figuring out why but it is apparent that you can't just take a pill or formula containing certain nutrients and gain the same benefits of getting these nutrients through food. (1) http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1789253 http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1789253
gibybo 12y ago
Using the oil packets and purchasing the most cost effective plan (28 bags for 255/month), Soylent gives you 220 calories per dollar. For a relatively sedentary averaged sized adult male (2100 calories/day), it will cost you about $285/month. Ensure powder from Amazon[0] gets you to about 205 calories per dollar, which comes to $305/month for the same adult male. I don't buy the 'it's a lot cheaper than Ensure' line. Another competitor, "Optimum Nutrition Serious Mass" is on Amazon in 12 pound bags for $49. It works out to 408 calories per dollar. Only $154/month for the same example male. Admittedly Ensure and Serious Mass have different marketing than Soylent (Ensure for old people and Serious Mass for bodybuilders), but if you compare their ingredients you'll find they aren't very different. [0] http://www.amazon.com/Ensure-Nutrition-Powder-Vanilla-Flavor/dp/B0007XXPLQ http://www.amazon.com/Ensure-Nutrition-Powder-Vanilla-Flavor... [1] http://www.amazon.com/Optimum-Nutrition-Serious-Chocolate-Pound/dp/B000GIPJ0M http://www.amazon.com/Optimum-Nutrition-Serious-Chocolate-Po...
corysama 12y ago
The explicitly stated purpose of Soylent is NOT to live on. NOT to "End Food". It is to be a better occasional meal replacement. It's a nice improvement on many boring products that preceded it (Ensure, etc). But, that doesn't make for good linkbait headlines nor revenue-generating eyeballs on sidewall ads. This is yet another in a long series of manufactured-controversy articles propping up Soylent as either the Savior or the Devil. YOU DECIDE! Not that I mind. I'm a backer of Soylent. When my month's supply arrives, I'm looking forward to living on it 100% for 30 days for a few reasons: 1) I need to lose a bit of weight. I know that for me, the best way to do that is to significantly change my "generally good but occasionally indulgent" diet. I know from experience that I can't willpower that into happening. But, I think that if I commit to a defined, strict diet, I stand a chance. Soylent should be particularly good for that because supposedly it won't leave me with carb/protein/fat cravings like every other diet I've tried. 2) I like the idea of going on a cleanse. What better cleanse than supposedly exactly what your body needs and nothing else? 3) I'm interested in the chemical science vs. mystical vitalism theory of nutrition debate. I.e. do we need certain chemicals or do we need "something to do with Real Food" to thrive? Supposedly, people feel really fine living on Soylent. I want to see for myself first-hand. I plan to get my "blood work" numbers measured before and after.
- letstryagain 12y ago
  > exactly what your body needs and nothing else? Soylent's main ingredient is maltodextrin which is certainly not essential to any diet.
  - markbao 12y ago
    Carbohydrates are, however. From the Soylent 1.0 ingredients list: > Maltodextrin (165g) - As the primary source of energy for the body, carbohydrates are the largest component of Soylent by mass. The starch in Oat Flour makes up the bulk of this nutrient and the rest is provided by Maltodextrin. http://blog.soylent.me/post/68180382810/soylent-1-0-macronutrient-overview http://blog.soylent.me/post/68180382810/soylent-1-0-macronut...
    - 12y ago
mantrax5 12y ago
Just because the ad says you'll want to live on Soylent, doesn't mean you would. There's a certain kind of people who like to buy into simple formulas for health, success and so on. There are more of them than it's comfortable to admit. The ad is worded to appeal to them, because after all Soylent is a business, and which business would ignore the large segment of the market that'll be buying your product regularly, every single day? For those who are more balanced thinkers, Soylent remains an interesting option when you need to have a meal on the go. Better than fast food. A side reminded, just like with vitamin pills, you should be skeptical of some of the claims made about Soylent's ingredients. Say, just because a product has calcium in some form doesn't mean your body can assimilate it in that form.
DanBC 12y ago
So many people are saying "i don't want to think" - Indians need to expand "tiffin" to the US. Make it nutritious and you'd make a freaking fortune.
ThatGeoGuy 12y ago
People keep going on and on about the nutritional value of the drink overall, but I'm somewhat curious to the effects it might have on the digestive tract. For example, if you ate soylent for a full year, and then went straight back to regular food, would your body have trouble digesting solid food now that it hasn't had to do so for a long period of time? What if we extend this time period to 5 years, or 10? I think we can maybe pull some insight from astronauts in this regard, as we should have some information about the change from tube-food to solid food from extended space missions. I can see soylent being a fantastic replacement in some respects, particularly with regards to coeliac's disease or with dairy allergies, but I'm still partially skeptical about the kinds of change that soylent will introduce in the future. One of the great parts about food nowadays is that you can basically grow and manufacture it anywhere, with the obvious caveat that not all food is available everywhere at once. On the other hand, with soylent, our food is almost "centralized" in a sense, since it is likely more difficult to create soylent than it is to throw seeds in the ground, or hunt and scavenge. This is sort of the reason why I'm curious to how the human body will react to such an abrupt change in diet. If humans just eat liquid food for an extended period of time, or their whole life, will they eventually lose / have difficulties with eating solid, more traditional food? Should a crisis arise (something akin to great floods or an earthquake), will it be possible to produce / ship enough soylent fast enough to fulfill the dietary needs of the population in need of aid? Of course, these sorts of questions assume that soylent will become a dietary replacement, rather than an occasional meal replacement, but I get the feeling, at least from this article, that replacing the diet is the plan of Rhinehart et al. I won't personally test soylent out, I love fancy food and flavours too much to bother, but in some sense I will follow the product and see what happens with it. I don't think something on this scale has ever been attempted before with regards to dietary / meal replacements, so it should be interesting (not necessarily good or bad, just interesting) to see what kinds of disasters / utopias unfold thanks to a full dietary replacement.

52 points by houseofshards 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

muhuk 12y ago

From the article: Rhinehart is well aware of the fact that Soylent isn’t the first beverage designed to replace meals. He considered using Ensure for his initial no-eating experiment, but found it much too expensive, too sugary, too unpalatable, and sub-optimal in its ingredient make-up. The differentiating factor seems to be in the intended purpose. Meal-replacement shakes have never been presented as a food — something that you could (or might want to) live on for an extended period.

canjobear 12y ago
I hope that the companies making the existing Soylent-like products (though I have yet to find one that is unflavored and isn't targeted to dieting people or to bodybuilders...) take the hype around Soylent as a cue to market their stuff this way. I trust their nutritionists more than I trust the Soylent guys' knowledge, which (as I think I read somewhere) comes from just reading some nutrition textbooks.
- livingparadox 12y ago
  Currently they have employed an on-staff nutritionist. That part is unfortunately not very well known...
- aianus 12y ago
  Well, how do you think nutritionists are trained?
jes5199 12y ago
Yeah. I have trouble remembering to eat meals regularly - I guess I sort of just don't really like eating? - and Ensure is available at the drug store. It's perfect for that "oh crap I haven't eaten in 24 hours and my problem-solving skills are too compromised by low blood-sugar to figure out how to prepare or buy something that isn't garbage" state that I get into periodically. I'll try Soylent, but I don't see what's revolutionary about it.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  They address that - Ensure is absolutely not meant as a food replacement. Its just a supplement. Its too sugary and unbalanced to live on for any length of time.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    You are wrong. Ensure comes in different forms and so e of them are total food replacements. You can get them for naso-gastric feeding. Ensure isn't marketed to the public as such because lawyers.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]

codezero 12y ago

I'm not sure people will want to live on Soylent, at least the first batch seems to be targeted at people who are intrigued by the idea and want to experiment with it. If that experiment pans out, then maybe there will be a question about why people want to live on it.

argumentum 12y ago

I've been enjoying my first week of Soylent. I eat "regular" dinner, but the rest of the day I drink a cup of soylent every couple hours. The best part about Soylent is it's hackable. I'm looking to gain weight, so I use whole milk instead of water, and add 4 eggs and 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream which also dramatically improves the taste (for me at least). It's almost like drinking melted ice cream, to be honest.

gmays 12y ago
Since you're looking to gain weight, try adding a scoop or two True Mass by BSN to a shake after a workout. That took me from 170 to 230. Syntha-6 is the leaner version which you'll want to switch to when you reach your ideal weight.
johnny99 12y ago
What's your poop like?
- argumentum 12y ago
  Fairly normal, maybe a bit paler.
  - johnny99 12y ago
    Thanks for the candid reply. Some juvenile part of me was hoping you'd say it was now a colorless, odorless gel. What prompted the question is the recent spate of articles on gut flora. That was the first thing I thought of when I heard of Soylent--what does it do to your microbiome? If anyone can speak or speculate knowledgeably on the topic, I'm curious.

Thiz 12y ago

Soylent bars sound like a cool idea. No dishes to do, no groceries to shop, no time spent in the kitchen. Pure gain.

yaketysax 12y ago

1. There are a lot of (nonessential) nutrients that you get from plants that you won't get from this drink. 2. Our idea of "everything the body needs" can change. 3. We don't know the long term effects of relying solely on it. The author spends a lot of time on stupid counterarguments. Seriously, do your homework.

Scoundreller 12y ago
1. Soylent doesn't seem to be entirely based on fine chemicals. When you go through their ingredients list, "fish oil", "oat flour" and "rice protein" likely contain a lot of the "(nonessential) nutrients" you fear missing out on. I still wouldn't want to be the guinea pig to exclusively live off of Soylent. 2+3. Having said that, there is plenty of research on "Total Parenteral Nutrition" and "Enteral Nutrition" for those that cannot consume regular foods for medical reasons. It isn't exactly a solved problem however, there are still issues.
- yaketysax 12y ago
  http://www.webmd.com/diet/phytonutrients-faq http://www.webmd.com/diet/phytonutrients-faq "More than 25,000 phytonutrients are found in plant foods. WebMD takes a look at these six important phytonutrients -- and their potential health effects: Carotenoids, Ellagic acid, Flavonoids, Resveratrolm Glucosinolates, Phytoestrogens" Find them in Soylent? It's cute that you put nonessential nutrients in quotes though. It's like this foreign term that only I use.

Zigurd 12y ago

It's possible that living on Soylent is healthier than the way the majority of people eat, maybe a large majority.

patrickdavey 12y ago

I assume if you subsist on a diet of liquids alone that your teeth get upset due to complete underuse. Anyone know if that's true?

Scoundreller 12y ago
One also wonders what happens to all that muscle one has to run their digestive system.
sciguy77 12y ago
Not a doctor, but I'm wondering what you mean by "upset"? Teeth are calcified body tissue, if I'm remembering HS biology correctly, and I don't know how having them not mashing down on things could damage them. Curious to hear other thoughts on this.
- carbocation 12y ago
  As a doctor, I'd like to point out that we don't spend much time learning about this kind of thing. I suspect, but have no evidence to support, that veterinarians would actually be your best resources for this type of question.
- Evgeny 12y ago
  and I don't know how having them not mashing down on things could damage them Stephan Guyenet had a series of rather interesting blog posts on malocclusion. One of the factors he mentioned in conclusion was the toughness of food. http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.dk/2009/12/malocclusion-disease-of-civilization.html http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.dk/2009/12/malocclusion-di... There are three main factors that I believe contribute to malocclusion in modern societies: 1. Maternal nutrition during the first trimester of pregnancy. Vitamin K2, found in organs, pastured dairy and eggs, is particularly important. We may also make small amounts from the K1 found in green vegetables. 2. Sucking habits from birth to age four. Breast feeding protects against malocclusion. Bottle feeding, pacifiers and finger sucking probably increase the risk of malocclusion. Cup feeding and orthodontic pacifiers are probably acceptable alternatives. 3. Food toughness. The jaws probably require stress from tough food to develop correctly. This can contribute to the widening of the dental arch until roughly age 17. Beef jerky, raw vegetables, raw fruit, tough cuts of meat and nuts are all good ways to exercise the jaws. However, this covers development up to age 17. What would happen to the teeth of a grown up man if he stops using them, I'd also be interested to know (from sheer curiosity)

sciguy77 12y ago

My uncle, who admittedly is pretty weird, used to only eat Costco pasta and peanut butter for 95% of his meals. The other 5% of the time he had lavish dinners with friends and family, and felt free to spend quite a bit. His logic was "I would rather have one amazing meal every now and again instead of a bunch of mediocre meals spread out." This may or may not be insane to you in terms of philosophy, but the biggest flaw is that he only ate two kinds of food for weeks on end. I imagine Soylent would be perfect for people like this: on a limited budget they can enjoy the occasional lavish meal without sacrificing nutrition for all their other meals. From the people I know who like the product, it seems to me that Soylent caters to people whose eating patters are already strange. I find it appealing because I tend to obsess over making sure I'm getting all the right nutrients and food groups (I never am). I like the idea of drinking Soylent every morning as an insurance policy, I know I'm at least getting all the nutrients I need once a day.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
Almost everyones' eating habits are strange. Unless you pay close attention to what you eat (which a subculture does, but that's the vast minority) then you're eating randomly. Soylent beats that for nutrition.

benguild 12y ago

It seems like a great solution to the “forgetting to eat” issue while hackathoning.

chemmail 12y ago

All this really is, is ground up rice, a vitamin pill, and some oil. No Thanks.

phazmatis 12y ago

Soylent is a huge first step. Henceforth, we'll know "what we don't know" about specific humans, and what is a general baseline throughout. That'll help us (humanity) make directed efforts to automate soylent mixture tweaking. I really can't wait for a device that scans me before each meal and decides what I need. Nutritionists would be in high demand, because who's going to trust a machine? At least for N years until entire generations have been through this system.

jqm 12y ago

Why "live on it"? I don't live on exclusively on anything else. It's a cool idea and I hope it replaces "some" meals because occasionally I just don't have the time and it has to be better (and more convenient) than fast food. Why do we have to take good things to extremes and set up unnecessary "all or nothings"?

disbelief 12y ago
This confuses me too! The first time I ever heard about Solyent, it was this guy who decided to live on it for 30 days. I guess it generates better press than: "I occasionally eat Solyent in moderation, and it's pretty good".

gexla 12y ago

The poor hacker's desk delivered lunch. There's so much overhead which goes into putting meals together. Just having to make ONE more decision is a day can totally derail me. That decision could be "what's for breakfast?" Personally, I would rather drink from a bag all day and then throw a fiesta for dinner to make up for bag time.

nether 12y ago

Another "stop liking what I don't like" view. You could make similar arguments against fast food and other products of convenience.

disbelief 12y ago
The author is actually coming out mostly in favour of Soylent. The title asks a question and the article tries to answer it.

tiatia 12y ago

Would be perfect for me. Never heard about it. I have a nasty food intolerance (rare from of gluten intolerance) that I was not aware off and made my life miserable. Unconscionably I realized that eating is not good for me when I worked as a scientist and had a heavy workload. Hence I lived on coffee, skipping breakfast, skipping lunch and ate my first meal around 5 or 6pm. One day my feeling for hunger was gone. First you form habits, then they form you I guess. Other people eat because they are hungry. I eat because I know I have to sustain my body. It is often hard for me or even annoying to eat food and I have difficulties getting my calories every day. Yes, I would buy this drink.

JacobJans 12y ago

I'm someone who loves food. I enjoy cooking wonderful meals. Almost every day I spend twenty to thirty minutes making lunch. It's not uncommon for me to spend an hour or two making dinner. Generally, I'm pretty confident that my diet is "healthy." But, when thinking about Soylent, people seem to be comparing it to perfection. Why not compare it to some other things. For example, would it be healthier to have a burger, fries, and a milkshake from McDonalds, or to drink Soylent? Isn't the answer obvious? Even as someone that regularly eats healthy meals, I still occasionally find it hard to have a healthy meal. Whether or not Soylent should be a complete replacement for food, it's probably a great replacement for so much of the garbage junk food that many people eat very, very, regularly. Maybe someday Soylent will put fast food out of business. The benefits would be obvious.

hueving 12y ago
>Maybe someday Soylent will put fast food out of business. The benefits would be obvious. Not as long as fast food continues to taste as good as it does. While soylent covers the nutritional portion, it doesn't have the flavors that are in fast food. People like to complain that fast food tastes like crap, but there is a huge chunk of the population (including me) that loves the flavors of burgers, fries, pizza, wings, etc. I rarely choose fast food because of the speed/convenience. Microwavable meals already beat them in that regard.
DanBC 12y ago
You make reasonable points. Why do people compare Soylent to perfection? Here's what they said when fund-raising: > "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." Soylent invites comparisons to existing replacement meal products (there are many) and makes false claims.

jeswin 12y ago

> The big-picture implications are also interesting. Rob Rhinehart definitely has grand ambitions for this product and hopes it will play a role in alleviating hunger. Well, this is the part that excites me a lot. Industrial scale production and distribution of a nutritionally sufficient meal could do wonders in the developing world. As of now, even though there are food subsidies for the poor, there are additional expenses (gas, stoves) and wastage involved. And the saved time could be put to work. A different incarnation of solyent could change the world. Last time I said this [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7765697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7765697], I was surprised I got downvoted into oblivion. I was genuinely curious why this isn't a good idea to take up at the governmental level.

DanBC 12y ago
Because there is already enough food for the world, that food is just poorly distributed. But concentrating on just the specialist end of disaster nutrition: World Food Programme et al already have products that are vastly cheaper than Soylent. 20% of the world population live on less than $1.25 per day. About one billion people lack access to clean drinking water (the primary ingredient in Soylent). Here's what the world food programme does: https://www.wfp.org/nutrition/how-wfp-fights-malnutrition https://www.wfp.org/nutrition/how-wfp-fights-malnutrition Here's a list of special nutritional products: https://www.wfp.org/nutrition/special-nutritional-products https://www.wfp.org/nutrition/special-nutritional-products Here is the factsheet about existing WFP products (note price and shelf life) : http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/communications/wfp255508.pdf http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/co... Soylent is far far too expensive for this role. It requires clean water. Rob making the claim that Soylent could help world hunger is yet another sensationalist sleazy claim made in ignorance of existing market.

leorocky 12y ago

Maybe "soylent profitable" is the new "ramen profitable" or whatever.

cperciva 12y ago

I'm seriously considering it, at least as an experiment. I have type 1 diabetes, so I'm constantly trying to figure out how much insulin to take -- and I don't always get it right. This is mostly a matter of judging the food I'm consuming, but not completely; there's also endocrine issues which affect blood glucose levels (usually pushing them up), and exercise usually pulls blood glucose levels down. I think having a "standard diet" which takes food out of the picture would make it much easier to figure out how all the other pieces fit together.

arg01 12y ago
You'll know how to manage your condition better than others but I'll point out that there is talk about a rather high GI for soylent thanks to the maltodextrin. Which could possibly mean it's not suited for you (or rather you might have to have a lot of smaller meals). Alternatively you could lookup DIY soylent and roll your own more appropriate recipe.
- cperciva 12y ago
  rather high GI for soylent thanks to the maltodextrin That's certainly a concern, although I think the GI has dropped since the initial version thanks to the introduction of oat flour. But for the purpose of figuring out how all the variables interact, it doesn't really matter if Soylent is good T1D food or bad T1D food... as long as it's consistent. I certainly wouldn't switch to Soylent long-term without seeing how it affects my A1Cs, but as a short-term experiment it might be worth having worse numbers in order to learn how to get better numbers.

meisterbrendan 12y ago

Can folks in the Bay Area pick up Soylent sooner than the 10-12 weeks it takes to ship to new customers? I'd totally be willing to drive to pick up a shipment--I want to try this life hack out NOW (or as close to now as possible).

cperciva 12y ago
Aside from "know someone who knows someone" hacks, I don't think so -- the 12 week delay is due to production constraints, not shipping constraints.

papa_bear 12y ago

I think it could find a big market in people who care A LOT about eating specific nutrient proportions. I'm working on the website Eat This Much (http://www.eatthismuch.com http://www.eatthismuch.com) and a huge portion of our audience are people that want to eat EXACTLY 40% of their calories from carbs, 30% from fat, and 30% from protein (that's part of the zone diet, as an example). Our meal plan generator allows you to request those proportions, but sometimes it can't meet the exact targets due to any number of other constraints, and it's a huge source of complaints from our users. It's a pretty complicated problem to solve while trying to give people a varied and interesting diet with real food, but Soylent makes it very simple. I use my own site as much as possible, and I'm excited to have it give me half of my calories from Soylent (probably my breakfast and lunch).

rdmcfee 12y ago

This was touched on in the article but I still feel it's necessary to point out that nutrition is one of the least understood fields in science. The primary reason is that there are almost zero proper clinical trials and interventional studies. We have thousands of cohort studies which prove almost nothing. For example, for 60 years saturated fat has been considered the enemy of cardiovascular health (because of some poorly conducted cohort studies in the 60's and 70's). Just this March, BMJ published a major meta study that showing that there are no proven causal links between saturated fat and heart disease. In fact it is now being suggested that avoiding saturated fat has been detrimental because Americans have replaced fat intake with high glycemic index foods causing obesity and T2D. Personally I have no doubt that Soylent will fail to provide some required nutrient or fail to induce a certain hormonal or chemical response which is obtained via natural food intake. We simply don't understand nutrition well enough to check all the boxes. That said, if Soylent wanted to follow the scientific method and conduct a proper interventional clinical trial with a control group, adequate study population and duration I would be happy to consider the results.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
So by that logic Soylent is exactly as acceptable as any other food eaten regularly. Except Soylent at least tries to cover all the bases, constituting a variety of known food components. While a constant diet of cheeseburgers and waffle fries has not. I've heard folks trot out the "what about the unknown food components?" That's a spurious argument - eating random processed food has no guarantee of including magic mythical food ingredients. And I'm skeptical of imaginary ingredients that are essential to health - how would that work? Man in the wild would die unexpectedly unless consuming some vitamin present only in Zimbabwean ground-nuts? Evolution must have screwed up royally for that to be true.
- rdmcfee 12y ago
  Soylent could be considered exactly as acceptable as any specific food but most other diets offer a very wide diversity of foods. The current thinking in nutrition science seems to be that diversity in diet gives us a better chance of eating how we should be eating. Because we don't actually know how we should be eating we rely on that diversity. It's naive to think that the definition of "nutritionally complete" (which Soylent adheres to) isn't going to change over the coming decades. A traditional diet will still have a chance of being "nutritionally complete" under future requirements whereas Soylent's exact formula almost ensures that it won't. I think what's even more important are some of more complex functions of digestion and nutrition response. For example, what is the glycemic response of Soylent? In December Annals of Internal Medicine published a study (1) showing that a daily multivitamin has no benefit to the longevity and health of the average American but we do know that dietary interventions which increase dietary intake of certain vitamins via actual foods are beneficial to health. Scientists are still figuring out why but it is apparent that you can't just take a pill or formula containing certain nutrients and gain the same benefits of getting these nutrients through food. (1) http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1789253 http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1789253

gibybo 12y ago

Using the oil packets and purchasing the most cost effective plan (28 bags for 255/month), Soylent gives you 220 calories per dollar. For a relatively sedentary averaged sized adult male (2100 calories/day), it will cost you about $285/month. Ensure powder from Amazon[0] gets you to about 205 calories per dollar, which comes to $305/month for the same adult male. I don't buy the 'it's a lot cheaper than Ensure' line. Another competitor, "Optimum Nutrition Serious Mass" is on Amazon in 12 pound bags for $49. It works out to 408 calories per dollar. Only $154/month for the same example male. Admittedly Ensure and Serious Mass have different marketing than Soylent (Ensure for old people and Serious Mass for bodybuilders), but if you compare their ingredients you'll find they aren't very different. [0] http://www.amazon.com/Ensure-Nutrition-Powder-Vanilla-Flavor/dp/B0007XXPLQ http://www.amazon.com/Ensure-Nutrition-Powder-Vanilla-Flavor... [1] http://www.amazon.com/Optimum-Nutrition-Serious-Chocolate-Pound/dp/B000GIPJ0M http://www.amazon.com/Optimum-Nutrition-Serious-Chocolate-Po...

corysama 12y ago

The explicitly stated purpose of Soylent is NOT to live on. NOT to "End Food". It is to be a better occasional meal replacement. It's a nice improvement on many boring products that preceded it (Ensure, etc). But, that doesn't make for good linkbait headlines nor revenue-generating eyeballs on sidewall ads. This is yet another in a long series of manufactured-controversy articles propping up Soylent as either the Savior or the Devil. YOU DECIDE! Not that I mind. I'm a backer of Soylent. When my month's supply arrives, I'm looking forward to living on it 100% for 30 days for a few reasons: 1) I need to lose a bit of weight. I know that for me, the best way to do that is to significantly change my "generally good but occasionally indulgent" diet. I know from experience that I can't willpower that into happening. But, I think that if I commit to a defined, strict diet, I stand a chance. Soylent should be particularly good for that because supposedly it won't leave me with carb/protein/fat cravings like every other diet I've tried. 2) I like the idea of going on a cleanse. What better cleanse than supposedly exactly what your body needs and nothing else? 3) I'm interested in the chemical science vs. mystical vitalism theory of nutrition debate. I.e. do we need certain chemicals or do we need "something to do with Real Food" to thrive? Supposedly, people feel really fine living on Soylent. I want to see for myself first-hand. I plan to get my "blood work" numbers measured before and after.

letstryagain 12y ago
> exactly what your body needs and nothing else? Soylent's main ingredient is maltodextrin which is certainly not essential to any diet.
- markbao 12y ago
  Carbohydrates are, however. From the Soylent 1.0 ingredients list: > Maltodextrin (165g) - As the primary source of energy for the body, carbohydrates are the largest component of Soylent by mass. The starch in Oat Flour makes up the bulk of this nutrient and the rest is provided by Maltodextrin. http://blog.soylent.me/post/68180382810/soylent-1-0-macronutrient-overview http://blog.soylent.me/post/68180382810/soylent-1-0-macronut...
  - 12y ago

mantrax5 12y ago

Just because the ad says you'll want to live on Soylent, doesn't mean you would. There's a certain kind of people who like to buy into simple formulas for health, success and so on. There are more of them than it's comfortable to admit. The ad is worded to appeal to them, because after all Soylent is a business, and which business would ignore the large segment of the market that'll be buying your product regularly, every single day? For those who are more balanced thinkers, Soylent remains an interesting option when you need to have a meal on the go. Better than fast food. A side reminded, just like with vitamin pills, you should be skeptical of some of the claims made about Soylent's ingredients. Say, just because a product has calcium in some form doesn't mean your body can assimilate it in that form.

DanBC 12y ago

So many people are saying "i don't want to think" - Indians need to expand "tiffin" to the US. Make it nutritious and you'd make a freaking fortune.

ThatGeoGuy 12y ago

People keep going on and on about the nutritional value of the drink overall, but I'm somewhat curious to the effects it might have on the digestive tract. For example, if you ate soylent for a full year, and then went straight back to regular food, would your body have trouble digesting solid food now that it hasn't had to do so for a long period of time? What if we extend this time period to 5 years, or 10? I think we can maybe pull some insight from astronauts in this regard, as we should have some information about the change from tube-food to solid food from extended space missions. I can see soylent being a fantastic replacement in some respects, particularly with regards to coeliac's disease or with dairy allergies, but I'm still partially skeptical about the kinds of change that soylent will introduce in the future. One of the great parts about food nowadays is that you can basically grow and manufacture it anywhere, with the obvious caveat that not all food is available everywhere at once. On the other hand, with soylent, our food is almost "centralized" in a sense, since it is likely more difficult to create soylent than it is to throw seeds in the ground, or hunt and scavenge. This is sort of the reason why I'm curious to how the human body will react to such an abrupt change in diet. If humans just eat liquid food for an extended period of time, or their whole life, will they eventually lose / have difficulties with eating solid, more traditional food? Should a crisis arise (something akin to great floods or an earthquake), will it be possible to produce / ship enough soylent fast enough to fulfill the dietary needs of the population in need of aid? Of course, these sorts of questions assume that soylent will become a dietary replacement, rather than an occasional meal replacement, but I get the feeling, at least from this article, that replacing the diet is the plan of Rhinehart et al. I won't personally test soylent out, I love fancy food and flavours too much to bother, but in some sense I will follow the product and see what happens with it. I don't think something on this scale has ever been attempted before with regards to dietary / meal replacements, so it should be interesting (not necessarily good or bad, just interesting) to see what kinds of disasters / utopias unfold thanks to a full dietary replacement.