5 ms·

I don't understand why Soylent receives the press it does, meal-replacement shakes have been on the market for quite a long time. The entire phenomenon seems to

by freyrs3 12y ago

I don't understand why Soylent receives the press it does, meal-replacement shakes have been on the market for quite a long time. The entire phenomenon seems to just be a marketing gimmick around some misguided notion of it "replacing food".

shaunol 12y ago
The eventual goal is not just as a meal replacement but a full diet replacement that eventually won't need to leverage crops, for areas with no arable land. Most meal replacement shakes I've seen (not including those used in the medical industry) aren't suitable to replace your entire diet with and are generally very expensive per meal because of this. Most also warn against using the product to replace every meal with. I think it's very good to have a mainstream product like this that attempts to cover 100% of the suggested daily intake, simply to bring into debate what the daily intake should really consist of? And if we can achieve it in countries that are too far from supply of actual crops.
- 001sky 12y ago
  "a full diet replacement that eventually won't need to leverage crops, for areas with no arable land." How will they make soylent? there are plenty of foods with 100kcal per/0z. that are shelf stable and natural (and healthy). Shipping in powder X vs other food Y is a false differentiation. Its neither more healthy nor, nor less bulky, nor cheaper to ship. Lastly, you will need to ship in water which is 4-5x the weight of food per day.
  - digitalpacman 12y ago
    You ship them soylent... watch the videos if you are interested. The problem to solve world hunger is not growing the food, it's logistics.
    - freyrs3 12y ago
      The problem to solve world hunger is to be able to distribute staple crops more efficiently to places which don't have access to existing markets. There's no conceivable way that some highly refined meal-replacement product for the first world can be more economical than access to bulk amounts of grains. Even Soylent as an emergency food is an order of magnitude less economical than the existing solutions for famine relief, which are themselves extremely expensive in bulk.
- oblique63 12y ago
  > Most meal replacement shakes I've seen (not including those used in the medical industry) aren't suitable to replace your entire diet with We literally do not know that. Similarly, we cannot know that about soylent either. Because we simply do not know enough about human nutrition to be making these kinds of statements yet. The government's "Recommended Daily Intake" system is just a veneer over our relatively primitive understanding of nutrition to help give us some very basic possible guidelines (which are still quite susceptible to being wrong). The unfortunate part is that people take these 'recommendations' to mean that we virtually know all there is to know about nutrition when that is truly far from reality... I'm confident that we'll get there eventually, but first the quality of nutritional research will have to improve significantly, and it'll be far more work than any one meal-replacement company can hope to realistically invest in. So as much as I am for soylent 'pushing the boundaries' in that area, it's gonna take a lot more than that to get us a full-diet-replacement figured out for sure.
  - Turing_Machine 12y ago
    Maybe when it comes to adults, but we do have a good idea for babies. Lots of them eat nothing but formula and do okay (though not as well as on as human milk, let me hasten to add). There was a case a number of years ago where one of the formula makers didn't add enough chlorides, resulting in cases of chloride deficiency (previously unknown -- salt is everywhere in a normal diet, and is present in human milk). So... while maybe we can't say that we have a maximally healthy artificial diet, we do have multiple instances of artificial diets that are good enough to survive on.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
Blaaguuu 12y ago
Is that necessarily a gimmick? Meal replacement shakes may have been around for a while, but they haven't been marketing to me. If Soylent can successfully market to a larger/different demographic than Ensure has been, then aren't they like any other company that introduces a new product into an existing market? Is there anything bad/dishonest about that approach?
- fidlefodl 12y ago
  Not to mention i've been dying for this type of product for a long time, and have not been aware of a meal replacement shake that is intended for this level of consumption. People can argue the health implications all they want, but to argue that this isn't anything new.. well, maybe i'm missing something, but it's quite new to me. Considering that i've been wanting this product for the last 15 years - I'd say at the very least the others (whatever they may be) were a marketing failure.
bignaj 12y ago
Soylent - "Ensure for Nerds"
sneak 12y ago
Meal replacement shakes are expensive, inefficient, and unhealthy compared to Soylent. They usually ship with the liquid/water mixed in, and the cost/kcal is substantially higher, with the carbohydrate concentrations much, much higher.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- jljljl 12y ago
  Do you have a source or proof for these points? Last I checked a serving of Ensure was a good bit cheaper than Soylent. Shipping with the liquid/water mixed can often be a convenience, and at least Ensure also offers it's product in a powdered form: http://ensure.com/products/ensure-powder http://ensure.com/products/ensure-powder
  - gnoway 12y ago
    The cost of a serving of Soylent varies based on the amount you've ordered. The cheapest it goes for is ~$3.04 per serving - $255 for a monthly shipment of 28 days worth. The 'buy online' link from the Ensure page you posted lists their powdered product at $65 per 6 pack of 14oz cans. The serving size is 57g, so there are about 7 servings per can; a serving costs about $1.55. Each Ensure serving is 250 calories, with 9g protein, 9g fat, 34g carbs (13g sugar, 0g fiber) and between 10 and 60% of all the major vitamins and minerals (most seem to be 25%). Each non-vegan Soylent serving is 670 calories, with 38g protein, 24g fat, 84g carbs (2g sugar, 9g fiber) and between 33 and 57% of all the major vitamins and minerals (most are 33%). The vegans do their own thing with an oil additive (Soylent ships a fish oil/canola blend) so the published nutritional information is not accurate for vegans. So without actually doing all the arithmetic, I would say that I would probably need 2.5-ish Ensure servings for every 1 Soylent serving to equalize calories. I would be getting more vitamins out of Ensure, but also more sugar - most of the carbs - and no fiber at all. The price would be close but Ensure would be more expensive. http://abbottstore.com/adult-nutrition/ensure-powder-vanilla-14-oz-container-case-of-6-00750#.UnqVXxCE7To http://abbottstore.com/adult-nutrition/ensure-powder-vanilla... http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0421/5993/t/4/assets/Complete-Soylent-Nutrition-Facts.pdf?29423 http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0421/5993/t/4/assets/Comple...
khawkins 12y ago
The fact that Soylent tastes terrible should hardly be a surprise considering that none of the team behind this product has education/experience in food technology (http://www.rosalabs.com/team/ http://www.rosalabs.com/team/). Shouldn't that be a red flag for investors, considering ample availability of experience in such industries?
- frankacter 12y ago
  It's unfortunate that this mantra is repeated again and again whenever the discussion of Soylent is brought up. At minimum, last September they publicly discuss the fact that they are working directly with nutritionist: http://blog.soylent.me/post/61556254347/9-15-weekly-recap http://blog.soylent.me/post/61556254347/9-15-weekly-recap
digitalpacman 12y ago
They actually haven't. The closest is "booster shakes" which you can use to replace a lunch, here and there. But that's it. None of them say you can stop eating food all together. I've sat down and done the research and tried to find a single one that would actually say you could use it as a meal replacement, and there aren't any. The only thing really are ones that they keep coma patients alive with, which isn't exactly something a normal every day person could use and stay active. But they would advertise it, just a hint at it, then the fine print says otherwise.
- gamblor956 12y ago
  Shakeology and Garden of Life have been making MREs for years now. You've probably not heard of them because they target vegans and are very expensive.
  - munro 12y ago
    Actually the Soylent community is well aware of the alternatives, still none of them are up to Soylent's nutrition level! But you can see people using those things as bases in their DIY recipes [1]. You will start experience joint pain if you decide to just it Garden of Life [2], among other vitamin deficiencies. [1] http://diy.soylent.me/recipes/people-chow-301-tortilla-perfection-w-hemp-seed-oil-coconut-oil-easy-on-the-powder-with-garden-of-life http://diy.soylent.me/recipes/people-chow-301-tortilla-perfe... [2] http://robrhinehart.com/?p=570 http://robrhinehart.com/?p=570

by freyrs3 12y ago

shaunol 12y ago

The eventual goal is not just as a meal replacement but a full diet replacement that eventually won't need to leverage crops, for areas with no arable land. Most meal replacement shakes I've seen (not including those used in the medical industry) aren't suitable to replace your entire diet with and are generally very expensive per meal because of this. Most also warn against using the product to replace every meal with. I think it's very good to have a mainstream product like this that attempts to cover 100% of the suggested daily intake, simply to bring into debate what the daily intake should really consist of? And if we can achieve it in countries that are too far from supply of actual crops.

001sky 12y ago
"a full diet replacement that eventually won't need to leverage crops, for areas with no arable land." How will they make soylent? there are plenty of foods with 100kcal per/0z. that are shelf stable and natural (and healthy). Shipping in powder X vs other food Y is a false differentiation. Its neither more healthy nor, nor less bulky, nor cheaper to ship. Lastly, you will need to ship in water which is 4-5x the weight of food per day.
- digitalpacman 12y ago
  You ship them soylent... watch the videos if you are interested. The problem to solve world hunger is not growing the food, it's logistics.
  - freyrs3 12y ago
    The problem to solve world hunger is to be able to distribute staple crops more efficiently to places which don't have access to existing markets. There's no conceivable way that some highly refined meal-replacement product for the first world can be more economical than access to bulk amounts of grains. Even Soylent as an emergency food is an order of magnitude less economical than the existing solutions for famine relief, which are themselves extremely expensive in bulk.
oblique63 12y ago
> Most meal replacement shakes I've seen (not including those used in the medical industry) aren't suitable to replace your entire diet with We literally do not know that. Similarly, we cannot know that about soylent either. Because we simply do not know enough about human nutrition to be making these kinds of statements yet. The government's "Recommended Daily Intake" system is just a veneer over our relatively primitive understanding of nutrition to help give us some very basic possible guidelines (which are still quite susceptible to being wrong). The unfortunate part is that people take these 'recommendations' to mean that we virtually know all there is to know about nutrition when that is truly far from reality... I'm confident that we'll get there eventually, but first the quality of nutritional research will have to improve significantly, and it'll be far more work than any one meal-replacement company can hope to realistically invest in. So as much as I am for soylent 'pushing the boundaries' in that area, it's gonna take a lot more than that to get us a full-diet-replacement figured out for sure.
- Turing_Machine 12y ago
  Maybe when it comes to adults, but we do have a good idea for babies. Lots of them eat nothing but formula and do okay (though not as well as on as human milk, let me hasten to add). There was a case a number of years ago where one of the formula makers didn't add enough chlorides, resulting in cases of chloride deficiency (previously unknown -- salt is everywhere in a normal diet, and is present in human milk). So... while maybe we can't say that we have a maximally healthy artificial diet, we do have multiple instances of artificial diets that are good enough to survive on.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

Blaaguuu 12y ago

Is that necessarily a gimmick? Meal replacement shakes may have been around for a while, but they haven't been marketing to me. If Soylent can successfully market to a larger/different demographic than Ensure has been, then aren't they like any other company that introduces a new product into an existing market? Is there anything bad/dishonest about that approach?

fidlefodl 12y ago
Not to mention i've been dying for this type of product for a long time, and have not been aware of a meal replacement shake that is intended for this level of consumption. People can argue the health implications all they want, but to argue that this isn't anything new.. well, maybe i'm missing something, but it's quite new to me. Considering that i've been wanting this product for the last 15 years - I'd say at the very least the others (whatever they may be) were a marketing failure.

bignaj 12y ago

Soylent - "Ensure for Nerds"

sneak 12y ago

Meal replacement shakes are expensive, inefficient, and unhealthy compared to Soylent. They usually ship with the liquid/water mixed in, and the cost/kcal is substantially higher, with the carbohydrate concentrations much, much higher.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
jljljl 12y ago
Do you have a source or proof for these points? Last I checked a serving of Ensure was a good bit cheaper than Soylent. Shipping with the liquid/water mixed can often be a convenience, and at least Ensure also offers it's product in a powdered form: http://ensure.com/products/ensure-powder http://ensure.com/products/ensure-powder
- gnoway 12y ago
  The cost of a serving of Soylent varies based on the amount you've ordered. The cheapest it goes for is ~$3.04 per serving - $255 for a monthly shipment of 28 days worth. The 'buy online' link from the Ensure page you posted lists their powdered product at $65 per 6 pack of 14oz cans. The serving size is 57g, so there are about 7 servings per can; a serving costs about $1.55. Each Ensure serving is 250 calories, with 9g protein, 9g fat, 34g carbs (13g sugar, 0g fiber) and between 10 and 60% of all the major vitamins and minerals (most seem to be 25%). Each non-vegan Soylent serving is 670 calories, with 38g protein, 24g fat, 84g carbs (2g sugar, 9g fiber) and between 33 and 57% of all the major vitamins and minerals (most are 33%). The vegans do their own thing with an oil additive (Soylent ships a fish oil/canola blend) so the published nutritional information is not accurate for vegans. So without actually doing all the arithmetic, I would say that I would probably need 2.5-ish Ensure servings for every 1 Soylent serving to equalize calories. I would be getting more vitamins out of Ensure, but also more sugar - most of the carbs - and no fiber at all. The price would be close but Ensure would be more expensive. http://abbottstore.com/adult-nutrition/ensure-powder-vanilla-14-oz-container-case-of-6-00750#.UnqVXxCE7To http://abbottstore.com/adult-nutrition/ensure-powder-vanilla... http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0421/5993/t/4/assets/Complete-Soylent-Nutrition-Facts.pdf?29423 http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0421/5993/t/4/assets/Comple...

khawkins 12y ago

The fact that Soylent tastes terrible should hardly be a surprise considering that none of the team behind this product has education/experience in food technology (http://www.rosalabs.com/team/ http://www.rosalabs.com/team/). Shouldn't that be a red flag for investors, considering ample availability of experience in such industries?

frankacter 12y ago
It's unfortunate that this mantra is repeated again and again whenever the discussion of Soylent is brought up. At minimum, last September they publicly discuss the fact that they are working directly with nutritionist: http://blog.soylent.me/post/61556254347/9-15-weekly-recap http://blog.soylent.me/post/61556254347/9-15-weekly-recap

digitalpacman 12y ago

They actually haven't. The closest is "booster shakes" which you can use to replace a lunch, here and there. But that's it. None of them say you can stop eating food all together. I've sat down and done the research and tried to find a single one that would actually say you could use it as a meal replacement, and there aren't any. The only thing really are ones that they keep coma patients alive with, which isn't exactly something a normal every day person could use and stay active. But they would advertise it, just a hint at it, then the fine print says otherwise.

gamblor956 12y ago
Shakeology and Garden of Life have been making MREs for years now. You've probably not heard of them because they target vegans and are very expensive.
- munro 12y ago
  Actually the Soylent community is well aware of the alternatives, still none of them are up to Soylent's nutrition level! But you can see people using those things as bases in their DIY recipes [1]. You will start experience joint pain if you decide to just it Garden of Life [2], among other vitamin deficiencies. [1] http://diy.soylent.me/recipes/people-chow-301-tortilla-perfection-w-hemp-seed-oil-coconut-oil-easy-on-the-powder-with-garden-of-life http://diy.soylent.me/recipes/people-chow-301-tortilla-perfe... [2] http://robrhinehart.com/?p=570 http://robrhinehart.com/?p=570