11 ms·

The value prop that people will save money is kind of funny to me. My diet: Breakfast: Oatmeal, honey, cinnamon $0.20 Lunch: Large Salad(spinach, carrot,

The value prop that people will save money is kind of funny to me. My diet: Breakfast: Oatmeal, honey, cinnamon $0.20 Lunch: Large Salad(spinach, carrot, tomato, cucumber, mushroom, bell pepper, sometimes almonds) $2.50 Dinner: Steamed Veggies and Seared Tilapia (kale, carrot, tomato, capers, tilapia) $3.50 If people just budged properly they would be fine. That being said, I'm curious to try soylent and have purchased a week supply of it. Could be fun to play with.

hvs 11y ago
I upvoted you because I agree that it is actually pretty easy to eat healthily for pretty cheap if you are willing to manage it correctly. I will say that you seem to have a surprising low daily caloric intake, though. I have a high metabolism, but sit in front of computer all day and I still need 2500 calories/day to maintain my weight.
- cblock811 11y ago
  Yeah my roommate has commented on this as well. I'm thinking of adding in more nuts and other calorically dense foods. I've only been doing this for a few months so it's a bit of an experiment.
  - beachstartup 11y ago
    you probably just have a low natural appetite but most people need far, far more fat in order to feel satisfied and not crave food all day and binge on crap later. nuts work great, but my personal favorite fat-booster is eggs, followed by lots of olive oil.
- comrh 11y ago
  Whey protein & milk and he would be fine I think.
- throw_away 11y ago
  At rough estimate, like half the calories most people need: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+cup+oatmeal+%2B+1+tbsp+honey+%2B+12+oz+spinach+%2B+2+tbsp+olive+oil+%2B+2+cups+broccoli+%2B+8+oz+tilapia http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+cup+oatmeal+%2B+1+tbs... scaled to the 2000'calories in soylent: 2000/951*$6.20 = $13.04 or 43% more expensive than soylent's $9.11. shopping and cooking and eating and cleaning for this must take at least around 1/2 hour - hour each day (compared to about 5 minutes for soylent) equals about 3-6% of your waking hours. Also, for the first time in my adult life, I'm pretty well prepared for natural disaster. before I would only keep a couple days of food in my apt and a lot of that needed refrigeration or cooking. Now I have a couple of weeks worth at the ready. I think, though that the value prop probably makes far more sense for single people without children. For them, preparing food is far less efficient and they have to coordinate their eating with others less often. Also, it probably makes less sense if your employer provides you with free meals.
Shivetya 11y ago
I would purchase a days worth but I am not going to toss eighty odd bucks on something I might not like. At least mealsquares has a sample pack at twenty five that is about my threshold for trying specialized food products.
- cblock811 11y ago
  Given that it's sort of bland, I imagine you can easily flavor it and make fun beverages. Part of why I want to get it is to experiment. My coworker drinks soylent and I bet I could make it taste fantastic after playing with it a bit.
- crusso 11y ago
  Soylent 1.4 has a grainy/nutty taste, similar to almond milk with oats. If you like those flavors, then you'll probably like Soylent. I spike mine with a healthy amount of chocolate protein powder (Isopure) and coconut oil since I do better with less carbs in my diet.
seanflyon 11y ago
I've always seen the value proposition as saving time vs cooking yourself and saving money vs buying prepared food.
s73v3r 11y ago
That takes time to put together. Even if you come back saying, "It only takes XX minutes to do!" that's still time it takes. Soylent is aimed at people who really don't have that time (or think they don't). People who have multiple jobs.
pdeuchler 11y ago
What's your hourly wage? Don't forget an hour of your time! Not saying that makes it impractical to cook your own food, but we can't act like the only cost in making dinner is the raw materials. As an aside, it's pretty difficult to maintain those price levels if you'd like to eat more than oatmeal, spinach salad, and tilapia every day.
- jahewson 11y ago
  That only makes sense if you're taking time off work to cook, which most people aren't. Otherwise you weren't getting paid for that hour anyway.
  - tedks 11y ago
    This is hacker news. Why would anyone here ever take time off of work? If you're still employed (and who is?) by some BigCorp you can at least have side projects in your off time. But most of the people here are founding one or more startups while managing a productized consultancy and can probably scale their billable time to something like 22.5 hours per day (assuming 90 minutes of sleep time distributed via the Uberman schedule). So this isn't a fair argument against soylent for most people in software/tech jobs, and probably soon most other jobs as the contractor model becomes more popular and jobs become uberified.
  - baddox 11y ago
    I value my free time too. Significantly, in fact.
- beachstartup 11y ago
  sometimes hn can feel like the cheapskate olympics. i'll easily spend $100 on a trip to the store when i buy high quality pastured eggs, organic protein, local olive oil, fresh vegetables, CHEESE, etc. sometimes i'll even splurge, and get an overpriced sandwich! can you imagine??? pre-made food... so irresponsible. i don't go into work every day so i can live like a college student on dry goods and roughage.
- PopeOfNope 11y ago
kentt 11y ago
I have Soylent for around 40% of meals. I know it's more expensive than my regular diet, but it's quick and healthy food. Of course you can argue that your meals are very low effort, but even just grocery shopping and planning meals is something I'm happy I don't have to do now. It makes my life simpler and more enjoyable and that's worth the price to me.
- paintrayne 11y ago
  I haven't seen any compelling evidence that Soylent is healthy, given that there are not even agreed upon RDA for most nutrients or macro nutrients.
  - MCRed 11y ago
    Further, not all people are the same, so "healthy" actually varies from person to person. In at least one area this is dramatic: Some people are insulin sensitive and some are insulin resistant. I looked at the nutrition label on soylent. It might be healthy for insulin sensitive people, who generally tend to be naturally skinny. But this would be a terrible thing for someone who is insulin resistant to consume. It has a very high amount of carbs and fat, which means that your body will see the carbs, blood sugar will spike the insulin will spike very high to compensate (since you're resistant you need more of it to get your blood sugar down) and the high levels of insulin tell the body to start storing fat... consequently making you fatter. Unfortunately, so much of the diet science assumes everyone is the same, and ignores the insulin sensitivity factor (and I bet there are several other factors going on as well that aren't understood.)
  - paulsutter 11y ago
    Are you arguing that you haven't seen compelling evidence that /any/ food or diet is healthy, given that there are not even any agreed upon RDA for most nutrients or macronutrients? I'd suggest comparing the nutrition of Soylent to the nutrition of actual meals we eat when we don't have time for a proper meal. Since that's how many people use it.
    - 11y ago
Numberwang 11y ago
This diet for 5 years and you will be dead. Add more almonds.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Nadya 11y ago
There's also an issue of taste. I dislike the taste of many foods considered healthy for me. I try to eat the ones I enjoy but many are expensive depending on the season. For example, I cannot stomach green beans. Attempting to chew them results in vomiting within my mouth. The smell of them alone is repulsive to me. If I can have a bland solution to eating healthy - that's a win for me. The only thing preventing me from trying Soylent is the price of buying enough for 2 people, since all of my current meals are shared. Having to buy normal groceries and Soylent would nearly double my monthly cost for foodstuffs. I'd have a healthier, cheaper diet if I only had to buy food for myself. E: Not to mention every "cheap alternative healthy food" to Soylent I see mentioned only targets a small section of nutrients and vitamins and often ignores proteins altogether. They aren't well rounded - even if they're healthier/cheaper than McDonalds. Soylent strikes the "well rounded" healthy food. Without the hassle of having to buy groceries or prepare the food.
- jahewson 11y ago
  > For example, I cannot stomach green beans. Attempting to chew them results in vomiting within my mouth. The smell of them alone is repulsive to me. Sauté them with butter, it's like a different food.
  - Nadya 11y ago
    I don't tend to have butter (or margarine spread) in the house. Not to mention I would have to cook them and clean the dishes :) I've tried them buttered, steamed, roasted, in a casserole, mixed into Mac&Cheese, and 1,000 different methods my mother tried to sneak green beans into my diet as a child. I struggle to stomach them no matter how they are prepared. I have little concern for trying foods I dislike. I make an attempt to revisit them every few years (ie. I hated sushi as a child, I absolutely love it as an adult) but don't actively try different recipes or "force myself to like it". The few foods I eat actively, I eat because I enjoy. The other foods I eat because I guilt trip myself into eating healthy. I'd live off nothing but rigatoni with old-school traditional Ragu sauce day in and day out if I could. But I limit that to once-a-week and figure out more balanced and healthy meals the other 6 days (if I eat at all). Soylent would likely do wonders for my dietary health.
atacrawl 11y ago
Serious question -- where do you shop that this amount of food for an adult only costs this much?
tedks 11y ago
Well, time = money, so unless you make that every week and have 0 daily prep/cook time, allowing you to amortize the bulk prep time across the week, Soylent probably saves you at least 8 hours a week assuming 20 minute prep/cook time per meal (I feel like, due to slop time, 20 minutes is about the minimum for this, unless you got really, really efficient with how you stored ingredients). Further, Soylent is about $9/day, and your food system is only a bit less expensive at $6.20/day. In contrast, I've lived for months off of DIY soylents that were $3.50/day.
tetraodonpuffer 11y ago
it depends on where you live, over here a medium sized bunch of organic kale is $2.99 at whole foods by itself, and $0.20 won't get you that many oats, let alone honey or cinnamon. The advantage of things like Soylent is that the price is the same no matter where you live, whether you are in a small town with great produce where it's cheap or whether you live in an expensive downtown with limited access.
- refurb 11y ago
  I don't know how anyone can afford to shop at Whole Foods! If you want fresh veggies and fruit for cheap, go find an Asian supermarket. If you walk in and realize you're the only non-Asian, then you're in the right place. I can easily buy enough fruits and vegetables to last a week for $15. We're talking multiple serving of both for lunch and dinner for 7 days.
  - sabujp 11y ago
    Or at farmers markets! Can't upvote this enough. I go to the indian and asian markets and only buy certain things at costco where the quality is slightly better (fruits) or I get more quantity for the $.
  - smackfu 11y ago
    If there's not much of an Asian population, Asian supermarkets aren't nearly as common and so not very convenient.
- lifeformed 11y ago
  20 cents wont get you a serving of oats? Oats are like 80 cents a pound, dry! A quarter pound of dry oats is plenty of food for breakfast...
- pharke 11y ago
  Where I live, buying rolled oats off the shelf from a regular grocery store will run you $0.00244 per gram. A serving of oats as indicated by the packaging is 3/4 cups or 65.7g of oats by weight. That works out to a whopping $0.1647 per serving. Prices are fairly average if not a little higher where I live so yes most people can get oats for $0.20 a serving. The secret is probably not buying at whole foods. Honey can be a bit more expensive, for me it's about $0.012 per gram when not on sale. I use around a tablespoon in the morning so that's about 21.25g by weight which gives $0.255 in cost. Once again, that's hardly unmanageable on a daily basis. I don't know how much cinnamon you generally put in your oatmeal but a couple of shakes usually does it for me, not sure what it would be if measured but certainly less than 1/4 tsp. and it takes me a long time to go through a bottle (125g) or bag if I buy the cheaper stuff and refill a bottle ;) so the couple dollars I spend on it only gets shelled out every 2 - 3 months. You can also order those ingredients from amazon: 50lbs bag of rolled oats $57.99 (0.00255/g) [1] 220z x 3 raw honey $28.80 ($0.0154/g) [2] 18oz. ground cinnamon $8.48 ($0.0166/g) [3] [1] http://www.amazon.com/Regular-Rolled-Oats-Bulk-Pound/dp/B007KV68UI/ref=sr_1_11?s=grocery&ie=UTF8&qid=1433597057&sr=1-11&keywords=rolled+oats http://www.amazon.com/Regular-Rolled-Oats-Bulk-Pound/dp/B007... [2] http://www.amazon.com/Y-S-Eco-Bee-Farms-Honey/dp/B000Z93FQC/ref=sr_1_2?s=grocery&ie=UTF8&qid=1433597347&sr=1-2&keywords=creamed+honey http://www.amazon.com/Y-S-Eco-Bee-Farms-Honey/dp/B000Z93FQC/... [3] http://www.amazon.com/McCormick-Ground-Cinnamon-18-oz/dp/B001PQREKM/ref=sr_1_3?s=grocery&ie=UTF8&qid=1433597859&sr=1-3&keywords=cinnamon http://www.amazon.com/McCormick-Ground-Cinnamon-18-oz/dp/B00...
detrino 11y ago
That sounds like less than 1000 calories a day. You must be getting more calories than that or you are very atypical.
elwell 11y ago
I spend at least 3x that
PopeOfNope 11y ago
Where's the protein and fat? The brain needs both to function correctly.
curiously 11y ago
wow, where do you live?
branchless 11y ago
I just find it totally disturbing. Who are these people who want to eat this because it's faster so they can work more? It's like a forum of aliens. I have nothing in common with them. It really made me feel repelled by some of the replies. To be human is to want to eat fine food and to play. To be inhuman is to want to consume calories so you can work longer. Yuk and yuk.
- MarcusVorenus 11y ago
  > Who are these people who want to eat this because it's faster so they can work more? Or maybe they eat this so they can play more? I just find it totally disturbing that you've chosen eating food as one of your primary sources of entertainment. You must be a really boring person.
- pharke 11y ago
  Speaking as someone who consumes one and sometimes two meals out of the usual three prepared in a simple liquid form in order to save time on food prep, it has a perfectly rational backing that fits in with most of the other activities engaged in by normal humans. Saving the time I would normally spend preparing and eating breakfast and lunch makes sense because it allows me to work more during that time so that I can finish my overall workload sooner which in turn gives me more time in the evening and on weekends to follow the pursuits that I really enjoy, of which cooking and enjoying fine food is one. I liken it to having an interest in and owning high performance cars. Driving a beautiful and powerful car in your off-time is a perfectly valid pursuit but using the same car for your daily commute resulting in more time spent in transit and the irritation of bumper to bumper gridlock and delays in exchange for the extra time 'enjoying' your car makes no sense if you can simply jump on a train or subway and skip the traffic even if that experience is rather more bland in comparison. We shouldn't eat to live and nor should we live to eat.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Come on - as the founder of Soylent wrote, I like to go to movies too. But not three movies a day. There are many things in life that are interesting and fun. For some its their startup job. Everyone coming to HN should understand that.
namlem 11y ago
Soylent is much cheaper if you make it yourself. It's only expensive if you buy it pre-made.
fernly 11y ago
Late reply... can you estimate the number of hours per week you put into planning, shopping, cooking, and cleanup? If so, and if you can you assign a $ value to that time, it would be an interesting exercise to compare such _total_ costs (averaged per meal) versus the same calculation using Soylent. I would suppose (based on doing 50% Soylent for a few months) that for an all-Soylent diet, planning and shopping time goes to zero, "cooking" time to 5 min/day (to shake up one bag in the pitcher), cleanup to near-zero (put glass in the sink). Very possibly the reduction in time, valued in dollars, makes Soylent cheaper.
kamaal 11y ago
Food is super dead cheap to produce, In most places the bulk of cost of food is transportation and profits accounted for every level in the chain of exchange of goods between farmer and the consumer. This is largely true in poor and developing countries. The food prices go up when fuel prices go up. I don't see this change even in the case of Soylent.

hvs 11y ago

I upvoted you because I agree that it is actually pretty easy to eat healthily for pretty cheap if you are willing to manage it correctly. I will say that you seem to have a surprising low daily caloric intake, though. I have a high metabolism, but sit in front of computer all day and I still need 2500 calories/day to maintain my weight.

cblock811 11y ago
Yeah my roommate has commented on this as well. I'm thinking of adding in more nuts and other calorically dense foods. I've only been doing this for a few months so it's a bit of an experiment.
- beachstartup 11y ago
  you probably just have a low natural appetite but most people need far, far more fat in order to feel satisfied and not crave food all day and binge on crap later. nuts work great, but my personal favorite fat-booster is eggs, followed by lots of olive oil.
comrh 11y ago
Whey protein & milk and he would be fine I think.
throw_away 11y ago
At rough estimate, like half the calories most people need: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+cup+oatmeal+%2B+1+tbsp+honey+%2B+12+oz+spinach+%2B+2+tbsp+olive+oil+%2B+2+cups+broccoli+%2B+8+oz+tilapia http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+cup+oatmeal+%2B+1+tbs... scaled to the 2000'calories in soylent: 2000/951*$6.20 = $13.04 or 43% more expensive than soylent's $9.11. shopping and cooking and eating and cleaning for this must take at least around 1/2 hour - hour each day (compared to about 5 minutes for soylent) equals about 3-6% of your waking hours. Also, for the first time in my adult life, I'm pretty well prepared for natural disaster. before I would only keep a couple days of food in my apt and a lot of that needed refrigeration or cooking. Now I have a couple of weeks worth at the ready. I think, though that the value prop probably makes far more sense for single people without children. For them, preparing food is far less efficient and they have to coordinate their eating with others less often. Also, it probably makes less sense if your employer provides you with free meals.

Shivetya 11y ago

I would purchase a days worth but I am not going to toss eighty odd bucks on something I might not like. At least mealsquares has a sample pack at twenty five that is about my threshold for trying specialized food products.

cblock811 11y ago
Given that it's sort of bland, I imagine you can easily flavor it and make fun beverages. Part of why I want to get it is to experiment. My coworker drinks soylent and I bet I could make it taste fantastic after playing with it a bit.
crusso 11y ago
Soylent 1.4 has a grainy/nutty taste, similar to almond milk with oats. If you like those flavors, then you'll probably like Soylent. I spike mine with a healthy amount of chocolate protein powder (Isopure) and coconut oil since I do better with less carbs in my diet.

seanflyon 11y ago

I've always seen the value proposition as saving time vs cooking yourself and saving money vs buying prepared food.

s73v3r 11y ago

That takes time to put together. Even if you come back saying, "It only takes XX minutes to do!" that's still time it takes. Soylent is aimed at people who really don't have that time (or think they don't). People who have multiple jobs.

pdeuchler 11y ago

What's your hourly wage? Don't forget an hour of your time! Not saying that makes it impractical to cook your own food, but we can't act like the only cost in making dinner is the raw materials. As an aside, it's pretty difficult to maintain those price levels if you'd like to eat more than oatmeal, spinach salad, and tilapia every day.

jahewson 11y ago
That only makes sense if you're taking time off work to cook, which most people aren't. Otherwise you weren't getting paid for that hour anyway.
- tedks 11y ago
  This is hacker news. Why would anyone here ever take time off of work? If you're still employed (and who is?) by some BigCorp you can at least have side projects in your off time. But most of the people here are founding one or more startups while managing a productized consultancy and can probably scale their billable time to something like 22.5 hours per day (assuming 90 minutes of sleep time distributed via the Uberman schedule). So this isn't a fair argument against soylent for most people in software/tech jobs, and probably soon most other jobs as the contractor model becomes more popular and jobs become uberified.
- baddox 11y ago
  I value my free time too. Significantly, in fact.
beachstartup 11y ago
sometimes hn can feel like the cheapskate olympics. i'll easily spend $100 on a trip to the store when i buy high quality pastured eggs, organic protein, local olive oil, fresh vegetables, CHEESE, etc. sometimes i'll even splurge, and get an overpriced sandwich! can you imagine??? pre-made food... so irresponsible. i don't go into work every day so i can live like a college student on dry goods and roughage.
PopeOfNope 11y ago

kentt 11y ago

I have Soylent for around 40% of meals. I know it's more expensive than my regular diet, but it's quick and healthy food. Of course you can argue that your meals are very low effort, but even just grocery shopping and planning meals is something I'm happy I don't have to do now. It makes my life simpler and more enjoyable and that's worth the price to me.

paintrayne 11y ago
I haven't seen any compelling evidence that Soylent is healthy, given that there are not even agreed upon RDA for most nutrients or macro nutrients.
- MCRed 11y ago
  Further, not all people are the same, so "healthy" actually varies from person to person. In at least one area this is dramatic: Some people are insulin sensitive and some are insulin resistant. I looked at the nutrition label on soylent. It might be healthy for insulin sensitive people, who generally tend to be naturally skinny. But this would be a terrible thing for someone who is insulin resistant to consume. It has a very high amount of carbs and fat, which means that your body will see the carbs, blood sugar will spike the insulin will spike very high to compensate (since you're resistant you need more of it to get your blood sugar down) and the high levels of insulin tell the body to start storing fat... consequently making you fatter. Unfortunately, so much of the diet science assumes everyone is the same, and ignores the insulin sensitivity factor (and I bet there are several other factors going on as well that aren't understood.)
- paulsutter 11y ago
  Are you arguing that you haven't seen compelling evidence that /any/ food or diet is healthy, given that there are not even any agreed upon RDA for most nutrients or macronutrients? I'd suggest comparing the nutrition of Soylent to the nutrition of actual meals we eat when we don't have time for a proper meal. Since that's how many people use it.
  - 11y ago

Numberwang 11y ago

This diet for 5 years and you will be dead. Add more almonds.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

Nadya 11y ago

There's also an issue of taste. I dislike the taste of many foods considered healthy for me. I try to eat the ones I enjoy but many are expensive depending on the season. For example, I cannot stomach green beans. Attempting to chew them results in vomiting within my mouth. The smell of them alone is repulsive to me. If I can have a bland solution to eating healthy - that's a win for me. The only thing preventing me from trying Soylent is the price of buying enough for 2 people, since all of my current meals are shared. Having to buy normal groceries and Soylent would nearly double my monthly cost for foodstuffs. I'd have a healthier, cheaper diet if I only had to buy food for myself. E: Not to mention every "cheap alternative healthy food" to Soylent I see mentioned only targets a small section of nutrients and vitamins and often ignores proteins altogether. They aren't well rounded - even if they're healthier/cheaper than McDonalds. Soylent strikes the "well rounded" healthy food. Without the hassle of having to buy groceries or prepare the food.

jahewson 11y ago
> For example, I cannot stomach green beans. Attempting to chew them results in vomiting within my mouth. The smell of them alone is repulsive to me. Sauté them with butter, it's like a different food.
- Nadya 11y ago
  I don't tend to have butter (or margarine spread) in the house. Not to mention I would have to cook them and clean the dishes :) I've tried them buttered, steamed, roasted, in a casserole, mixed into Mac&Cheese, and 1,000 different methods my mother tried to sneak green beans into my diet as a child. I struggle to stomach them no matter how they are prepared. I have little concern for trying foods I dislike. I make an attempt to revisit them every few years (ie. I hated sushi as a child, I absolutely love it as an adult) but don't actively try different recipes or "force myself to like it". The few foods I eat actively, I eat because I enjoy. The other foods I eat because I guilt trip myself into eating healthy. I'd live off nothing but rigatoni with old-school traditional Ragu sauce day in and day out if I could. But I limit that to once-a-week and figure out more balanced and healthy meals the other 6 days (if I eat at all). Soylent would likely do wonders for my dietary health.

atacrawl 11y ago

Serious question -- where do you shop that this amount of food for an adult only costs this much?

tedks 11y ago

Well, time = money, so unless you make that every week and have 0 daily prep/cook time, allowing you to amortize the bulk prep time across the week, Soylent probably saves you at least 8 hours a week assuming 20 minute prep/cook time per meal (I feel like, due to slop time, 20 minutes is about the minimum for this, unless you got really, really efficient with how you stored ingredients). Further, Soylent is about $9/day, and your food system is only a bit less expensive at $6.20/day. In contrast, I've lived for months off of DIY soylents that were $3.50/day.

tetraodonpuffer 11y ago

it depends on where you live, over here a medium sized bunch of organic kale is $2.99 at whole foods by itself, and $0.20 won't get you that many oats, let alone honey or cinnamon. The advantage of things like Soylent is that the price is the same no matter where you live, whether you are in a small town with great produce where it's cheap or whether you live in an expensive downtown with limited access.

refurb 11y ago
I don't know how anyone can afford to shop at Whole Foods! If you want fresh veggies and fruit for cheap, go find an Asian supermarket. If you walk in and realize you're the only non-Asian, then you're in the right place. I can easily buy enough fruits and vegetables to last a week for $15. We're talking multiple serving of both for lunch and dinner for 7 days.
- sabujp 11y ago
  Or at farmers markets! Can't upvote this enough. I go to the indian and asian markets and only buy certain things at costco where the quality is slightly better (fruits) or I get more quantity for the $.
- smackfu 11y ago
  If there's not much of an Asian population, Asian supermarkets aren't nearly as common and so not very convenient.
lifeformed 11y ago
20 cents wont get you a serving of oats? Oats are like 80 cents a pound, dry! A quarter pound of dry oats is plenty of food for breakfast...
pharke 11y ago
Where I live, buying rolled oats off the shelf from a regular grocery store will run you $0.00244 per gram. A serving of oats as indicated by the packaging is 3/4 cups or 65.7g of oats by weight. That works out to a whopping $0.1647 per serving. Prices are fairly average if not a little higher where I live so yes most people can get oats for $0.20 a serving. The secret is probably not buying at whole foods. Honey can be a bit more expensive, for me it's about $0.012 per gram when not on sale. I use around a tablespoon in the morning so that's about 21.25g by weight which gives $0.255 in cost. Once again, that's hardly unmanageable on a daily basis. I don't know how much cinnamon you generally put in your oatmeal but a couple of shakes usually does it for me, not sure what it would be if measured but certainly less than 1/4 tsp. and it takes me a long time to go through a bottle (125g) or bag if I buy the cheaper stuff and refill a bottle ;) so the couple dollars I spend on it only gets shelled out every 2 - 3 months. You can also order those ingredients from amazon: 50lbs bag of rolled oats $57.99 (0.00255/g) [1] 220z x 3 raw honey $28.80 ($0.0154/g) [2] 18oz. ground cinnamon $8.48 ($0.0166/g) [3] [1] http://www.amazon.com/Regular-Rolled-Oats-Bulk-Pound/dp/B007KV68UI/ref=sr_1_11?s=grocery&ie=UTF8&qid=1433597057&sr=1-11&keywords=rolled+oats http://www.amazon.com/Regular-Rolled-Oats-Bulk-Pound/dp/B007... [2] http://www.amazon.com/Y-S-Eco-Bee-Farms-Honey/dp/B000Z93FQC/ref=sr_1_2?s=grocery&ie=UTF8&qid=1433597347&sr=1-2&keywords=creamed+honey http://www.amazon.com/Y-S-Eco-Bee-Farms-Honey/dp/B000Z93FQC/... [3] http://www.amazon.com/McCormick-Ground-Cinnamon-18-oz/dp/B001PQREKM/ref=sr_1_3?s=grocery&ie=UTF8&qid=1433597859&sr=1-3&keywords=cinnamon http://www.amazon.com/McCormick-Ground-Cinnamon-18-oz/dp/B00...

detrino 11y ago

That sounds like less than 1000 calories a day. You must be getting more calories than that or you are very atypical.

elwell 11y ago

I spend at least 3x that

PopeOfNope 11y ago

Where's the protein and fat? The brain needs both to function correctly.

curiously 11y ago

wow, where do you live?

branchless 11y ago

I just find it totally disturbing. Who are these people who want to eat this because it's faster so they can work more? It's like a forum of aliens. I have nothing in common with them. It really made me feel repelled by some of the replies. To be human is to want to eat fine food and to play. To be inhuman is to want to consume calories so you can work longer. Yuk and yuk.

MarcusVorenus 11y ago
> Who are these people who want to eat this because it's faster so they can work more? Or maybe they eat this so they can play more? I just find it totally disturbing that you've chosen eating food as one of your primary sources of entertainment. You must be a really boring person.
pharke 11y ago
Speaking as someone who consumes one and sometimes two meals out of the usual three prepared in a simple liquid form in order to save time on food prep, it has a perfectly rational backing that fits in with most of the other activities engaged in by normal humans. Saving the time I would normally spend preparing and eating breakfast and lunch makes sense because it allows me to work more during that time so that I can finish my overall workload sooner which in turn gives me more time in the evening and on weekends to follow the pursuits that I really enjoy, of which cooking and enjoying fine food is one. I liken it to having an interest in and owning high performance cars. Driving a beautiful and powerful car in your off-time is a perfectly valid pursuit but using the same car for your daily commute resulting in more time spent in transit and the irritation of bumper to bumper gridlock and delays in exchange for the extra time 'enjoying' your car makes no sense if you can simply jump on a train or subway and skip the traffic even if that experience is rather more bland in comparison. We shouldn't eat to live and nor should we live to eat.
JoeAltmaier 11y ago
Come on - as the founder of Soylent wrote, I like to go to movies too. But not three movies a day. There are many things in life that are interesting and fun. For some its their startup job. Everyone coming to HN should understand that.

namlem 11y ago

Soylent is much cheaper if you make it yourself. It's only expensive if you buy it pre-made.

fernly 11y ago

Late reply... can you estimate the number of hours per week you put into planning, shopping, cooking, and cleanup? If so, and if you can you assign a $ value to that time, it would be an interesting exercise to compare such _total_ costs (averaged per meal) versus the same calculation using Soylent. I would suppose (based on doing 50% Soylent for a few months) that for an all-Soylent diet, planning and shopping time goes to zero, "cooking" time to 5 min/day (to shake up one bag in the pitcher), cleanup to near-zero (put glass in the sink). Very possibly the reduction in time, valued in dollars, makes Soylent cheaper.

kamaal 11y ago

Food is super dead cheap to produce, In most places the bulk of cost of food is transportation and profits accounted for every level in the chain of exchange of goods between farmer and the consumer. This is largely true in poor and developing countries. The food prices go up when fuel prices go up. I don't see this change even in the case of Soylent.