Slashdot Mirror
20,000 Customers Have Pre-Ordered Over $2,000,000 of Soylent
Daniel_Stuckey writes "Less than a year ago, Rob Rhinehart published a blog post explaining how he had stopped eating food and begun living entirely on a greyish, macro-nutritious cocktail. Today, he told Motherboard that he's sold more than $2 million worth of Soylent to tens of thousands of post-food consumers worldwide—and that it's on track to ship next month. 'We have crossed $2,000,000 in revenue from over 20,000 customers, with more every day,' Rhinehart told me. 'International demand is really picking up as well.' This despite the fact that Soylent isn't technically on the market yet, and has thus far only been available to beta testers. Rhinehart's company spent much of last year tinkering with the formula—the version he tried first was deficient in sulfur, and contained since-jettisoned ingredients like cow whey. But there's been a steadily building crescendo of publicity—both positive and negative—around the project since its inception."
Soylent is supposed to be SOY, LENTils, and optionally plankton. Come up with a new name. Sheesh.
Makes me think of Soylent Green.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Just stay away from the Green label
It was a 5 part series and was really interesting. Overall, they had a positive view of Soylent after you get past the first 2 days of stomach cramps
Considering that good food and cooking are some of the great pleasures in life, no thanks! I find the concept pretty depressing, actually.
In the interview, it is also called bachelor chow. I think that would be a much better name. It's a convenient food alternative, instead of a dystopian horror story.
Yes, I stole that from Futurama
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This sounds gimmicky, like freeze-dried space food.
Besides that who would want to give up food for this? Its like giving up sex for masturbation.
Go read his blog post about the "results" he experienced. He's giving the full-blown "I now have the body of a 12 year old and my brain increased in efficiency 400%" kind of crap under "qualitative". It's great to feel better after you start eating better, but unless his prior diet was >50% animal product and too much of it for his calorie needs, I'm calling bullshit.
Under quantitative, apparently his blood work improved quite a bit. Yeah, your blood work tends to improve when you eat a simple vegan diet, and that's all soylent contains. Vegan ingredients with a 2 oz mix of fish and vegetable oil per day.
I guess it's nice to have a supremely convenient and very healthy diet that makes you feel better, but he's laying it on pretty fucking thick. Not to mention you could create a diet of the same health benefits with maybe 15 raw ingredients. You could just put the shit in a blender if you wanted...
How is this fundamentally different than MRP's that have existed for decades?
Conspiracy theorists and alternative medicine freaks are a lucrative market, there was no way this could have failed.
No thanks.
Dohhhh!!!!
2) Steak ( bloody ) in green pepper sauce, no potatoes or whatever side dish
3) "Mohr im Hemd" ( Austrian chocolate dessert )
accompanied by Rhine wine. How does that compare to slurping some soylent ? The table conversation ? The joy of eating ? I simply don't get it, what the fun of soylent could be. Must be me.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Harry: "Oh ho ho! Soylent green!? (laughs)...Didn't even know they made it in green. What do they PAY you?"
John Oldman: "Nothing is too good for my friends."
Amber? are people too.
Do you know what else came in green and amber? 1970s/1980s monochrome computer monitors. Yes, I'm a nerd. But this is Slashdot, so you already knew that.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It's not green, so it doesn't have people in it yet. So what secret will we discover is the ingredient in Soylent Grey?
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Why would you never want to eat food again? I enjoy food. Taste is a sensation essential to enjoying life. Our bodies are made to naturally consume nutrients in the form of *food*, not powder.
You know why you get stomach cramps for a few days with this stuff? Because it's basically the same idea behind feeding tubes for patients who are unable to process food. I can tell you from personal experience that it's pretty miserable.
I can understand the use of this stuff for a malnourished population or maybe a field military operation where supplies are rationed and space is tight, but as some fashionable movement to create the "post-food man"? Why would you do that to yourself and deny yourself the essential pleasure of eating?
I now have the body of a 12 year old
So his voice is about to crack, he's skinny, and no woman would dare date him for fear of going to prison? What adult wants that?
Yeah, 12 was kind of fun when the bullies weren't around, but even if I had a magic wand I wouldn't want to revisit that age again, at least not for more than a few days.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
There's the remote possibility that eating soylent might be good for you.
If you look into nutrition studies, you find lots of little anecdote studies (meaning: one-off scientific studies) that look like a small piece of a larger puzzle. Beef and chicken contain antibiotics which can trigger mild allergic reactions, glutin (from wheat) is a mild poison made by the plant to discourage predators, bread is now made with Bromine instead of Iodine (which the body needs)...
There's just a zillion different ways in which our diet is non-optimal, and a zillion little ailments with no known cause.
(Vitamins typically use Magnesium Oxide as a supplement - but this form isn't bio-available. Is Fibromyalgia caused by low Magnesium?)
A diet consisting of a everything you need without all the additives might just cure some of these diseases; though, I wonder whether lack of roughage will cause problems.
Still, it might be an interesting impromptu experiment. The effects of eating Soylent will be something to watch.
'nuff said.
but you'll sure as shit have to shit again.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
we really understand nutrition well enough to hack it. We keep learning that things we'd overlooked were significant -- phytochemicals, resistant starch, and a practically un-ending parade of classes of fats.
Still, we *are* being nutritionally hacked by food companies all the time, so I suppose this can hardly be worse. But the food companies have a specific goal in mind -- to get us to eat more of their product while making that product cheap as possible. I don't think we're at the point where someone can look at a nutrition textbook and design a healthy synthetic diet.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I encourage all the "healthy People" and all of the "diet gurus" and all of the Activists to jump on this bandwagon.
The ones jumping off the "eat stuff" bandwagon will help me get cheaper foods to support my PETA habit... (People Eating Tasty Animals)
To toss a stab at the "oh god it takes so much effort to make food" whiner.
Open a crock pot, drop a slab of beef in it, open a jar of pepperoncinis and dump the contents in, turn on, walk away for a few hours, then consume. It takes less than a few minutes to prepare, and you won't get sick from mixing powders together.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Now I have matured to the next level, scotch and haggis. I could have that 3 times a day from now on as well, if haggis were easier to get in Montreal...
Soygis green ... is sheep!!!
Nutraloaf is this shit that some jails and prisons feed to their inmates who are in solitary confinement for punishment purposes. It sounds very nasty, not unlike this Soylent shit.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
I'd like to toss out a healthy and tasty way of getting nutrients - I have a juicer that I use to juice up two medium tomatoes, a green pepper, a couple of carrots , and a beet.
I add a bit of vinegar and some salt.
It's tasty and has the carotene for the eyes, the beet contains nitrates so it's good for the circulatory system, and you've got all the good stuff from tomato and green veg.
Adding kale is a boost as well.
A lot more work goes into cleaning the juicer but I've had an improvement in eyesight and general health feel that may be psychosomatic, but could care less since I do feel better..
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
I don't care if you can live off his stuff; I want VARIETY from my food (and many other things in life as well). I cannot imagine having to eat the same thing every day, I'd much rather be already dead.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
... where's FDA ?
I mean, FDA (the Food and Drug Administration for the uninitiated) is supposed to have been tasked to oversee the safety over ***FOOD***.
This guy is selling his Soylent brand ***FOOD*** to 20,000 people to the tune of $ 2 Million, isn't it time FDA takes some samples and have them tested for safety ?
I am never for BIG GOVERNMENT, but there are times the government does need to step in to assure the safety of the food people buy and eat - especially when this guy use the word "Soylent" as his brand of food, which originally means Soy and Lentil, when his food doesn't even contain Soy.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
This "pre-ordering" thing has gotten out of hand when someone takes $2 million in pre-orders for a food product. Even worse, their current payment policy:
"When is my card charged?
Since we have already reached our fundraising goal, your card will be charged immediately."
Since they promised shipment in "early 2014", and it's early 2014, If they don't start shipping in volume within days, they're going to run into trouble with the FTC's Mail Order Rule. (The Mail Order Rule can be summarized as "ship within 30 days of promised delivery date or offer a refund; after 60 days, send a refund unless the customer explicitly gives you more time in writing").
Vegetable Ersatz-food that's for you, sweetheart.. me I'll just have you.. after your system has filtered at least some of the .. but wont ever want to eat your liver or your kidneys.
txoins I will have your meat
What I wonder is - how exactly is this different from something like Ensure, which you can live on drinking nothing but?
But there are other bodily pleasures you can enjoy besides Food, and it also begins with the letter F. So I'm alll for a "post-food" diet if that would really make me feel younger and, uhm, sexier. As for this particular man's claims, I'm sticking to my fish and veggies.
I poop a lot less
That should be something to worry about. What I've read doesn't say much about fibre, but our digestive systems have developed not only to deal with directly useful food to absorb, but also to process such 'indigestibles', and to deal with all the variation we get in a normal diet. Without this work there is every likelihood that long term harm to the guts will result. We already know that this happens to factory farmed animals fed on processed food rather than their normal diet.
They ate soft foods with no fiber and they got Diverticulitis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
Soylent actually includes dietary fiber and ingredients. It is a full food substitute, including all of the necessary things for every part of the body, including the digestive tract. Suspicious about it come largely from a lack of knowledge on the product and its development. There are valid criticisms, but they are highly specific and interesting, not so mundane as this.
HOw many times do we talk about the FDA being a terrible federal body?
You go on and trust them or wait for there approval.. It means little to nothing from them.
Just like the EPA and DEP there worthless agencies and aren't interested in your safety, and are easily bought off from industry/companies.
I want to see these money leeches [lawyers] suing the FDA and the drugs/food they approve that end up causing just as much harm if not more then these non-approved drugs/foods being advertised, then being sued but, these money leeches refuse to go after the others responsible when it comes to government regulatory agencies.
First the Death Clock is stolen from Futurama (Metalocalypse). Now Bachelor Chow? Why did they cancel the show if everyone is getting so much influence from it?
If you believe the billboards in the show, Bachelor Chow was improved at some point with flavor. This is more like the stuff in The Matrix.
Okay, in reality, there's probably some old obscure sci-fi book that came up with this idea waaaaaay before it was ever in a movie or TV show.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
So, you're posting like an idiot. How can you tell? You're screaming your head off about ZOMG NEVER EATING FOOD AGAIN!!!!!!eleven
Protip: Most people who threw money at Soylent are doing it in the interest of, "Hey, a zany nutritional beverage with a catchy name that's my kind of people? Instead of microwaving a box of frozen shitfest when I'm pressed for time? That sounds like something I'd be interested in."
more evidence for old sayings. fools and their money are easily parted. or there is one born every minute. thats nothing is it,piddling small change,fir real american stupidity,look at their "sports" business's. some insane idiot has just paid half a BILLION not million,BILLION dollars for 4 "men"to throw a ball and to try and hit ball with a bit of wood. half a BILLION for 4 "men". which i would expect to buy a complete team of winners for that and still buy a lear jet. mad,mad,mad. another sign of total lunanacy in america,realy staeting to look like an empire turning in on itself just before the total collapse,trouble is,the rest of us are all infected with the taint now,so when america folds,we are going to dragged down with them,just not as badly.
I believe that the estate of author Harry Harrison will have a good case against Rhinehart over the use of the name Soylent. For those not in the know, Harrison was the author of the book which Soylent Green is loosely based on, Make Room! Make Room! Whether there should be grounds for such a case based on a work that's 48 years old is of course highly debatable.
1. Own rights to Make Room! Make Room!
2. Wait for Soylent to become a huge commercial success.
3. Call in army of Lawyers.
4. Profit!
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
Still, we *are* being nutritionally hacked by food companies all the time, so I suppose this can hardly be worse. But the food companies have a specific goal in mind -- to get us to eat more of their product while making that product cheap as possible. /quote>
Sorry. but you're wrong. The food companies's goal is to make as much as money as they can. Making their products cheap is one way to get it while they can't manage some kind of lockdown, as Monsanto is trying to do.
A Company is a Company. Give them some edge (as, per example, Microsoft get for themselves) and see what they do.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
I've been drinking my homemade "soylent" (with a lowercase 's', because it's not his brand) most weekdays for about 2 months now. In fact, I'm drinking it right now, literally. Actually not literally, I set it down to type. I adapted it from various recipes I found online, all started by the ideas of the creator of Soylent. I'm also a competitive athlete, so I tweaked things quite a bit, particularly the macronutrients. So, as the (seemingly) only commenter who actually has experience with it, I'll point out a few things:
1. To those whining about lack of fiber...it has plenty of fiber (33.45 grams to be exact). More than that little bit of shredded lettuce in a Big Mac extra value meal. In fact, my bowel movements seem more regular on soylent than when I eat regular food.
2. I eat better on it than without it. Meaning: Okay, what if my recipe isn't perfect? What if I'm missing something? Well compare that to what I would otherwise normally eat on a weekday...maybe some toast for breakfast, a microwave chicken burrito for lunch, and a reasonably healthy but probably too large meal for dinner to make up for the slice of toast I had for breakfast. Then I have to try to work those meals around my workouts, which probably means downing some extra calories. Some days I ate well, some days not.
3. It's a timesaver. This is related to #2. If I wanted to take several hours to create the healthiest most ideal meals every day, then perhaps it would come out healthier than soylent. But let's face it, that just doesn't happen. I've tried that in the past, and it always falls by the wayside. I'd rather be out having fun...obviously if cooking was your version of play (e.g. it's your favorite hobby) then this isn't for you. I can hold my own pretty well in the kitchen and have always enjoyed making delicious meals once and a while, but 90% of the time it just seems like work.
4. I eat at better times. I spend 10 minutes in the morning mixing it up. Then it's right there, available to me anytime, all I have to do is go to the fridge and poor it into a glass, or take it with me in a water bottle, so I can eat at ideal times that are the healthiest, meaning my caloric distribution throughout is even and/or at proper times around my workouts, rather than having too few calories in the morning and too many late at night like most people do. Otherwise, I end up being too busy for awhile, then by the time it's my next meal I end up either just throwing something in the microwave and/or eating too much all at once, or I go too long before or after a workout without eating, or I eat right before a workout and my stomach isn't happy...you get the idea.
5. I never feel too hungry. I don't crave junk like I do otherwise. If I do have a thought like, "gee, some chips sound good," I don't feel compelled to eat them because I don't feel hungry, plus I know I can eat them on the weekend if I still want them.
6. I chose to eat normal on the weekends because that's when it becomes a social thing. Also, by knowing I'm going to eat other foods on the weekend it keeps me from craving junk, and also if I am missing something from my soylent recipe that only exists in regular food, then I'll still get some.
They are just cooking up some bullshit numbers to try and give this pigslop some credibility hoping that some sheeple will jump on the bandwagon
Most of these comments are missing the point of Soylent and also the target customer.
I like eating home cooked food. I like time. These two goals are at odds with each other, because making home cooked food takes lots of time.
Some nights, I just don't feel like cooking or I don't have time to cook. I just want something quick to satisfy my hunger. I would probably end up eating fast food, which is terrible for me nutritionally.
Soylent is for those nights for me. When I don't feel like cooking and I just want to feel full. It would be nice to have something filling but also healthy, and that's where Soylent comes in vs just getting fast food.
I imagine that most people who preordered Soylent are similar to me in this sense. Very few people plan to stop eating altogether and subsist solely on Soylent.
It's not about replacing food, so please, get over that idea.
If you've ever come home from work, and hacked away at a project until the wee hours of the night, and thought "damn, I'm so hungry, but finishing what I'm working on is more exciting than eating right now. I wish I could just make my hunger go away so I could focus on what I want to work on." then you might be able to understand my desire for something like Soylent.
-Glitch "We all know Linux is great...it does infinite loops in 5 seconds." - Linus Torvalds
Over 6 months ago. I followed it but didn't see it changing my diet anytime soon.
Before: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets...
After: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets...
It has its merits. For dogs. Or cats. It's usually referred to by us vets as "dry food" or "kibble". The pitfalls:
This is the first people kibble produced, and if fed as a sole diet, it will probably turn out to have similar problems. Interesting problems, no doubt, but problems nevertheless.
On the brighter side it might have more merits in the lab: precisely controlling student diets while experimenting on them. (Glad I'm not a student in need of funds anymore. :-) )
Otherwise, there is no magic to it. No surprise when eating it. Only tastes different when stale or you have a cold. Sounds utterly soulless. Even the best cookies don't make a good diet. In short: Yuck.
towel heads at GITMO - it will fit in with their yoga quite well
I'm still intrigued by this one. Curious.
Not that I would want to live on it. I quite enjoy a good meal. However, there are also many days where I am absorbed in work or horribly busy or just not in the mood and meals are a necessity that I try to get done with as quickly as possible. Stuff like this would be perfect for those days and if it is what it claims to be, give me the peace of mind that I'm still eating nutritionally well.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Not a statistically significant sample, but in my experience, women who care about and enjoy food are the ones who also enjoy sex. The ones who can't be bothered to cook are also lousy in bed.
No left turn unstoned.
One of my best friends has a degree in Nutrition from UC Davis. Don't confuse her with a Dietician. A Dietician will tell you what to eat. Regan was a specialized kind of Biologist. She was a lab assistant at UC Berkeley, doing research on the effects of aging on rat intestines, but lab assistants never make any money, so I advised her to become a coder.
Someone earned the Nobel Prize in Medicine for figuring out that Vitamin B12 injections effectively treat a particularly severe form of anemia.
He discovered this by feeding dogs only particular parts of cows, eventually to find that the dogs fared best if their severely restricted part was the liver.
I don't know how he arrived at the Methylcobalamin, but he found that it was the blood that contained it. It's just that the liver is particularly rich in blood.
It turns out that Methylcobalamin is a particularly vital nutrient, because it is used to make our blood. We only need it in very, very tiny quantities, but if you don't get those tiny quantities, all Hell breaks loose.
Plants do not contain Methylcobalamin. Most people get it from eating the blood in meat. This presents a problem for vegans and vegetarians, however Methylcobalamin is also found in fungus.
Most vegans know to eat lots of fungus, but not all do. A while back I read of a vegan who went back to eating meat after suffering all manner of quite severe, quite bizarre illnesses.
I don't really know, but suspect that the prevalence of alcoholism in the United States, and at one time in England, has a lot to do with the widespread consumption of cheap beer. My theory is that beer and wine are actually nutritious, but if you drink only The King Of Beers you're going to be malnourished.
The Germans, French, Italian and Spanish drink like fish but alcoholism is uncommon there.
A friend of mine was borrowing my car when he visited a house that was in the process of being busted as a meth lab.
A woman friend of his needed to pick up something from that house, so he gave her a ride in my car.
"What's your name?" one of the cops asked her.
"Jane Doe."
"Jane Doe? Are you John Doe's little sister?"
"Yes."
"You are under arrest. You have a right..."
You read that right - she was arrested for being the little sister of a notorious drug dealer. But after 72 hours with no evidence of an actual crime, they released her.
They searched my car next. My friend was very, very concerned about what kind of goodies I might have in it. Google for "any flavor but lemon" to find out why.
"What's this?" asked the cop, pointing out a cardboard box full of little Zip-Loc bags of dark grey, white, and light brown powders.
"It's a telescope mirror grinding kit, officer."
Heh. Grey: Silicon Carbide. White: Aluminum Oxide. Light Brown: Cerium Oxide.
The cop looked all pissed off, but then told my friend he was free to go.
This magical powder can't possibly replace the complex variety of micro-nutrients our body requires. Anyone who tries to live off of this will suffer from malnutrition and related health problems in the long term.
My supper was red beans .... with rice, and hummus
With all the talk here about Soylent Green, I read that last item as "humans".
Anyway, your post gets today's Smugness award. It was a near thing, but your closing line clinched it.
I don't think we really understand nutrition well enough to hack it.
And we never will if people like this guy weren't willing to experiment. Somebody's always got to be first.
Soylent has better marketing, that's it.
''' Rob found himself resenting the inordinate amount time it takes to fry an egg in the morning and decided something had to be done. Simplifying food as "nutrients required by the body to function" (which sounds totally bulimic, I know, but I promise it's not), Rob has come up with an odourless, beige cocktail that he calls Soylent. '''
I can relate. I also resent the the inordinate amount of time is takes to bathe every day, pick out something to wear, or talk to a girl. Over a 20 year period, the average time a strong and virile young man like myself and Rob are at their mental and physical peak, eliminating egg frying and all these other hassles can liberate up to five years worth of extra time for more worthy pursuits such as playing D&D. Toss in the benefits have making some serious bucks and getting to drink a beige, odorless yet tasty beverage twelve times per day, well...damn. Sign my ass ...err stomach up!
yummy
I don't think we're at the point where someone can look at a nutrition textbook and design a healthy synthetic diet.
And we never will be. There's variation between humans, so that sort of thing will always require close monitoring. Look at what Astronauts go through for an example.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Indeed. The further we go the more complicated we find the information including synthesis between chemical reactions and differences based on a host of factors, not the least of which is our large variance in gut microbes. Not to mention the fact that if you aren't chewing/ripping your food, you're not exercising your jaws, which might affect your facial musculature/skeletal development, which might affect your breathing patterns, which might introduce more bacteria, which...
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz
I don't understand this. At all. Complete "solid food replacements" have been around since forever. As in, actual nutrition companies that have some clue what they are doing have sold this stuff for people with chewing problems, and for use with feeding tubes, for decades. Some of it even tastes pretty good and has a texture that won't make you gag.
Why the big hubbub about a complete amateur developing a nearly-unpalatable copy of what's already been done? Oh, I forgot! Crowdsourcing! Open Source! If the guy took BitCoins as payment, the Slashdot trifecta would be complete.
And so it continues. As humanity seeks to further distance itself from having any joy in life by turning every activity into boring routine efficiency. Future historians will look back at this event as being one of the key moments which saw humanity turn into the greys.
I personally like this counter-argument, lots of real data:
http://www.priceplow.com/blog/...
Go to your local drugstore. Go to the "Nutrition" isle. Purchase Ensure, Boost, Slim-Fast, or one of the store-brand generics. It has a smooth texture (unlike Soylent), a palatable tasted (unlike Soylent), and was developed by people that have some clue what they are doing (unlike Soylent.) If that's not enough calories for you, ask the Pharmacist to order Nutren or a similar product.
These are professionally-developed products that have been in use for years and years. The high-test stuff, such as Nutren, is used for people with feeding tubes (but it is flavored and can be drunk) and they live off this stuff for decades.
Your prostate, which produces the stuff sperm swims around in, does not care how much roughage you get.
You are thinking of the colon; an organ which, cancer or no, always is very concerned about proper roughage.
There is a simlar product on the market: BP-5. It's intended as short-term emergency food and pretty much does what Soylent does minus some calories and fine-tuning. Actually, Soylent might have a chance of competing with BP-5 if it can boast a similar shelf life but superior nutritional value.
If you want to buy BP-5 and can't buy it there's a similar product (virtually identical except in taste and packaging according to the German Wikipedia) called NRG-5 which might be easier to obtain.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Oh, the humanity.
I've been living on a reddish-orange, macronutritious substance since 1994.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sHwc...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Soylent is made of people, PEOPLE !!!!!!
In jiu jitsu Brooklyn, various gyms are made in New York for students and teenagers to make them skillful persons, remove extra weight from their body, boost up their confidence, and even stopping their bad habits like smoking.
Please don't start your comment in the title.
It's annoying and difficult to read.
They may have obtained $2 million in pre-orders, but just last week they revealed that the shipping version will contain Sucralose, an artificial sweetener. If they can't figure out a way to manage the PR issues besides just saying "You people are ignorant, sucralose is fine," then Soylent may not last long. Regardless of the pros or cons of artificial sweeteners, you have to give the customer what they want and not what they don't.
Perhaps, it still needs a few Prions for nervous system development?
Anybody else read the book, "Kampus" (1977, James Edwin Gunn) about how people were making special pills that enhanced knowledge...setting was a university (Berkley, I think). In one scene, the guy drank his favorite professor's brain through a straw light a smoothy and absorbed the sum of his knowledge.
Wonder if they can make it taste like a McDonalds shake?
My argument against Soylent is that it is developed by somebody who is not a nutritionist by either experience or training. If a Nutrition PhD student developed this stuff, I'd consider it. If it wasn't nasty glop, I'd consider it (although I'd certainly hesitate to try and live off of it.)
But there's no assurance at all it works as designed, and it's nasty besides. What does it have going for it?
And no, I have nothing whatsoever to do with the nutrition industry; my Slashdot posting history should be proof enough of that.
Well, it's hard to say, because TFA doesn't say anything about the ingredients in this guy's concoction.
Ensure's first ingredient is table sugar, which is not so hot. It won't kill you, in the *short run*.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Starting your sentence off in the title is not a good idea.
I don't know how they are marketed in Europe, but here in the US, they are sold (and labeled) as "meal-replacement" drinks. They have their own section in the store, separate from the ordinary beverages. In addition, they are developed by either drug companies or special "nutritional" divisions of larger firms. Sure, I'd be hesitant to drink an "all-in-one" developed by, say, Coke. But I think something developed by, say, Nestle Nutritionals, which develops their consumer-marketed products right alongside the ones designed specifically for medical use, should be okay.
(As a fascinating side-note, the logo for Nestle Nutritionals is a mommy bird feeding a baby bird. Given how birds feed their young (by essentially vomiting pre-chewed food), I'm not sure that was the best choice.)
But is it low carb/keto/diabetic diet friendly?
Remember melamine? Somebody discovered that you can water down your milk, add some melamine, and profit. So melamine milk goes in baby formula and dog food.
Let's say you have a dog or a baby. You buy a bag of dog food/baby formula, and that's all they eat for a month or two, until you run out and buy the next bag. And if it's got melamine, now you have a dead dog. Or a dead baby.
Variety is the spice of life, folks. If you eat nothing but soylent, you will die. I can't live with that.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
and not need to eat. There are people who can't eat and survive on just a drink.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Anything liquid is either going to be incomplete or hell on your pancreas. Fiber and starches are important. A glance at Ensure reveals 50g of sugar per cup. That's more than twice what's in Coke...
From Robert Rhinehart's blog post:
"I read a book on Number Theory in one sitting, a Differential Geometry book in a weekend, filling up a notebook in the process. Mathematical notation that used to look obtuse is now beautiful."
except for the fact that we have. You can buy meal replacements right now, and there are product for people who can not eat.
Astronauts are a horrible example. They have restrictions for reasons no person on earth(literally) will ever have.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Conveniently replacing a meal is not hard at all. You could live for months on nothing but OJ and a 1% milk. Go plug it into a nutritional counter. How is soylent any more convenient than two liquids that you can buy cheaply pretty much anywhere in the USA at any time of day?
Because fish are just extremely fast moving vegetables? And commercially obtained calcium is never made from crushed bones?
A real vegan diet would kill a lot of people; some of us physically require animal-derived nutrition. Which is unsurprising, given our dental structure.
And the vegan ethical/moral argument appears to be bankrupt too. A mindful omnivore, who eats grass-fed beef, kills far fewer animals than a vegan who eats tofu.
Veganism aside, though, I have to agree with you that he's laying the pseudo-scientific health claims on with a trowel.
except for the fact that we have. You can buy meal replacements right now
Yeah. Ever tried to live on those for long? You won't enjoy it, and not just because of the "flavor".
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Food scientists have been working on stuff like this for decades, and there are plenty of products better than Soylent already on the market, but give it a ridiculous name and backing from Silicon Valley, and apparently there are idiots who will drink it. However, if you do decide to drink Soylent, please know that you are buying into the same juvenile "lifestyle" of energy drinks and electronic cigarettes. In other words, in twenty years you will be ashamed that you did this.
I know this because I owned a pet rock.
When can I buy Soylent with Dogecoin?
Hungry Shibe.
http://nutritiondata.self.com/...
this is WAAAAAAY too much sodium. If this label is true, it's heart disease in a foil packet. have even 2 per day and you're at 5x what the FDA is talking about recommending as the ACTUAL recommended daily intake of sodium: 1000mg
I really question how many health experts this guy has talked to...
All that said, I ordered some last month.
Where do you see that? According to their site, one bottle has 41g of carbs, only 18g of which are sugar (for the dark chocolate one).
Everything in Soylent is GRAS (generally recognized as safe). The ingredient list is easy to find online, and all the company is really doing is paying someone to mix ingredients ordered from other suppliers which are already approved as safe in food. They aren't doing anything in house themselves beyond testing the recipe.
What exactly do you expect the FDA to find which would merit additional scrutiny beyond that which is already present at all their suppliers and at their mixer & packer?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The same thing as lunch, breakfast, and yesterday's dinner, Pinky, soylent.
Can we have it fried tonight, Brain?
Sorry, Pinky, we don't have any oil, just soylent, soylent, soylent....
#insert Royal_Canadian_Mounted_Police.chorus
mark "and now for something completely different"
Yes, I suppose if you go with the bottom-dollar "Poor Man's Recipe", you can save some dough (not enough for me, personally, to choke that down, though.)
I imagine most people would start with the "Beginners's Recipe". It costs $6.59 for 1697 calories. (257 kcal/$). This is right off of the "SoylentMaker" website.
Surprise! Nestle Nutren 2.0, containing everything a human needs, with a taste, texture, and nutrient content that doesn't have any bugs to work out, is 500 calories for $2.15, (232 kcal/$) shipped right off of Amazon. (And I imagine local suppliers that don't have to mail crates of liquid would have it for less.)
If I'm replacing my meal with a liquid, I'll let somebody that knows what they are doing take that task off my hands for a 10% upcharge, thank you very much.
...is it green?
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
It's soylent green. It just looks gray on your TV.
Big Mac in a Magic Bullet, 10 seconds. MMMMMM!
This is total hype- if you get your protein from casein the major amino is MSG. ya. and every day is back from mexico day.
Soy shake + metamucil + vitamins etc. etc. Too much hype.
Well, I'd drink beer if it came in 8oz bottles. I like alcohol but suffer from alcohol flush syndrome. One standard size drink is just a little too much for me, so I buy a 750ml bottle of liquor and it lasts me about a month.
I also grew up in a restaurant family, so good food is second nature to me. I don't see it as anything to be ashamed of.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Soylent is a real time saver.
You can warm it up and pour it right into the toilet.
No brain, no pain.
"It's people. Soylent Green is made out of people. They're making our food out of people. Next thing they'll be breeding us like cattle for food. You've gotta tell them. You've gotta tell them! " I can't believe that this is the name they chose for this product! I thought this was a joke because of the name...has anyone here seen the movie Soylent Green?
Just wanted to share my Soylent situation. There's a lot of naysayers who I don't think really understand the stuff or its intended usage.
I'm a college student living in a college dorm. We have a community kitchen that is a disaster area to walk into, and are not allowed to do any cooking in our rooms other then in a microwave. So unless I want to be living off of Swanson boxes, I have two options for food.
1. Meal Plan
2. Soylent
My school doesn't have the common "unlimited" meals, you buy a multiple of 25, which gets discounted the farther up you go. That means the most cost efficient way to eat is one gigantic meal per day. I sit in the cafeteria for 45 minutes to an hour trying to get 2000+ calories in me in as healthy of a way as possible (not that it's a healthy situation to begin with).
Soylent offers me a reprieve from binge eating, and I can pretty much guarantee it will be giving me a more nutritious diet. I'll be able to "eat" smaller meals throughout the day, saving time and stomach volume. It's about 30 dollars difference for 7 weeks of food compared to the meal plan. Given the quality of food I'm getting now, I don't mind giving up eating entirely in exchange for a healthier lifestyle. But don't get me wrong, I love eating. When I go home there's nothing I want more than my father's American Chop Suey. However, the school's offerings no not meet those standards, so I'm going to give it a try and see if it's worth the switch.
I can understand it's not for everyone. A lot of people think it replaces food, and it doesn't. It replaces crappy meals. This stuff isn't competing with Slim-Fast as a weight loss tool or Ensure as a supplement; it's competing with McDonalds and Dominos and anywhere else you can grab a quick bite to eat. And even though it's not going to have any of the pleasure as those other foods, it has nutritional and cost benefits that I think suit my current situation.
I wonder if that timing is indicative -- I wonder if the Western aversion to organ meets is at all related to the ways in which 1) organ meats typically contain higher concentrations of environmental poisons, and 2) the number and dangerousness of environmental poisons has increased substantially since we started learning how to make more of them.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
I'm talking about the early 20th century and before here. I'm also talking about the situation where the Inuit servants were in good health living off what the expedition doctor did not consider part of an ideal diet while expedition members were dying from strange effects of deficiency while having plenty to eat. It turns out that you can't just live off steak, even seal steak.
The "ideal diet" was not seen to include organ meats by some respected scientists.
However at the same time other expeditions were less fussy and eating the whole seal (or whatever) and science was slowly beginning to prove that eating liver really is good for you. Mawson had heard that so saved the dog liver for his sicker companions. For years it was suspected that they overdosed on vitamin A but nobody has been able to find anything close to fatal levels in dog livers (of any breed) since. There's been speculation about parasites and other things, but when it comes down to it people who are seriously ill in polar conditions pulling heavy sledges around are at high risk of loss of life from just about anything that makes them sicker.
Thank you so much for mentioning Nutren! I had never heard of it. Since it will be a while before any Soylent will be shipping anyway I'll be giving Nutren a test run.
From internet research I have now done since reading your post I've found the following:
There are several Nutren variations. They all seem to be based on 4 cans/containers per day that are supposed to provide 100% of daily nutrients for 20 different things, although the numbers don't all seem to add up. Some provide 1000 calories per day, some 1500 and some 2000 calories per day. The other main way that each type of Nutren varies from the others seems to be in the ratio of Protein/Carbs/Fat, with some versions also containing a Fiber additive. So a person could just drink only those and lose weight with the calorie restricted versions, or eat one nice normal meal per day in addition to the calorie restricted drinks and remain stable, I like the flexibility that offers. Also; it has a vanilla flavor that is said to be good and it uses 12g of sugar per container to achieve that, so no artificial sweetener like Soylent has.
Nutren Pulmonary is the lowest Carb version that I could find in that series, with 1500 calories per day, and might be the one I will try out first. The lowest price I could find for it on the internet was $69 per case of 24, which at 4 per day = 6 days worth. 30 days would take 5 cases = $345 per month, not bad. If that is too expensive some of the other versions of Nutren are up to $40 less per case = $29/case (Nutren 1.0 with 1000 calories per day) or $35/case (Nutren 1.5 with 1500 calories per day) or $49/case (Nutren 2.0 with 2000 calories per month). If I weren't wanting the low-carb version I could really save a LOT more money.
Here are some links:
Nutren - all types
http://www.nestle-nutrition.com/Products/Family.aspx?FamilyId=4ca2cfa1-b5a8-45c6-ae7d-5f368ce50395
Nutren - Pulmonary (Lowest Carb)
http://www.nestlehealthscience.us/products/Pages/NUTREN%C2%AE-PULMONARY.aspx
Nutrition Information for Nutren Pulmonary:
http://www.nestlenutritionstore.com/publishingimages/catalog/NTRPUL_Nutri.jpg
* I might actually try Nutren 1.0 which would allow me to look forward to eating one normal solid meal per day yet still lose weight, and still end up saving a lot of money each month.
The different versions of Nutren have different caloric values, all purporting to provide a full day's nutrition with four cans, because they are targeted towards different populations. As in, a person confined to a hospital bed that can't do anything but drink can have their full day's requirements provided with four cans of 1.0. Somebody who's medical problem means they have a feeding tube, but are otherwise normal individuals, would have four cans of 2.0 dumped down their tube every day.
Nestle Nutren is actually cheaper than Soylent. You can order Nestle Nutren 2.0 for about $2/can off of Amazon, and four cans (500 kcal) will power you for a day.
When your recipe talks about adding a small amount of vanillin to "disguise the fishy taste of some of the ingredients", I don't think taste is at the top of your priority list.
And none of the reviews of the stuff have had great things to say about the texture.
is this really Soylent Green -:)
1) Change the damn name
2) Make it taste like french fries or bacon rather than some crappy, vaguely sweet protein shake.
Maybe you should inform yourself about the role of people in a product before you give them credit for something.
The inventor of Soylent is most definitely NOT a nutritionist. None of the people on the executive team are nutritionists.
The guy with the big long list of titles you mentioned? The only mention of him on the web page stated confirmed that the macronutrient ratios were of a certain value, and can form the macronutient base for a non-deficient diet. That's it. Notably, it didn't say he did any analysis for adequate micronutrients, bioavailibility, or any of the other things you need to know if you want to claim to sell a complete replacement for solid food.
If your every day experience is one of grind, then no amount of diet is going to fix that. Taking the time to prepare for a meal, prepare a meal, eat the meal, clear away and digest properly before jumping back in to your hamster wheel all adds up to a balanced lifestyle. Take the time out. If you can't "affort the time", you're on the way to an early death, miserable life, or both.
Twinkies are food? ;)
My girlfriend can't cook worth a damn, enjoys food, and is awesome in bed.
Farting?