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."

Comments

"post-food consumers"

[secretvampire]

Considering that good food and cooking are some of the great pleasures in life, no thanks! I find the concept pretty depressing, actually.

Re: "post-food consumers"

[Anonymous Coward]

As a different AC who can cook quite well, and considers cooking a rather major and serious hobby with considerable cumulative time and effort investments: I agree most meals are an inconvenience. While I cook most of my dinners from scratch, quite often breakfasts and lunches are more about fitting into a schedule,often lacking time, equipment and space to make a properly cooked meal. Unless you want to precook something specific to that meal, or take a decent chunk out of your lunch time to prepare something (even though I can prepare a decent dinner in 15 minutes, that would be a large fraction of my lunch time, and the entirety of my breakfast time), you end up with either leftovers or paying someone a lot more to get something decent, quick, and healthy.

If I had the option to replace a meal with a 5 minute drink, I would frequently exercise it for meals, because eating well is not the only pleasure in life and cooking is not my only hobby. I would rather get back to working on other interesting projects during the day, and even possibly get home earlier to have more time to concentrate on making a single nice meal, then spreading time over three meals.

I don't view every meal that I don't cook as a wasted opportunity, because sometimes the compromise is letting me make gains elsewhere, and I'm not trying to maximize every meal at the expense of any other priority or preference. I also don't consider every glass of water I drink to be a missed opportunity to drink something more interesting or better. I don't consider every packaged program I install to be a missed opportunity to program my own, nor would I question someone else's interest or skill in programming because they choose some packaged programs over doing everything from scratch.

Just had a meal

[vikingpower]

1) French onion soup with croûtons and cheese

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.

Variety !

[dargaud]

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.

No matter it's Soylent or Soylent Green ...

[Taco Cowboy]

... 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.

Re:"Soylent Green is people!"

[wonkey_monkey]

You want a truly great read, get the book. You want a horrible viewing experience, get the film.

You want to make up your own mind instead of being told what to think by someone on the internet, do both.

As someone who's drinking it right now...

[NoKaOi]

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.