Soylent 2.0 Comes Bottled and Ready To Drink

An anonymous reader writes: Soylent has announced today their latest product, Soylent 2.0. It comes premixed and ready to drink in recyclable bottles. Each bottle is one fifth of a scientifically balanced daily meal plan, will last up to a year unrefrigerated, and will cost you $2.42. A Soylent blog post reads in part: "Not only are its ingredients vegan, Soylent 2.0 reaches an unprecedented level of environmental sustainability with half of its fat energy coming from farm-free, algae sources. This next generation agricultural technology has the potential to reduce the ecological impact of food production by orders of magnitude, signifying a major step towards a future of abundance, a world where optimal nutrition is the new normal."

Comments

They aren't revolutionizing shit.

[bistromath007]

Congratulations, soylent, on perfecting your middle class hipster chow. Wake me when a month's supply of your gross bullshit doesn't cost half again as much as my SNAP benefits.

Re:They aren't revolutionizing shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your steadfast determination to show everyone how unimpressed you are shows you're more of a hipster than you'll ever accuse anyone of being.

Re: They aren't revolutionizing shit.

[bistromath007]

*rolleyes*

I remember looking into this stuff a while ago. It was already too expensive for what it was when it was only powder, and since you can only get it online anyway, it's always been unavailable to people who could genuinely benefit from something like it.

Part of their hype... Er, stated goals, is to change the way the world thinks about food supply, reduce environmental impact, and improve the affordability of nutrition. But their crap is only cheap if you customarily go to Starbucks every morning. They have made the Tesla of food: big promises about social goals that go nowhere and just give horn-rim wearing assholes another status symbol.

Re: They aren't revolutionizing shit.

[Isarian]

I wouldn't shove them into the same category as Tesla myself. Soylent's hype was about taking something existing (liquid food) and retooling it for the masses (basically liquid food but with a different nutrient balance for the non-bedridden). If they had met their promise and actually produced a product that would reduce food costs for the masses and be accessible to the general public on basic food benefits it would have been great, but hey, like you said - hype.

Tesla/SpaceX on the other hand are developing revolutionary technologies that didn't exist previously and building a massive electric vehicle infrastructure available to all EVs as well as opening up their tech to the competition. If they tip the automotive balance over to EVs and help to produce a market of affordable electric vehicles they'll have surmounted a significant environmental and social hurdle to the benefit of the entire planet.

Re: They aren't revolutionizing shit.

[bistromath007]

Thank you for confirming that a vegan diet is fundamentally a middle class affectation that should offend anyone who actually understands global food supply problems at all.

Re: They aren't revolutionizing shit.

[bistromath007]

And they also frequently struggle with malnutrition. Because a vegan diet that is actually complete is unquestionably harder and more expensive than a non-vegan one. It is something you can only really reliably do in a first world country, where it is therefore an infuriatingly hypocritical exercise of privilege.

That's Crazy Expensive

[drinkypoo]

Ensure is 1/3 of a daily meal plan and costs $1.19/unit. In order to be successful, a new product has to be cheaper and better. If your definition includes sustainability then it might be "better", but at literally twice the price of the entrenched competition, it's got to be twice as good. But it's little more than half the food value... So it's got to taste almost four times as good as Ensure to be compelling. Guess what?