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

Oblicatory

[mitcheli]

I'm waiting for their Green formula.

Re:Oblicatory

[XxtraLarGe]

With all due respect, I'd rather eat Ramen and take a vitamin pill than consume the current Soylent formulations and fart all night long.

Why choose only one when you can do both?

Re:Oblicatory

[geekmux]

I'm waiting for their Green formula.

Regardless of company name, choosing to name a new oddball food product Soylent (as in Green) was the result of someone sitting in the marketing department wondering how they could possibly create more controversy than GMO has ever managed to muster...

Re:Oblicatory

[ArcadeMan]

This Soylent Green tastes funny... Oh look, the box says "May contain clowns".

Re:Oblicatory

[volkerdi]

I've had no issues with Soylent 1.4/1.5 producing the kind of room-clearing gas that earlier versions did. It's really rather disappointing.

Re:Oblicatory

[SuricouRaven]

I've seen the film. The official explanation is that the Soylent product line was named as it was originally made from soy and lentils, though it was implied that marine algae farms were also required. At the end it is revealed that the new product Soylent Green is made from reprocessed human corpses - a desperate attempt to maximize production when environmental damage has crippled agriculture, which the government tries to hide from people out of concern there will be mass panic if it becomes known how close to starvation the world is.

Re:Obligatory

[Irate Engineer]

I'm waiting for their Green formula.

I've heard it tastes like ass.

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.

[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.

[Isarian]

Well first I'd say that you have to have it for a few days before getting used to the taste. The closest thing I could use as an analogy is VERY thin pancake batter. Very little texture to speak of, just mostly drinks like water and is very slightly sweet. I enjoyed the taste but the liquid part of it set off my reflux :/

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.

Re:They aren't revolutionizing shit.

[thinkwaitfast]

disturbingly neutral. Like scientifically engineered inoffensive blandness.

So English food?

Bowl of snot

[TWX]

It's a single-celled protein combined with synthetic aminos, vitamins, and minerals. Everything the body needs.

Re:Bowl of snot

[preaction]

... It doesn't have _Everything_ the body needs...

Re:Bowl of snot

[Anonymous Coward]

It has electrolytes, and that's what a body craves.

Now stop talking like such a fag.

I don't get it,... five a day?

[Selur]

"Each bottle is one fifth of a scientifically balanced daily meal plan, "
$2.42 per 400-calorie bottle so $12.08 a day,... cooking my self I can manage a (I hope) tastier alternative for less,...

Sorry, but I really don't get why this is interesting at all, for a short moment I thought: "Okay, may be for long term 'food' storage, then I read '"However, we counter that by the fact that the drink does not require refrigeration and also does not spoil until at least one year."

=> What is the gain in using this?

Re:I don't get it,... five a day?

[Isarian]

The idea was to have foodstuff that is easy to prepare, low-cost, and includes all of your dV of various dietary needs. One of the promises/mission statements by Rob Rhinehart was to reduce the cost of Soylent over the time - there's some consternation in the Soylent community right now because with the announcement of 2.0 they are also increasing the cost of the base powder form of Soylent with no material change to the formula - your standard price hike, quite contrary to the promise of lower costs over time.

Re:I don't get it,... five a day?

[Anonymous Coward]

=> What is the gain in using this?

Silicon Valley 1.0: Let's build something cool and make the world a better place.
Silicon Valley 2.0: FUCK YEAH DISRUPT ALL THE THINGS BECOME BILLIONAIRE!

The "benefit" of Soylent is you can make millions of dollars by convincing other wannabe-millionaires by giving them Life Hacks(tm) so they can Bro Down(tm) and Code(tm). Flavor is an impediment to Productivity(tm). Concern for presentation is an impediment to Agility(tm). Time that you spend cooking and eating food with flavor is time that could be spent Disrupting(tm).

You have time for eating something as pedestrian as food, and you further demand that your food have flavor? If you aren't spending every waking minute on your Startup(tm), you're obviously not Passionate(tm) about it. Bro, do you even Lyft(tm)?

Re:I don't get it,... five a day?

[pr0t0]

I don't think it's really meant to be a complete food replacement for most people. I make my own based off of what I saw on the DIY Soylent page. Mine's a bit more nutritionally complete than most DIY stuff, is a little cheaper, and is fewer calories than actual Soylent. It also contains no soy or oats (which can cause gas). I only consume it for breakfast and lunch, Monday through Friday. I really love it though. It's quick, easy, low cost, filling, and nutritionally complete. How much molybdenum do you get? How about Selenium? Enough?

My only worry is absorption. It's all well and good to say that I am putting the National Institute of Health's RDI of each vitamin, mineral, and macronutrient; but I don't really know if I'm absorbing all of that. Still, I feel great, I'm losing weight, and my bloodwork is good.

My guess is the bottled product is part of a long-term strategy to eventually push to sell the product in grocery stores. It will be meant for grab-and-go eating that some people will pay a higher price for given the convenience. Soylent will wholesale it to the stores who will then mark it back up to a price that Soylent can say people are already comfortable paying.

Re:I don't get it,... five a day?

[93 Escort Wagon]

i can buy a pound of hamburger, one tomato, one onion, head of lettuce, loaf of bread, for about 20 bucks, and cook four hamburgers, and feed four people and it will taste a heck of a lot better, thats about 5 bucks each a day, a lot better than a liquid diet too

But that's not nutritionally complete.

You need to add bacon and cheddar cheese.

Who wants to drink pureed vegans?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> Not only are its ingredients vegan

Who the f*** wants to drink pureed vegans?

If I'm going to get my liquid cannibal on, I want the taste of real hamburger-fed 'muricans!

Not A Slashvert for the Competition...!

[Hardness]

I forgot about Soylent. I read the headline and thought, "Wow, Soylent News' new business model is pretty interesting!"

"...Wait, why is this on Slashdot..?" //reads more carefully:

"Oh."

Re:Obligatory

[drinkypoo]

I've heard it tastes like ass.

You're thinking of Soylent Brown.

Re:"farm-free, algae sources"

[gaudior]

Well, there's not much wrong with free-range, locally-sourced algae, but the real problems come from the container-bred, factory-farmed algae.

Re:"farm-free, algae sources"

[Junta]

farmed algae is inhumane. Constrained to live in limited vats I eat only free range algae. They get to exercise you see.

Re:At $363/month per person, not sustainable

[gaudior]

Patreon.

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?

Re:That's Crazy Expensive

[ExekielS]

You are kidding, right? If anything, that isn't enough. It has over 230 carbs in the present recipe, when a healthy range is 50-150. Anything higher starts to cause insulin resistance high blood triglycerides, high blood sugar, and numerous problems throughout the body. If anything, more of the carbs need to be removed and replaced with fat. They had more protein initially, but lowered the amount because it was causing very smelly farts because people eat so little protein generally, but it should still be higher to keep up with those who live more active lifestyles. The only reason I'm not already on soylent is because of it's extremely high carb levels. At least they brought it down from over 300 carbs per day, but they still have a long way to go.

Screw Soylent!

[ArcadeMan]

It doesn't even have ELECTROLYTES!

Re:Obligatory

[LordSkippy]

Actually, the taste varies from person to person.

Re:Obligatory

[Applehu Akbar]

Obviously, the vegans it's made from. This is revenge of the best kind - environmentally sensitive vengeance.

Soylent , I would suggest following this up with a solid, sweetened product, in a variety of flavors, called Just Desserts

Actually, an old recipe

[PPH]

Handed down from visiting aliens in a book titled "To Serve Man".

Re:Obligatory

[Soylent Beige]

Hello!