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Soylent: The Totally Real Food Substitute That Totally Isn't Made of People (Probably)
Posts
but you never know!
How much do you eat a day
How long to prepare / req appliances / everything can be ordered online?
How easy is it to screw up a batch
Shelf life
Cleanup
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
For a lot of people, myself included, eating healthy food is pretty much an annoyance. I do it anyway, but let me give an example from my personal life:
I've been a vegetarian for about six years now. I don't miss meat at all, partly due to the fact that I can get meat substitutes such as veggie burgers. However, I can't just stock up on them because it would be very difficult to make myself eat the more nutritious vegetables I've got in the fridge before they went bad. I used to buy two or three packages of veggie burgers at a time; now I only buy one, and not even every time I go to the grocery store, because I had trouble forcing myself to eat my salad mix or broccoli or kale before they went bad. I would know I needed to, but when faced with the prospect of "eating for pleasure" vs "eating for health" I found it hard to muster up the willpower if I had both options immediately available.
And before anyone asks, yes, I am aware that you can add spices and whatnot to give veggies more flavor. I personally can't stand the taste of a lot of these additives, though, and get weird looks whenever I order a salad at a restaurant and specify that I don't want any sort of dressing or request that they don't put any kind of spices on my steamed broccoli. I even tried a bunch of different dishes at a popular vegetarian restaurant and didn't find anything I really liked; everything was either barely enjoyable (IMO, of course), an active chore to make myself finish, or was so spicy that I had to run to the bathroom three times in a meal to deal with the torrent of mucus pouring from my nostrils.
That's why the idea of Soylent sounds really appealing to me. Why should I go to the grocery store to dutifully buy veggies I really don't like that much and will spoil in only a matter of days when I could just buy long-lasting Soylent in bulk and drink it instead? It's designed to be thoroughly nutritious, even more so than the average vegetable. Even better, the author of the Motherboard article said he didn't even crave burgers or fries or anything of the like, but that the fried chicken he ate after a month of Soylent tasted divine.
So, to sum up, Soylent:
- Is more convenient than traditional food.
- Is (supposedly) more nutritious than traditional food.
- Satisfies your body's needs thoroughly enough that you don't even experience cravings for traditional food (at least, in the Motherboard author's experience).
- Makes it so that not only is eating traditional food done entirely as a rational choice, without the interference of cravings, but also helps you enjoy pleasurable foods even more because they are a rare treat and not something you eat often because of the human brain's irrational addiction to salt, sugar and fat.
My only hesitation is that Soylent is so unlike anything humans evolved to eat that I wouldn't be surprised if it caused adverse health effects in the long run. However, seeing as people are already eating things that our bodies did not evolve to eat that are nowhere near as (hypothetically) healthful as Soylent and are in many cases actively deleterious to health, I'll probably end up at least trying it for a while.
Do you experience the same sorts of psychological effects the author of the Motherboard article does, such as a lack of food cravings?
1. My usual target is 2000 calories. Since I'm not often eating purely soylent, it's rare that I'd be exactly at that number. But, a fully prepared batch for one day of the recipe I use comes out to 2000 calories. The DIY site is very easy to use and allows you to customize recipes to fit whatever daily nutritional needs you have.
2. It's easiest to prepare if you just mix a whole bunch of it in advance. Required equipment is basically a digital millimeter scale (to measure out portions of each dry good, particularly the supplements), some measuring spoons, and large plastic containers to store the mix. When I first started I'd store each day's worth of mix in a gallon sized ziploc bag... now I just mix a few days at a time and store it in a big tupperware container. Optional but really helpful equipment is some blender bottles, which just make it very easy to get evenly mixed drinks.
2b. Prep time for dry goods is around 30 minutes -- I just sit at a table and mix it up while watching TV. Prep time for drinks once the dry mix is prepared is super minimal -- just scoop a cup of soylent into a blender bottle, fill the bottle to the top with water (I use filtered tap water), shake it a bit and toss it in the fridge.
2c. Everything can be ordered online, but it's much easier/cheaper to source masa harina out of your local grocery store. And if you're really interested in cutting food costs as low as possible, sourcing from different places (or in huge bulk quantities) can be way cheaper. The recipe I linked above is partially very popular because you can get almost everything in it straight off Amazon. The only thing you need to order elsewhere is potassium supplements.
4. Pretty hard to screw up a batch. Just use a digital scale to make sure you get the right amount of each ingredient and put it into a container that has some extra space so you can shake the mix well to evenly distribute the ingredients.
5. Shelf life of dry goods is theoretically indefinite as long as you store it in a dry, cool place. It's basically like storing flour. After mixing it up with water, you definitely want to keep it refrigerated, and I would probably rather discard soylent that's been sitting in the fridge for more than a couple days instead of eating it.
6. Cleanup for dry goods is just like cleaning up flour. Close all your containers, use a dry paper towel and just gather it up/toss it into the trash. Blender bottles are dishwasher safe and pretty easy to clean... I only own a couple and use them daily, so I am hand washing them pretty often. In fact, I probably spend more time hand washing the bottles than I do preparing soylent through any given week.
I don't experience any hunger after eating. Each "meal" I have is 500 calories and since there's a pretty good amount of fiber/protein in each shake it usually means I won't feel hungry again until around 4-5 hours after I last ate. There's a lot of social expectation built around shared meals and going out to events where food is a focus. Since I'm not at all attempting to replace every meal of mine with soylent, this isn't a problem for me. If I think I'm gonna go out to lunch or dinner or the bar with some friends, I just go do that instead.
So do you have typically 2 soylent meals a day? So 1000 calories of soylent and whatever calories with dinner/snacks?
Yeah. If I was eating a day's worth of soylent it'd be four shakes made from roughly 4 cups of dry mix. But usually I just replace breakfast and lunch and then just have whatever food I want (hopefully around 1000 calories, but I'm not too worried about making that exact) for dinner. Since I prepare the mix in terms of "days" (and my food cost calculation is based on that) but only use half a day's worth of mix each day, it means I am weighing out new mix maybe once every week and a half.
Did you find yourself experiencing the benefits of a more complete and regular diet?
How would you rate, on a scale from 1 to 10, your fartiness on this diet?
I'm about 6 weeks in. There've been some weekends where I just ate regular food with no soylent -- mostly because I was out and about and you definitely are gonna look like a fuckin' weirdo if you sit there at restaurants with your friends ordering nothing because you already drank a shake, and arranging refrigeration can be problematic. You can eat it right after mixing with no refrigeration, but it has a way better mouthfeel and taste if you give it some time in the cold.
I'd say that I'm feeling better than I was before starting using it, but I had quite possibly the worst diet known to man so that's not some high praise, just a general observation that eating a reasonable amount of calories/fiber/protein/nutrients is better than eating a whole bunch of fried food and pizza intermixed with starving myself every morning because I was too lazy/strapped for time to get some damn breakfast.
The DIY recipe I use is pretty light on the gastrointestinal side effects. Not much in the way of farting (the masa harina helps... most of the really farty recipes are oat flour based)... had some kinda weird consistency bowel movements during the first week but it cleared up since.
How can it be 'chemically milk' if it has no lactose?
Those bad feelings aside, though, it's hard to argue that there's anything wrong with nutrition shakes per se. To anyone who wants to guzzle a quick meal: why not? If they want to make something that's cheaper, healthier, and more transparent about its ingredients than other meal-replacement products, more power to them.
As far as this thing goes... change the name you boob. I would argue this is worse than Ayds candy. They at least have the excuse for existing before another popular homonym entered the public's vernacular (though they get nothing for noticing this and changing their name to... Diet Ayds). Soylent green I feel is one of those things that has transcended pop culture. Even if you've never read the book or know nothing otherwise, everybody knows that "Soylent green is people". You're basically asking for trouble for using the name.
I can't countenance why an entrepreneur with a severe need to have people critically examine his invention would give it a name whose cultural associations would provoke people to critically examine his invention.
I'm "kupiyupaekio" on Discord.
All this is he a nutritionist or not, does consulting with doctors count as good enough or not is pointless.
This product is so fundamentally flawed it doesn't even warrant consideration. What fucking idiot thought this was a good idea? I'm going to not eat, which will also preclude me from drinking and fucking.
Good job jackass. If I wanted that I'd go on the Colt diet. One meal for the rest of your life, is way more convenient than liquid goop 3 times a day. And if you want moddable?
nah, the vast majority of people that aren't old and addicted to entertainment don't know. Also, if you remember the film, there were several varieties of soylent that weren't people, and this soylent actually has the plankton that soylent green was supposed to have.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
eating healthily at work is pretty much my only real hangup for getting a not disgusting diet going
other than wanting pizza pretty much all the time, but i'm strong
The side benefit for me has also been that my lunch breaks have dropped from 30-60 minutes to 5-10 minutes. I'm not hourly, so I can put those time savings towards going home early. I realize that part of their marketing plan is "eating is inefficient if you just don't do that you'll be able to write more code for the Silicon Valley overlords", but effectively for me it means I get a couple more hours of leisure each week. Which I guess I could spend making a really nice meal for dinner if that was what I was in to?
Hehe, yeah, I'm hourly and I can't take less than 30 mins... but the cost savings of a couple bucks a day compared to $8.00 or so a day would be pretty great
On top of the whole not eating fast food thing
And, really, how can lose? It's not like, even if it turns out it's not the best nutrition, I'm only replacing a McDonald's #8, so it's not like I could possibly be doing worse things to my body.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
i don't think it's unfair to suggest that this particular product, or the products based on it, can be a superior meal replacement compared to other options
and the transparency aspect is particularly important. in fact, it seems like that transparency should be considerably greater, as opposed to like, a reddit group.
the reason i would not try one of the other meal replacement shakes i've seen on the market is a) they are not willing to share exactly what's in it, which is ABSOLUTELY crucial to anything i'm going to replace real food with, and b) there is little or no regulation on supplements and dietary aids and all that crap to make sure their claims are backed with testing and facts, so without the detailed ingredients and proportions it's just a mystery
and c) most of them are gross, or at least powerfully flavoured enough that you'll get sick of them and it's hard to combine them with something else
i have not seen really compelling evidence, to be fair, that Soylent itself is dramatically superior to other options, but I haven't looked very hard
the DIY option sounds quite appealing though
Pfft. This is being marketed to hardcore coders. You think they're having sex now?
but intense physical activity being more difficult? to me that sounds like the formula needs tweaking to improve the way it provides energy, or to provide some missing nutrient(s)
so i'm noticing the pricing on the DIY Soylent link is a little off
the masa harina is $11.99 on Amazon
You can get it for $1.99 on there but it's with $7.49 shipping. Throws the "per day" cost off by a couple dollars because one bag only lasts six days.
BUTT I'm pretty sure I've seen that stuff in like every grocery store, so I imagine it's a lot cheaper that way. Amazon tends to jack up the prices on stuff you can get with free shipping (crazy I know)
The costs in the DIY recipes haven't been updated since when the recipe was last edited. You'll want to source masa harina from your grocery store. Should run $3-5 for a bag that'll give 6 days of supply.
Like reading you guys writing about Masa my thoughts are:
Man I haven't had tamales in a long time, tamales are fucking awesome, I need to make some.
Not:
Man I'm sure glad we can deconstruct tamales into their constituent compounds, remove all the flavors, blend them together and drink it.
being interested in a utilitarian food option doesn't mean you're not interested in food
it just means you don't want to be constantly putting in maximal effort to plan, purchase and prepare healthy food that is cost efficient
it is a little strange if people don't like broad categories of pleasurable endeavour - eating food, listening to music, reading books - but imagine how awful it must be if you don't enjoy food and you still have to purchase and/or prepare it every day
like being trapped in some horrid, demanding meat prison
but there's so many meals I've eaten where i was eating unhealthy and/or unappealing food, meaningless meals where all I was doing was hurting my health and not even particularly enjoying it
now I focus on really enjoying the meaningful meals, and let the ones that do not matter that much just be a source of simple sustenance.
how invested are you in every lunch you have while at work?
but I ain't making tamales for lunch at work either
Now that I think about it, I never really knew what the ingredients of those tamales were, but they always seemed reasonably priced. And delicious.
A question for the DIYers here: have you experimented with flavoring and how did that go? Any favorites or does it not work out well?
Growing up I wasn't exposed to good cooking; my dad tried to make sure we always had a meat and two veggies, but he likewise didn't have much experience to draw on so it was all pretty bland. As a result, I don't really have much appreciation for fine food most of the time. I'm capable of recognizing it now, but I rarely crave something expertly prepared over random junk food.
I find it interesting how aggressively foodies defend the food experience as something religious. I'd happily take a pill or chug a quick shake for every alone meal so I could use that time for literally anything else.
I haven't, but I don't find the recipe I use to be unpleasant tasting. It's perhaps a little bland, as would be expected for what is basically a corn flour shake. Not much in the way of variety of taste.
I've heard of some people mixing it up with fruit and ice in a blender, but to me that just seems to unnecessarily complicate the process. More dishes to clean, have to prep the fruit, etc. Getting to the point where I'd certainly prefer to make a sandwich. I've also heard that some people who prefer something sweeter tasting like to add very small quantities -- like, less than a gram per day -- of pure stevia extract. I find it really important just to make sure it has time to chill because at room temperature and just after mixing, it can be very grainy and have a very unappetizing mouthfeel.
I have lived in two very different states and never ever seen a food truck in real life outside of a fairground or similar non-work related environment.
also eating tamales every day is probably not a whole lot different than eating macdonalds every day, nutritionally
PSN/XBL: Zampanov -- Steam: Zampanov
I've been doing power protein brand shakes in place in place of breakfast for a while. they're tasty and filling but only like 160 calories so I don't know if they'd really work as a lunch replacement
they aren't terribly expensive for having one a day. 18 shakes is like $23 at costco