Food is bullshit. Convenient food is terrible for you (and is causing a major worldwide health crisis, if you didn't know), and healthy food is a real time sink. Why can't we just stop eating altogether?
Turns out there is now a product that promises just that:
Soylent
Soylent is an open sourced nutritional drink. Its creator, software engineer Rob Rhinehart, researched nutritional requirements and developed the formula by self-experimentation based on his own research online and through textbooks, and scientific journals.[1][2]
A commercial version of Soylent has been financed by a crowdfunding campaign and venture capital which raised funds in excess of US$3,500,000.[3] The funding paid for additional research and modification of the formula. The first shipments of U.S. orders began in the first week of May 2014.[4]
Motherboard: How I Ate No Food For 30 Days
That night I went out for drinks with the crew, at a bar and grill where people were chowing down on burgers and fries. Weirdly, I wasn’t interested—Soylent had me entirely gastronomically satisfied.
Days four and five got a little easier. I still felt a little unsettled and gut-tight, but was starting to wonder if that was mostly psychological. I called my father, who’s a physician, and he told me that indeed, my body could take some time to adjust to a radically different diet.
After I got back to New York, I didn’t lust after food. I didn’t go hungry, and I didn’t curse Soylent. I was still anxious, sure, as I missed lunch hours and dinner dates and nights out drinking. I found that my new Soylent-fueled body wasn’t well-equipped for drinking. I’d get dizzy, a little ill, but not exactly drunk, if I downed more than two or three drinks. Long, intensive physical activity seemed an undue strain, and I started to lose weight.
Yet I felt fine—even good. Some days I was downright grateful I was on Soylent; a packed day with deadlines, interviews, and edits to finish blew by seamlessly, and I never had to leave my desk. Those days, I embraced Soylent wholeheartedly.
I kept a diary. This, for instance, is from Day 9:
I still wouldn't say I'm desperate for food or anything. Far from it. It's already almost become a bit of an abstraction; an option. Food. I don't know if it's because I can't allow myself to need it, but I really and genuinely feel like I don't need food right now.
Is this something that could catch on, or is it just a curiosity that few people will ever really go for? Could their be unforeseen side-effects to subsisting on a completely artificial food substitute, or could it truly turn out to be the ultimate in nutrition? If it really is all its promised, could Soylent have applications in supplying nourishment to famine stricken populations and treating obesity? Could this be the ultra-efficient, eco-friendly food of the future?
When I consider the mess re-engineering and processing actual food has made of public health I can't help but be skeptical of an attempt to remove human nutrition from the natural world completely (especially since we really understand very little of how the body works). The informational video alone seems like something you would see in the opening scene of a science-fiction movie (just before you find out it caused the zombie apocalypse or whatever). I will admit that I am curious and leaning towards trying Soylent, and I wouldn't be against turning it into a staple "food" of my diet if it were truly safe.
Anyone here tried it?
Posts
Call.
It.
Soylent.
1. Is this stuff any different than the slim fast I occasionally use? It really doesn't seem that different.
2. Seriously, why would you call your product something that conjures the image of cannabilism? There has to be a better name.
3. Jonathon Swift's A Modest Proposal for your perusal. The word soylent makes this satire unable to leave my mind. I'll try this stuff if, someday, they can call it Tasty Wheat or something without my knowing it was once called Soylent.
Mmmmm soylent. Ugh. Try slim fast or whatever you have locally, because this doesn't seem new, just differently marketed.
According to the guy
He's right about price
Now Soylent is vastly more than I spend on food, but if you tried to replace all of my meals with Ensure it would sure as shit cost more than $200 a month
That article that is the first hit from google that is quoted in the OP is pretty interesting. Dude seems like he was losing weight without explanation, and that fried chicken sounded delicious.
Edit: apparently new orders are 4-5 months out. Hmm.
I'm not defending the product, I have no idea if it's any good, but it seems silly to criticize it on the basis that other products like it exist
those aren't really meant to do what soylent does either, they're for like skipping lunch not completely replacing food and doing so would cost a lot more
So I'll just say I think it is based on a false premise (healthy food takes too long to prepare) that is borne out of misplaced priorities (must spend all time coding) and an inflated ego (I'm smarter than everyone who ever made food in human history).
Also it's a terrible name, and would be even if it actually contained soy and lentils, which I doubt.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
I doubt it will go anywhere though
no matter what they do it'll be way more expensive than rice and grain
Second, not all food is created equal, or require the same amount of energy to produce. It takes a lot more energy to produce meat than it does grain. I wouldn't at all be surprised if production of the nutrients in soylent also require little in the way of energy investment.
I'm more worried about the actual formula. You can claim that soylent has all the nutritional value a body needs but that doesn't make it so. There could be long term consequences for going on a soylent diet. I'm reminded of a friend that went vegetarian in high school. She ended up getting sick because she wasn't getting all the nutrients she needed. It would help if studies were done on soylent to determine if it really can replace traditional food with no negatives effects.
And yes, the name is a really bad idea.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
What the fuck are you talking about?
I'm not being hyperbolic. I honestly have no idea what you mean. A healthy meal can be massively quick to cook. A healthy meal can be picked up ready to eat as instantly and as portably as your junkfood.
Salad in its many and varied forms.
A sandwich that maybe contains some vegetables and isn't covered in melted cheese.
Fruit. So many different fruit.
This is not hard.
No. You drink soluble fiber (which is what soylent contains) and it's fine.
Or to put it another way: those juice only detox things people do generally work out okay, and a lot less thought has gone into making them.
EDIT: Consider something like metamucil, or benefiber - both soluble fiber products, sold for the purpose of helping people increase their fiber intake.
Why do you cook? Do you think you're smarter then the people who prepare meals for supermarket consumption?
Seriously, all of this post, and I suspect your rant, is just you projecting some weird insecurity about this product even existing. It's the equivalent of every thread about vegetarian which involves a bunch of omnivores declaring they'll totally eat more animals.
EDIT: Not to mention your multiple assertions that this guy is totally wrong and you're right. How dare he have different priorities (that just so happen to align very accurately with how the majority of the western world's lifestyles actually play out).
So they stuffed extra carbs in the powder and call it everything the body needs?
I'm also curious how they get their ingredients, it doesn't sound like they are extracting the maltodextrin themselves. Getting it from somewhere costs energy. I read they want to get the cost down to under $5 a meal, so I start to wonder where the savings would come from.
Surely not from ups unless they make a deal with amazon to utilize prime shipping...oh for fucks sake that's probably going to be the next big amazon product announcement, isn't it?
Hey, so guess what none of these things have (and also, try preparing a sandwich more then 1 day in advance). If you guessed "all the nutritional requirements of the body" then you'd be right!
When I read your post I thought "like what? Fruit and salad I guess"
When you expand beyond that it gets trickier, stuff that needs preparation.
And the big trap with junkfood is that oftentimes people are choosing what to eat at a time they're already experiencing willpower depletion, so while its easy from a cold rational perspective to say "look! A Healthy meal can be cooked in 20 minutes or less" it doesent always pan out like that.
Also you've got a weirdly condescending tone about this.
TOO BAD I'M STILL WAITING ON MY ORDER FROM EXACTLY 1 YEAR AGO
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.
trying to fill up on salad is hilariously difficult for the average person as the last few decades telling everyone to avoid fat have shown
if soylent is both healthy and legitimately solves the satiety problem that lots of people who are used to high fat+sugar diets have when trying to stop, more power to it
I enjoy eating food that I cook far too much to go for it, but theres no way in hell it's as bad as what many people eat
First of the person designing and making this isn't a registered dietitian, but an complete amateur. Registered Dietitian is a protected title that requires a college degree in nutrition and health with over 1200 hours of practical study. Unlike the way more common title Nutritionist which is a title that can be used by anyone and has no requirements. If you think that having actually studied how nutrition and diet affect the human body is a plus in creating something like Soylent, then ding, ding, ding you are right.
The history of Soylent is filled with Rhinehart making elementary mistakes, that are alternately horrifying or hilarious. The Soylent is definitely not approved by the FDA and are made under conditions that would have the FDA close the factory down in seconds.
Real diet Shakes cost $200 a month because they are made by people that know what the fuck they are doing.
man what, the world of dietary supplements is all but unregulated and many don't even contain the ingredients they say they do (I'm not pointing at a specific thing here, just in general)
they cost $200 a month because of the profit margin
which, again, is not an endorsement of soylent because it should probably be studied to make sure it's legit, but I feel like it's getting a ridiculous level of criticism when you factor in what kind of trash is sold in stores to go into people's bodies
And that's ignoring how half-arsed this seems.
Interesting.
Are you guys talking about cooking a healthy meal versus cooking an unhealthy meal, or buying a healthy meal versus buying an unhealthy meal?
Because I don't think there's really a difference between the cooking a healthy meal versus cooking an unhealthy one, and ditto for buying fast food.
Edit: Same goes for snacks.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
Yep http://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/tcpmt/american_pure_whey_is_american_pure_shit/
you could probably sell actual powdered dog shit as a vitamin supplement in a fancy package for $20 a box and get away with it for years
it says on their website they were "guided" by an MD/MPH attending at Columbia, which could mean anything
FDA is extremely lax in regulation of food, especially food supplements and medical foods. So waiting for that is pretty fruitless.
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.
*sigh*
So here's the thing about this criticism: it's complete crap.
Because you haven't actually identified any specific problems. You haven't actually explained what you think the fatal mistakes are. You're simply pointing to the title the guy does or does not hold, and declaring it means something.
Which might hold some weight if he was trying to make an extraordinary claim, as opposed to a fairly mundane one. It also might hold some weight, except no one in the history of commerce has ever had to be a dietician in order to sell a food product, and the founder of the soylent company has never tried to claim any special title as such.
So you know what would be really great? If the "foodie"-crowd would take off their stupid hat and sense of indignation, and come up with better actual criticisms and/or content for their arguments.
Because once again: everytime Soylent comes up, some group of people seem to take it as some weird personal attack on...something. I don't know what. But the response is exactly identical to when someone says they're a vegetarianism and then someone starts ranting about how much they love steak and oh how could you not love steak?
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.
Is there a timetable for you receiving your order? I mentioned earlier that the website says current new orders are 4-5 month waits for delivery.
Is anyone other than journalist/bloggers actually getting to try this yet?
That is an actual valid criticism and its not a "foodie" thing, its a common sense thing. I am not a foodie anyways.
Soylent and its designer/supporters falls at the first post: Does this guy know what the fuck he talking about? No.
It is a food product in the same standing as any other food product which can be commercially sold (and they do in fact, meet the various guidelines, as well as have several food scientists working for them).
You might as well bitch and moan about any of the myriad of people who will happily offer up their thoughts on dietary advice randomly on the internet, who also do not have such qualifications. You are under no obligation to believe them. But unless you can actually argue specific details or concerns, you're not bringing anything to the conversation - you know, evidence.
So again: actual criticisms of ingredients, methods or results? You have some? No?
It sounds essentially like you want to rant about something else which is offending you about this concept.
I mean a 100% soylent diet would be strange as it would effectively cut you off from a large amount of shared human experiences.
Although on the other hand if the only time you ate food was on special occasions you might actually get more enjoyment out of it on the whole.
Breakfast falls closest to the right for me on the above scale, although I couldnt imagine replacing dinner.