Wow. Exactly the right response. I would never have paid any attention to Soylent's agreement with a large HACCP-certified manufacturer before, but Vice's story actually made that relevant to me. They might actually pick up customers from this shitstorm.
It's hard to imagine the type of person that would be on the fence about Soylent that would be ok with it after reading this article. Hopefully the "it was beta" excuse for producing Soylent in an unhealthy environment won't fly outside of SV culture. If anything, it should bring up serious doubts about the integrity of a team that, when faced with overwhelming demand and flush with investor cash, stoop to a level of cognitive dissonance necessary to claim lofty goals of fighting hunger worldwide while sidestepping around the rats and filth in their "beta" production environment. If the Soylent team wants respect they should focus less on dreaming up scientific sounding rebranding campaigns and slow down the "deployment" of their product in order to subject it to rigorous scientific tests and trials before mailing it to strangers.
---------------
Meta: wow, I really get worked up over this Soylent stuff. There's something deeply disturbing about this to me, like we're witnessing the birth of a monster. Maybe it's the first sign of the worst of the "move fast, break things" cutting corners culture smelling money to be made iterating on peoples' health...
That was the beta/promo batch. I fail to see how that's relevant now.
They're already subjecting the production version to rigorous testing.
As for trials, those cost hundreds of millions of dollars and are done for no other food. Are you suggesting that they simply not make Soylent because it hasn't gone through a phase 3?
>That was the beta/promo batch. I fail to see how that's relevant now.
Beneath the snark and hyperbole in my post, this was intended to be my point. I don't feel like someone with this mindset necessarily warrants trust in their ability to safely make the product in the future.
I just get this gut reaction against Soylent that makes me care less about structuring my thoughts in a more civilized manner. Back to ruining fun at bake sales.
Isn't it just the first behind-the-scenes look at food production for most of us? A rat scurrying by on camera just looks worse than what frequently goes on in the storage room of your or my local food market.
As far as the "beta testing on strangers" aspect, I'd point you to sneak's comment[1], which sums up the slight absurdity of requiring one food to be rigorously tested and adhere to some hypothetical standard. I frequently eat MetRx "meal replacement bars"[2] and I don't assume they are held to any rigorous trials. After some cursory research, I don't even know if Plumpy'nut[3] is held to any standard, aside from beta testing it on starving children and seeing if they improve.
A rat scurrying by on camera just looks worse than what frequently goes on....
Currently in NorCal, there are rodents infected with both Bubonic Plague and Hemmoragic fever. And their <shit> is an effective vector that can get you killed. Even if they are nowhere in sight. So, its best to be somewhat educated and conscientious on the topic.
My guess is you are also inherently troubled by what soylent is in itself, regardless of how it is made.
On the one hand I'm deeply suspicious of replacing food with something that is in a very approximate sense "equivalent". But he does make an excellent point that making healthy "food" convenient could prove to be a great boost to public health.
What shitstorm? The Motherboard piece was overall positive, and didn't have the tongue-in-cheek holier-than-thou tone that most articles about Soylent have had.
> When I'd received my first shipment of Soylent in New York, it arrived in the office in a white UPS box—and the yellowish crust-dust was packed into barely-sealed Ziploc bags.
How is something barely sealed? It is either sealed or it isn't.
They're trying hard to play up the amateur hour part, and that bit with the doctor's "I don't recommend it" where she lists the social aspects of food after she was holding an existing commercial meal replacement drink was pure sensationalism.
Even for an opinion piece, they could stand to be quite a bit more fair. The video said nothing of the bag puncture (only the mold), or the fact that the hand assembled soylent was a limited promo batch and not the final product.
Also, the clinical trial demand (something we require none of at the grocery store) at the end seems simply silly when he breaks his fast with FRIED CHICKEN, something for which we already have plenty of data to indicate that it's bad for your body. You don't get to say "I'll try it once it's held to standards that I hold no other food to" while eating things out of a deep fryer without looking like a total jackass.
> They're trying hard to play up the amateur hour part, and that bit with the doctor's "I don't recommend it" where she lists the social aspects of food after she was holding an existing commercial meal replacement drink was pure sensationalism.
What? I like rooting for the underdog newcomer and all but will you please settle down. The social aspects of food are pretty freaking relevant and worth talking about in an extended article on Soylent. As well exposing are any shortcuts they're taking, no matter how trivial they seem. You'd expect a review on a restaurant to tell you if the reviewers saw any rats there, right? Despite the rats being there, besides questionable operating practices the Vice piece was overall positive, so just cool it there on kicking Vice around.
Text is horrible at getting emotions across, granted, but it seems like you're more upset (about GP's post) than he is about the Vice piece...
To me, the Vice article was okay. It certainly wasn't a smear piece, but it did (deliberately?) structure things or not talk about important stuff that would cause controversy. For me, I think Soylent isn't for me at all, but for such an extended article on it it sure missed some very important information. This gives the impression of trying to smear Soylent.
I would interpret barely sealed to mean the zip strip was 95% sealed. That is generally sufficient to keep stuff from falling out, but it's not quite airtight, and prone to opening with jostling.
The nascent shitstorm was the story PandoDaily wrote that cherry-picked the mold and rat incidents from the Vice piece to make the content more salacious than it otherwise was.
I hope you realize there are more rats in more restaurants and food factories than you think, and that health departments nationally, while quick to cite, fine, and demand changes to your pest control, really understand that rodent problems happen, and don't shut you down for a rat. Rat infestation... yes.
Ever since watching the "Cities" episode of Human Planet I've assumed most restaurants have pest infestations to varying degrees. Is that not the case?
Many startups put the word "utilize" in their press releases to sound fancier and more official: "This...prompted us to utilize more robust packaging."
You can always say "use" instead of "utilize" to avoid buzzwords and sound more conversational. In fact, there are only a few specific cases (mostly in science writing) where "utilize" is necessary:
This is also incredibly common among company/field grade military officers trying to appear "educated".
I use "use" when something is put to its intended or designed use; I use a shirt by wearing it. I utilize a shirt by wrapping it around my arm, as a pressure dressing, to stop bleeding.
Thank you! I am on a life long mission to eradicate the use of the word "utilize". The only exception I make is in operations where "utilization rate" is a term that I have no issue accepting.
>Pretentious diction. Words like phenomenon, element, individual (as noun), objective, categorical, effective, virtual, basic, primary, promote, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize, eliminate, liquidate, are used to dress up a simple statement and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgements.
I dislike jargon, but in this case, neither "efficient" nor "fast" captures the same concept as "performant".
First, both are open-ended and relative. "Fast" and "efficient" compared to what? A cheetah is "fast", but it's not fast if I'm trying to use them to propel fighter jets. If I say, "my code is fast", am I saying it's fast enough for the problem at hand? Faster than it was before? Fast compared to most other code that solves the same problem?
"Efficient" has all of the same problems and it's also ambiguous. If my library is efficient, does that mean it runs fast? Starts up fast? Uses memory efficiently? Bandwidth?
"Performant" is etymologically strange, but in the place I've seen it used, it has an effective, precise meaning: "well-performing in speed relative to the needs of the problem". It means "fast enough" without the negative connotations of "enough", sort of like "plenty fast". Likewise, it's negation is usefully precise, "not performant" means "however fast it is, that isn't enough for our needs".
Plenty fast and not fast enough just don't do it then, huh?
No, "performant" is one of those words which is usually chosen to flatter the speaker, not because it imparts some meaning which is so difficult to describe without it.
When it comes to technical topics, amateurs write to impress. Professionals write for clarity.
It may be different where you live, but at least in Southern California English, 'utilize' is quite commonly used and would sound conversational in tone to many an ear.
I think this is probably one of the best handled rollouts of a product with so high a potential for controversy. Each issue seems to get addressed rapidly, the company is pursuing a quest for quality, and the product itself is coming together rapidly.
I don't really understand why Soylent needs a factory anyway. Just white label some generic meal replacement shake like Ensure and they are done. The only thing interesting about the company is they managed to market a product that already exists as something new to a new audience.
Summary: Soylent aims for something more ideal than a suboptimal solution. It's a day to day meal replacement for otherwise healthy, active people. Given the ingredients of Ensure, I wouldn't want to try to live on it for 30 days. It's like Google vs. Altavista, if you'll pardon the strained analogy.
From the link: "I considered Ensure but found it much too expensive, low calorie, unpalatable, and an ingredient make up that was far from complete or optimal"
I have family ties into this industry, and quite frankly this comment is rather ignorant. Ensure is a brand range, with a lot of variation, some of which are, for example, extremely high in calories.
It is also worth noting that one of the uses of products like Ensure is to actually mix in with regular cooking, increasing the calorific and nutritional value of normal food.
Comparing existing products in the market with "Altavista", and Soylent with "Google" is also very disingenuous, as it serves to discredit all the work put into existing products, and ignores their business model. Funnily enough, Ensure isn't marketed as hipster-food, and everything about it is tailored for their target market of the medical industry.
As hackers, surely we should be supporting good business, rather than blindly going with the latest fad?
Because pharmaceutical/clinical nutritional sales have very little at all to do with websites!
In our tech focused, Business to consumer / mass business market, it is easy to forget about hands-on sales.
These products, remember, have lots of legislation around them, very strict instructions on when they are appropriate to be used, training is required in order to really use many of them properly, and so on. That tends to be the first indicator of the need for sales reps.
Equally, and perhaps more importantly, remember that direct to consumers is a market for these products only because of clinical teams recommending them. Their typical sales targets are huge, and are acquired in big bulk contracts with entire hospitals, if not healthcare regional bodies. Contracts on that scale are, again, typically done via sales teams who work closely with a client, build a relationship, and help the client get the most out of their sales. This model also exists in the tech industry, and indeed is how most Big Enterprise IT works.
I'm sure they could get more direct to consumer sales if they improved their website, yes. But even ignoring any legislative issues with directly aiding that market, why focus on growing the 5% of your market (being generous!), when that 95% of hands-on sales is really what you should be investing in?
zzbxdo comment, fourth from the bottom is also interesting.
People point out existing commercially available meal replacements, but I've been wondering about what hospitals use. There are already people that have to live for extended periods by being fed through a tube.
So has anyone done a comparison of soylent vs meal replacements vs medical products?
There is some evidence that working with one's hands relieves depression and promotes happiness. I would like to see a clinical trial which attempts to measure the opposite effect from Soylent: that removing the food preparation ritual can contribute to depression, or at least ennui. Sometimes removing a piece of the natural environment is not good for an organism. Few suggest replacing all human walking with motorized transport, for example; I wonder if the same will hold for meals.
On the other hand, some people use food as a drug, and removing it may be helpful in a Buddhist desire-suppression kind of way.
It has practically disappeared and the submitted link was substituted[1]. I think this is a first.
I doubt that PG is aware of this type of orchestrated manipulation going on. It is quite dangerous for the credibility of HN.
Soylent seems interesting and potentially disruptive. However, it is FOOD and deserves to be put under the microscope. Anyone conniving to make them dodge scrutiny (especially via underhand moves) is not doing them any favours.
YC owns a portion of Soylent. It is not in the best financial interest of YC to portray them in a negative light.
You can't reasonably expect impartial and unbiased information to come from this site, can you? They have a vested interest in seeing the success of their children.
It's not a first. It happens all the time. And for the first time I'm glad we have editorializing mods. The original article was blatant blogspam. It even said so in the title: Oh look, let's focus only on the negative aspects of the original source.
Then it's up to the community to read it and flag it. Having mods change title's is one thing but this if the first I've ever seen links change (and it's actually only one of two articles today where I've seen links change). Although I'm against mods changing things there should at least be a system where it's made clear that a change has happened.
Soylent is a food, like the McDonald's McRib sandwich, the Baconator from Wendy's, the Denny's Grand Slam Breakfast, and the delicious beef tacos from my local Mexican restaurant. Why does Soylent need more scrutiny than any of these or the hundreds of thousands of other food products on the market today?
The company is claiming that it is a dietary supplement and NOT food in order to avoid FDA scrutiny. At least that is what the PandoDaily article that was originally linked to claims.
That should not change the standards they are held to. Nobody's forcing people to eat soylent 24/7, any more than they're forcing people to eat supersized big macs for three meals a day.
Except food is held to a different standard than supplements.
Soylent is regulated as a supplement, but sold and promoted as a food.
People aren't asking for weird amounts of scrutiny, just for the same amount of regulation as the rest of the food chain.
Seeing the filthy conditions that the beta product was made in was surprising - the founders knowing how bad it was but continuing to ship beta product to paying beta customers is weird.
Both the McRib and Soylent are intended to extract a price from customers in exchange for sustenance and a positive consumption experience. The McRib leans towards experience in its marketing and Soylent leans more towards sustenance.
The marketing of Soylent is certainly more active these days which isn't really that surprising as the product and company have developed from a concept to a full fledged and funded company. They're affiliating themselves with claims and experiences that may be unfounded, just like the McRib implies it's a delicious BBQ pork sandwich and not processed meat (pork?) shaped to look like rib meat or how car manufactures imply that purchasing a new vehicle will improve your life substantially. Customers will decide if their product matches their claims or if the product serves enough of a function to purchase despite the fact that it may not meet all of the claims it affiliates itself with (like complete food replacement... which is a marketing affiliation, not a legal claim). If you buy Soylent and get sick because all you eat is Soylent and you don't take the necessary precautions when completely changing your diet then you're in that category of consumer that might buy Axe Body Spray and think it's going to be the sole factor that makes you attractive to female models.
Marketing can be over the top and distasteful, but that doesn't relieve consumers from their responsibility to be skeptical of marketing claims and do their own research and basic risk remediation before purchasing a product.
I agree and I think Soylent's indirect claims that all you might need to eat is Soylent are in the same league, but their direct claims aren't really anything more than you can eat Soylent safely. Their marketing is strong and deserves skepticism, like one might be skeptical of male enhancement products, but it doesn't need more regulation or oversight. The product will ship, people will use (some foolishly no doubt), and consumers will have more information to decide if they want to eat Soylent instead of McRibs or whatever.
>I doubt that PG is aware of this type of orchestrated manipulation going on.
I don't doubt it, and I also don't care. He's a business man. He's got money at stake. It's his site. Why shouldn't he use it to help market this stuff? Nobody is being forced to buy it. I see nothing wrong with that.
The fact a rat was spotted in a dusty old warehouse isn't really worth addressing.
From what I've learned so far, the only factor letting this product down for me is the price. I'd guess $65/w is around what I'm spending on food now. Do we have any idea of their margin? Is the price expected to decrease once they get a decent production line up?
The rat does concern me. From the video they have a huge warehouse and 95% of it is for kickball and interviews. They mix they shit in a room Dexter wouldn't even kill in. Why not mix it in someones kitchen? It would be cleaner, mine is.
That's incredible to me...even at $65 it's less than $10 a day. Half the price would be like $1.25 a meal.
I spend almost that simply for lunch each day (sushi, sandwiches...food on-the-go), so for me spending $65 a week would pretty easily save money. Makes me curious how many people (in the U.S.) spend less than $65 a week on food.
When I was younger and had my wisdom teeth out, they had to break my lower jaw to get the deeply impacted lower ones out. I spent six weeks eating nothing but Ensure. To this day I can't stand the taste of it.
Going back to solid food took a few days of introducing progressively more and more solid food back into my system and was not terribly fun.
I think the appeal of this, in terms of time savings during busy work periods, is intriguing. But there's already tons of these kinds of things in a very crowded market, and I don't even have to mix it myself. But as an extended, multi-week replacement? No thanks.
A well-written response. Soylent have handled this extremely well and the fact they've partnered up with a HACCP certified manufacturer with over 20 years experience will prevent any mishaps with future production of Soylent. Really looking forward to giving this a shot, none of the issues highlighted in the beta have deterred me from trying as they won't be present in the main manufacturing process.
I am actually excited by their move to an established manufacturer. A good manufacturing partner will be well placed to help them deal with FDA approval, which will be required.
However, they big challenge they will eventually face is the existing nutritional product manufacturers. At the moment, Soylent is not viewed as a serious competitor, but it is worth remembering that if they prove that a market exists, Abbott, Nestlé and the like both have the marketing clout and some rather clever tricks to muscle in on the market.
But the saddest thing of all? Despite companies like Soylent, Abbott, Nutriset, Nestlé, etc, clinical malnutrition is still a serious issue. Proper nutrition is essential to successful treatment to many issues (cancer being one), yet it is still commonly neglected by clinical staff and administrators :( And most people don't even know about the risks and that different options exist for different needs!
I would be very, very interested to see the long-term consequences of an exclusively Soylent diet. I suspect the lack of phytochemicals would lead to increased incidences of cancer. That said, I would also guess that millions (billions?) of people have far worse diets.
For the same price (easily under $10/day), frozen vegetables and chopped meat. Just add spices and a bit of oil. Dump it all in a rice cooker if you're really pressed for time.
Not as trivially portable as a bottle of soylent, but otherwise superior in every respect.
Soylent will likely become a billion dollar global enterprise, and even "disrupt" the food industry.
It will also ultimately be a failure and frowned upon in modern society. Why? Because a Soylent-saturated world would rob families and loved ones of the ritual and benefits of eating together.
Eating together civilizes people. It's emotionally and socially edifying. Studies show that families that dine together stay together [1]. Their children are healthier and get better grades. It also lowers the risk of weight problems and alcohol and substance abuse.[2]
Eating real food persisted throughout human history because it's more than about eating.
> I'm glad to see so many people disagree with me. It means I'm on the right track.
Does anyone else find this "first they ignore you" style of belief-reinforcement to be vaguely troubling? Don't get me wrong, you shouldn't just believe your critics without further inquiry, but the presence of critics shouldn't be used as supporting evidence in and of itself. You risk creating a kind of insular belief system where any threat can be transformed into reinforcement.
It's a form of self-delusion whereby you start from a place of supreme self-assurance and the existence of critics only serves to further your confidence.
I mean, make no mistake: the parent not only has no idea what he's talking about, his thinking also suffers from multiple logical fallacies. Let's go through a few of them.
1. Eating together civilizes people. It's emotionally and socially edifying.
Sure. Who said you need to consume your Soylent all by yourself? I told one of my coworkers that I ordered a week's worth, and guess what: she asked me if she could try it with me.
2. Eating real food persisted throughout human history because it's more than about eating.
No, eating "real food" (whatever that means) persisted throughout human history because we did not have any alternatives. It's kind of like aging: because it kinda just happens, we have accepted it as a normal thing. But that doesn't mean it is normal, or should be accepted as such.
>Who said you need to consume your Soylent all by yourself?
Well, no one. But, you know, if you're kind of in a "I want the convenience of eating my food from a pre-mixed sack" mode, it's not illogical that you may be less social with your mealtimes. "Hey, bring your sack over to my place and we'll gulp them down in 5 minutes together!"
>It's kind of like aging: because it kinda just happens, we have accepted it as a normal thing. But that doesn't mean it is normal
I am trying to think of something that "kinda just happens" 100% of the time with no effort, but that's not normal. Isn't that the definition of normal?
Very true. You can't use the fact that someone has something bad to say about you to actually improve your perceived value. It's strictly[1] more probable that you're worse if there is criticism than if there isn't.
[1] EDIT: as pasquinelli noted, I didn't actually mean "strictly" here, I meant >=. Also, pasquinelli, you've been hellbanned.
I think the related but slightly more general claim is that you cannot update your beliefs in the same direction for both of two exhaustive and exclusive outcomes. In this case, if people disagreeing with you reinforces your beliefs, then it should be the case that everyone agreeing with you makes you question those beliefs. (This might be reasonable if you are e.g. in a mental asylum.)
Not really. Smart people are just as susceptible to logical fallacies as average people. Perhaps more so since they can 'reason out' the fallacies they make. I find I need to constantly double check myself to see I'm not missing something.
Yes, it is totally inaccurate. It is like the people who performed witch hunts: "If she doesn't admit to being a witch, she must be lying. If she admits to being a witch, then obviously she is because why would anyone admit to that?" If either outcome of a test -- criticism, ~criticsm -- increases your prior belief estimate, you need to have another look at Bayes' theorem.
Personally speaking, I think the B2B market makes a lot of sense for Soylent. Especially sales to the military, space agencies, and maybe even white labeling for big food companies.
In the consumer space, sure, you have some "Valley geeks" who see food as more of a burden to be solved than a source of enjoyment or socialization. But you've also got folks like athletes, both professional and amateur (a much bigger consumer market). If (and it's a big if) Soylent satisfies the requirements of a high-intensity training program, then it could take off there. People who are obsessed with performance nutrition tend to place less emphasis on food-as-experience and more emphasis on food as fuel. That's the Soylent psychographic sweet spot.
Military organizations already spend a lot of time and money on food, given its overwhelming importance in things like fighting wars. I suspect "Valley nerdchow-paste" is not going to do a lot to raise morale.
"Military organizations already spend a lot of time and money on food, given its overwhelming importance in things like fighting wars"
Correct, which is why military branches are deep-pocketed potential buyers.
"I suspect "Valley nerdchow-paste" is not going to do a lot to raise morale."
In a military context it's not a meal replacement, per se. More of an emergency MRE or HDR replacement, provided it's more shelf stable and can compete on nutritional factors. (Big ifs, of course.) I don't disagree that morale is a concern, though. MREs are nasty, but they're at least attempting to be palatable within the confines of their purpose.
Indeed. Military organizations have learned over several millennia that serving unappealing food to heavily armed and lethally trained people is bound to lead to suboptimal outcomes.
> Personally speaking, I think the B2B market makes a lot of sense for Soylent. Especially sales to the military, space agencies, and maybe even white labeling for big food companies.
Last I heard, the main focus of new food efforts for the military is long-shelf-life food that does a better job of emulating "normal" food. Because it makes a pretty big difference to morale.
> In the consumer space, sure, you have some "Valley geeks" who see food as more of a burden to be solved than a source of enjoyment or socialization. But you've also got folks like athletes, both professional and amateur (a much bigger consumer market).
A market that's highly saturated with well-established nutritional supplements and meal substitute powders, shakes, etc. The one space where Soylent has an advantage over established market players is in marketing to Valley geeks that are insulated from the other markets for this kind of product (some of which is of the "this product is a good fit for you" type, and some of which is "this product is a solution to all kinds of other things for which there are not currently solutions" type, but both of those are marketing messages for Soylent that are mostly successful with the same demographic.)
I would consider 'microwave food' as lazy. Food is the at most basic necessity of your body, with air, water, shelter and clothes.
Are people really so busy that you can't get off your keyboard to eat something? I am not sure if that is the case merely using Soylent is going to fix any of your problems.
I love good food. But I fall in the amateur athlete category, and for me getting the right nutrition mix is a massive chore on a day to day basis. I would never go to just Soylent, but I'd love to experiment with substituting a number of meals with it.
as an amateur athlete, it's time you learn about sports supplements. if you had, you'll come to realize there are many meal replacement products that can easily satisfy your needs and that has been around for decades. EAS myoplex is the first that comes to mind that not only has a lot of important nutrients, but actually tastes pretty good in my opinion.
The condescending tone is unwarranted and distasteful.
Especially when you so totally miss the point of Soylent vs. sports supplements like Myoplex: The latter are not in any way trying to provide the same. They generally aim for roughly a certain mix of proteins, carbs and fats + various mixes of other ingredients that often seem to be chosen mostly to be buzzword complete.
In fact, here's some sales copy regarding Myoplex:
"EAS recommends supplementing your diet with 2-3 high quality Myoplex nutrition shakes along with 3-4 whole food meals a day to ensure that any nutritional "gaps" are filled. "
I use a lot of supplements - for my protein intake I use or have used a variety of shakes, bars, muffins (yes...), cookies, to complement my high protein "real foods". To date I have never found a sports supplement that tastes nice without being way too high calorie for my use, but I can tolerate that for the convenience.
But more importantly: most sport supplements are very limited in their overall nutritional profile. For a reason - for protein heavy products people tend to focus on whey and to a lesser extent casein, and most products aim to minimize other ingredients unless that are products for specific other purposes, such as weight gainers etc. They're supplements for occasional meal replacement. They are not intended to replace food in general.
And exactly what appeals to me about Soylent is that it might provide a good alternative to fill those "nutritional gaps" mentioned in the Myoplex sales copy, which are pretty much inevitable if you were to stick with only regular sports supplements. As I said: I'm not interested in replacing food entirely, but having something available that I can have reasonable confidence is reasonably complete, that I know the calorie content of by volume, so it's easy to measure and keep track, and that is quick and convenient for when I don't have the time or want the hassle of sorting out a proper meal would be great.
In my mind, I think of Soylent as "food for people who don't like food". In the same way I think of Nickelback or American Idol as "music for people who don't like music". There are millions of these people worldwide. But yes, obviously this doesn't apply to 100% of all people.
I personally see food in two lights a necessity and a luxury. Most of the time it is simply a necessity and Soylent will do. The rest of the time it is a luxury and I'll go cook a nice meal or go to a restaurant.
Actually I like food a lot, it's just that health is more important to me than taste. After all, the pleasure we get from tasty food only lasts a moment, while the pleasure we get from having a healthy body and mind lasts a lifetime.
I agree with your main point that long-term health is very important, but I'm hoping you're not saying that healthy food and tasty food are mutually exclusive.
Let's recognize the fact that McDonald's food actually tastes good to a large portion of the population, for better or worse. To do otherwise is, IMO, harmful to the discussion of improving what we eat as a society.
Millions of people eat at McDonalds and like it. Most people would choose the McDonalds burger. The people that give a shit about factory farming and nutrition are in the minority.
Delicious unhealthy cheeseburger or a tasteless but healthy goop in a can? I guess you're right, it's a no-brainer either for people with self-discipline and for those without.
If you think it is "trivial" to make a bland substance taste good without substantially changing the nutritional makeup of that substance, there are a lot of diet food companies who would like to have a chat with you and make you fabulously rich. Jamba Juice would like to know the secret, too.
Most things that innately taste good -- stuff that you could drop in a blender and drink and it'd still be agreeable -- are fatty, salty, starchy, sugary, or some mix of all these. Healthy and good-tasting food requires pleasant textures and careful composition that allows a small amount of fat, salt, starch, etc. to enhance the flavor of the whole meal.
I guess I should have said it would be trivial to make it tastier for my own non-demanding taste buds. I could just add a few drops of stevia and I'd be good to go, but I see how it could be a challenge to make something that pleases most people.
"Fatty" is not a synonym for unhealthy by the way. A lot of people consider high fat/low carb diets to be healthier than the reverse.
Don't get fries. Don't get a drink with sugar added. Definitely don't get a milkshake or cookies.
The burger itself is fine. You wouldn't go to Subway for a nice sandwich and drink a liter of Coke afterwards and a bag of chips and complain about how unhealthy it is.
Here you can get some nice fresh crispy raw carrots instead of fries.
This is one of the more obscure "internet things that irk me", but particularly on HN I keep seeing the word "delicious" applied to any food that is minimally palatable.
The word itself is starting to grate on me, as "lecker" in German already does thanks to its overuse.
I eat out at least a few times a week with friends. But if I'm stuck at the office working late or home alone one night, I don't cook. I order off seamless, and a lot of it is garbage. Sure, I should learn to like cooking, but I've failed to do that and that's unlikely to change.
So in my mind, replacing the shitty delivery meals with something optimally nutritious would be great. And then on the weekends or when I have time, I'd still of course eat out with friends and family.
Soylent is not aiming to replace every meal. But as a replacement for grabbing a slice of pizza on the way home from work by yourself, what's the problem?
Given you're at a computer using HN, then at any
off time a good meal is no meal
I don't quite follow, are you saying because one sits behind a computer one doesn't use any energy at all?
You can safely say stuffing more food into you
is not needed.
Food gives energy and mental exhaustion, believe it or not, does actually take up a lot of energy, heck, even just resting takes up energy (it's not like your body stops functioning..).
I have to say that I very much follow what the parent is saying. I love eating with people and all, but, I'm not always with someone, and more often than not am too lazy to cook (or I've just forgotten to shop groceries).
Correlation/causation - dining together doesn't cause all those benefits, it is simply correlated with them. There is probably a common factor which causes all of those behaviours, probably something to do with education and wealth (although working out exactly what is a bit too much science for a back-of-envelope estimate).
Nonetheless, your fundamental criticism of Soylent is probably still valid (even if the target market isn't families.)
> I'm glad to see so many people disagree with me. It means I'm on the right track.
What? No it doesn't. The rest of your post was thought-provoking, but this "teenage forum troll with a wounded ego" act drags the whole thing down. I don't recommend repeating it if you want people to take you seriously.
I cook breakfast for my kids every morning. We eat together every night. For lunch, I'm at work and I typically microwave some junk and get on with more important things. For me, it'd be nice to have another solution for the mid-day meal. So, I've bought in for a trial. I'm not expecting it to be a 100% replacement for regular food. My hunch is that most people will not replace 100% of their food with soylent.
Why don't you just buy Ensure or Carnation Instant Breakfast? They already exist and are well known, that you can buy anywhere. Or make yourself a bowl of oatmeal. Or eat leftovers from the night before.
I think that the only reason that anyone's interested in Soylent is the current startup/crowdfunding bubble hype, not because it's actually anything particularly new. Soylent is to Ensure as Groupon is to coupons. Before the hype, on select groups (people who were too sick to eat, middle-aged housewives) would be into each of them, but once you add the startup/crowdfunding/Internet angle, all of a sudden a bunch of 20 somethings take a fascination in something that they otherwise would have sneered at.
Can you really compare products like Ensure or Carnation Instant Breakfast to Soylent? Pick up any of those products in a store and you'll see that half of the ingredients have nothing to do with nutritional value and are about making the product taste better. I'm holding a bottle of Nestle's "Boost" meal replacement drink right now and here are the main ingredients:
Just because something is "well known" doesn't make it better. Nestle is not a company with an outstanding global reputation and if given the choice between trusting them or a company like Soylent, I'm going to choose Soylent.
Like others here, I view Soylent as an interesting experiment. I enjoy a nice meal as much as the next person but I also appreciate the value of something fast, simple and nutritionally complete that can be used from time to time as supplementation when you don't feel the need to sit down for an actual meal.
I'm not sure flavorlessness will make Soylent more popular. Most people like to have at least some flavor.
My point is that there already are a lot of products out there that are "fast, simple, and nutritionally complete that can be used from time to time as supplementation when you don't feel the need to sit down for an actual meal," but I don't see everyone who's so excited about Soylent already using them on a regular basis. OK, perhaps you would prefer to have something without sugar in it (I'm not sure why you would object to the other ingredients, fats and salts are essential parts of your diet), but I would think that if Soylent were going to be as popular as people make it out to be, there would already be lots of people replacing meals with existing meal replacements. All Soylent offers over the others is that it's bland, as far as I can tell.
I'm not saying the existing, well known ones are better. Just that they haven't revolutionized food or replaced traditional meals on a large scale or anything.
There are plenty of people who do already replace occasional meals with these existing meal replacers, along with energy bars and the like. So, Soylent will be one more out of a large number of choices in this field, produced by people with no particular food industry experience, and more bland than the rest. Is that supposed to get me excited about "the future of food"?
I can imagine people who already do use existing meal replacers, but having some particular problem with them that Soylent solves, might go for this. And then there's the Silicon Valley hype bubble, where a bunch of people will buy it and drink it for lunch for a month or two before getting bored and excited by the next big new thing (Twitter to your shoes! Personal Instagram quadcopter follow bot! Distributed decentralized FarmVille/GTA hybrid!)
The reason I'm so baffled by this is that it's hard to imagine why so many people would get excited about yet another product in an already crowded marketplace that's fairly niche (well, fairly niche for people who use them as their primary nutrition; relatively large for people who use it to replace an occasional meal). I don't see anything revolutionary about Soylent; it's yet another meal replacer.
Ensure tastes like shit. If Soylent tastes reasonably OK, and has stronger guarantees that it can be a true meal replacement than supplements like Ensure, then sign me up.
I was replying to a comment that suggested he was interested in using it merely as a supplement (replacing only lunch). Ensure is perfectly capable of doing that. I'm not sure what "stronger guarantees" Soylent would have. Ensure has been used to replace meals for tons of sick people for 40 years; why do you think that a few computer geeks will be able to suddenly do better than 40 years of industrial research?
As far as the taste, it's too soon to tell. Indications are that it's pretty flavorless http://gawker.com/we-drank-soylent-the-weird-food-of-the-fut... (outside of joking reactions like "It was great and I love it. I don't want to eat anymore.") Given that they aren't particularly focusing on trying to make it taste good ("I'm not trying to make something delicious; there are already a lot of delicious things. It's all about efficiency, it's about cost and convenience."), I doubt it will wind up tasting much better than Ensure.
I just don't get all of the excitement over Soylent. It seems like a solution in search of a problem. It's pretty damn easy to get a healthy diet for cheap and extremely low effort, as long as you don't care about flavor and variety. Rice, beans, and grated cheese covers pretty much all of your nutritional needs (maybe toss in a multivitamin per day to be on the safe side), takes about 5 minutes of work and 15 minutes of waiting for it to simmer, you can prepare a week's worth in advance and reheat it over the course of the week, and it will cost you less than $5 per day in the US. How is Soylent supposed to be so much better than that that it will "disrupt the world food system"?
Given how much of a problem some people here seem to have with normal food (though it only seems to have happened after seeing the Soylent marketing materials, I didn't know anyone who complained about how much trouble eating was before the Soylent hype), it's hard to tell if you're being sarcastic or serious. I suppose I've just run up against the Silicon Valley Hype Machine version of Poe's Law.
Given how bad the hype has become (Soylent appears to me to be about as useful and likely to be successful as Pets.com), I think it's time to start shoring a bunch of Silicon Valley stock; we appear to have hit the next bubble. The problem is that outside of Twitter and Facebook, no one has really gone public recently, so it's a lot harder to actually short these silly companies.
I've been complaining about how much trouble eating was since I realized I was underweight maybe 6-7 years ago. I've narrowed it down to some kind of mental problem that makes me chew 3-5x longer than other people. I therefore get full 3-5x sooner and it's hard to eat enough calories.
I've tried supplements and eating very dense foods (lots of grease and carbs) with lukewarm results but if Soylent works as promised, it'll basically change my life.
That said, my comment was meant to be humourous and I totally understand how people who don't have problems with normal food might view Soylent. It's the ultimate first-world problem.
If you try Soylent, and dislike it, there are other products that are calorie dense that may help. (This is not medical advice, see a doctor, etc etc).
I know of Ensure Plus because I know lots of people with anorexia, and it's used during refeeding programs. (Sometimes as a drink, and sometimes through an NG tube).
OK, so it was a mix of sarcastic and serious. Good to know.
Sure, there may be some people in specialized circumstances that have problems with normal food, though there are a lot of options already (smoothies, existing meal replacements like Ensure, possibly even bodybuilding focused meal replacements as they tend to focus on being high-calorie, soups, etc). And yeah, Soylent does seem like the ultimate first-world-problem food.
Anyhow, good luck with trying to get more calories in your diet, and if Soylent helps you with that, all the better!
I'm commuting 2+ hours twice a week for school, and I don't have time to actually eat (real) food in between work and school. Having a decent meal replacement for that is helpful, so that I don't end up eating garbage.
I drank ensure pretty much every day for about 15 years due to health issues. Every flavor tasted terrible, and it was always presented as a supplement by my doctor. Maybe it's better now this was 10-15 years ago
No one eats every meal with their family, and people who switch to Soylent for every meal are doing so for the interesting story and proof that Soylent, at least in the short term, is not harmful and is complete. The fact that eating together with friends or family is great has very little to do with Soylent.
People keeping bringing this up. What is so difficult about the concept that not everyone wants to, or even can, cook meals that are nutritionally suitable, healthy or even intended to be consumed collectively - all the time?
Because on the internet, and especially in internet comments, the world only exists in black and white. Something is either 100% true for everyone everywhere at all times without exception, or it is 100% false. There is no middle ground, and no shades of gray. Ever.
Imagine people said that you could save time and money by replacing friends with Facebook. Or you could stop walking a buy a segway.
Soylent appeals to exactly those people. If we wanted to live like this we'd just buy a bag of rice and a box of vitamins. We all understand that it's technically possible to use soylent, just that like replacing all your friends with Facebook, or riding a segway, it's social suicide.
>Imagine people said that you could save time and money by replacing friends with Facebook. Or you could stop walking a buy a segway.
or, and hold on, not everyone lives with other people (like, say, students etc) and cooking a meal just for yourself is time consuming and requires you have the energy to do so.
That says nothing about your social life whatever, but, replacing friends on with facebook does. Soylent is in no way social suicide. Even if I wanted to replace my diet 100% with Soylent, that'd have little implication on my already thriving social life, because, you know, I don't only socialize over dinner, there are actual other things to do...
Unless your social life is at a deeper level than simply putting food in your mouth around certain people. Either way, I don't think many people would _replace_ food with Soylent so much as they would drink it instead of eating some meals. I'd love to just drink a glass of liquid instead of preparing and eating a lunch.
> Because Soylent robs families and loved ones of the ritual and ceremony of eating together.
And frees them up to participate in other rituals together?
Just think how many other activities could be correlated with "families that stay together." It's almost a given, since the alternative would be a family that was divorced or estranged from each other... yet still came together for meals.
> a Soylent-saturated world would rob families and loved ones of the ritual and benefits of eating together.
The Vice writer mentions his compromise with his girlfriend: Every time they would have shared a meal... they do something else together instead. My family eats dinner together nearly every night. But it takes a long time (at least for the slow eating kids). Part of me thinks it would be nice if dinner only took 5 minutes (prep & consumption) and we spent the next hour playing a board game together or reading. Replace one ritual with another.
> Soylent will likely become a billion dollar global enterprise, and even "disrupt" the food industry.
Have my doubts on this though. One of the things that contribute most to software startups being successful, and the cause for most hugely successful startups having a software component in them, is network effects. You use that software and not another one because, even if there are alternatives, you have vested interests in the shape of user accounts, files, photos, friends... Even hardware startups have software that backs them and creates those vital network effects.
Soylent is not software, nor it has a software component in it. Its formula might be a secret (as compiled programs "are"). Yes, it can build a brand, but how long till Nestle and/or Kraft Foods, with all their marketing muscle, release their own Soylent?
Might be better to sell Soylent for half that billion to one of them :)
I don't think Soylent has to stop families from eating together, and if it does, the reason those families aren't eating together probably isn't entirely due to Soylent.
Rob himself mentions in his blog many times that he imagines most people won't do what he's done and quit eating real food altogether. It's more of a "fast food" replacement than anything. When you're busy with work or something and the act of cooking is a distraction, you'll often just grab a bag of chips from the pantry or -- if you can take the time -- you might run out to the nearest McDonald's to sate your hunger. You don't want food because it's good, or because you're spending time with your family -- you want it because you're hungry. Rob wants to provide a quick and healthy meal for times like that.
Will I use Soylent? I dunno, probably not. But I can see where the niche exists.
Family that spends time together, stays together. It has nothing to with eating. It's just that eating is a simple way to make it happen in a consistent fashion that's not overly forced.
Haven't similar products existed for a while now? I wonder how Soylent compares to a product like Ensure, or other meal-replacement powders / shakes that have been on the market for years already. Is Soylent significantly cheaper, and/or is it better nutritionally?
I think for Soylent to really explode in sales, they should find a way to market it as a cheap weight loss solution or something similar. The mass market loves weight loss products.
I've read on the Soylent message board and various related sub-reddits that Ensure and similar products are indeed not as nutritionally optimal. Specifically, many of them are loaded with sugar so that they taste good. Which may be okay for 1 meal, but bad if you are using it regularly. Also, they probably are more expensive.
That said, Ensure is usually the product I hear has too much sugar. I'd be curious if anyone with more knowledge has looked into this issue more, or compared the nutritional components of the major players in that market.
I have two kids (10 and 8). Yes, some nights we do not eat together because of schedules, but those nights are few and far between. My wife and I find it quite important that our family can share a meal at least once a day. We know lots of other "modern" families who do the same thing.
Food production and eating are not problems to be solved[0]. If you don't enjoy sitting down to a good meal, well, that's okay by me. Personally, I think you're missing out on something, but that's just my opinion. But please don't act as if giving up on sharing a meal with friends or family is a step forward for humanity.
[0] Famine and food shortages notwithstanding. I could see the benefits of Soylent in areas where there are food shortages and people suffer malnutrion.
> It will also ultimately be a failure and frowned upon in modern society. Why? Because a Soylent-saturated world would rob families and loved ones of the ritual and benefits of eating together.
I'm curious how even eating Soylent for 90% of one's meals would perform this "rob[bing]" of which you speak.
They definitely need two kinds of soylent. One, soylent red, with a different formula and more nutrients for the first few days while our bodies adapt, and then regular soylent green.
I say this because everybody complains the first days are really hard on their bodies and nerves. So a smooth transition would make it easier to stick to the plan and reduce drop rates.
Nothing I've seen about the Soylent project makes me imagine that its founder lives on quite the same planet inhabited by most other humans. He has an interesting idea and he certainly seems able to execute, at least so far, but I can't help but be a little more skeptical than I would be otherwise; the first time I saw mention of it, it took me a good fifteen minutes to convince myself that it was what it appeared to be, and not a prop for some sort of "alternate reality game". Even now, I still find myself waiting for another shoe to drop.
The name is one of the things I love about it. After all, "Soylent is people" is right on target, in the sense that it's a people product, designed to help people with a food problem.
There isn't one group on the planet that wouldn't benefit from at least a little bit of Soylent at some point in their regular lives.
It doesn't have to replace their family meals, and it doesn't have to replace their social eating.
But it can be their occasional breakfast when they got up a little too late. Or their lunch when they need to run to the post office in their lunch break. Or their "eating at my computer" food when they're busy programming and don't want to order pizza delivery. Or their everyday staple when they're on a budget. Or their emergency food when they've just been hit by a tsunami and the rescue team won't come for days. Or their backpack food when they're on a military mission. Or their one-meal a day when they're in a submarine with tight space issues. Etc. etc. etc.
Speaking of multiple Soylent versions, I would go further than that. It would also be nice to see a "protein-enhanced" version for power athletes and actually athletes in general. Right now, I believe the male formulation is ~120 grams (that was the beta version anyway, exact amount not publicly available yet). Worse, it's plant protein. I'd pay more for a high-protein whey isolate version.
It's a related story; it's not the same one. This is basically Soylent's response to the previous story. It's the second chapter in an ongoing dialogue of sorts. I can't claim to speak for everyone here, but I speak as one of the 36 people (at the time of this comment) who upvoted this story. I think it's interesting.
Flag a post because it's inappropriate -- not because you don't care for the topic.
Argh! But, well played.