Why don't people understand? It's so simple: Soylent is for meals you don't care about but need. It's not a) the ONLY food you can eat or b) supposed to replace all meals.
I order a box of Soylent bottles every few weeks—they come in handy while working or for a quick breakfast or if I have little time and am hungry. I also cook meals with my girlfriend a few times a week and go out to dinner every weekend. Both things can exist at the same time.
It's just a nutritious drink you can drink at any time if you need to. If you want to make it most of our meals, sure go ahead. But no one says you must.
This is the problem. That concept is completely foreign to a lot of people (me included). The combination of my body's needs and the way I was raised lead me to view each meal as an opportunity to be enjoyed, never a chore.
Something I observed in the weightlifting community: there are people who need to worry about dieting (cutting) and people who worry about eating enough (bulking). Serious weightlifters go through cycles of both but most people struggle more with one side or another.
Bulking isn't a struggle for me -- I can clear 5,000 kcal/day without a sweat. I've trained myself to eat pretty healthy but I'd always prefer steak and eggs for breakfast. On the other hand, a friend of mine complains about all the pizza he has to eat to meet his targets. Soylent makes a lot of sense for him (quick calories) but I'll never understand that feeling of "ugh, I need to eat, guess I'll have a Soylent".
The liquid Soylent is about as disruptive as drinking water. That's really useful to me when I'm sucked into a programming challenge or research task. Sometimes I'll go 3-4 days doing nothing but work and sleep. A meal is really disruptive during those times, because I just want my head fully integrated into the problems I'm working on.
"Good morning," said the little prince.
"Good morning," said the merchant.
This was a merchant who sold pills that had been
invented to quench thirst. You need only swallow one
pill a week, and you would feel no need of anything to
drink.
"Why are you selling those?" asked the little prince.
"Because they save a tremendous amount of time," said
the merchant. "Computations have been made by experts.
With these pills, you save fifty-three minutes in every
week."
"And what do I do with those fifty-three minutes?"
"Anything you like..."
"As for me," said the little prince to himself, "if I
had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked, I should
walk at my leisure toward a spring of fresh water."
In my experience no one who treats that idea as novel ever seems to offer a litmus test to tell if the value of technology trumps the potential enjoyment in doing something manually. Does rimantas use stone or metal tools to cook? But the feeling of spinning the tree branch in your hands against the kindling! How greatly rimantas has lost in their fervor for convenience...
I do my best work while sleeping, I just need to figure out how to bill for it.
Is Soylent ramen for rich people?
I'm working on decentralization, which I think is a very socially important goal. The cloud is not my ultimate objective, but it's one of the very few short term use cases I see where a decentralized system seems to have the potential to utterly dominate a centralized one.
Decentralized tech is very new. It's very hopium, and it's very poorly understood, both by zealots and by non-believers. I think that decentralization is going to change a lot of things in fundamental ways, and I think I can move the field forward faster by building a tangible, provably working, provably superior use case for decentralized tech.
Cloud storage is not as glamorous as starting a new world order, but the most important engineering is often the most mundane. People probably felt similarly about the Internet back before the world wide web was invented.
Edit: I think decentralization is great (like say IPFS), but I would not risk health or put off others to dedicate all my time to working on it, social interaction is an everyday need!
What part of that stack are you working on? Blockchain currency, low level networking, distributed filesystems, p2p websites, ...
In all seriousness, this is tremendously unhealthy. Get up and go for a walk, a light jog, something. The health consequences of even just being sedentary for that long are terrible (to say nothing of the psychological consequences of deceiving yourself into thinking that work is the only thing of value in life).
I know this is HN, but that sounds awful.
I think it happens less than once a month, and almost always lasts less than a week.
I do wish that I went hiking more often, camping more often, and I wish that I had more social interactions that were free of social and business undertones.
I once felt that living like you currently are was sustainable and that I would be impervious to the long term effects, but now that I have hit the half century mark, I am finding I suffer from all sorts of back and shoulder pain from sitting for extended programming sessions lasting days. I also have rapidly degrading eyesight, and high risk of glaucoma from staring at screens all day every day, and I have other health and digestive issues from not eating regular healthy meals, or drinking enough water back in the day.
It is highly likely that the lifestyle you are accustomed to will turn around and bite you one day. Make changes now so that you don't end up the same as this old programmer. :)
That being said, make time for yourself, all consuming projects will make you discontent with life in general.
It is not necessarily less "living life", just different choices.
Of course, that assumes you do it because you're working on things that excite you and interest you because you enjoy them.
That sounds extremely unhealthy from both a physical and a mental standpoint.
Exactly the reason we should enjoy actual regular meals, preferably with other people.
When going out to eat, I would hold my son in my left hand, as I shoveled food into my mouth with my right hand, taking a break to apologize to whomever was dining with me for having such bad manners.
> But when the kids are sick or I'm running behind and have a meeting, I grab a soylent and I feel like it's a lot healthier than picking up sugary junk or other alternatives.
It's not about general meals. It's those situations where you aren't able to make a real meal and have to settle on either nothing, or something fast and convenient. A muffin can be grabbed and eaten immediately. I'm not really sure how you expect them to grill a steak and vegetables.
So yes, it's not perfect, but it's better than it sounds.
(And it's 34 total net carbohydrates per bottle, with 3g fiber. Which isn't great, either.)
Your expectations of how much sugar people should eat are set unrealistically low.
Sometimes when I'm working, I run to the fridge, grab whatever is in it and eat it while I keep working. It usually doesn't taste like anything because I don't even bother heating it.
Soylent lets me do that but it's a lot healthier than whatever leftovers I might grab out of the fridge.
Either way I'm not enjoying the food nor the company (I'm at my desk at home alone). I'm also only spending 10 minutes.
I have a feeling that if the truth were to come out, the effectiveness of flossing would turn out to be entirely dependent on tooth spacing or some other individual characteristic. If so, that may be true for the waterjet gadgets as well. But it seems less likely.
Who does exactly?
Food, to me, represents more than replenishment of nutrition. It represents meeting and understanding my coworkers. Learning more about my significant other or unwinding with this person to talk about our week. Even when it's not a social situation, for me it's a treat. I completed some work and now I should treat myself by revitalizing my body with a substance that tastes good. It's a great motivator.
It's such a fundamental part of being a human being I can't at all relate to seeing it as a mechanical process such as flossing. I can't think of a worse comparison: when you're flossing, you're alone, and if anything anti social. Eating couldn't be any more be the opposite. It's something that all humans can relate to and bond over no matter what your opinions are.
Flossing isn't a part of our culture. Food is a part of every culture.
But just like I can, and occasionally do, enjoy social interactions but usually prefer solitude, while I can, and do often, greatly enjoy food there are still plenty of time when hunger is just an annoying disruption.
All of the stuff that you have built up around food can exist just fine separate from it. You connecting socialising and bonding with food is just habit. That's fine, but it isn't universal.
I generally don't like food. Sometimes I crave something specific, or want to eat at a nice place. But 6 out of 7 days out of the week, food just isn't appealing to me, and is a chore to eat. It's basically like flossing.
Ever since a time when I was a teen and had to fast because of an esophagus problem, I haven't really felt hunger the same way. It's possible for me to go a few days without eating and not notice it or feel hungry. I can tell when I'm very hungry because I get lightheaded and weak around day 3. (Note, I don't do this intentionally and it isn't often I go days without eating).
So Soylent (or equivalent) is really helpful in making sure I get some food everyday.
I mean, I agree with you and everything but you're saying "this thing is so important to me I cannot understand other people". There are a reasonably large number of people who would be very happy if they only ever ate a bowl of cereal and a banana for breakfast every single day for the rest of their life. I don't understand it, and I wouldn't like it, but I don't want to prevent them the comfort they get from that.
> Who does exactly?
I do! Admittedly anecdotal. I am not afraid to confess that I enjoy flossing.
Also, deciding what to eat is a huge chore and mental energy drain for me... especially since I like constant diversity and novelty even in food. If I could afford to have a personal chef that would be trained to "always surprise me" and occasionally I could just tell him smth like "uhm, that salad looks delicious, but I'm too lazy to eat it, grind it up into a shake please so I can slurp it on my way to place X or while coding" it would rock!
There seems to be something very unsettling to people like you about the idea of "meal replacement". To me it appears to be a kind of cultural conservatism, like it's an attack on "family values".
Different people, different concepts :). I used a Soylent clone in the past to replace breakfast/lunch and I liked it. I feel I might be unique at that among my coworkers, but I e.g. really prefer eating at my desk - I can parallelize it with work, or reading a book, or reading HN, which is infinitely more interesting to me than eating out with most people.
> but I'll never understand that feeling of "ugh, I need to eat, guess I'll have a Soylent".
My mother was on a diet plan once, where they suggested two options for meals each day, and if you really didn't feel like eating that, you could replace it with a protein shake. There were days when that shake really was the best alternative, and it allowed her to stick to the plan instead of giving up.
It sounds like you have either more free time or a more a steady work schedule then their target user.
Always having too little time, always working and being proud to plan every minute of every day (recently Marissa Mayer and Bill Gates and someone else from the US said in interviews they have every minute of every day planned; sounds like pure hell but he) seems very American. This Soylent thing fits in there.
Why would someone want to work that much unless you want to become a billionaire which, again, seems a drive in media coming from the US?
Maybe it is just the media I read though, but here there is no vibe like that and when I meet (very successful/rich) entrepreneurs in Asia/Aus/EU they seem to be always eating elaborately so they do not give of that vibe either. Again the press distorts but posts here on HN and a thing like Soylent support that press.
I think there is more acceptance in certain cultures, for example, to skip lunch because it's a busy day. Having worked globally and in multiple industries, I don't believe it's an American only thing although probably more common there. I see it as more of an industry thing, and each industry seems to have it's own use case for a product like Soylent. i.e. the programmer 'in the zone' and not wanting to stop for dinner or the investment banker running on a few hours of sleep due to an upcoming pitch.
> Always having too little time, always working and being proud to plan every minute of every day
I'm not sure how that was implied, but that does not represent the typical American workforce in my view.
> entrepreneurs in Asia/Aus/EU they seem to be always eating elaborately
I would be surprised to hear these types of individuals don't deal with skipped meals or lack of time based on what's going on in there life/work like their counterparts in other countries do.
People here imply that people consume Soylent either because they cannot get enough calories in with normal food to not lose weight (what a luxury that must be), or, in most cases and as the direct parent writes, that they do not have time to eat 'normally'. That seems to mesh with the whole culture of fast food and minute day planning; I for one could not tell you if I have time for an elaborate meal or a quick meal at lunch today and I would not want to know if I do either. I'll see what happens when I get hungry.
> but that does not represent the typical American workforce in my view.
Not typical workforce; I'm citing some famous and very rich US business people. Just noting that these people seem proud of it while I don't hear the same stories (in the press) from anywhere else. And others (especially on HN) seem desperate to copy it (which is, I assume, were Soylent came from in the first place); people who cite this (time-hacking/life-hacking/whatever-hacking it is called) as a great feat are all from (=living in currently) the US when I check their profiles.
But having employees willing to sacrifice their actual wellbeing for the pipe-dream of getting "rich" is quite beneficial if you're say, a VC, so of course they foster this culture. "Look at how busy you are, you must be doing such important work!"
https://books.google.com/books?id=2uBEAAAAIAAJ&lpg=PA44&ots=...
I find it hard to hit 2500 calories daily to not lose weight.
2400 calories per gallon, well balanced between protein, fat, and carbs (you might say that it is ideally formulated to feed large mammals :P). The best part is that it is readily available every where and super cheap (< $3 per gallon).
https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/lactose-intolerance#statis...
Europe varies greatly, with by far the highest level of tolerance in Northern Europe (I'm Norwegian, and I didn't even know about lactose intolerance until I was in the 20's - it just wasn't something that became a subject until we were exposed to more immigrants as while it existed in Norway before that it was <5%), with lactose intolerance increasing to well above 20% in many other European countris.
In any case the advice to down vast quantities as milk isn't universally applicable anywhere.
The full quote:
"Approximately 65 percent of the human population has a reduced ability to digest lactose after infancy. Lactose intolerance in adulthood is most prevalent in people of East Asian descent, affecting more than 90 percent of adults in some of these communities. Lactose intolerance is also very common in people of West African, Arab, Jewish, Greek, and Italian descent."
It is also a very inferior product made with zero genetic engineering. Just silly crossbreeding until the cow has big enough milk gains.
Don't see how it's, from a nutritional or health perspective, superior to Soylent.
Milk is also super cheap because it's heavily subsidized through taxes. I'm not saving idiot entrepreneurs by buying their unsustainable products.
Several other points:
1. The OP was remarking that they had a hard time maintaining weight. Anybody who has done GOMAD (gallon of milk a day) can tell you that large quantities of milk will head off the possibility of weight loss.
2. Is there any reason to believe that the agricultural inputs to something like Soylent aren't just as heavily subsidized as you claim milk to be?
Milk is in our diet for several thousand years, not millions.
1. There's also a lot of people who ate balanced meals and kept weight. Drinking that much milk has some unwanted stuff in it - like IGF-I - which can cause cancer in those huge amounts.
2. Maybe soy, but that's a side-effect of the dairy that uses it not for the sake of human consumption. But it's highly likely the soy used is the one for human consumption, which would remove the necessary subsidies.
Maybe it's the way Soylent markets itself, but I don't understand why people are so _personally_ offended by it. Just... don't eat it.
There is no cultural value to food, for me. There is no social value that I find appealing about food.
I like a great meal a lot, but if that was the three top events each day, I'd consider it an empty life.
Although from this thread I'm starting to think the real reason many people dislike Soylent is the holier-than-thou attitude many of it's supporters seem to sport :)
Soylent seems to me to be a hipster Ultra Slim Fast and consumed for the exact same reasons legions of working women have that stuff in office refrigerators.
I can respect that people have different priorities than a great meal each day, but I can also pity them.
There's a volume challenge - 5,000kcal is only 1.5lb of butter, but 32lb of broccoli.
There's also a mechanical challenge- chewing constantly (e.g. when eating lots of vegetables) is emotionally exhausting.
I do acknowledge it's possible there are people out there for whom there is simply no greater joy than eating, who would eat nonstop with joy. But, not everyone is like that.
When I arrive home to an empty apartment at 9PM, I sure as hell don't feel like cooking. Sure, I cook great meals during the weekend and the days I come home early. But cooking when you got back from a big day of work + an infernal commute is cooking nothing but a chore.
Edit: That being said, I'll drink a regular liquid meal and only if all the other alternatives can't be done (no food in the fridge, I am not home, I need to eat in the car, etc.) I don't see the need to get Soylent either.
I used to be a normal weight, but I had to eat 1,200 kcals and run 4 miles a day.
On the days when I lift weights I eat close to 5K calories, sometimes even a little more, depending on the commute. All of my daily commute is by bike, including taking my kid to and from the kindergarten, and later to some extra activities (welcome to Denmark), which can be anywhere between 20 and 35 km total for the day.
I'm 178 cm and weigh around 79 kg.
http://strengtheory.com/increasing-work-capacity/
So essentially every week I'm doing just a little bit more volume in every exercise, either by adding a little weight, or an extra rep. So far I'm able to do it consistently for a few months so I guess I'm recovering well.
Then of course there is all that "getting used to it" thing where you do something long enough and get into it gradually and increase little by little and you're fine.
I worked originally about 5 km from home and it felt like it was enough cycling there and back. Then I changed my job and now I was 11 km from home so I started combining bike + train for a while because that felt like too much to cycle. Then one sunny day I cycled all the way home. I realized two things: 1) I'm not that tired and 2) I cut 10 minutes off my train + bike commute. So now I bike all the way and save time and money at the same time! Win-win!
I lift 5x, walk every where and swim LISS 3x a week. 173cm about 82kg. TDEE is ~3250 kcal. Currently shoot for 3500 a day. However, I only see my son on weekends. I bet my TDEE would be higher if had him every day.
I keep a box of soylent under my desk specifically for days like this. Without food I get "hangry" and can't concentrate.
I can chug a bottle of soylent in a minute or two between meetings, or sip from it instead of from a water glass, without being even as disruptive as an energy bar would be. (Plus I can't stand how sugary those things are.)
It's a terrible substitute for a salad but there's every reason to believe it's better for you than a slice of pizza or a bag of chips. Like any other food, it has a place in a healthy diet as long as it's in moderation.
Probably it's all not that black and white, you like the convenience etc, but damn it just sounds sad. I also used to try to optimise my life to have impact etc, until i realised that i don't want to miss out on also living it.
What if you schedule your workday too tightly to break for lunch specifically so that you can leave the office earlier and spend time with the people you love?
What if you'd rather spend an extra hour a couple times a week hiking with your friends / family rather than chopping vegetables and scrubbing pots?
What if spending less time on food ENABLES you to live your life instead of missing out?
Due to how cultural values vary, I'm not surprised that many HN readers are repulsed to some degree by the idea of not preparing and consuming a traditional meal. It's just a kind of conservatism, a recognition of traditional values that help us find another way to enjoy life.
In my own time growing up, my family had traditionally prepared meals almost every day together, and yet even as a child I had little patience for it. I was endlessly curious, wanted to explore the world, play with dad, tinker with my computer, read something, write something, draw something, make something. My life was incredibly full of worth and value to me, and I enjoyed it immensely -- and yet, meals were only ever a distraction, merely one of the lesser chores I had to take care of to keep enjoying the rest of my life.
This sentiment is still largely with me today. Today, meals either serve as a mechanism for me to guarantee people I want to spend time with will be in the same place at the same time, or else I'm alone, in which case I simply see no point in all the bother. There are still many things much more interesting and spiritually fulfilling to me than preparing, consuming, and cleaning up after a traditional meal. Gladly would I accept a solution that successfully meets all of my nutritional needs while also allowing me to do any of those other things instead.
i've known since high school that there are some people out there that view eating as a nuisance but i didn't know there were so many that were in the tech industry. everyone i've ever known in tech loved eating/cooking/meals out/whatever (obviously i've been self-selecting my social group!)
It IS sad, downvotes or not.
Let's see how long it takes them to lose that image of a complete food replacement.
Soylent makes perfect sense in the context of a meal replacer for busy or lazy people. But even the original creator stopped eating it at all times because he missed the "social aspect of eating".
Thanks god for creating apples and bananas and thanks the grocery stores for selling them all the year round. And thanks the Germans for putting a bakery on every corner.
You can store apples during the whole winter if you have below 0 degrees outside. We did it when I was young.
Quality of life does not starts with a 6 digit salary and ends with working on the next Uber for X. Living in the right country/city with the right people can case you a lot of happiness. I know because I was born behind the iron curtain.
But is that really a reason to argue against nutritionally complete meals? Healthy is still better than unhealthy. I suppose the choice becomes healthy or tasty at some point.
I think a lot of people eat very unhealthy, especially people who have no time to cook a proper meal. Something that helps them eat more nutritionally balanced food could do them a lot of good.
>> people who have no time to cook a proper meal
Are we talking about the same people they spend daily 4+ hours wathing TV?
I'd quite like to have a good portable locally sold lunch option that doesn't have bread of some sort in, but the only option seems to be soup.
But there are already so many meal replacements on the market, from companies that actually know what they are doing. Why choose soylent?
Soylent is not the cheapest. It's not the tastiest. It doesn't have the best macro balance.
Why soylent and not one of the trusted brands?
No, Ensure, Slimfast, Boost, etc. are not balanced (eg. too much sugar and vitamins, not enough calories and fiber).
Wait,
"Soylent is an open source meal REPLACEMENT[emph added], advertised as a "staple meal", available in liquid and powdered forms as a beverage, and as a solid-form meal bar. Its creators state that Soylent meets all nutritional requirements for an average adult."
If something is advertised as a "meal replacement", it seems likely that people will use it to ... replace their meals - for those inclined, that would mean "all meals".
https://web.archive.org/web/20150515220800/https://www.soyle...
But regardless, they went for that angle in the early days because it got them the advertising and funding. It got the attention, it's good marketing.
Nowadays they bill it as a meal replacer, in the respect of you CAN replace whatever meal you want with it without having to worry about the effort or time it takes to prepare/research a good balanced meal.
All that said, I don't personally use the stuff but would like to try it out.
> It's not [...] b) supposed to replace all meals.
That's not how it was advertised during launch and the kickstarter. It was heavily pushed as a sole source of nutrition.
People are only repeating what Soylent said.
If you can use Soylent as a sole source of nutrition there shouldn't be anyone in this thread saying that Soylent is never meant to be used as a sole source of nutrition.
If you can't use it as such then Soylent have been irresponsible in their marketing (although they have toned it down a bit).
https://ensure.com/nutrition-products/protein-shakes-healthy...
Is it cheaper? More complete? Dehydrated?
I was on a liquid diet for a while for medical reasons. Ensure (and other drinks in that space) are horrifyingly sugary, and even their "diabetic" formula is disgustingly sweet and high in simple processed carbs that are a half step up from sucrose. They're also extremely low in fiber.
Additionally, though the vitamins and minerals are balanced for consuming four per day, you'd have to drink 8-10 of them daily to fill the caloric needs of a healthy and not particularly active adult. Sugar is a surprisingly inefficient source of calories on the scale of an adult's daily metabolic needs.
Soylent has a very neutral flavor that can be seasoned for a sweet or savory effect, and a bottle has roughly the right amount of calories for a meal for an adult. If you're moderately active and eating nothing else, around 5 per day will suffice.
Even on a liquid diet, I ate other things besides soylent, and I struggled to consume enough calories to meet my basal metabolic rate - below which your body will start consuming itself for energy. (Forget maintaining your original weight on a liquid diet at all.) Whole milk, you say? I was forbidden to consume significant amounts of lactose.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of options were either extremely sweet or would fill your stomach without providing meaningful nutrition (a cup of chicken broth has 10 calories!) Despite usually being a chocolate hound, after two weeks of that I would gag at the thought of a m&m. Soylent at least was neutral and would keep me feeling full for a little while.
But if you're a young man drinking Soylent, this hip new VC-backed tech fuel drink, it occupies a similar mental association space to Red Bull. I can't help just seeing it as a marketing thing.
How is mixing & drinking a glass of Soylent easier or less time consuming than eating a sandwich with cheese & lettuce? Or an apple?
I buy some Soylent and it will be good there for a while. So when I'm hungry and we are out of bread, now it's a 30 second meal vs a 30 minutes or more to run to the store.
>I buy some Soylent and it will be good there for a while.
Regardless, I'm hoping you realize that I was being general and using "Soylent" as the example there because that was the topic of conversation.
Also your comment is especially funny to me as I've never purchased Soylent the product. I have things similar to it, but I've never bought any Soylent. Once they get this figured out, I might try their bars, but they seem a bit expensive for me which is why I'm always apprehensive to pull the trigger.
Just with a different marketing pitch.
Problem already solved, MRE [0] and discussed [1].
[0] Example here is a Patrol Ration One Man (PR1M) used in the ADF ~ https://flickr.com/photos/bootload/4549780731/in/set-7215762...
It's simple, really: The closer your are to nature, the better you feel (because the healthier you are). Our body is happier when we spend our time in nature instead of artificial environment (there are studies on that subject) and we are less cancerous when we eat natural food (as opposed to processed food).
Every time we step away from our nature, we sabotage ourselves.
With a uranium chaser.
Start cooking food was a big step. Too much of nature and your body can turn into an aquatic park.
Honestly, it fucking kicked ass. I'll list some of the pros and cons
Pro
- Easy to make
- Portable
- Little mess/no cleaning
- More time to do other stuff
- Most insane regular shits. 2pm everyday, sit, shit, 2x wipe, done in 30 seconds. Every shit was exactly the same.
- Never any indigestion, gas, diarrhea, sick feeling
- Never felt hungry. Like I would go weeks without feeling that sensation
- Felt really good overall
- Skin disease cleared up for the first time in over a decade
- Perfect control over calories and macro composition
- Cheap(ish), $7 a day.
Cons
- Bland/bad taste and texture
- Gets old fast (like "Ugghh, not this again")
- Must drink lots of water with it. (really only a con because I had to carry a water bottle too, but water is good for you)
- Takes a while to drink, at least for me.
- Piss is neon yellow (from vitamin B, not really a con, just odd)
- People are kind of freaked out by it
- Doesn't store well in liquid form, so must be made each time before drinking or at least daily.
- Needs some time to sit (~30 min) after making or else it has a really bitter taste.
- First 2 weeks were brutal. Felt all manner of sick and uneasy from it. My body felt all out of wack. Intense headaches too. Others had warned of this so I pushed on. I was about to give up but on day 13 I woke up feeling great and it was smooth sailing from then on out. Guess it was my body adjusting? I had a really shit diet before that.
Right now I am still drinking them but way less, maybe 6 a week down from 21 a week. Regular food is just so good. But I plan to go back to it in the near future.
We have enough other stuff in our lives to look forward to that we can sacrifice one part of it.
Not that anyone should if they don't want to, just saying I can understand it.
Throughout my entire life I always would get get some form of indigestion pretty regularly. It had gotten to the point where I just accepted it as what it is to be human. Nausea was by far the most common and happened all the time. Once over that two week hump though, everything went away. It was awesome. Now I still get some indigestion since I eat more much regular food now, but I eat a healthier diet so it's not so bad.
I use a different protein (NOW dutch choc isolate) and a different oil (smart balance). I also dropped the choline because it has a bad interaction with nicotine and I use an e-cig. When I went full soylent though I used it because I stopped using my e-cig during that time. I also added in 5g creatine.
I should note that this is a mass building recipe and meant for use while lifting. It has way more protein then you need for regular day to day. You can axe the protein down to ~60g daily and use it.
Also if you want to try it, get the corn flour from the grocery not amazon. It's waaaayy over priced on amazon.
Why bother getting healthy in one aspect of your life if you're going to trash it in another?
And that health is a zero-sum game. It's not.
[0] gwern.net/Nicotine
I see people saying this, and I've seen that they have short-term effects one would expect from taking in nicotine (not that dissimilar to caffeine), but nothing much suggesting that they're harmful in the longer term.
I was an early Soylent supporter because my wife and I were curious about it and thought it might be inexpensive and sensible to replace our lunch meals with it. If we both worked through lunch, hilariously, we could have had an extra hour to spend cooking dinner.
Not every meal of my day needs to be a fine dining experience.
Also, my wife was pregnant, and having a lot of random food aversions. The idea of something you could just sort of mindlessly drink was appealing to her.
She tried it once and really hated it. I tried it twice and also really hated it. So it didn't stick for us, but I liked the idea of it. I brought it to the place I was working at the time and one of the engineers there really took to it, ate all the rest of it over the course of a few weeks. Different strokes.
Backpacking, hiking, search and rescue, hunting, anything outdoors.
I carry an unopened package of Soylent powder in my SAR pack and I've been glad I have it several times. Take a Nalgene, fill it up to about 300 ml with powder, add water, shake vigorously, and now you have enough fuel to ease fatigue for several hours. It's lightweight and convenient and easy. Cleanup is simple.
Now when I'm peak-bagging my default is just to carry some Soylent with me. The only time I carry my mess kit anymore is if I'm going out with the intention of a morning, afternoon, or evening meal ritual being a planned part of the trip. Like, "let's hike out to Phoenix Lake and have a nice hot dinner at sunset." Otherwise, Soylent.
I've been gradually becoming a disciple of the ultralight over the last couple of years and food weight is challenging to whittle down. The alternatives, freeze-dried anything, are mostly disgusting and still require carrying a stove, fuel, and require cleanup. Soylent has reduced my pack weight and size by quite a bit, and (for the most part) I'm getting better nutrition overall because I can just chug it in small doses throughout the day. It also means I'm less likely to develop a fatigue-related injury.
It's gotten some attention from other folks on my SAR team and my longtime hiking partner has started giving it a try too. It doesn't seem to be something that's really caught on in the outdoor industry yet. I really wish Soylent would sell small, lightweight packages of the powder that were pre-sized to mix with about .8 liters of water and then get it into places like REI, but I guess that's not something they're very interested in.
> The alternatives, freeze-dried anything, are mostly disgusting and still require carrying a stove, fuel, and require cleanup
I've found Mountain House to be decently close to tasting like real food and requires no cleanup other than wiping the spoon. A Snow Peak LiteMax with a 750ml titanium pot weigh next to nothing, but there is still the fuel canister. I find the MoHo tasty enough that I'll eat it at home or work on occasion if I really don't want to spend any time on a meal.
The older powder was a bit tougher to clean (but not difficult), the newer one is easier.
Mountain House probably got better since I last tried their stuff, but it still requires stopping, cooking, cleanup. I've got an MSR Windburner and I love it for what it is, but if I just want to put down a lot of miles for a quick trip the Soylent is king. I'm >this< close to being able to do a Summer overnight with my 12L BD Bbee.
...of course, developing some serious intestinal discomfort 18 miles from the car would suck, so there's that.
I found Soylent 2.0 and Coffiest work a lot better, since their bottles are disposable. Just put it in your trash bag and you're good.
That said I agree in another aspect... I'm actually surprised I couldn't find more MRE (not just energy-granola type) bars that specifically market to the outdoor crowd on Google, especially considering things like ultralight backpacking becoming more popular. I could only find one offhand (http://www.greenbelly.co/). Maybe I'm missing more, but it does seem like there would be more of a market for this sort of thing.
Speaking for myself, I also find that after a day of getting your ass kicked by Mother Nature, having something that somewhat approximates comfort food - warm, saucy, even if rehydrated - before crawling into your tent or bivy is a big morale booster.
Just ordered my first batch of Huel and am going to try it next weekend. Could make my pack lighter and might be more nutritious.
Sometimes they might not understand, so they reach out and converse with others: "I don't understand why anyone would X, because Y has always worked for me." What's so wrong with that conversation and assume they're shills?
A lot of people think they don't like fish because they've never tasted fresh fish.
Then I tried Huel (Soylent equivalent made in the UK), and I get it. The best way I can describe it is that food had become like music for me. Rather than just sitting down and listening to music, I have some music on all the time, in the background. I constantly wanted to be tasting something, eating.
I found that by using Huel, I changed that habit. I can prepare it in a minute and drink it quickly, and it stops me feeling hungry. I can limit my calorie intake perfectly without having to think about tracking it, and it means I can avoid thinking about food at all. Then, on occasion, when I go out with friends or whatever, I can have a real meal and really enjoy the tastes.
It's like only listening to music when I go out to a concert and that's all I'm doing.
It's not for everyone, for sure, but there are definitely real cases for it. I'm sure on the other end of the spectrum, there are people that just don't care about food and this helps them remember to eat the right amount.
Assuming that your relationship with food is the same as everyone else's is your mistake.
Maybe fragile masculinity? IDK.
I think that the difference is that this stuff was uniquely (and probably irresponsibly[1]) marketed towards nerds. - It's not advertised, as the shakes I mention before this, to make you bigger or smaller; it's advertised to save you effort on eating; I think that is the primary difference.
[1]My impression is that they have implied that soylent can completely replace normal food for long periods of time, and I personally think that is dangerous, just because of how much we don't know about micros and about the GI tract in general. I'm sure it's fine if you do the slim-fast thing and have 'a delicious shake for breakfast, another for lunch, then a sensible dinner' - but that's not how soylint seems to be advertised.
Huh. I've always gotten the impression that Muscle Milk is a protein supplement (though it's got carbs, too), not really a (full nutritional) meal replacement.
Of course, I'm no doctor (but then, neither is Rob Rhinehart,) and it is possible research has progressed further than I know; but personally? I wouldn't take the word of a software engineer on this.
Nope. Here is what the Muscle Milk website says in their FAQ - note the last sentence:
Many people use MUSCLE MILK® Ready to Drink Shakes and Powders as a meal replacement or snack between meals. The ready-to-drink products are especially convenient to use as a meal replacement or snack when you are on-the-go. MUSCLE MILK® Ready to Drink Shakes should always be used in conjunction with whole foods and adequate hydration, and never as a sole source of nutrition.
My understanding is that we don't know either way, really. Hell, there's still a lot of legitimate controversy about the RDA - and that is just a very short, and certainly incomplete list of micros.
(personally, I'd be more concerned about the missing micros (or that they put in the wrong chemical form of the micros) than I would be about the structure of the food; but I'm no doctor, and certainly chewing is a part of digestion, so maybe that is important, too? I bet you could actually find good studies on that part, though; figuring out if a liquid diet is ok should be easier than figuring out if you have all the micronutrients you need; there are plenty of cases where people are medically tube-fed over the medium to long term.. but I think that even that involves pulped fresh food, and how is that different from food that wasn't recently living? the obvious starting place is the bacteria, but I'm sure there are other differences, too.)
That's the thing, it seems like this would make for interesting medical research but it's instead advertised as a time-saver, without a lot of actual medical supervision.
Again, the 'extraordinary claim' here is just that you can live solely off of the stuff... if they marketed it the way the other meal replacements are marketed, e.g. we tried to make this good for you, but don't let this be the only thing you eat, I think it would be a fine product.
This would make a great Black Mirror episode.
The spin of the marketing is almost certainly part of it, Soylent being marketed as "don't bother stepping away from that super important coding problem, just have some soylent," but it's also the first marketed (non-medical) product that really aims to be nutritionally complete and balanced. There are certainly criticisms you could levy at Soylent WRT whether they've succeeded at that goal, but at least it's their goal.
I've never heard of slimfast, and if I had I would immediately discount it because I'm not overweight, nor do I eat badly.
Soylent was simply the first product I heard of that did the meal replacement "with everything you need nutritionally" thing.
Not saying it was the first, just that it was the first I'd heard of it.
Never actually went out and got it, but was close because I was at a time in my life where I was too busy to prepare good meals, (between sports, work and my own side projects).
There are a wide variety of sole-source of nutrition liquid feeds.
The reason you haven't heard of them is because they've been marketed to medical professionals, for use with ill people, and not to the general public.
The lack of caution in the promotion of Soylent is a worrying sign.
It's like how "Gatorade" was neon colored and marketed for athletes, when the same kind of formula was also used for less glamorous rehydration.
Instead of being packaged like Slimfast is, where it becomes part of weight loss culture, Soylent is targeted at hacker types. It fits. They're supposed to always be working and have no time for cooking, and it has a futuristic image, so they integrate with it.
When really, you're right, it's basically the same thing as Slimfast.
http://observer.com/2013/10/how-is-soylent-not-just-slim-fas...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/01/food-tech...
I didn't read those, but I think there's a slight difference between Soylent and other meal replacement drinks, mainly in the purpose. Slimfast is for people who only use them to lose weight. Ensure is for people who only use them because of illness. Soylent is for people who want to transcend humanity to sustain life without the hassle of ingestion.
I get it. I'd love to bypass eating. But I think it's naive. When I saw the people getting excited over it on Reddit many years ago, I rolled my eyes. Nutrition is not so simple and understood where you can mix some ingredients in batch, then drink your meals quickly without thought. You can get away with it for a while, especially if you're young. But it's really a science fiction fantasy, and I thought the people buying into it were naive at best, and being scammed at worst.
Just like I think believing you need Slimfast to lose weight, or that it's a smart approach is equally naive. People want simple programs to follow though, and it's opportunity for businessmen to capitalize on the desire.
It's as simple as marketing, which does matter. Slimfast in it's name implies a diet drink, not food replacement. Most people would never even consider them in the same arena and that's due to simple marketing by the very companies that produce them.
But don't be too quick to dismiss masculinity or coolness factors in product selection. Diet Coke and Coke Zero are essentially the same thing made by the same company (the latter having a slightly different "flavor profile"). Coke Zero exists because some men or many men will not order a Diet Coke: it's sissy or uncool. Coke Zero was introduced solely for that reason.
Compare to e.g. Diet Pepsi, which is to Pepsi what Coke Zero is to Coke, Coca Cola was for decades worried about making something that was too close to the original (hence Tab being their first diet cola)
Or Diet RC Cola, which is the only diet cola product I've ever been close to confuse with the real thing (my parents insisted I "wouldn't notice the difference" with diet colas as a child in an attempt to get me to accept them, and utterly failed).
If you want a diet cola that tastes like a regular cola, Diet Coke will never be it, and it left Coca Cola with a gap in their lineup for people who weren't as concerned about picking a diet product, but would pick one if there's a diet cola available that is "close enough".
[1]: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/introducing-bloke-co...
How do they differ in ingredients?
- initially announced on a blog in 2013
- crowdfunded on Tilt, raising over $3M
- got funding from a16z
Due to that it's got a lot of cachet. Also, the idea of a meal replacement is more in line with life/body hacking.
Slimfast goes back to 1987 and is marketed as a diet and weight loss product. One could consider it more "old tech".
This is just my very fallible perception, and I don't intend any judgement on either.
Had to drink a lot to get enough energy and it was way too sugary and sweet – it gave me the sick feeling I get when I have only donuts or something for breakfast. The sugar free version tasted too much of aspartame.
I'd be happy to try something else with the same sweetness balance of Soylent if you have a suggestion.
I use a Soylent-like products occasionally just to increase my chances of my body getting all the specific nutrients it can use.
http://www.slim-fast.com/recipes/balanced-meals/#balanced-me...
But really I think a lot of the Soylent hate comes from the fact that people assume their own senses are the best judge, when really we only have a sample size of one. It doesn't even have to be a lack of sense acuity as I said above, but just personal taste. People come in all different types, and that's cool.
[1]: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0421/5993/t/4/assets/Compl...
People report Soylent 'curing' rashes: that's exactly the opposite happening. They were deficient in e.g. zinc until now and finally got enough through Soylent. A good multivitamin would also have solved it.
There's argument to be made for supplementing a known deficiency, but it seems as if you're better off eating it in food rather than a supplement.
[1]: http://annals.org/aim/article/1789253/enough-enough-stop-was...
[2]: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/07/the-vitami...
That said, of course I would never support "soylent" anything if it is making people energy/immune system/vitamin deficient no matter how many classic dystopian novels it names its food after.
My only complaints:
* Too expensive
* Too inconvenient (It leaves a residue on everything, and mixing a pitcherful consistently was a chore)
Its not like these companies do their own research anyways; its an application of the same nutritional studies everyone else has access too.
Care to elaborate? What exactly do you mean by "what you need to also eat in order to absorb the necessary nutrients"?
These absorption rates can also vary widely from person to person, based on the flora in your gut, the drugs you ingest, your diet, and also certain DNA (eg. most East Asians never developed specific lactose related digestive abilities [1]) and ancestry can significantly alter this too.
For example, my grandfather had issues with high iron absorption, thus he would regularly donate blood to get rid of the excess iron in his bloodstream. Neither I nor my immediate family share that issue, but he made dietary choices based in part on avoiding iron rich food (like the iron enriched cookies I used to eat, mmm).
TL;DR: Your body & the food you eat are very complex things to understand, and we understand the tiniest sliver about it. Highly processed food likely misses important nutrients you need.
1 - https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/lactose-intolerance#statis...
Food like this that's specifically tuned to your own metabolism would be fantastic of course, but just getting some healthy stuff into you instead of whatever the vending machine sells, is already an enormous improvement for a lot of people.
One possible angle for explanation is that if you're already missing these things, there's only upside. Additionally, it seems most who use soylent don't use it to replace all meals, but only some where time savings is the primary consideration. Anecdotally, I searched for bars that would do the same thing some years ago, because I had no patience for cooking anything, no friends or family to enjoy it with, and always something more interesting to use my time for.
That's still largely true today. Cooking anything more than a very simple meal is a big indulgence, and will leave me questioning why I spent all the time I did preparing it. When cooking these days, usually I will prepare a few days' worth of food at a time, sacrificing time in the short-term for savings later without feeling pressured to eat something quick and unhealthy (and potentially expensive).
Soylent -- the idea, not necessarily any particular product -- seems very attractive in this case.
Oooh, protein bar talk! Lately I'm liking EAS Myoplex 30 Chocolate Peanut Butter and NuGo Dark Mint Chocolate Chip. For when I'm uh..."too busy"...
Here's the Tilt crowdfunding page: https://wayback.archive.org/web/20141012152640/https://crowd...
Note, it's titled "Soylent Free Your Body". Here are some phrases in the short post:
"What if you never had to worry about food again?"
"Soylent frees you from the time and money spent
shopping, cooking and cleaning, puts you in excellent
health, and vastly reduces your environmental impact by
eliminating much of the waste and harm coming from
agriculture, livestock, and food-related trash."
$255 One month supply of Soylent
We'll ship enough soylent to fully replace one month's worth of meals
"Soylent™ was developed from a need for a simpler food source."
"No need to shop for individual ingredients or plan ahead" (I think this one was Mealsquares)
"You’ve got more important things to do than worry about food."
"Enjoy a 26 hour day"
I wrote a parody post based on the marketing on the web page and my own personal outrage with the claims:
https://medium.com/@__1/on-food-and-not-cooking-4c9fba0d2d20
I still believe my note is true:
Note: Neither Soylent nor Mealsquares make any public claims that I could find,
beneficial or otherwise, about using their product for the complete nutrition
of women, especially those expecting or nursing, children, teenagers, the
elderly, or people with medical conditions, including malnutrition. I think
it’s probably optimized for healthy males, aged 20–40-ish, or in the words
of Soylent: “All Adults”, but I don’t have a B.S. in Electrical Engineering
like Rob, so I probably shouldn’t comment.
Please proceed at your own risk just in case.
I think I'll just stick to Quest bars when I'm too busy to eat right. :-P