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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PreNWWOYfI#t=32s

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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_(food)

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...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1665563

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.