http://d8m5oga7foiu.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/1...
http://files.soylent.com/pdf/soylent-drink-nutrition-facts-e...
if it had that much sugar, it wouldve never gained a reputation for losing weight.
Historically, diet shakes/meal replacement shakes/etc have been almost entirely sugar, and slimfast is infamous for exactly that.
> if it had that much sugar, it wouldve never gained a reputation for losing weight.
That's not how advertising works. :)
(There is a new variant of slimfast with low sugar, but that's a very recent exception to the rule. Most slimfast is high sugar, and historically all slimfast was high sugar. It's like arguing "coke doesn't have lots of sugar", and linking the nutritional information to diet coke.)
Ah, I see you've forgotten about the 'low-fat' era.
Efficacy has very little to do with the popularity of diets.
The Original I checked had 18 grams of sugar.
What I don't understand: the REI market is the one place where Soylent is inarguably better than any other product in its niche, and nobody seems to give a shit about that.
I carry a bag of dry Soylent in my SAR pack. When I get sent out on an assignment, I have no idea how long I might be out for. For less weight than any other option, I have dinner and breakfast and lunch if necessary.
If I know in advance I'm going to be out hiking for more than about three hours, a pre-mixed solution of it in a Nalgene, with a quick chug here and there, really beats back the fatigue.
The REI market is not small, and it's got a huge focus on ultralight, ultralight, ultralight now. Soylent really seems to be missing an opportunity here.
I guess it depends on what you mean by "better".
SAR is a niche within a niche. I can totally understand why Soylent is 1000x better than other options.
But most backpackers are doing it for fun. Reducing weight and space is great, but there are plenty of much more enjoyable meals that are only marginally heavier/bulkier.
At least for me, cooking a good meal before bed is my favorite part of the day. I'll happily carry an extra pound or so to make that happen.
TBF, a lot of purely recreational backpackers care less about the pleasures of life. The type doing 14 hour days and so on. But that's a small market, and all the folks I've met on trails who are doing that sort of thing tend to be pretty price sensitive. Young folks with few savings taking a few months off work don't have three months of Soylent money ;-)
thru-hiker here. I did it on $2k of credit cards, which is the least of anyone i met personally. a dehydrated meal with 350 calories costs $5 minimum, requires cooking (fuel cost/weight), and requires time/energy for your body to digest.
a soylent powder meal costs $2.
It does require you to go to the supermarket, quickly buy some ingredients, and mix them together.
Here is an example: You can just buy oats, skim milk powder, peanuts (a bit better if you buy them crushed, or crush them), raisens, and dehydrated fruit & berries. I also add almonds, walnuts, chocolate, coconut. It works out to b/w 25-50cents a meal if you buy at Costco, and is very healthy. You can add sugar if you want (I add a little, and a very small amount of salt).
You can also customize to your heart's desire. Replace milk powder with whey powder. Peanuts with almonds, flax for omega 3s, etc.
There you have it - The wisdom to outcompete soylent on price, nutrition, and taste, and all by a lot.
Not saying that's a bad option, just different.
The disadvantages to soylent are taste, chewing difficulty/calories, preparation, it stops up your digestive tract, and takes much longer to become usable energy.
Ah, now I know why it sounded good to me. As a Swiss we basically grow up with that stuff.
SAR = search and rescue
REI = major American outdoor retailer
As for price, I bought a 30-day supply of camp food for less than $100 on amazon.
If your goals include speed or (less) weight, those freeze dried options are really far from ideal. To get around the weight issue you mostly need to plan and package your food yourself, which takes some time. If you're getting called out to do SAR you either need to have it done in advance or go with another option.
I can't really speak to the exact sodium content, but it's more than reasonable for emergency rations or hiking or SAR. You're not eating this stuff every meal for the rest of your life, and if you are, you deserve what you get.
It also gives you a lot more control over portions, which can be an issue as well. There is no point packing more than you are going to eat.
I brought up the salt content not for health reasons, but taste. Many of the ones I've tried have been so salty I've had trouble finishing them even after a day of backpacking.
So sure, you can combine your nutrient goo powder into a single sack, and thereby save a tiny fraction of the weight of the food (and water) itself. But you're splitting hairs.
I picked a mountain house pouch-based product at random on amazon, and the packaging weight was .06oz on a gross of 5oz, or 1.2%. Which is, of course, nothing. I have heard exactly zero people, ever, complain about the weight of their dried food packaging. I've heard lots of people complain about camping food being boring and flavorless.
If you like Soylent, fine, but the claim that this stuff is the obvious best product for campers is silly.
If I'm carrying a stove, then I'm carrying fuel too. That weight and space adds up. Even if I'm carrying my MSR Windburner, it's still about the size of my first aid kit. My old MSR PocketRocket was smaller by itself, but required a mess kit or a pot of some kind for the hot water. I could go with a soda can alcohol stove, but then if I spill my fuel I'm a bit boned and they aren't always the most reliable or efficient setups to begin with.
Soylent is: remove Soylent package from pack, dump approx 10 oz into Nalgene, add water (cold, filtered from a stream if possible), shake, and continue.
Cooking while backpacking is fun ... sometimes. Once in a while it's nice to take the time to put together some backcountry gourmet stuff.
But for just having the equivalent of emergency rations in my pack, Soylent really is better than the other choices.
Oh, and anecdotally: digestion is a pretty big deal when you get far enough away from civilization. I've had some Mountain House meals do some pretty unhappy things in my gut, and there's only so much cleanup that small wad of "oh-no" TP I carry around can do. Soylent tends to digest really well and not cause post-digestive messes. Unless, of course, you happen to be one of those many people who were allergic to one of their recent formulations.
The instructions on all the Mountain House stuff that I have say "add hot water and wait N minutes".
(But I agree with the gist of the argument, that things like Soylent and Tsogo are better for this use case anyway.)
I can also state that the majority of people I know care so much about weight that they would never carry mountain house type food around.
If we both extend our friends to the general public, we have a clash. Or, maybe, there are different types of people in the world, some of whom think that Soylent is a great alternative for many of the situations they find themselves in.
If everyone you know is different, congratulations. Enjoy your nutrient goo.
I also participate (professionally) in uSAR via a technical rescue team for a decently large municipality. We don't take food on call outs and have no idea how long an extrication will take for example. When I am at work, I often don't eat for two, three, or four hours past "lunch time" or "dinner time" due to calls. Soylent is not an option anymore than drinking a protein shake on a call. Not happening.
Soylent is just very good at marketing to people unfamiliar with protein powder.
I though Soylent was good because it covers all your nutritional requirements (haven't tried it) - this trader joe's has the same nutritional content?
jakefood.com beg to differ.
Which of those examples are actual food replacements instead of liquid candy blasted with vitamins?
Slimfast high protein is the only option I see online that doesn't include huge amounts of sugar, but a single 180 calorie shake also gives way too much vitamins and protein to be sane times 10, which is what you need to get a day's worth of calories from it.
Weight watchers shakes look like they have exactly the same issue as slimfast high protein, except with more sugar and more servings required.
So here you are crapping on the product, but you actually haven't pointed to a realistic replacement for it.
Last I checked Soylent contained Sucralose (Splenda).
(And if it's not going in your mouth, it can taste like ass.)
No, they're expensive because no food manufacturer wants to kill the customers, and these customers tend to be at significantly increased risk of death.
> And if it's not going in your mouth, it can taste like ass.
Medical sole-source of nutrition products can be given through a naso-gastric tube, but many of them are designed to be drunk. Manufacturers have increased the range of flavours because they recognised that people hated the vanilla / chocolate / banana / strawberry limited range.
Funny how that information buried on the site. I've re-ordered a few times based on its (prominently featured) use of Isomaltulose, thinking that is where the sweetness came from. Some evidence that sucralose will spike insulin. Seems to jibe with personal experience. Will probably hold off until they eliminate sucralose. Perhaps trehalose?
Last year, though, a team of Israeli scientists put together a stronger case. The researchers concluded from studies of mice that ingesting artificial sweeteners might lead to—of all things—obesity and related ailments such as diabetes. This study was not the first to note this link in animals, but it was the first to find evidence of a plausible cause: the sweeteners appear to change the population of intestinal bacteria that direct metabolism, the conversion of food to energy or stored fuel. And this result suggests the connection might also exist in humans.
[0] http://bayesianbodybuilding.com/the-myth-of-1glb-optimal-pro...
Except that every time I've ever seen/heard it from bodybuilders it has always been 1g per lean pound which fits pretty well with your 0.82 figure accounting for typical bodyfat percentages. So your article is arguing a strawman and they've been right all along.
It's hard, although possible, to have too much protein.
Why should suggesting a replacement be a requirement for criticism?
The "realistic replacement" is to not worry too much about perfectly balanced nutrition if you need skip an actual real meal occasionally. The body can handle it.
A better alternative to Soylent is going hungry? Why?
When Soylent launched they made several misleading, unethical, medical, claims.
They've since dropped every single one of those.
Soylent have had a number of product recalls. They don't have a huge volume of product, and they've only been in business for a short time, so it's a bit worrying that they haven't fixed their problems.
Some people think that when you're raising money from the public you should be honest. Some people think that when you're providing a safety critical product you should be competent.
There's also an element of backlash against the massive hype / very successful marketing - we see this with any product.
Not really. Soylent is much cheaper than Ample, and that's a major plus for the cost conscious (which is a lot of people!)
As for the other ones - honestly mostly marketing I'd imagine. I've never heard of any product billed as a "nutritionally complete" meal. SlimFast to me sounds like a dieting product (as do weight watcher shakes), which isn't what I want at all. Non-dieting meal replacements, where they exist (I don't know the name of a single one!), just don't seem to target the same market that Soylent does.
Do other products exist that do what Soylent does? I don't doubt it. I've never heard of them, though.
https://www.gardenoflife.com/content/product/why-choose-raw-...
I was working from home & had an ashtanga yoga routine. Personally, I think it's better to have a diet of home-prepared food consisting of whole foods grown in good soil, but in the interest of time & (lack of) motivation to prepare meals, it worked for me.
That's all it is. If Soylent brands itself as a normal meal replacement, that's not sexy. So Soylent branded itself as a food replacement - which is more interesting and more dangerous (I just cannot trust that replacing food with Soylent won't have unintended health consequences down the line).
I agree with the common sentiment that Soylent's original goal/purpose - a simple powder/drink that could serve as one's sole source of nutrition - is sort of ridiculous, but it actually led to a remarkably well balanced product unlike anything on the mass market. It's remarkably filling and nutritionally well balanced for a convenience food.
Care to explain why? I am genuinely curious, as it sounds like an awesome idea.
Glycemic Index/Glycemic Load: a quick search doesn't give me SlimFast's GI/GL info, while Soylent does post the number.
It's available. Seems weird to decide based on the availability of the number versus the number.
I don't see result by searching "glycemic site:slimfast.com". There are some numbers posted on other websites (e.g. http://www.glycemicindex.com/foodSearch.php?num=1469&ak=deta... which looks credible), but compare to Soylent's disclosure (https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/212769503-Glycemic...) I'm more confident to choose Soylent instead of SlimFast.
Out of curiosity, I also searched GI/GL info on amplemeal.com and found nothing.
E.g. regular coke has a GI of 63 (source http://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/glycem...), and is considered medium GI, but of course it contains a lot of sugar.
No, none of the products you mentioned is anywhere near as nutritionally balanced as soylent. And those that are, clearly came after
Unlike the examples you mentioned, Soylent is not a "lose weight" brand.
As an undergrad in college, Soylent is everywhere. Can't remember the last time I saw any of those other meal replacements.
Soylent (400 kcal) 21g fat 37g carbs (9g simple sugars, 3g fibers) 20g protein
Ensure (400 kcal) 11g fat 60g carb (?g simple sugars, doesn't say, NO FIBERS) 16g protein
I looked at every single brand of meal replacement shakes I could get my hands on around here at drugstores, I was looking for a cheaper alternative to Soylent and figured one of them would do. You would think someone would be making a meal replacement that's not sugar water garbage already. NOPE. Plus, most of them serve a different goal, either weight gain or weight loss, not just meal replacement.
EDIT: arguably Soylent is sugar water garbage too, it's first ingredients are water and maltodextrin (a sugar), but it's not as bad as the others I've looked at.
Every time someone talks about Soylent I always bring up the main ingredient, Malto, it's such a terrible substitute for real complex carbs (oats, brown rice, etc.). You may as well be pounding sugar all day. Maltodextrin is what I use in my post-workout shake to spike my insulin.
I didn't know that... thanks, I've actually switched my subscription to Biolent, the carbs in it come from oat and buckwheat flour, it has more fibers and no fast carbs as far as I can tell. I'm Canadian so it's only slightly more expensive for me.
https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/212769503-Glycemic...
EDIT: They're protein bars, not meal bars, am I missing something?
20g protein, 6g fat, 4g carb
That's too much protein. AFAIK even a strength training diet is only 30-35% protein or so.
Soylent - http://files.soylent.com/pdf/soylent-drink-nutrition-facts-e...
Ensure - http://c4.q-assets.com/images/products/p/ab/ab-116_3z.jpg
Ample - https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1096/7494/products/Ample_4...
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1096/7494/products/Ample_I...
Edit: added Ample info.
Filtered Water, Soy Protein Isolate, Maltodextrin, High Oleic Algal Oil, Isomaltulose, Canola Oil, Rice Starch, Oat Fiber, Isomaltooligosaccharide, Soy Lecithin, Potassium Chloride, Calcium Phosphate, Magnesium Phosphate, Natural & Artificial Flavors, Dipotassium Phosphate, Salt, Choline Chloride, Gellan Gum, Sodium Ascorbate, dl-alpha-Tocopheryl Acetate, Ferrous Gluconate, Zinc Sulfate, D-Calcium Pantothenate, Niacinamide, Sucralose, Thiamin Hydrochloride, Copper Gluconate, Manganese Sulfate, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Vitamin A Palmitate, Riboflavin, Chromium Chloride, Biotin, Folic Acid, Sodium Molybdate, Sodium Selenite, Phytonadione, Potassium Iodide, Vitamin B12, Vitamin D. Contains: Soy
https://jameskennedymonash.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/ingre...
While you're at it, you might as well list the ingredients in fast food meals, pizza, and all sorts of other food people "deliberately choose to eat".
Per 2000 calories, Ensure has 135g sugar to Soylent's 45g.
https://ensure.com/nutrition-products/ensure-original#vanill...
http://files.soylent.com/pdf/soylent-drink-nutrition-facts-e...
https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/24/dairy-might-have-snuck-int...
Other food manufacturers go for years, with tens of millions of units sold each day, without having a recall.
Plenty of new companies are capable of producing food in similar or greater volumes than Soylent is without any recalls, why has Soylent had more than one recall?
Soylent aren't even doing the production; they're sub-contracting it out to existing companies.
Aside from being an actual meal replacement, rather than a calorie-cut diet drink (140ish for a single slimfast shake) who's third ingredient is plain old sugar?
> equivalent
Then you havn't looked very hard. Some of us have gone so far as to look at the nutritional label and list of ingredients.
If there are non-diet meal replacements, I don't know if any, which clearly seems like an opportunity for a product such as Soylent.
Millions.
The fact that at least 4 people in this thread have mentioned "meal replacements" but not a single one has named a specific product I would know by name (non dieting!) seems to me a pretty clear indictment that this category is not as established as you are suggesting.
I agree, though, that Soylent's unique strength is in marketing to middle-class to upper-middle class Millennials that arent seeking any particular goal other than replacing the bother of food; not through unique product features, just pure marketing focus.
And as for specific products...
- https://www.bodybuilding.com/store/vega/one.html
- https://www.bodybuilding.com/store/garden-of-life/raw-organi...
- https://www.iherb.com/pr/Madre-Labs-Zenbu-Shake-Meal-Replace...
- https://www.iherb.com/pr/Now-Foods-Tru-Food-Vegan-Natural-Be...
- https://www.iherb.com/pr/Nature-s-Plus-Source-of-Life-Vitami...
- https://www.iherb.com/pr/Orgain-Organic-Meal-All-In-One-Nutr...
- https://www.iherb.com/pr/PlantFusion-Phood-100-Whole-Food-Me...
- https://www.iherb.com/pr/MRM-Veggie-Meal-Replacement-Chocola...
- https://www.iherb.com/pr/Pure-Advantage-MRP-Meal-Replacement...
- https://www.iherb.com/pr/Vibrant-Health-Maximum-Vibrance-Ver...
- https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0038B1EOY/
- https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00KS6WUUE/
- https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0184DGHHO/
- https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B004VRGS7W/
- https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0088YQ8MO/
- https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01N2M3RK0/
- https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01N3Y7R1S/
And those are just a few results from a quick search for "meal replacement" across 3 different stores.
Now, I'm not against Soylent, and I'm definitely pro meal replacement products, but let's at least be honest here and call a spade a spade. Soylent's main differentiating factor is it's marketing pitch and that's ok, it doesn't have to be totally revolutionary to succeed.
Soylent has 20g of protein per serving, and most of the products listed above are also in that 15-30g of protein range and share most of the same micronutrients, so functionally they're about equivalent. The only real differences between all these products are marketing, price, taste, "recommended" serving sizes, and small tweaks in nutrient ratios. Other than that, they're all pretty interchangeable.
This breaks down easily into per-meal replacements especially for the powder. Half a bag is half a day's needs, and so on.
That is literally the whole reason Soylent exists. As far as I know, it's the only product that works that way at that price point.
Right off the bat, it's worth noting that Soylent has an unusually large serving size of 106-142g [0], compared to the products listed above which have an average serving size of 30-40g, and therefore position themselves as being 'better deals' because they can claim to have more "servings". But otherwise the nutrient ratios are quite comparable and it's disingenuous to suggest otherwise.
[0] https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/204409635-Preparin...
> Soylent has 20g of protein per serving, and most of the products listed above are also in that 15-30g of protein range and share most of the same micronutrients, so functionally they're about equivalent.
The point is that they have 15-30 g of protein per 120-150 kcal serving as opposed to 20g per 400 kcal serving for soylent.
The macro ratios are not comparable at all. Point me to a single meal replacement that has comparable macros. If it's actually cheaper I will gladly cancel my soylent order and buy that instead.