I'm guessing from this that you've never cooked in your life?

(Hint: Pretty much nobody cooks five hours a day unless it is their job. I mostly cook for myself, and I don't think I've ever really spent more than 30 minutes of active work on it).

Everyone here saying anything along the lines of "ZOMG, my healthy meals like toast+juice only take me 15 minutes each" has no idea what they are talking about. The list of healthy whole foods (those that don't come out of boxes or bags) that can be prepped and cooked and cleaned in 15 minutes is a short one. I know because I spend a lot of time planning, shopping, and cooking a variety of foods. If anyone cares, right now I eat 90% paleo with occasional dairy and legumes. For years I was involved in veganism/vegetarianism, but quit when I realized it was more like a food religion than a rational healthy choice.

Think of the average grocery store. All that crap lining the aisle shelves is going to get bought by somebody, and even if we allow for the longer "residence time" of packaged food products compared to fresh produce/meats we can infer that the average shopper is leaving with the preparations for a depressingly monotonous and nutritionally poor diet of mostly corn-derivatives, flour, and sugar. If you had to empty out a standard grocery store one cart at a time, the average haul would be far worse than anything the writer admits eating. As fun as it is to get self righteous about food ideology, anybody who actually thinks the writer's diet is poor in comparison to the average American diet isn't thinking far enough beyond their own experience.

Also, your argument here is silly. This guy's diet is not "above average" in quality by any means and a Chipotle Burito Bol is not a "legit meal" based on what one would consider to be a healthy lifestyle. The amount of sodium alone in those things is enough to make me and some of your organs cringe - literally.

Go to the grocery store. Pick up some raw foods. Cook them on a Sunday night. Put them in the fridge. Pat yourself on the back. You've just managed to prep your lunch/dinner for the week and you did it all without having to find a stay-at-home wife.

Go play around with their nutrition calculator [1]. It's fast food.

[1] - http://www.chipotle.com/en-us/menu/nutrition_calculator/nutr...

So? It's not like he's eating two of those a day.

I was also amazed by the cost of his daily diet: $24 per day, excluding restaurants on weekends?!? I eat natural, 'normal' food for much less than $10 per day, and I live in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

PS That said, I'm intrigued by Soylent and would like to try it -- although not at its current price point.

The health hysteria over aspartame hasn't really been fully debunked, there are still countless conflicting studies about the effects of aspartame, one of the more recent ones finding the metabolic effects of artificial sweetener to be the same as an actual HFCS-sweetened soda.

Soda may or may not be bad for you, but it's certainly empty calories. He shows a picture of Diet Coke but mentions Vanilla Coke throughout. Your parent comment is on the mark.

Not diet soda. There are NO calories in it. It's not "empty calories". With your level of ignorance, I'm surprised you haven't poisoned yourself.

>Even the veggie burrito bol is in the 800 range for calories, and based on how employees heap stuff on,

The calorie counts have to be based on the average serving size, or they will be fined by the FDA for lying.

[1] http://www.cdc.gov/Features/dsSodium/

Yeah, and that is above average. You are seriously over-estimating how healthy the average american's diet is. This is one of the big reasons people are interested in soylent, getting 100% of all your vitamins and minerals by just eating "real food" is actually very difficult.

Getting people to eat better is not an easy problem to fix.

(BTW, it's also easy to paint restaurant food as bad, without actually examining why. It's also easy to make unhealthy home-cooked organic food.)

You can't say it's cheap because it's not being sold to consumers. There's a promotional price that works out to $10 a day which is cheap but not out of line with similar products.

"reasonable, healthy nutrition" give the benefit of the doubt here.

"no planning" - doubtful, it's a powder mix you make into shakes. That requires some planning.

"no decision making" - identical to any "eat only x" diet, many people would not consider this a selling point.

"easy" Ok, we'll give them a pass here. Not the easiest though.

I assumed it was going to be way cheaper than that.

"Soylent fans" who are fans before the actual product has been seen or tested in any significant way might self-identify as people who need to be targeted by the first paragraph of this reply, however.

I think soylent would have a hard time beating my diet WHEN I eat correctly (some recent issues resulted into me drifting far from my normal diet, but now I am returning to it again).

My normal diet,

breakfast: toast, cheese, chinese tea (I like all colors) or matte tea (it remembers black tea, but with a less harsh taste and less caffeine)

lunch: vegetables and proteins (meat, cheese, sashimi, whatever..)

dinner: proteins (usually, fish)

and then you can sprinkle some fruit and cereal bars during the day.

When I did this diet for the first time (while ignoring my nutriotionist and doctors) my weight plunged from 125 to 100, most of that in fat, my cholesterol dropped from the dangerously high 270 to 170, and several other stuff in my blood tests that were unhealthy got fixed.

I see here lots of "healthy" people like the author, that avoid meat because it is supposed to be "healthy" that are quite unhealthy. Well, several of them are not obese, but they are obviously weak and have nutrition issues.

I met REALLY FEW non-cow eaters, vegetarians and vegans that really knew what they were doing...

(by the way, the advice that I ignored from my medics was eat more grains, like rice, and avoid fatty foods, specially red meat... I did exact the opposite and it worked, while when I followed their advice strictly I got fatter, to me it is clear that even the fat in the meat is useful and important for the body)

I'm a bit pessimistic, so I think that his diet is probably not far off from the average American's diet, probably a lot better. That's a depressing idea in itself, but does lend credence to the idea that a simple, cheap alternative would be beneficial to people who are too busy/stupid/ignorant/poor to solve the problem for themselves.

I'm pretty sure I can do this with less than 60 seconds of attentive time, the rest can be spent catching up on tech stories, pull requests or whatever.

Frying it all would be even easier, too. Heat pan, put steak and eggs in, leave for a couple of minutes. Turn steak, leave for a couple of minutes. Slide everything onto a plate, eat.

I refuse to live a life where I regularly cannot find time to boil water. That's just absolute insanity.

> but it takes a solid 4 minutes cook time and 10 minutes rest time to make a proper steak, that's not fast.

If we're comparing it against eating soylent, then I don't think resting it is going to be vital. An unrested steak is still tasty, which means we're talking about 4 minutes.

Maybe we've got vastly different ideas of "quick".

That's fine for you; others don't want to have to take that time just to refuel. We don't all think of eating as an event or a treat, it's often just a burden of being biological.

> An unrested steak is still tasty, which means we're talking about 4 minutes.

Then we seriously disagree about the proper way to make a steak. :)

Boiling a kettle is so burdensome it's only done by those looking for a treat or some special event?

I'd understand if we were talking about preparing a roast (I still think that takes very little time out of a day), but boiling a kettle or frying a steak? These are things that can be done while thinking, reading, playing air guitar.

I mean seriously we're talking about very small parts of a day here.

> Then we seriously disagree about the proper way to make a steak. :)

Well we're talking about people who seem to find boiling an egg such an ordeal they're giving up food altogether as it's a "burden of being biological", I don't think the difference is going to be a deal-breaker.

> Well we're talking about people who seem to find boiling an egg such an ordeal they're giving up food altogether as it's a "burden of being biological", I don't think the difference is going to be a deal-breaker.

Yes it would be, eating a meal replacement doesn't change the way I like my food prepared and an un-rested steak is just awful IMHO.

The original question was "I have not been able to find a breakfast food that's quick, tastes ok, and isn't high in carbs.", not "What can I make in less than 20 seconds?". You introduced that

I'm saying if you're regularly in such a hurry then you're doing things wrong. This is an extreme hurry. Yes, yes, every so often you'll sleep through an alarm and need to run out of the door but if you're always doing this then something is very wrong with your schedule.

> Yes it would be, eating a meal replacement doesn't change the way I like my food prepared and an un-rested steak is just awful IMHO.

Well then you might have to plan in an entire 10 minutes of reading or coding into your schedule. Shocking I know, but such is the terrible price of haute cuisine.

I really don't get how this is such a terrible thing. Read HN? Steak on, read a couple of stories, take steak off, go through a docker tut or read more, eat. That's the amount of time required to have steak for breakfast. Or start reading your emails, or coding, or ...

Or cook something other than steak. Bacon and eggs on toast, or just bacon and eggs. You can even take it with you if you don't have time to eat at home.

Guess what, some of us don't like other people that much either and can't stand the idea of having to regularly eat meals with them. Michael Pollan is a foodie and an English major, he has no credentials with which to say what is or isn't psychologically healthy. His "opinion" on the matter is just that, an opinion.

I'll agree that Soylent is healthier fast food than McDonald's. I just won't agree that eating Soylent on a regular basis is as healthy as taking your time and sharing non-McDonald's meals with your friends and/or family. Everyone has friends and family. I guess I feel like Soylent is encouraging social isolation, and helping people to deprive themselves of the physical pleasure of eating.

I'll also agree that spending hours a day preparing food sucks. That's for professional chefs and stay-at-home spouses to choose. But a maximum average of an hour total per day is pretty reasonable in my opinion.

Assuming you're an extrovert. I'm an introvert and I eat alone. Most days, it's the only time I get to be alone and recharge.

I guess I feel like Soylent is encouraging social isolation, and helping people to deprive themselves of the physical pleasure of eating.

Not everybody is wired the same. I know plenty of people who get no physical pleasure from eating. They look at those with food addiction and simply don't get the appeal. They'd rather be doing something productive/social/physical/recreational. I'm personally not one of those people, but I can understand where they're coming from. For some people, running marathons gives them a high bigger and better than any drug. I look at those people and simply don't get the appeal. :)

And you're a bit disconnected from reality, no everyone does not have family and friends; you should think really hard about why you think they do and about how insensitive it is to presume that. Tons of people have no family left, and tons of people are friendless either by choice or not.

For me, it's an hour, tops. That's lunch and dinner, I don't eat breakfast. It's probably the single highest cost/benefit ratio activity I engage in on a daily basis.

Saying that preparing and eating real food is "not psychologically healthy" is the dumbest thing I've read in quite some time. If you're an extrovert, eat with other people. If you're an introvert, eat alone and think. If you think that's psychologically damaging, how do you feel about meetings? Or maintaining other people's code? Or paying taxes?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantain_%28cooking%29

I wasn't able to take the post too seriously after that since Soylent, as simples as it is, apparently is still better than his previous diet.