In the consumer space, sure, you have some "Valley geeks" who see food as more of a burden to be solved than a source of enjoyment or socialization. But you've also got folks like athletes, both professional and amateur (a much bigger consumer market). If (and it's a big if) Soylent satisfies the requirements of a high-intensity training program, then it could take off there. People who are obsessed with performance nutrition tend to place less emphasis on food-as-experience and more emphasis on food as fuel. That's the Soylent psychographic sweet spot.

Correct, which is why military branches are deep-pocketed potential buyers.

"I suspect "Valley nerdchow-paste" is not going to do a lot to raise morale."

In a military context it's not a meal replacement, per se. More of an emergency MRE or HDR replacement, provided it's more shelf stable and can compete on nutritional factors. (Big ifs, of course.) I don't disagree that morale is a concern, though. MREs are nasty, but they're at least attempting to be palatable within the confines of their purpose.

Last I heard, the main focus of new food efforts for the military is long-shelf-life food that does a better job of emulating "normal" food. Because it makes a pretty big difference to morale.

> In the consumer space, sure, you have some "Valley geeks" who see food as more of a burden to be solved than a source of enjoyment or socialization. But you've also got folks like athletes, both professional and amateur (a much bigger consumer market).

A market that's highly saturated with well-established nutritional supplements and meal substitute powders, shakes, etc. The one space where Soylent has an advantage over established market players is in marketing to Valley geeks that are insulated from the other markets for this kind of product (some of which is of the "this product is a good fit for you" type, and some of which is "this product is a solution to all kinds of other things for which there are not currently solutions" type, but both of those are marketing messages for Soylent that are mostly successful with the same demographic.)

I would consider 'microwave food' as lazy. Food is the at most basic necessity of your body, with air, water, shelter and clothes.

Are people really so busy that you can't get off your keyboard to eat something? I am not sure if that is the case merely using Soylent is going to fix any of your problems.

Especially when you so totally miss the point of Soylent vs. sports supplements like Myoplex: The latter are not in any way trying to provide the same. They generally aim for roughly a certain mix of proteins, carbs and fats + various mixes of other ingredients that often seem to be chosen mostly to be buzzword complete.

In fact, here's some sales copy regarding Myoplex:

"EAS recommends supplementing your diet with 2-3 high quality Myoplex nutrition shakes along with 3-4 whole food meals a day to ensure that any nutritional "gaps" are filled. "

I use a lot of supplements - for my protein intake I use or have used a variety of shakes, bars, muffins (yes...), cookies, to complement my high protein "real foods". To date I have never found a sports supplement that tastes nice without being way too high calorie for my use, but I can tolerate that for the convenience.

But more importantly: most sport supplements are very limited in their overall nutritional profile. For a reason - for protein heavy products people tend to focus on whey and to a lesser extent casein, and most products aim to minimize other ingredients unless that are products for specific other purposes, such as weight gainers etc. They're supplements for occasional meal replacement. They are not intended to replace food in general.

And exactly what appeals to me about Soylent is that it might provide a good alternative to fill those "nutritional gaps" mentioned in the Myoplex sales copy, which are pretty much inevitable if you were to stick with only regular sports supplements. As I said: I'm not interested in replacing food entirely, but having something available that I can have reasonable confidence is reasonably complete, that I know the calorie content of by volume, so it's easy to measure and keep track, and that is quick and convenient for when I don't have the time or want the hassle of sorting out a proper meal would be great.

I've had enough Mcdonalds for this lifetime. Bring on the Soylent vending machines!

Maybe my sarcasm detector is off but I don't see how this is a real question.

Delicious cheeseburger? Have you even eaten at a McDonalds?

I'd still much rather put bland goop into my body considering how terrible the contents of a Big 'n' Tasty combo meal is for my health.

Ever heard of the term 'balanced diet'?

http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html [More than one-third of U.S. adults (35.7%) are obese.]

http://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/statistics.htm [Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States.]

I choose -- false dichotomy. Plenty of healthy and not tasteless quick meal replacements that already exist.

Most things that innately taste good -- stuff that you could drop in a blender and drink and it'd still be agreeable -- are fatty, salty, starchy, sugary, or some mix of all these. Healthy and good-tasting food requires pleasant textures and careful composition that allows a small amount of fat, salt, starch, etc. to enhance the flavor of the whole meal.

"Fatty" is not a synonym for unhealthy by the way. A lot of people consider high fat/low carb diets to be healthier than the reverse.

The problem is, McDonalds meals are not healthy, full stop:

Mcdonald's - Big Mac Meal With Fries and Coke With No Onions

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calories/mcdonalds-big-mac-...

1130 Calories, and 67 grams of sugar. Call me when McDonalds modifies their meals to consist primarily of protein/fat calories.

The burger itself is fine. You wouldn't go to Subway for a nice sandwich and drink a liter of Coke afterwards and a bag of chips and complain about how unhealthy it is.

Here you can get some nice fresh crispy raw carrots instead of fries.

Right...that's why I called the scenario a false dichotomy.

The word itself is starting to grate on me, as "lecker" in German already does thanks to its overuse.