People mentioned all of the existing similar products.
Soylent supporters said that those products are only supplements, and you could if you wanted live on mothing but Soylent. (Those people are wrong about the other products - you can live on some of them).
Now some Soylent supporters are saying "of course you wouldn't live on it. It's just for supplemental use." In which case, what advantages does Soylent have over all the other products?
Other products come in a range of flavours; you can get unflavoured versions; you can get savoury versions; you can get formulations designed for naso-gastric feeding and, importantly, they've got many dietitians and registered nutritionists working with them. (I realise that Soylent have nutritionists now.)
There are plenty of products available to you today that you could use tha do mot taste like pancake batter. They're not particularly pleasant.
It's true, the market has an itch: people are health conscious and want to eat well but they are stretched for time (and money in most cases). But is a nutrient extract meal-replacement the answer?
After investigating the obstacles people in Toronto face with preparing healthy food, this is what we, at Meal Garden (http://www.mealgarden.com), have come to understand:
There's almost always a trade-off between TASTE, CONVENIENCE(time/money), and HEALTH. If the meal satisfies two out of three, most people will opt to eat that meal. But one of those three priorities is compromised - and that is the market itch that Soylent has not been able to scratch. But it doesn't have to be a "two-out-out-of-three" trade-off.
Food should (and can) be healthy, convenient and taste amazing all at the same time. But people need shortcuts and tools to connect them to food providers in their area. As well as a general health guide on what options are healthier than others.
All this can definitely be done given the right amount of time to build these marketplace tools (web and mobile applications to be more specific).
I certainly can't, and that's the niche Soylent fills. It markets itself to the mass market.
My problem with these supplements is the amounts of vitamins for example contained in a product say nothing of absorption, I'm not even sure we have any good information on absorption. I guess you'd have to put people in a lab, control their eating and drinking for a several weeks and weigh and examine their BMs and fluids to know what's being absorbed.
Soylent proposes an alternative to cheap $0.50 noodles that is a lot healthier. I know if it was available when I was a college student, it would probably have been in my pantry. I haven't tried Soylent yet, but probably will give it a shot to fill in those meals I can't make due to time constraints.
You are absolutely correct, and I should have been more clear about the complete-meal-replacement aspect. I was referring to the small segment of people that would love to replace every meal with something like Soylent. So maybe "complete-food-replacement" would have conveyed my intended meaning a bit better.
I too ate lots of Ramen in college, but in order to prevent myself from wanting to slit my wrists, I'd usually seek out at least one meal a day with some nutiritional value, and, more importantly, flavor that wasn't just salt water.
Costs $5, 45 - 60 minutes of my time, and is probably less nutritious than the $3 Soylent. And I have to do something similar at least twice a day every day. I don't understand how people don't see the improvement here.
I don't understand how anyone can see a horribly tasteless, gastrointestinal disturbing, chalky goop could be an improvement on literally any other option.
But, I am excited to prepare and eat my meals every day. The taste of the food and the experience of eating is important to me (as is the forced time away from keyboard). Not everyone feels the same way, obviously (though they are wrong! ;) ).
I'm a foodie. I delight in trying new dishes, restaurants and cuisines. I'm also a marked extrovert. I constantly seek out social settings and experiences. Combined with my ineptitude at cooking and address in Manhattan, we have why I eat one to three meals out a day. I manage the healthfulness of my diet with simple rules. Salads for lunch, finish all the greens on your plate before moving to other things, defaulting to seafood over red meat, etc.
But this comes at a cost, both in dollars and in time. Many times, a meal will go half eaten, because I have to rush out for a call. Other times, dinner gets pushed out so late that the only options aren't healthy. Yes, I could schedule meals into the day, but sometimes I prefer doing other things. And it's not just work! I feel starved during film festivals, too, between full schedules and my refusal to feed on solely popcorn and tapas for two weeks.
I don't think too many people will ever seriously replace a majority of their meals with something like Soylent. But even shifting my weekday lunches and late-night snacks from salads, paninis and starving to something cheap, healthy, and available would be welcome. A prerequisite to this would be Soylent not tasting like pancake batter. Utility doesn't have to be unpleasant. But there is a place for this amongst people who love food, love people, and aren't necessarily workaholics.