I did know some women in the group who would do that as well, so I can't say it's exclusively men, but women were definitely a minority when it came to power lifting. Not sure if that's what's going on here or not. Maybe it's that mostly people who follow tech news know about the product, and the tech industry does tend to lean more towards men. Who knows?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1262767/
Although excessive protein intake remains a health concern in individuals with pre-existing renal disease, the literature lacks significant research demonstrating a link between protein intake and the initiation or progression of renal disease in healthy individuals.
or this
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10722779
To conclude, it appears that protein intake under 2. 8 g.kg does not impair renal function in well-trained athletes as indicated by the measures of renal function used in this study
I haven't done it in a very long time, and the thought of drinking even a single shake makes me feel ill now. But it's possible to lose 20lbs in one month.
EDIT: I dug into the raw data and my original assumption seems to be supported with the age distributions as well. 23% of respondents were younger than 25, 70% were younger than 35, and 88% younger than 45. So the demographics for Soylent are young men with the largest chunk in their 20s.
Soylent is a tech product with standard early adopters of tech guys.
That's true, but not necessarily so. I value the ritual of going to the comic book store and browsing. But I don't value comics so much that I want to bag and collect them obsessively for hours on end. Likewise, I do value the ritual of food/coffee prep. But I don't want it to consume more than 15% of my daily allotment of time and energy. My priorities just aren't set up like that.
So you can also think of Soylent as a way to control that daily allotment.
Soylent surely tickles the nerdy nerve of some people, but (fortunately) real food is still a pleasure for many; adding the fact that it's possible to prepare such food spending relatively little time, I can imagine that people who are already inclined to cook (as above) would not switch to substitute food.
- For new foods and drugs that are potentially dangerous, the early adopters are almost universally men. Just look at the demographics of the various online research chemical communities.
- The product almost seems like it's marketed toward people on the autism spectrum.
Men might think of protein shakes: you know, whey protein GMC-type stuff, that kind of thing. Women, on the other hand, might think of diet shakes: Slim-Fast and the like.
These might both have a broadly "body improvement" type outlook, but one of these associations is perhaps more positive-thinking than the other.
Or maybe not. Just a thought.