I'm probably going to get downvoted for this ... but honestly why do people want to eat Soylent? One of the great joys of life is food, Soylent taste like shit, eating it every day is boring, and no one knows the long term affects of eating it for long periods of time.
I'm a big fan-boy of a lot of stuff SV produces, Soylent does not impress me.
As with most Soylent detractors, you're assuming people are eating this every day, or for every meal. In reality, it's great as a once-in-a-while thing. I bought some from a friend, and it was perfect for when I was hungry but running late for something. I had maybe 3 meals a week like this. Any time I told a friend I had some soylent, I got the exact same response you just gave.
But why not go for a protein bar then? Quest bars for instance are delicious (I'd even prefer them to a candy bar), and pack a far more interesting macro profile than the Soylent ones.
Granted, they are trying to do different things; Soylent tastes like crap but has a lot of nutrients(supposedly a "complete" meal), whereas Quest is higher in protein and lower in sugar while tasting terrific.
Personally, I would still choose Quest over Soylent because I suspect that the idea that we need a constant intake of a wide variety of nutrients isn't really true. I'm not denying that we definitely need vitamins and minerals, but experience of going months eating very few vegetables(and almost entirely meat and cheese) has caused no noticeable health effects in me besides weight loss. We're made to think that we've got to eat a ton of vegetables and even take supplements, which I think might be more clever marketing than anything else.
But the micronutrient selection is only relevant if you only consume Soylent, and most people here seem to be saying that they only consume some Soylent products in replacement of a couple of meals/when they don't have time. So if the rest of your meals are normal meals you will have filled your micronutrients requirements already. Soylent is only beneficial then over a protein bar if you plan to eat garbage the rest of the day too, but then if you do the macronutrient profile of Soylent becomes pointless, because the garbage you are going to eat later on is probably going to be carbs and fat bombs (as garbage food usually is).
Therefore I don't really see the place that Soylent is trying to occupy and I can't help but dismiss it as another nutritional fad.
It contains way more fat and carbs than protein. Fat and carbs are already cheap and plenty (just pick up a bag of crisps) everywhere around us, so if you try to replace one of your meals by something like this you might as well go for something that is more expensive/less practical to eat, like protein. It may just be my lifting background making me biased though as we typically require a higher protein intake.
I think the lifting background is biasing you. I'm also a lifter and I had the same thought when I first saw Soylent. But actually, I would dispute that fat is cheap and plenty. Carbs are for sure, but when I do the math I'm actually very unsure how a typical American diet would have either enough fat or enough protein, without scaling the whole thing to well beyond caloric maintenance, which is probably exactly what people are doing. Unless you're a serious lifter, the macro ratios in Soylent actually make a lot of sense if you are eating it for most meals.
You're right to point out that there is a bit of a conflict between Soylent's two goals of being both a viable replacement for every meal, and for any given meal. If you only eat one meal of it, it should probably counteract the bias of your other meals, namely, having too much carbs. But keto-Soylent would not be ideal for everyone using it as a complete food replacement.
Exactly this. I enjoy great food as much as the next guy, but the alternative to Soylent for me isn't some delicious, nutritionally-balanced meal. The alternative is usually not eating at all due to a lack of time.
Its faster than grabbing say Tomato or Grapes as a snack / when running late? You are trading your health for a quick fix. Yeah if you are consuming processed foods daily then Soylent might be a good replacement but don't forget its still processed and heavy on GMO Soy like Lecithin (google it). PS. I used to be a Soylent customer having replaced breakfast and dinner with Soylent -- never again.
For me, at least, the problem is a tomato or a handful of grapes realistically isn't what I'll grab when I'm running out the door. I'm much more likely to just skip breakfast entirely or grab a bagel at a bodega. So while I would never want to consume Soylent exclusively, or probably even every day, I think it's net health-impact has been positive.
Yep. I buy one box of Coffiest (12 bottles) per month. I usually drink them before I go swim early in the morning (2-3 times a week). Then, when I come back I get a regular breakfast. And I really enjoy the taste, so... none of the arguments apply.
I'll second that. I get a lot more mocha than coffee. Though the alertness effect seems to be consistent with having a small cup of coffee in the morning.
Not every meal is gourmet, sometimes you just need fuel. Additionally, some people don't really care about food as a pleasure to begin with.
Personally, I have a bottle of Soylent maybe once a week when I'm too lazy to make anything else, and I have a soylent bar a couple times a week at my desk when I need a snack but don't want to resort to a candy bar from the vending machine. A Soylent bar is 250 calories and has a reasonably good balance of macro and micronutrients, a Snickers bar is 215 calories and has an abundance of sugar.
I expect that there are relatively few people who consume Soylent as the majority of their calories. Besides, it's not like most people are eating meticulously balanced diets to begin with, so the "long term effects" point seems fairly moot to me.
Eat better food, and eat it mindfully. Really good food lights up every sense but hearing. Think of it like sex - you don't just hurriedly hop on top of each other and rub genitals as fast as possible until orgasm, that would be awful.
I've had food that is widely considered good, and while I do find it to be good, it's not good enough to be worth the trouble (which is where your analogy breaks down).
Really, it's just the day to day inconvenience of having to worry about where and what to eat that bugs me, because I don't enjoy food enough to make it worth the trouble.
This is a great argument, and it makes me think of my favorite tea bar / restaurant in SF, Samovar. However there are downsides to eating like that too: it costs more and takes more time (either to prepare yourself, or to wait at a restaurant).
Soylent is an excellent way to control costs and calories while saving time. You don't eat it for every meal. And it makes the meals you do take the time and have the money to prepare more enjoyable. Soylent prepared from powder is $1.93 per meal (500 calories) and is easily mixed from a packet of 4 meals at a time with the included pitcher.
My girlfriend and I drink soylent just about every morning for breakfast and then have a cup of coffee. We prepare it at night in about 2 minutes for the next 2 days. It's much better cold from the fridge than faucet temperature but mixes much better with faucet temperature water. It tastes like a mild cereal with a hint of vanilla (they changed the more recent versions' taste). It's helped us lose/maintain weight and keep food costs under control (NYC is expensive).
Soylent and coffee is not a good start to a day. Neither provide morning hydration. Sacrificing your health because it's fast and easy is something my younger version used to believe too. And yes I have consumed Soylent in the past up to 3 times a day for months on end.
I was talking about food, not hydration. I drink 24oz of water with breakfast as part of drinking a gallon a day. I track my daily hydration with an app on my phone. 177 days in a row and counting.
I love good food as well, both cooking and going to restaurants. But Soylent is fast and convenient for light meals. If I had a big lunch late in the day I might have it for dinner. But I definitely prefer "real" food for dinner with my loved ones. As for the taste, I think it's fine, kind of oatmealy, not oversweetened. If you don't like the flavor, fine, but that's your taste and not other peoples'.
I'm one of the few people that bounces between 70-95% soylent each month. I do the powder which is the cheapest option and it comes out to around $230/mo if it was my only source.
The average per person spending in the US is somewhere close to $300 per person if I recall correctly. Taking that into account with the time savings, and it's really quite cheap as a pure fuel source.
$220 on groceries (not eating out or takeout) for one person is enough to buy good stuff. You could make your own protein/fiber bars, yogurt smoothies, slow cooked foods. A freezer and a slow cooker will free you.
I guess I was taking the "people who can afford " part of your comment as "it's for well off people" when it's actually a reduction in spending for many Americans.
I can see how'd you'd draw that conclusion from what I wrote, sorry for the confusion. I just mean that your money can be better, um... eaten, not that it's some kind of expensive luxury.
This depends greatly on where you live. I grew up in a middle class town in CT but now live in NYC. The price differential for groceries is huge. And compounded by the fact that you don't have a car, so you're limited in the stores you can reasonably go to and bring groceries home from.
NYC isn't totally unique, but it's hardly the norm either. Most of the people I've seen here at least, talking about Soylent, are struggling to find affordable groceries. Almost universally it's a variation on convenience or (to broadly paraphrase) "Freedom from food."
I didn't specify regular, plain yogurt rather than the junk food version because I assumed people were smart enough to know that junk food yogurt is junk, and there is plenty of sweetness from the frozen fruit. I would make a terrible contract lawyer.
Cereal is expensive, and not a great thing to eat most of the time. Make your own breakfast bars, cookies, or muffins. They'll taste better because you can tailor them precisely to your tastes.
My SO and I have a stockpile of bottled Soylent. It's great.
There's always a nutritious meal available. Sometimes neither of us feels like cooking. Sometimes we don't feel like going out. Sometimes you're hungry, need some reasonably healthy food, but don't care if it's gourmet or tastes great as long as it's acceptable. Soylent does the job really well.
I also don't agree that it tastes like shit. The bottled Soylent tastes like soy milk to me, which I find delicious.
I'd say I personally only drink one bottle per week, maybe two. My SO uses it for breakfast fairly often (which previously she was in the habit of just skipping).
I enjoy food, but don't budget my time appropriately in the mornings. Soylent is my go-to when I'm leaving for my commute in the mornings and for nighttime if I end up working on my own projects at home too late to remember to make something, since I prefer not to eat solids right before bed.
Recently, two friends have given me their own reasons for choosing Soylent. One of them feels that eating is a chore, and the other is convinced that drinking amounts of it will allow their body to take more junk food on the weekend. Not the best reasonings in my opinion, but those are some of the opinions out there.
TBH, i think soylent tastes fine. But it's got what I can only describe as an after-texture that is somewhat unsettling. It's like an extremely fine sand coating your mouth.
The arguments I've heard generally come from people who think it's more convenient than alternatives they could make themselves. In my experience, those thoughts are incorrect, but it still explains the reasoning. I think the other reality is that people who don't like to deal with food, or have issues with food such as problems with obesity, or an eating disorder might think it's a solution to the "I can quit smoking, I can't quit eating" issue.
So, serious question then, because I've honestly been looking for this as a Soylent alternative.
Do you have any pointers to a meal plan that would give me full daily nutrition for say, a time/effort expenditure of around 20 minutes a day in preparation?
Let's say I'm totally cool eating the same thing for any given meal each day (though I'd prefer different breakfast/lunch/dinner within same day), and let's say I'm fine buying appliances as long as the maintenance/cleanup is within that time period too. Money isn't a concern here within reason. Since you mention rice cookers and crock pots (and I also have an instant pot) I can also work with set-and-forget as long as I only have to pay attention for 20 minutes or so.
The draw of Soylent to me is that I basically have no clue how to feed myself within time allotted, so I eat like crap grazing on what amounts to snacks or ordering out. I know Soylent isn't great but it's better than what I do on my own.
I'd love to have a healthier alternative, but I also know from experience that unless I can find something dead easy like described, I won't build the habit.
For me? I'm partial to cooking a lot of stuff at once and portioning it out, then freezing it. Pretty much anything with any kind of beans or lentils is easy to make in large quantities, tastes good and lasts a long time in the freezer. Rice cookers are a great multipurpose tool as well, and as a bonus they're great at making (and keeping) rice. Toss in the water and rice in the morning, come back to rice. Protein of your choice on a skillet or toaster oven, or nuke some of your stews, on the rice... boom.
I like (again this is my taste, yours of course may vary) oatmeal, coconut and fruit bars (the internet is full of good recipes for energy, protein, fiber, etc bars and snacks). They last a while in the fridge, and basically forever in the freezer. Another case of, "Make it when you have some time, and eat them for the rest of month or quarter".
Finally... sandwiches, salads, and soups. I also love granola with yogurt and honey, and eat that as my "I have some time to enjoy this" breakfast; only thing to cook is the granola, again once a month or so.
OK, those are good tips. Batch and freeze makes a ton of sense, though I'm not sure my freezer is up to it, and I do like the timer function on my rice cooker and instant pot (and also like rice, oatmeal, etc.)
I just wish I could actually find a decent and specific "sandwiches, salads, and crock pot" type 7-day (or even 1-day) meal plan out there that covered all the bases for times when I haven't done prep work. I'm a little lost as to how to combine the ingredients effectively--I know the concepts of nutrition, of course, but not the intersection of those and what practically works.
Edit: My best advice is to think about what you have to work with in terms of appliances and such, and google search for recipes using them, along with things like "For a month" and that kind of thing. So much of this is down to personal taste; I mean if you don't like black beans, no amount of recipes for them will help you out.
I eat super healthily, and I've managed to get my daily prep down to about half an hour in total, with a little extra time on weekends.
Breakfast - yogurt and frozen fruit blended into sherbet. I have 8 different kinds of frozen fruit in my freezer so there's plenty of variety.
Lunch - replaced by a protein shake at 11, then another one at ~2. I mix it with powdered drink packets, so there's plenty of variety there too.
Dinner - a crock pot with some kind of bean (again, I mix it up), a can of some kind of green (spinach/kale/collards/etc), some spices and some kim chi.
Elevensies (yeah, I'm like a jacked hobbit) - a piece of smoked meat and some sauerkraut.
The key is to keep the structure of your meals the same, and just have a rotation of ingredients that you swap out to keep things fresh.
Of course it's more convienient! Soylent takes 0 time to prepare. Most other things take at least some time, and are often less healthy.
It takes me at least an hour to cook and eat 3 meals a day. Soylent takes almost no time to cook and consume. If you value your time at all (say, a very minimal $20/hour) that's $600 a month saved right there.
To answer for myself personally, I don't eat it every meal. I tend to eat it for lunch on the weekends, if I don't have any particular lunch plans. It's cheap, reasonable-calorie and doesn't make me feel lethargic after eating it. In fact I feel pretty good after drinking one, usually.
The only reason I don't drink them more often is that it leaves me just slightly unsatisfied, and that dissatisfaction is distracting when i'm trying to concentrate on work.
I am as puzzled as you, especially if the taste is as bad as you say. There is one industry that has already been focusing on making "healthy" stuff taste good for the past decades: the fitness industry. Why not just go for a good old protein shake? Or a protein bar? It costs almost nothing (except maybe the protein bars, which are comparable in price to soylent ones) and are nutritious enough.
I wake up on many days at 5am to head out for work. I go from butt naked in bed to out the door in ten minutes. Before Soylent I just skipped breakfast, now I can swig it down really quick. My lunches and dinners OTOH tend to be much nicer, but nothing beats the quick rush of nutrients.
It's tangential to the contents of the post, but as a lover of good food (I consider it my one real vice), I've always liked the idea of Soylent. A vast majority of the time I just need something to fill me up. And it's a neat idea to know you're getting everything you need from a single foodstuff (a la the Matrix's gruel). I feel like, if anything, it may make the times you sit down to a nice meal that much more enjoyable.
As someone who has, in the past, lived on Soylent for months at a time when it was most convenient, I can vouch for your feeling.
Every "normal" meal I had while living off Soylent tasted amazing and in between great tasting meals I didn't have to stress about food if I didn't want to.
To me, Soylent is gaining control over a thing that gives me great anxiety, that thing being food. And having that control allows me to put even more effort into cooking great meals when I want to.
Man, you nailed what I was trying to say. I never would have described it as anxiety - because off the cuff it actually sounds pretty silly to be anxious about food - but that is absolutely what it is.
Ever since its first very first release, anytime I've read about Soylent, there is always some type of gastrointestinal response associated with it. What's the deal with their formulas?
I've used other Soylent type products, and researched a ton more, and I never get the impression that they have similar issues.
The honest answer is probably that most people are not used to having substantial amounts of fiber in their diet, and being in the form of a liquid makes it much more noticeable if you do have any issues.
The basic issue is that, while you may have gas as a result of eating a burrito, it's spread out over a day. With Soylent or any liquid nutrition really, it hits you over 1-4 hours. Ditto any other sort of gastrointestinal upset - what would be subclinical with solid food and a day or two long timeframe becomes an immediate crisis where you'd better find a restroom in the next 10 minutes.
So why aren't the competing products I've tried / researched, not filled with so many of the common complaints that Soylent has? For example the one I use is entirely flax/hemp/sesame/rice, that's about as fibrous as they get.
Hard to say, but I'd guess that partially it's availability bias. Problems with other niche foods aren't usually posted on Hacker News. They also don't have their own Reddit group and fans who post about each others' experiences (sometimes negative).
If they've really put so much science into the formulation, shouldn't crop-dusting index (CDI) be one of the metrics by which the formula is optimized?
This is the response I have been waiting for - this kind of decisive action is a step in the right direction.
The timing however is not. This is not a preventative measure, it's reactive. Would Soylent have taken the same action if they had not been put on blast on Reddit and other sites? If not for the bad publicity I don't think they would have done anything at all.
Until they are ensuring the quality of their product from batch to batch I'm out. That means properly mixed bars, testing each batch to ensure the 100% nutritional values they claim.
Tylenol was killing people because it was deliberately tampered with by an anonymous murderer. That's a much more serious issue than a new experimental food that makes some people throw up.
Even though I'm a fan of real food and a skeptic of Soylent, I'll say that the Soylent Bar issues sound overblown already, and comparing this to cyanide-tainted Tylenol is blowing it even more out of proportion.
It was not Tylenol that killed people. Someone put cyanide capsules inside Tylenol bottles. I am saying "someone" because as far as I know they never found the person who did this.
I've been a soylent customer for 2 years or so, and have always found the flavor to be alright.
The latest formulation, 1.6,changes this. It's far and away the best flavor yet. Very different, and very good. The only formulation so far for which my mouth waters when I'm hungry.
I don't like spending time on cooking and I hate when my house smells like food from cooking.
I also don't like spending money on eating out that doesn't taste extremely good.
Soylent tastes good enough, healthy enough, and cheap enough for me.
The title "Update on Soylent Bar" is pretty vague, so here's the gist:
> It has recently come to our attention that a small number of our customers have experienced gastrointestinal issues after consuming Soylent Bars. As a precautionary measure, we are halting all Soylent Bar purchases and shipments and are advising our customers to discard any remaining bars in their possession.
> After hearing from our customers, we immediately began investigating the cause of the issue and whether it was linked to a problem with the Bars. So far we have not yet identified one...
> We will be reaching out via e-mail to all Bar customers to offer a full refund.
Wow.
I have a box of Soylent Bars from a few weeks ago I've been eating on occasion. I haven't had any issues, and they seem fine to me.
Kudos to the Soylent team for covering the issue so quickly, especially after the incident last month [1] where Coffiest wasn't meeting its prescribed nutritional content. It seems like they're struggling with production quality and consistency at scale.
Maybe they are fine. I saw people online raving about Quest bars, so I bought five different flavors to try. Result: Gastrointestinal issues I haven't experienced with other protein bars. And I didn't even like the taste.
Even with that experience in mind, I'd probably try a Soylent Bar. Everybody's different.
It's probably one of the sugar alcohols, which tend to draw water into the bowels.
As for anecdotes: Quest bars usually don't upset my system, but other protein bars (MetRX protein bar, that was a memorable time…) and a lot of "diet" foods, like Weight Watchers desserts, cause, well, lower GI upset.
A lot of "diet" bars and sugar-free protein mixes are sweetened with sugar alcohols like Xylitol or Sorbitol. Your upper GI tract can't actually digest these sugars, but there's plenty of bacteria in your lower GI tract which digest them readily and produce a large quantity of gas.
Sugar free gum has the same effect for the same reason, at least if you chew enough of it.
Sorry - I'm going to say it. These guys need to change their name already. It's just too much. (their name is derived from a dystopian film called Soylent Green, which I won't give away and other replies shouldn't either. It's really really famous.) I thought it was bad enough when everything was going dandy but when we read about this kind of PR / damage control, it's just too much.
They have a choice about it. This is a conscious joke on their part. They need to take the next step, please.
I got downvoted but I'm going to keep this (it's quickly heading to -4). Go watch the film, in the canon of filmmaking, and then come back and tell me I'm wrong.
You're wrong because we all get the joke, and are over it. It's a very conscious branding choice to label themselves as counterculture and edgy. It won't appeal to everyone, but it clearly is a conscious marketing choice, and you'd have a hard time saying their marketing isn't going well.
I think your time would be better spent telling MetRx or Ensure to change their names, considering they are brands which are not very successful at capturing the market Soylent is dominating (the bottled-nutrition-by-choice market).
As far as I can tell their only issue is quality control and customer communication, changing their name wouldn't fix either.
I guess you would have the same opinion about "Schiit audio" (a brand to fleece audiophiles, and which does very well.) their site[1] reads "Yes, that is our name. Shih-tah. It's a proud German name, host to a long line of audio engineers who slaved away in crumbling Teutonic fortresses as lightning lashed the dark lands outside, working to perfect the best amplification devices in the world...
Or, well, no. Yep, Schiit is our name, and it's pronounced, well, like "hey man, that's some really good Schiit!" And now that we have your attention..."
Sorry. I believe "nomen est omen" and I personally believe that until they update their name they have it baked into their DNA to lie to, to mislead, and to create an awful dystopia. It is quite literally on the label.
Compare the origin of the term Ycombinator: [2]
We might disagree on this but I am going to maintain that when your name clearly embodies some ideal, however vaguely, it affects things.
Why are there no restaurants called Makesyapuke Diner? (or anything like it.)
They need to align their name with their positive vision. They've outgrown the joke.
Actually the name was derived from an earlier book to which the movie was based on [1]. On the other hand, Soylent Green (as a movie) is pretty low in pop culture, and I can't say I've really seen any issue with the name. I'm fairly certain Soylent (as a company) has done market research on whether the name is worth it.
That's fine, a variation would be fine. I'm not a branding expert but any variation ("Soyful" as an example) would be fine by me, even if later they moved away from soy for whatever reason. I object just to their specific name.
I'm a big fan-boy of a lot of stuff SV produces, Soylent does not impress me.