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Soylent 2.0

blog.soylent.com

221–230 of 235 posts

Re: Soylent 2.0

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's...significantly more expensive than I thought it would be per day.

Some quick comparisons: 2000 calories in Big Macs: $17.87 at a US McDonalds 2000 calories in SlimFast meal replacement shakes: $13.13 at Wal-Mart 2000 calories in SlimFast powder: $8.94 at Wal-Mart

Or – for a more traditional comparison – cooking.

I live in a house of 8 where we order food communally, last month my food bill was £93.35 ($145.50), so $4.85/day for three (subjectively very healthy) meals.

Not your typical setup, but still perhaps of interest.

Re: Soylent 2.0

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> let's take a minute to appreciate how freakin' amazing Soylent is Soylent just markets a standard weight gainer as a total food replacement. Not sure why this is "freakin' amazing."

> Soylent just markets a standard weight gainer as a total food replacement. I do not understand why people think it's okay to make such assertions without backing them up. Is it not obvious to you that this statement is just plain false? If you think Soylent lacks something to be a total food replacement, or have any constructive criticism - please share it with us. But don't just throw random silly things out there…

For instance: you can stop by http://www.truenutrition.com/ or scores of other custom and premixed Meal Replacement Powder websites and get something cheaper and customized to your own activities and lifestyle.

Hospitals regularly feed people pre-mixed meal replacements when chewing food is not an option.

Soylent is just another old MRP with stupid "geek" marketing. Which should come as no surprise as the rest of the athletic supplement and MRP market is also just basic macronutrients and hokum with "bro" marketing. I can't wait for Soylent Monster Xtreme with Branched Chain Amino Acids. There's nothing wrong with it. Its probably no more over-priced than GNC. The only new things about it is its press on tech sites.

Which you think might know better, but the tech world is so narrow minded that obvious cons like this one can turn into a viable business.

Re: Soylent 2.0

#223
post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dunning-kruger in effect. We are all at least layman when it comes to nutrition and health, so you get people who dont know what they dont know commenting on something to reassure their views. They dont do the research, because they already "know" the right answer. We should be skeptical of any food stuff the purports to be nutritionally near perfect, but Soylent looks like its on track.

> Dunning-kruger in effect Are you talking about Soylent or people criticising Soylent? Because, for a company that's supposed to have done all tue research, they've made a couple of errors. That might not sound like much but liquid feeds are not new; there are plenty of people that have experience in liquid feeds; so there's not much excuse to make the mistakes Soylent made.

So they are not perfect demi gods?

Burn them!

Re: Soylent 2.0

#224
post #189
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What worries me is that soylent is 20% based on soy. Some studies indicate that eating a heavily soy based diet leads to increased estrogen levels. Which can have negative side effects regardless of your gender. [0]: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3074428/ [1]: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0303720711...

I love Soylent, but because they use Soy protein, I have stopped using it. I would drink it every day, all day if they used an animal protein source. I haven't read latest research, but even if there is a slim chance it increases estrogen levels, I don't want to risk it.

Ok...

Re: Soylent 2.0

#225
post #13

My first thought whenever I see soylent is that we have studies proving that we can't replace breast milk with baby formula. Some of that is due to immune system being passed on to the infant, but we haven't yet mastered the nutritional content of real food to the point where we can confidently say it's safe to eat Soylent or another similar product regularly. It takes me back to the whole issue with processed dog fo…

Agreed, it is good to try it, and even better that they care about the impact of the production on food and the environment. But this should not be a startup looking for fast growth. This should be a slower process, evaluating the longer-term health of people who truly use it to replace their food. I don't know that I would go so far as to say it needs the whole clinical trial process, but it definitely needs more th…

Lol

You obviously have no idea of the food business

Re: Soylent 2.0

#226
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, it is good to try it, and even better that they care about the impact of the production on food and the environment. But this should not be a startup looking for fast growth. This should be a slower process, evaluating the longer-term health of people who truly use it to replace their food. I don't know that I would go so far as to say it needs the whole clinical trial process, but it definitely needs more th…

Lol You obviously have no idea of the food business

Please comment civilly and substantively when posting to Hacker News.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Soylent 2.0

#227
post #39
post #13

My first thought whenever I see soylent is that we have studies proving that we can't replace breast milk with baby formula. Some of that is due to immune system being passed on to the infant, but we haven't yet mastered the nutritional content of real food to the point where we can confidently say it's safe to eat Soylent or another similar product regularly. It takes me back to the whole issue with processed dog fo…

I can't trust them. They have 0g of cholesterol yet it's an important part of a healthy diet. This rings of "marketing diet" to me.

It has been found that most cholesterol in food just passes straight through you, most of the cholesterol outside your digestive tract is produced (by your liver IIRC) as a product of working on other things like large fat molecules.

People used to think that cholesterol directly in food was the big bad here because the sorts of foods with high cholesterol also tend to be high in the stuff the body uses to make its own meaning there was a significant correlation.

Silly high cholesterol in your diet is probably still bad, but very low is likely fine (as long as you have the right balance of everything else, of course).

This does mean that I have trouble trusting something like Soylent though: as we are still finding surprises like this because we don't fully understand how our bodies process nutrients, we can't be sure that a food replacement product like this is as healthy as intended and not potentially causing new problems. It is an interesting experiment to watch as an outsider though. I wonder if any independent researchers are yet doing well run long term comparative analysis on people using this stuff compared to other replacements and more "normal" diets? People are willingly taking it, so you don't have the ethics comity problem of convincing people to let you feed the stuff to humans as they are already feeing it to themselves and you are just watching the results.

Re: Soylent 2.0

#228

Seems odd that we're at 2.0 now and it's still not available in the EU - is there a legal reason for this?

Maybe because people in Europe are more likely to, you know, actually enjoy eating their food?

What does drinking a meal replacement a few times a week have to do with not enjoying your food?

Re: Soylent 2.0

#229

For me Soylent would have to be incredibly inexpensive to replace a meal or two a day. I like the idea of a cheap way to avoid going out when I don't feel like cooking, but I'm thinking ~$30 a month to replace a meal a day, not $102

I drink a syntha-6 protein shake every morning after working out or as a quick meal replacement and it works great. Costs about a buck a serving.

A protein shake is not comparable with soylent

"I eat a banana every morning. costs me only 30cents. "

Re: Soylent 2.0

#230
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I saw Soylent claim to "put you in perfect health", and claim to be suitable for anybody. Both of those are dangerous, scumbag, claims. Soylent has not retracted those claims. They did quietly drop them though.

That's what iterative improvement looks like. You make mistakes, then you stop making them.

That's not what I want from people making medical products. Or food.
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