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Two Months of Soylent

robrhinehart.com

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Re: Two Months of Soylent

#61

Post by dandelany »

lnanek2 wrote: post #42

Couldn't you just buy Ensure or some other meal shake at the local pharmacy?

You could, but what fun would that be? :) In seriousness though, much of OP's intent was to make Soylent as affordable as possible. To that end, a quick cost comparison:

You can buy 24 8-oz Ensure drinks on sale from Amazon for $42.50. Each drink contains 350 calories, so: (24 * 350) / $42.50 = 198 kcal/dollar.

Rob claims to get 2629 calories a day from Soylent, and his monthly costs were $154.82, so: (30 * 2629) / $154.82 = 509 kcal/dollar. Soylent is 2.5x cheaper than Ensure (based on calories alone).

Re: Two Months of Soylent

#62

Post by dandelany »

discodave wrote: post #56
ChuckMcM wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The components of Soylent (as listed in an earlier blog post) are chemically stable at room temperature. (caveat the probiotics). (this from looking them up in the 'rubber bible' [1]) I would expect you could spoil them if they got too hot (oxidizing) but other than that doesn't look too bad. Assuming the $150/month calculated, that's still pretty pricey for someone who makes $1-$2 a day in wages. Its not clear to me…

Also the price is entirely dictated by the market... If everybody was drinking soylent the price of the ingredients would go up.

That's a bit of a reach. Maybe long-term, if the whole world were drinking Soylent and it relied on some severely limited resources, this could happen. But in the short/medium term, if demand increases, it's very likely Rob will find someone who can produce/mix the ingredients in large batches, and economies of scale will kick in, making it significantly cheaper.

Re: Two Months of Soylent

#63

Post by nathan_f77 »

geoka9 wrote: post #12

Sorry, but after reading the following (elsewhere on that blog), I'm hard-pressed not to dismiss this as an elaborate troll. "I read a book on Number Theory in one sitting, a Differential Geometry book in a weekend, filling up a notebook in the process."

I have the feeling that he was already an exceptionally gifted individual.

Re: Two Months of Soylent

#64

Post by markerdmann »

After reading the first Soylent post, I felt inspired to try and come up with a recipe for a "nutritionally complete" soup. I used an online tool that calculates the total nutrients for a recipe and came up with this:

3 potatoes 1 onion 500 grams of wild alaskan salmon 1/2 cup of mushrooms 3.5 tbsp of olive oil 30 grams of sunflower seeds 1 tbsp of dried parsley 2 tbsp of ground thyme 50 grams of parmesan cheese 3 cloves of garlic 20 grams of sesame seeds 1 medium oyster (from a can) 1 tbsp of ground mace 1 tsp of cod liver oil

To cook it I just added everything to boiling water in order of cooking time, starting with the potatoes and onions and ending with the salmon.

I tried making it last night and ate it for dinner and breakfast, and it was delicious! I also feel amazing. I guess I should track the effects of the recipe on quantified-mind.com. :-)

I was actually surprised by how hard it was to fit all of the daily nutrient requirements into a recipe with about 2000-2500 calories (while also avoiding nutrient overdoses). It would be great if someone would create a website for "nutritionally complete" recipes, especially recipes that are cheap and easy to make with a good blender or crockpot.

Re: Two Months of Soylent

#66

Post by LaGrange »

onan_barbarian wrote: post #58
andrewfelix wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"in a nutshell: man only started eating a significant amount of carbohydrates about 10,000 years ago." This is a myth and patently wrong. Anatomically modern humans evolved on a diet of cooked food, the bulk of which was tubers and other root vegetables. EDIT: 'tubas' -> 'tubers' derp.

This is also patently wrong; a paleolithic human could not have subsisted on a diet of tubas, as they were not invented until the mid-19th century.

Parent said "modern", not "paleolithic". You are not a paleolithic human, and if you are, welcome, time traveller.

Re: Two Months of Soylent

#67

Post by nbouscal »

jheimark wrote: post #14

I'm confused. Is soylent the same thing as soylent green? In which case, this is a satirical post (but I don't find it very funny)... If not, isn't soylent just about the worst possible name for a real food product (with unknown/nonspecific ingredients), because of the movie?

The movie glossed over some details. In the book, Soylent was a variety of different things, with a soya and lentil base (hence the name), and only Soylent Green specifically was the problematic one, it being the newest release. (I haven't read it myself, just summarizing what was discussed in the last thread.)

Re: Two Months of Soylent

#68

Post by prawn »

andrewfelix wrote: post #46
bsmith wrote: post #7

> Some people tell me going "ketogenic", or reducing carbs is healthy. I am now skeptical of this claim as lowering carbs makes me feel hungry and tired, and the drink taste less sweet. Perhaps it would be possible after an unpleasant transition period, but I don’t see the ultimate gain... Their advice seems to fall in line with the paleo/primal philosophies—in a nutshell: man only started eating a significant amount…

"in a nutshell: man only started eating a significant amount of carbohydrates about 10,000 years ago." This is a myth and patently wrong. Anatomically modern humans evolved on a diet of cooked food, the bulk of which was tubers and other root vegetables. EDIT: 'tubas' -> 'tubers' derp.

"tubas" should be replaced with "tubers"

Re: Two Months of Soylent

#69

Post by abecedarius »

markerdmann wrote: post #64

After reading the first Soylent post, I felt inspired to try and come up with a recipe for a "nutritionally complete" soup. I used an online tool that calculates the total nutrients for a recipe and came up with this: 3 potatoes 1 onion 500 grams of wild alaskan salmon 1/2 cup of mushrooms 3.5 tbsp of olive oil 30 grams of sunflower seeds 1 tbsp of dried parsley 2 tbsp of ground thyme 50 grams of parmesan cheese 3 cl…

Neat experiment. If the cod liver oil's for vitamins, I think cooking will mess that up.

Re: Two Months of Soylent

#70

Post by scoofy »

gojomo wrote: post #13

Crazy name. Grab-bag, ad-hoc nutritional doctrine. Still, I'm glad such fringe self-experimentation happens. My biggest concern would be that healthy adaptive systems benefit from variety, challenge, and chaos. Intermittent fasting is good. A little contamination from things that are normally unhealthy is good. (See, for example, the hygiene hypothesis or the idea of hormesis.) Chewing is good -- as is the somewhat r…

Taleb's new book "Antifragile" talks about this, though his conclusions about medicine are borderline absurd.
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