Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Soylent Month Three

robrhinehart.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 207 posts

Re: Soylent Month Three

#111

Post by EvanKelly »

DanBC wrote: post #61
jjcm wrote: post #9

I get lost in my work/play quite a bit and often forget about meals. I'd definitely be interested in trying soylent simply as a meal replacement, especially if ingestion/preparation of it is quick enough not to break my workflow.

There are a bunch of different liquid feeds available. Well known brands include Ensure and Fortisip. ( https://www.nutricia.co.uk/fortisip// ) ( http://ensure.com/ ) These have the advantage of careful preparation and high standards of QA.

There's also Vivonex, which is a Nestle product and used in feeding tubes for Crohns patients quite often.

Re: Soylent Month Three

#112

Post by corresation »

nemo1618 wrote: post #44

Soylent is certainly polarizing on HN, and pretty much everywhere else as well. This will only be resolved once it's widely available and people can confirm/contest Rob's results. Personally, I'm very curious to give it a trial run. It certainly can't be any worse than what I eat now. Rob said it best: >I'm touched so many people are concerned about my intake of possible unknown essential nutrients. No one seemed to…

No one seemed to worry about me when I lived on burritos and ramen and actually was deficient of many known essential nutrients.

This sort of nonsensical dichotomy seems to infect discussions of this. Yesterday I had a Burger KingTM Whopper (it was, after all, Whopper Wednesday). The day before I had a spring-mix salad with added tomatoes, green onions, and cucumber, and a cucumber dressing, in a day that I also had a peanut butter sandwich...

...and on, and on. Such is any normal diet where people tend to eat lots of varied things, any of which, if the singular source of nutrients, would cause concern for anyone.

The nonsense argument that it is either this or fast food, or ramen noodles, or whatever, just highlights how utterly ridiculous this is.

Re: Soylent Month Three

#113

Post by anigbrowl »

"surely we can make food that is tastier, cheaper, and more nutritious than anything that exists naturally."

You're not convincing me. The idea of consuming a nutrient shake on a daily basis doesn't appeal in the least. I like chewing my food; texture is important to me. There's a reason that we have teeth and powerful jaw muscles. If we had evolved to consume our nutrients as a puree then we'd have mouth parts, like flies who squirt digestive juices onto their food and then suck up the partially-digested goop.

Re: Soylent Month Three

#114

Post by corresation »

javert wrote: post #71
DanBC wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a bunch of different liquid feeds available. Well known brands include Ensure and Fortisip. ( https://www.nutricia.co.uk/fortisip// ) ( http://ensure.com/ ) These have the advantage of careful preparation and high standards of QA.

I would order Soylent right now if I could. So I'm pretty excited to find out about these. I had no idea they existed. FWIW, my diet now is like 95% red meat, with some cheese occasionally added in. What are the downsides of these compared to Soylent? I mean, what's the motivation for Soylent if these already exist?

What are the downsides of these compared to Soylent? I mean, what's the motivation for Soylent if these already exist?

I swear that this Soylent thing is all, as some others have opined, a long troll.

But yes, there are a number of "meal replacement" drinks, some of them (like Ensure), very widely known and heavily advertised.

Re: Soylent Month Three

#115

Post by GuiA »

nhangen wrote: post #108

Is it me or does it seem like everything is now a giant lead into a Kickstarter marketing push? Is Kickstarter the new Internet marketing?

Good question; I am launching a kickstarter campaign next week to fund my next book, which will answer precisely that question :)

Re: Soylent Month Three

#116

Post by nbdbvcrea »

hesdeadjim wrote: post #69

I'm concerned less with the long term health effects of this diet as it relates to missing nutrients, and much more concerned about quality control of the individual ingredients themselves. Who's actually checking that, say, the vitamin A palmitate coming from a supplier actually contains the dose requested, and additionally that it contains no other contaminates? The supplement world is like the wild west as far as…

I would be most concerned about overdosing some vitamin or mineral powder, taken in miligram range.

Just one pinch can cause serious and painful injury.

Will it always be mixed evenly?

Re: Soylent Month Three

#117

Post by jasallen »

sowhatquestion wrote: post #74
jasallen wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

haha, I really hope you are right about the problem space. I'm currently building a company that hopes to solve exactly the "forget about food and then are starving and make a bad decision" problem. Not ready to say more yet, but again, sure hope you're right :-) Anyway, if it's that thing to have on stand-by, I'm sure its ok, but so is an Ensure, a Balance Bar, a Slim-Fast, etc, so again, no real innovation here.

Note that your argument began with "It's too radical, it won't work!" and ended with "It's boring, there's nothing new here." When I see this particular pattern of cognitive dissonance, I take it as a sign that the phenomenon being dismissed has real merit. Not to single you out, either--this pattern describes perhaps the majority of arguments I've heard against Soylent.

to eat one thing 100% of the time "is too radical it won't work". yep. To eat one thing as your 'go-to' filler is fine. but neither new nor radical. One addressed one argument, the other addressed a different one.

Re: Soylent Month Three

#118

Post by jasallen »

papa_bear wrote: post #98
jasallen wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

haha, I really hope you are right about the problem space. I'm currently building a company that hopes to solve exactly the "forget about food and then are starving and make a bad decision" problem. Not ready to say more yet, but again, sure hope you're right :-) Anyway, if it's that thing to have on stand-by, I'm sure its ok, but so is an Ensure, a Balance Bar, a Slim-Fast, etc, so again, no real innovation here.

I'd also be interested in a signup form

If you email us at previews _at_ fudi.st , we'll be happy to keep you updated.

Re: Soylent Month Three

#119

Post by XorNot »

nbdbvcrea wrote: post #116
hesdeadjim wrote: post #69

I'm concerned less with the long term health effects of this diet as it relates to missing nutrients, and much more concerned about quality control of the individual ingredients themselves. Who's actually checking that, say, the vitamin A palmitate coming from a supplier actually contains the dose requested, and additionally that it contains no other contaminates? The supplement world is like the wild west as far as…

I would be most concerned about overdosing some vitamin or mineral powder, taken in miligram range. Just one pinch can cause serious and painful injury. Will it always be mixed evenly?

Presumably this is a problem that's been long-solved in scale up manufacture, and something you should just be concerned with on the small scale.

Generally though - yes - anything water-soluble is pretty easy to get very controlled concentrations of, since you can dilute until your in the operating range of your weighing machine.

Re: Soylent Month Three

#120

Post by jasallen »

manmal wrote: post #66
jasallen wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

haha, I really hope you are right about the problem space. I'm currently building a company that hopes to solve exactly the "forget about food and then are starving and make a bad decision" problem. Not ready to say more yet, but again, sure hope you're right :-) Anyway, if it's that thing to have on stand-by, I'm sure its ok, but so is an Ensure, a Balance Bar, a Slim-Fast, etc, so again, no real innovation here.

Do you have a sign up form yet so I can get notified when your product is up?

If you email us at previews _at_ fudi.st , we'll be happy to keep you updated.
Post reply on HN