Live data from Hacker News

Soylent International

blog.soylent.me

11–20 of 91 posts

Re: Soylent International

#11
post #4

I'd be interested in seeing a comparison of Soylent against Ensure Complete. They seem to be very similar in intent: http://ensure.com/products/ensure-complete-shakes and based on the nutrition information for Ensure Complete from that page and the rough description of Soylent ( http://robrhinehart.com/?p=424 ) I do not see a major difference. It would appear that to get the same nutrients as Soylent I would need to…

Ensure's goal is as supplement, or to fight food-related diseases (diabetes etc). Solyent's goal is to provide every day healthy food replacement for regular people.

Re: Soylent International

#16
Not impressed. I manage to eat a healthy (and tasty) diet cheaper than that, while spending minimal amount of my time in the kitchen.

Vegetables steamed in the microwave take less than 5 minutes to prepare. (More on my eating habits: http://blog.tasuki.org/how-i-didnt-stop-eating-food/)

I think eating only Soylent exposes you to a significant risk of missing something vital that we usually get incidentally from regular food.

Re: Soylent International

#18
post #4

I'd be interested in seeing a comparison of Soylent against Ensure Complete. They seem to be very similar in intent: http://ensure.com/products/ensure-complete-shakes and based on the nutrition information for Ensure Complete from that page and the rough description of Soylent ( http://robrhinehart.com/?p=424 ) I do not see a major difference. It would appear that to get the same nutrients as Soylent I would need to…

Looking at Ensure, I don't get the impression that you're supposed to be able to live entirely on it. It looks more like a meal substitute (liquid nutrition bar) than a food substitute.

People who have to live for years with a gastric tube rather than chewing their food to eat it (for example, some quadriplegics, like my late dad for the last six years of his life) life largely on Ensure or one of the very similar products from competing companies. Liquid nutrition products are very time-tested products, into which many hours of clinical observation and laboratory experiments have been devoted.

Re: Soylent International

#19
post #8

I doubt they really care about HN's opinion given the vast number of criticisms put forward, but I do really hope that they'd post more product information, perhaps more of the science, more of the research. Again, as I've said before, hiring a few more relevant scientists would help with their credibility, and might it be possible? -- improve their product. That is all. May there be no more flamewars. (Granted, I've…

I believe in a previously shared blog post, the founder mentioned that he was planning a "large-scale controlled trial". However, I haven't seen any additional details about these plans.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5815108

Re: Soylent International

#20
This is perhaps the worst example of people who learn their science and medicine from reading Reddit that I have yet seen in the Hacker News community. It illustrates the fallibility of human nature behind every new business scheme, and shows that a business doesn't have to be a big, multinational publicly traded corporation to engage in business with little regard for customer safety or public benefit.

AFTER EDIT: I have read the numerous stories submitted here about this YC-affiliated company before, and, yes, I am painfully aware of the company founder's appalling lack of background in nutrition and medicine.

http://blog.soylent.me/post/51007573199/the-biggest-pivot-in...

Post reply on HN