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Soylent International

blog.soylent.me

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61–70 of 91 posts

Re: Soylent International

#61

Post by jljljl »

jamesaguilar wrote: post #29
tokenadult wrote: post #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…

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that you don't actually know where this guy learned his science and medicine. Let people experiment on themselves. IMO there are enough humans that if a few get slightly ill from this, it is worth it for the chance that it does work (which seems significant given the experimentation he did on himself, the presence of similar, competing products, etc.).

One of the reasons we have consumer protection laws and the FDA is so that people _don't_ have to experiment on themselves in order to verify the more extravagant claims made by products.

People should have a reasonable expectation that when they buy a product, it will work as expected and as advertised. And they should have recourse if this turns out not to be the case.

Re: Soylent International

#62

Post by mapt »

Here's how you create a Soylent without losing the DIY aesthetic:

1) You make it an open source project under an open license, OpenSoylent

2) You leave any health claims to be made by the OpenSoylent community. If this is unsatisfactory, you put out a bounty for MetaMed to write an independent report on the OpenSoylent wiki with references.

3) You accept people's patches to OpenSoylent

4) You create a separate, unaffilliated company to provide Soylent(tm), an implementation of OpenSoylent, with zero health claims, in a commercial kitchen, and link back to the OpenSoylent wiki for more information

Whether the above is legal or not, I'm not certain, but A) it's a hell of a lot closer than the present situation, and B) it doesn't offend geeks who apply critical thought to businesses that blog.

Re: Soylent International

#63

Post by jack-r-abbit »

aroch wrote: post #56
tasuki wrote: post #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 regu…

>Scrambled eggs are pushing it, preparation takes like 15 minutes and there’s the dirty pan left afterwards. But sometimes I still enjoy them. How the hell does it take 15mins to prep scrambled eggs? It should take less than 5 and your cleanup should take all of a minute 1. Put Small/medium saucepan on stove 2. Add 1/2 Tbsp butter 3. Crack 2 eggs into pan (Do no beat beforehand) 4. Put pan on mid-low flame and stir b…

Some people prefer a few other things in their eggs. So if you need to chop some onion or peppers or meat that will add to the prep and the clean up.

Re: Soylent International

#64

Post by Avshalom »

zxcdw wrote: post #55
Afforess wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the HN hate for this guy incredible. The NSA is less loathed. Do you need to be a nutritionist with a PhD to open a restaurant? Why does he need to be one?

Because this guy is making a fortune on a very simple and ancient idea brought into practice after some self studying. If Soylent delivers and can be capitalized on, this guy saves the world. On an ancient idea, simplest of them all, which everyone said was impossible.

Saves the world?

Saves the fucking world?

How? People in this world suffer malnutrition because of socio-political and logistical problems. A maybe shelf stable maybe meal-replacement isn't going to solve any problems, because as is kind of a theme in this version of the soylent thread WE ALREADY HAVE THIS.

Re: Soylent International

#65

Post by brownbat »

I'd really get behind an Open Soylent project.

More power to Soylent to monetize this, become a business just like Ensure or Slim Fast (succumbing to all the commercial pressures such products face, like, "Y'know, let's drop pricey molybdenum and just encourage people to have normal food once a day.")

I guess I was way more excited about the project when I thought he was starting a discussion where we can all pool information on self experimentation to help each other generate a cheap, nutritionally complete chemical sludge.

Re: Soylent International

#66

Post by mixmastamyk »

I wish the guys at soylent well. But, please get a nutritionist on staff so we don't have to listen to the same complaints every time.

Also, I think the difficulty in preparing food part is overblown. Haven't any of these guys heard of Trader Joe's?

Re: Soylent International

#67

Post by zxcdw »

Afforess wrote: post #58
zxcdw wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because this guy is making a fortune on a very simple and ancient idea brought into practice after some self studying. If Soylent delivers and can be capitalized on, this guy saves the world. On an ancient idea, simplest of them all, which everyone said was impossible.

Making a fortune? 500k is crowdfunding for enhancing the product and paying for clinical trials. I guess crowdfunding isn't cool anymore?

So you fail to see the market for this?

500k in croudfunding for a guy with absolutely no academic education behind the subject which by it's idea is as simple as Soylent is must surely rub the fur of a few the wrong way. "It just can't work!".

Re: Soylent International

#68

Post by aroch »

jack-r-abbit wrote: post #63
aroch wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Scrambled eggs are pushing it, preparation takes like 15 minutes and there’s the dirty pan left afterwards. But sometimes I still enjoy them. How the hell does it take 15mins to prep scrambled eggs? It should take less than 5 and your cleanup should take all of a minute 1. Put Small/medium saucepan on stove 2. Add 1/2 Tbsp butter 3. Crack 2 eggs into pan (Do no beat beforehand) 4. Put pan on mid-low flame and stir b…

Some people prefer a few other things in their eggs. So if you need to chop some onion or peppers or meat that will add to the prep and the clean up.

Given OP's other "recipes" it seems unlikely that this is the case. Even if it were, it'd hardly add another 10minutes

Re: Soylent International

#69

Post by tasuki »

aroch wrote: post #56
tasuki wrote: post #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 regu…

>Scrambled eggs are pushing it, preparation takes like 15 minutes and there’s the dirty pan left afterwards. But sometimes I still enjoy them. How the hell does it take 15mins to prep scrambled eggs? It should take less than 5 and your cleanup should take all of a minute 1. Put Small/medium saucepan on stove 2. Add 1/2 Tbsp butter 3. Crack 2 eggs into pan (Do no beat beforehand) 4. Put pan on mid-low flame and stir b…

Not quite sure why I've always cracked eggs into a cup first, cracking them directly into the pan seems obvious (and no beating, I'm not cruel!). You've just saved me one minute for every future scrambled eggs!

And as jack-r-abbit suggested, I do like to chop some onion/peppers/tomatoes into scrambled eggs. I'll time it and try to get under 10 minutes next time!

Re: Soylent International

#70

Post by zxcdw »

Avshalom wrote: post #64
zxcdw wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because this guy is making a fortune on a very simple and ancient idea brought into practice after some self studying. If Soylent delivers and can be capitalized on, this guy saves the world. On an ancient idea, simplest of them all, which everyone said was impossible.

Saves the world? Saves the fucking world? How? People in this world suffer malnutrition because of socio-political and logistical problems. A maybe shelf stable maybe meal-replacement isn't going to solve any problems, because as is kind of a theme in this version of the soylent thread WE ALREADY HAVE THIS.

Saving the world is obviously(yes it is, lets not even argue) an extreme case formulation in this case.

My point stands, the man came up with something as ancient and as simple as "generic stuff you can just eat and get all you need without preparation or other stuff you need to ever care about", and people go absolutely nuts over it.

It is my belief that the problem is not the product, but the idea. I do not hold any qualified education to argue for or against whether or not something like that is ever possible, but considering the heated debate back and forth, to me it seems as if it's not about Soylent itself or anything, but rather about the whole principal idea.

I enjoy cooking and good food, and put some effort in what I eat and what I don't eat, so I am not even personally interested let alone invested in this. Also the marketing speeches of Soylent fixing everything are outright laughable, but I can't stop wondering the knee jerk reaction against the idea behind Soylent itself even.

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