What makes Solyent special vs other meal replacements? I take a meal replacement called Raw Meal (only one meal a day) that's make mostly from sprouts. I feel great when I make myself do it every day. Is the difference that Solyent isn't made from any plant material but rather is raw chemicals?
How I Ate No Food for 30 Days
71–80 of 297 posts
Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days
#72EDIT: Unbelievable. Both the title and the link to the article I commented on have been swapped from the PandoDaily article ( http://pandodaily.com/2013/11/12/vice-investigates-soylent-f... ) to the Vice article which PandoDaily referred to, but that tries to give it a positive spin. This goes well beyond whatever policy pg was trying to defend recently. This is deeply manipulative. --- It looks a scam, it sounds lik…
A scam? Hardly.
The only "scammy" thing was overreaching claims about how it's "optimized perfectly" and the like. And from what I've heard, they've toned that down.
We haven't cracked the human body, but there is science that supports Soylent.
Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days
#73As someone who drinks Soylent regularly, the most pertinent part of this article was the blood tests after the author went on a 30 day Soylent-only diet. "Doctors tested Merchant’s blood at the end of it, and the only nutrient he was deficient in was Vitamin D -- i.e. sunlight", which he says made sense because having Soylent handy meant he "wouldn’t have to leave the office". That's certainly good news. If the mold…
I'm not a real fan of chewing food, but having done a similar diet before I prefer it. Turns out that even though me and food don't always get along, after 3 weeks on a liquid diet the cravings for real food for me come back. There are plenty of weightlifters who have done similar full-liquid diets for years before soylent, this data exists but has been largely ignored since it's from a different kind of community. A…
Yeah, I was pretty appalled to see one of the founders/employees measuring ingredients out of a box on the floor while wearing dirty espadrilles (canvas shoes). I suspect that if you look at the skepticism/support in this thread you'd see a strong correlation between people who have worked in food service at some time in their lives and those who haven't.
Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days
#74As a long time beta user I have a bunch of problems with this piece: - the Oakland space was a temporary location while they were iterating on the beta. Soylent is not manufactured there. - all the journalists writing about Soylent seem to attribute to Rob stuff that he doesn't actually say: namely that you should only consume Soylent all the time. The point of Soylent is that it replaces transactional eating and mak…
Soylent is a technology company. It's not just positioning. They are iterating towards finding an exponentially better way to do transactional eating using technology. That's the definition of a tech company.
Well, any product is technology in that sense. But this particular technology, meal-replacement shakes, is already reasonably well established. What seems new to me is that Soylent is pitching itself to people who either don't know about or have failed to become interested in the existing products, which seems like a marketing innovation more than a tech innovation. They don't seem to be differentiating on technical quality or iteration. If you read their campaign, for example, it is entirely positioned against regular food, as if they have just invented the full-meal-replacement shake, and does not mention anything about technical innovation over existing competitors: https://campaign.soylent.me/soylent-free-your-body
It's possible they also have technical innovation over any existing meal-replacement shake, but they are being very quiet about it if so.
Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days
#75Seems like Soylent is taking advantage if the entire industry loophole called supplements. If the loophole didn't exist, this type of entrepreneurship wouldn't. Food companies are also doing real experiments. I don't see tasteless goop shakes disrupting the market any more than sport shakes. EDIT: I stand corrected on the first paragraph. I still believe the 2nd to be true.
Soylent is a food and not a supplement. The commercial version of the product is being produced in an FDA approved and GMP certified facility - RFI.
Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days
#76Best part of this for me was the information that the Optifast product exists. I hope soylent is successful, but I like knowing there are existing total-meal-replacement competitors I can order now on amazon (which I just did).
Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days
#77IS the stuff on vice.com real? I read about a guy who claimed to only eat raw meat, and it seemed a bit far fetched.
Ok, this Solyent is believable, but why??? Eating is one of life pleasures.
Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days
#78I suppose you could spin it "Look how healthy our rats are and there is nothing in this warehouse but Soylent! Testing on rats, check!" But this made me a bit sad. I think Soylent is great, it is disruptive, it is more palatable than nutraloaf it could be a great alternative for folks who just need food to live, and it could provide a fascinating 'control' group for various Microbiome projects. But clearly these folk…
What you do, is then you hire a 10-year veteran of the food preparation business. What you DON'T do, is pickup a few textbooks on body chemistry and assume you can figure it all out by yourself.
Why not? The human body is a machine, and we can examine and alter that machine. We've been doing that throughout history.
I don't like the early claims of Soylent being "perfectly optimized" and the like.
Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
> For me however it does not discount the product in the least You can get better products from reputable companies. Or you can buy this gloop, from a bunch of people who clearly have little clue about what they're doing.
Perhaps I should clarify, I would hate to see this hurt the entire industry. If Soylent does not do a complete rethinking after what has happened I expect someone else to take their place.
They're using a copacker now, which means a proper, approved, factory. So things should be much better for the actual product.
I dislike the way the founder keeps saying “I want to be totally transparent,” - but only after someone has seen a rat or found mold or whatever.
The algae stuff sounds interesting. Is anyone already working on it?
Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days
#80Soylent might, technically, work. It might be safe and healthy, it definitely looks simple and allows you to forget anything related to grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning up afterwards. But thinking about the prospect of the future makes me sick to my stomach. Soylent paints a disgustingly frightening dystopia where humans are fed 100% "correct" food to allow them to continue being cogs in the business machine, n…
Or... it could put humanity in a position to provide a balanced nutrition as a fundamental human right, delivered right to your doorstep by USPS. If the economics worked out it could be provided everywhere worldwide, and then other food consumption could be purely for enjoyment.
There are always people who scream "dystopia!" every time a new technology arrives. That seems very pessimistic.