171–180 of 297 posts
How about linking to the original and not this blogspam? http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/soylent-no-food-for-30-days I'm no fan of Soylent (mainly because it's all marketing hype, meal replacements have been around for decades) but this title is BS. He had a moldy shipment caused by damaged packaging and saw rats at a bar. BFD.
As 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 w…
Kudos to Soylent for trying to normalize liquid diets.
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OK, so I like cooking and eating food. I think soylent is a scam, or at the very least just another in a long line of unappetizing "diet replacement shakes". But just allow me a moment to conduct a thought experiment, or at least play devil's advocate. For years you've been walking to get where you are going and you've been plowing your fields with a couple of very high maintenance animals that are costly and risky.…
Breaks down and you have no idea how to fix it and have to hand over cash to the guy you bought it from, because your generations of accumulated animal husbandry knowledge is now useless? Does not magically replace itself with newer models like your farm animals did? Introduces new and unexpected dangers like a blade that accidentally cuts off your childs hand, because while you and your children are very familiar wi…
My point is that world changing inventions do occur (rarely) and they are met with skepticism.
From a different perspective, has anyone ever taken the time to read local health department restaurant inspection reports (if available)? I assume most people here eat at restaurants without too much concern, but if you ever read the reports, you'll find experienced industry professionals cited for far worse infractions than these.
OMG, yes, that sounds like a totally reliable product to, you know, like, trust one's own existence to.
Not to mention the incredibly sad, and dehumanizing experience of losing all the marvellous things of a great meal that are not related to nutrition: textures, flavor, a time to disconnect and relax, a time to chat with friends, family, etc, just to mention a few obvious ones.
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There's a difference between "meat", and grain-fed, antibiotic treated cow meat. And last time I made bread, it didn't magically develop high fructose corn syrup or ammonium chloride, and yet, somehow it appears in the "bread" of a McDonalds hamburger. It goes without saying that the condiments are more or less by definition artificial processed foods. And let's not even get into the amount of sodium in this thing. Y…
I can't tell if this is just hyperbole or if you actually believe what you're saying.
This is, IMO, the stupidest thing ever. Why just WHY give up on food? Cooking and enjoying food is one of our essential pleasures in life; I just can't see myself replacing it to some hipster matrix-like shake of nutrients. Just no thank you. Anyway the title feels a lot misleading for someone that is used to do water fast. That is truly 'eating no food', and some do it for lengths of 30 days (yes it's safe for most…
Soylent 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…
Its funny because we already live in this dystopia and you simply don't notice it because the plastic food we eat "looks real" and "tastes good". What is the difference between the completely artificial hamburger people get at McDonalds and Soylent? The fact that its basically "molded" to look like the real food we used to eat? The reality is that we long ago crossed the line into having a society that mostly eats ab…
Even if there are mechanically separated parts of the meat, they're still meat.
Even if it's as artificial as you say, isn't food that "looks real" and "tastes good" better than food that "looks like deplorable shit" and "tastes like deplorable shit" and is unapologetically named after something horrible from a 1970s dystopian sci fi movie?
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It's only a problem if it harms a human suddenly and irreversibly. I'm guessing that anyone who was suffering problems from a dietary change would have time to correct. Show me some evidence or even some indication that Soylent will result in an irreversible and sudden decline in health. I'm guessing that you won't, or can't. Your argument is "We don't know, so let's not risk it". The risk here is minimal. If it fail…
> Show me some evidence or even some indication that Soylent will result in an irreversible and sudden decline in health. > If it fails to live up to the hype, it's reversible. Once again, demanding evidence that something is unsafe instead of providing evidence that it is not, then in the same breath taking that it is not for granted. Is that all you are wired to do? It's like what I'm saying is going in one ear and…
I don't treat human life lightly. You're just treating a dietary change too heavily.
> It's like what I'm saying is going in one ear and coming out the other.
I was just about to say the same of you. I'm done here.
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It's only a problem if it harms a human suddenly and irreversibly. I'm guessing that anyone who was suffering problems from a dietary change would have time to correct. Show me some evidence or even some indication that Soylent will result in an irreversible and sudden decline in health. I'm guessing that you won't, or can't. Your argument is "We don't know, so let's not risk it". The risk here is minimal. If it fail…
> Show me some evidence or even some indication that Soylent will result in an irreversible and sudden decline in health. > If it fails to live up to the hype, it's reversible. Once again, demanding evidence that something is unsafe instead of providing evidence that it is not, then in the same breath taking that it is not for granted. Is that all you are wired to do? It's like what I'm saying is going in one ear and…
If you build software that doesn't work, people get pissed off and yell at you on web-forums... but in the great scheme of things that's not a big deal.
The main downside is that once you leave software, startup culture becomes incredibly dangerous. If you build an airplane that "doesn't work", people die. If you build a train that "doesn't work", the train crashes into a building and people die. If you build a bridge that doesn't work... people die.
And of course, when it comes to Soylent... if you build a food process that can be infested with diseases, or leave out important dietary nutrition in a particular diet... people can die.
We have all this discussion talking about the diet side of things, but little discussion on the practicality of storage, or whether or not it needs to be refrigerated.