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Soylent on the latest Vice piece

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Re: Soylent on the latest Vice piece

#141

Post by sneak »

jimmar wrote: post #12
contextual wrote: post #10

Soylent will likely become a billion dollar global enterprise, and even "disrupt" the food industry. It will also ultimately be a failure and frowned upon in modern society. Why? Because a Soylent-saturated world would rob families and loved ones of the ritual and benefits of eating together. Eating together civilizes people. It's emotionally and socially edifying. Studies show that families that dine together stay t…

I cook breakfast for my kids every morning. We eat together every night. For lunch, I'm at work and I typically microwave some junk and get on with more important things. For me, it'd be nice to have another solution for the mid-day meal. So, I've bought in for a trial. I'm not expecting it to be a 100% replacement for regular food. My hunch is that most people will not replace 100% of their food with soylent.

https://twitter.com/rosalabs/status/396327848010477568

(@rosalabs is the company behind Soylent.)

Re: Soylent on the latest Vice piece

#142

Post by zipppy »

spurgu wrote: post #53
jebus989 wrote: post #33

The fact a rat was spotted in a dusty old warehouse isn't really worth addressing. From what I've learned so far, the only factor letting this product down for me is the price. I'd guess $65/w is around what I'm spending on food now. Do we have any idea of their margin? Is the price expected to decrease once they get a decent production line up?

Yeah, I spend even less than that. The price would have to be somewhere around half of that to make it attractive for me.

That's incredible to me...even at $65 it's less than $10 a day. Half the price would be like $1.25 a meal.

I spend almost that simply for lunch each day (sushi, sandwiches...food on-the-go), so for me spending $65 a week would pretty easily save money. Makes me curious how many people (in the U.S.) spend less than $65 a week on food.

Re: Soylent on the latest Vice piece

#143

Post by mcphilip »

tptacek wrote: post #2

Wow. Exactly the right response. I would never have paid any attention to Soylent's agreement with a large HACCP-certified manufacturer before, but Vice's story actually made that relevant to me. They might actually pick up customers from this shitstorm. Argh! But, well played.

It's hard to imagine the type of person that would be on the fence about Soylent that would be ok with it after reading this article. Hopefully the "it was beta" excuse for producing Soylent in an unhealthy environment won't fly outside of SV culture. If anything, it should bring up serious doubts about the integrity of a team that, when faced with overwhelming demand and flush with investor cash, stoop to a level of cognitive dissonance necessary to claim lofty goals of fighting hunger worldwide while sidestepping around the rats and filth in their "beta" production environment. If the Soylent team wants respect they should focus less on dreaming up scientific sounding rebranding campaigns and slow down the "deployment" of their product in order to subject it to rigorous scientific tests and trials before mailing it to strangers.

---------------

Meta: wow, I really get worked up over this Soylent stuff. There's something deeply disturbing about this to me, like we're witnessing the birth of a monster. Maybe it's the first sign of the worst of the "move fast, break things" cutting corners culture smelling money to be made iterating on peoples' health...

Re: Soylent on the latest Vice piece

#144

Post by sneak »

mdisraeli wrote: post #123
cgh wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please see this discussion, in particular the response from "rob": http://discourse.soylent.me/t/comparing-soylent-to-existing-... Summary: Soylent aims for something more ideal than a suboptimal solution. It's a day to day meal replacement for otherwise healthy, active people. Given the ingredients of Ensure, I wouldn't want to try to live on it for 30 days. It's like Google vs. Altavista, if you'll pardon the strai…

From the link: "I considered Ensure but found it much too expensive, low calorie, unpalatable, and an ingredient make up that was far from complete or optimal" I have family ties into this industry, and quite frankly this comment is rather ignorant. Ensure is a brand range, with a lot of variation, some of which are, for example, extremely high in calories. It is also worth noting that one of the uses of products lik…

Why doesn't Ensure have a good webpage showing us these options and educating us on how to choose?

There's more to "product" than what's in the bag.

Re: Soylent on the latest Vice piece

#145

Post by nationcrafting »

thinkalone wrote: post #23
aaronem wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure calling it anything other than Soylent Red and Green would be a really, really good idea. Call it a hunch.

Yeah, I was pretty disheartened in the Motherboard video that the founder liked the name Soylent.

The name is one of the things I love about it. After all, "Soylent is people" is right on target, in the sense that it's a people product, designed to help people with a food problem.

There isn't one group on the planet that wouldn't benefit from at least a little bit of Soylent at some point in their regular lives.

It doesn't have to replace their family meals, and it doesn't have to replace their social eating.

But it can be their occasional breakfast when they got up a little too late. Or their lunch when they need to run to the post office in their lunch break. Or their "eating at my computer" food when they're busy programming and don't want to order pizza delivery. Or their everyday staple when they're on a budget. Or their emergency food when they've just been hit by a tsunami and the rescue team won't come for days. Or their backpack food when they're on a military mission. Or their one-meal a day when they're in a submarine with tight space issues. Etc. etc. etc.

Re: Soylent on the latest Vice piece

#146

Post by DanBC »

aianus wrote: post #136
lambda wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given how much of a problem some people here seem to have with normal food (though it only seems to have happened after seeing the Soylent marketing materials, I didn't know anyone who complained about how much trouble eating was before the Soylent hype), it's hard to tell if you're being sarcastic or serious. I suppose I've just run up against the Silicon Valley Hype Machine version of Poe's Law. Given how bad the h…

I've been complaining about how much trouble eating was since I realized I was underweight maybe 6-7 years ago. I've narrowed it down to some kind of mental problem that makes me chew 3-5x longer than other people. I therefore get full 3-5x sooner and it's hard to eat enough calories. I've tried supplements and eating very dense foods (lots of grease and carbs) with lukewarm results but if Soylent works as promised,…

If you try Soylent, and dislike it, there are other products that are calorie dense that may help. (This is not medical advice, see a doctor, etc etc).

I know of Ensure Plus because I know lots of people with anorexia, and it's used during refeeding programs. (Sometimes as a drink, and sometimes through an NG tube).

Re: Soylent on the latest Vice piece

#147

Post by selmnoo »

sneak wrote: post #133
thinkalone wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What shitstorm? The Motherboard piece was overall positive, and didn't have the tongue-in-cheek holier-than-thou tone that most articles about Soylent have had.

> When I'd received my first shipment of Soylent in New York, it arrived in the office in a white UPS box—and the yellowish crust-dust was packed into barely-sealed Ziploc bags. How is something barely sealed? It is either sealed or it isn't. They're trying hard to play up the amateur hour part, and that bit with the doctor's "I don't recommend it" where she lists the social aspects of food after she was holding an e…

> They're trying hard to play up the amateur hour part, and that bit with the doctor's "I don't recommend it" where she lists the social aspects of food after she was holding an existing commercial meal replacement drink was pure sensationalism.

What? I like rooting for the underdog newcomer and all but will you please settle down. The social aspects of food are pretty freaking relevant and worth talking about in an extended article on Soylent. As well exposing are any shortcuts they're taking, no matter how trivial they seem. You'd expect a review on a restaurant to tell you if the reviewers saw any rats there, right? Despite the rats being there, besides questionable operating practices the Vice piece was overall positive, so just cool it there on kicking Vice around.

Re: Soylent on the latest Vice piece

#148

Post by sneak »

oftenwrong wrote: post #96
KevinEldon wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soylent is a food, like the McDonald's McRib sandwich, the Baconator from Wendy's, the Denny's Grand Slam Breakfast, and the delicious beef tacos from my local Mexican restaurant. Why does Soylent need more scrutiny than any of these or the hundreds of thousands of other food products on the market today?

Because your local Mexican restaurant doesn't claim that you can eat nothing but their tacos and maintain perfect health.

That should not change the standards they are held to. Nobody's forcing people to eat soylent 24/7, any more than they're forcing people to eat supersized big macs for three meals a day.

Re: Soylent on the latest Vice piece

#149

Post by brandon272 »

lambda wrote: post #67
jimmar wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cook breakfast for my kids every morning. We eat together every night. For lunch, I'm at work and I typically microwave some junk and get on with more important things. For me, it'd be nice to have another solution for the mid-day meal. So, I've bought in for a trial. I'm not expecting it to be a 100% replacement for regular food. My hunch is that most people will not replace 100% of their food with soylent.

Why don't you just buy Ensure or Carnation Instant Breakfast? They already exist and are well known, that you can buy anywhere. Or make yourself a bowl of oatmeal. Or eat leftovers from the night before. I think that the only reason that anyone's interested in Soylent is the current startup/crowdfunding bubble hype, not because it's actually anything particularly new. Soylent is to Ensure as Groupon is to coupons. Be…

Can you really compare products like Ensure or Carnation Instant Breakfast to Soylent? Pick up any of those products in a store and you'll see that half of the ingredients have nothing to do with nutritional value and are about making the product taste better. I'm holding a bottle of Nestle's "Boost" meal replacement drink right now and here are the main ingredients:

> Water, Sugar, Corn Syrup Solids, Modified Milk Ingredients, Cocoa, High Oleic Sunflower Oil, Corn Oil, Salt, Artificial Flavour, Soy Oil

Just because something is "well known" doesn't make it better. Nestle is not a company with an outstanding global reputation and if given the choice between trusting them or a company like Soylent, I'm going to choose Soylent.

Like others here, I view Soylent as an interesting experiment. I enjoy a nice meal as much as the next person but I also appreciate the value of something fast, simple and nutritionally complete that can be used from time to time as supplementation when you don't feel the need to sit down for an actual meal.

Re: Soylent on the latest Vice piece

#150

Post by sneak »

mcphilip wrote: post #143
tptacek wrote: post #2

Wow. Exactly the right response. I would never have paid any attention to Soylent's agreement with a large HACCP-certified manufacturer before, but Vice's story actually made that relevant to me. They might actually pick up customers from this shitstorm. Argh! But, well played.

It's hard to imagine the type of person that would be on the fence about Soylent that would be ok with it after reading this article. Hopefully the "it was beta" excuse for producing Soylent in an unhealthy environment won't fly outside of SV culture. If anything, it should bring up serious doubts about the integrity of a team that, when faced with overwhelming demand and flush with investor cash, stoop to a level of…

That was the beta/promo batch. I fail to see how that's relevant now.

They're already subjecting the production version to rigorous testing.

As for trials, those cost hundreds of millions of dollars and are done for no other food. Are you suggesting that they simply not make Soylent because it hasn't gone through a phase 3?

I bet you're real fun at bake sales.

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