What a depressing life to eat all day protein powder... I bet they try yoga while compiling in order to avoid the urge for sex (or masturbating) because it consumes valuable watts that could be used for thinking
In Busy Silicon Valley, Protein Powder Is in Demand
11–20 of 87 posts
Re: In Busy Silicon Valley, Protein Powder Is in Demand
#12I've been using Soylent and other powdered food products (Schmilk, Keto Chow) regularly (as in 4-5 times per week) for the past 8 months.
I'm a full-time student. I spend upwards of 10 hours a day in classes or in the lab. I've tried prepping meals beforehand to avoid eating out, but in the end I always ended up getting fast food on campus because I didn't have time or energy. Powdered foods have a surprising amount of utility as a meal replacement for one or two meals a day.
Soylent itself is a fantastic product, truly. They've been attentive to the needs of their users, adapting the formula to issues as they crop up (such as digestive troubles from an excess of fiber), and recently made it a lot easier to use by incorporating the oils into the powder. Now they just send you the powder, and you mix it with water in the included pitcher. No measuring or anything. Of all the powdered foods, Soylent is easily the most convenient.
Nowadays, I'm a big fan of Schmilk. It tastes pretty good (like milk and oats) for powdered food, and it's very inexpensive at $55/week (with no subscription) for the powder (and around $10/week for the whole milk required).
Re: In Busy Silicon Valley, Protein Powder Is in Demand
#13Soylent was originally touted as a meal replacement but I (and others) have found that it works best as a "plan B" to nutrition. It changes the way you look at food if you always have an option to just get the nutrition you need quickly and easily: a lot of meals you'd normally skip you don't, and a lot of meals you eat that are less than nutritious you can either opt-out of or can supplement with proper nutrition wi…
So, here's a question; If you're using it as a supplement rather than a total meal replacement, why spend the exorbitant amount for Soylent specifically when you could get 90% of the way by getting some whey, mixing in a bit of cheap oil, and taking a multivitamin?
Many do. People eat official Soylent because the convenience, specifically, is worth it to them.
However easy your recipe is, mixing a bag of powder with a pitcher of water is still faster, easier, and less to pay attention to.
Re: In Busy Silicon Valley, Protein Powder Is in Demand
#14I reluctantly replaced about half of my meals with Soylent while stateside for a few months recently on a visit. Jake Shake is an EU competitor and, as far as I can tell, has the same nutritional profile and tastes about a million times better than Soylent on its best day. It also comes in single-serving pouches, which is a big win for me because Soylent has to be refrigerated after making it and the colder it is, th…
Any idea how to get it if you're outside the EU?
Re: In Busy Silicon Valley, Protein Powder Is in Demand
#15Soylent was originally touted as a meal replacement but I (and others) have found that it works best as a "plan B" to nutrition. It changes the way you look at food if you always have an option to just get the nutrition you need quickly and easily: a lot of meals you'd normally skip you don't, and a lot of meals you eat that are less than nutritious you can either opt-out of or can supplement with proper nutrition wi…
Where Soylent falls short in this respect is that it's nutrition is only ideal given that the rest of your diet is Soylent too. It has a ton of carbs, and if you're anything like most Americans, you already have way too many carbs in your diet. Unless you're doing a lot of physical activity and you need those carbs, most people would do better just drinking a regular whey protein shake.
Soylent 1.4 (the most recent formulation) is 40/43/17 fat/carbs/protein and the carbohydrates that is supplies are slow digesting. So I would say supplementation of Soylent to an average diet would improve it overall.
Re: In Busy Silicon Valley, Protein Powder Is in Demand
#16For fun, I ordered a couple weeks of Soylent. On my first taste I realized it tasted almost exactly like a common but old Korean grain drink called Misugaru (미숫가루)[1]. It's hard to get exact nutrition information on Misugaru because even today it's usually ground up at the supermarket and put into nondescript bags. It's usually made with water or milk and chilled or mixed with ice. Like Soylent it dissolves poorly in whatever liquid you put it in, so you'll end up with big chunks of powder at the bottom of your cup. Leaving Soylent overnight usually resolves most of that, I have no idea if Misugaru does the same. Soylent is a little more "pancake/unsweetened cake batter" flavor than Misugaru, but the experience is remarkably similar.
Soylent is weird stuff, I expect to get hungry shortly after drinking it, but it holds satiation longer than regular food for me. I usually drink it as a quick breakfast, and where I'd normally get hungry around 11:00-11:30, I'll still be fine till around 1:00-1:30pm. I've also started drinking it on weekends where my option is microwave garbage or fast food. I'll be fuller, longer, and can almost guarantee it will have a better nutrition profile than what I would have eaten. And it'll probably have been cheaper as well.
As a result, I'm buying fewer groceries, and I have other stuff in my freezer that I'm not eating and seem to just take up space. I have fewer dishes to do as well. It's kind of weird how much time and space is taken up by food and food related activities and items and you don't realize it until you don't need them.
The only real weird side effect I've had is that when I go for a couple days at more than half Soylent, I get really vivid dreams, often about eating red meat. They're kind of disturbing so I usually just keep to under half my meals. That way. I've read other people reporting similar meat cravings and vivid dreams as well when they dose up.
One other benefit, when I decide to eat food, I'm doing it for flavor and experience, so I find I'm focusing on finding great foods to eat more than just looking for something to get me through the next few hours. It's paradoxically made me like good food more than I did.
So on the whole: cheaper, more nutritious, more convenient offsets the boring taste for me.
edit they also support a robust community of DIYers, which is a really smart way of growing the marketspace out.
1 - http://mykoreankitchen.com/2013/02/05/korean-multigrain-shak...
Re: In Busy Silicon Valley, Protein Powder Is in Demand
#17Re: In Busy Silicon Valley, Protein Powder Is in Demand
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't call Soylent "exorbitant". It works out to like $3 a meal.
Right, but whey protein is less than a dollar per serving.
With meal replacements, convenience is the killer feature. Buying whey protein, some oil, and a multivitamin is undoubtedly cheaper, but there's the non-negligible overhead of purchasing the ingredients (instead of just a Soylent subscription), and measuring ingredients for every serving.
Re: In Busy Silicon Valley, Protein Powder Is in Demand
#19Anybody knows if the soy used to produce Soylent is a GMO?
Re: In Busy Silicon Valley, Protein Powder Is in Demand
#20Soylent was originally touted as a meal replacement but I (and others) have found that it works best as a "plan B" to nutrition. It changes the way you look at food if you always have an option to just get the nutrition you need quickly and easily: a lot of meals you'd normally skip you don't, and a lot of meals you eat that are less than nutritious you can either opt-out of or can supplement with proper nutrition wi…
So, here's a question; If you're using it as a supplement rather than a total meal replacement, why spend the exorbitant amount for Soylent specifically when you could get 90% of the way by getting some whey, mixing in a bit of cheap oil, and taking a multivitamin?
Good question. Nature usually favours diversity so I'm skeptical at how convenient this really is at a Molecular Biology level.