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How Soylent Ships a Trillion Calories per Month

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Re: How Soylent Ships a Trillion Calories per Month

#11

Post by jamii »

I tried soylent for a while and found the experience fairly unpleasant. I switched to http://www.mealsquares.com/ instead. Warmed up, they taste like a dense brownie. The thinking detailed on their website and the level of care that clearly went into choosing a safe recipe gives me a lot more confidence than soylent did eg

> First, there's nothing especially risky or unusual in MealSquares; they're made from a broad variety of ordinary, healthy whole-food ingredients like milk, rice bran, dates, etc. See our nutrition page for the full list. And unlike many commercial baked goods, MealSquares are free of artificial preservatives and flavoring agents.

They also don't require mixing so they work much better as a camping/climbing food.

Re: How Soylent Ships a Trillion Calories per Month

#13

Post by apsec112 »

I think they mean "billion", not "trillion", two words that are sadly very close together. A typical person might consume 60,000 calories a month, so a trillion calories a month is the equivalent of 17,000,000 people consuming nothing but Soylent. Soylent's not that popular.

Re: How Soylent Ships a Trillion Calories per Month

#14

Post by JohnTHaller »

jamii wrote: post #11

I tried soylent for a while and found the experience fairly unpleasant. I switched to http://www.mealsquares.com/ instead. Warmed up, they taste like a dense brownie. The thinking detailed on their website and the level of care that clearly went into choosing a safe recipe gives me a lot more confidence than soylent did eg > First, there's nothing especially risky or unusual in MealSquares; they're made from a broad…

Soylent is a different product from MealSquares. MealSquares likes to talk about "whole-food ingredients" but the whole point of Soylent is to get away from that and base the formula on what the body specifically needs... as opposed to what whole food ingredients happen to come close and taste decent together.

Soylent is simple to make, simple to drink, and has a pretty neutral flavor. They tweak it at each new version so the issues with the early versions have been eliminated. Some people won't like that approach and will prefer a "whole food" thing instead, which is just fine.

Re: How Soylent Ships a Trillion Calories per Month

#15

Post by Nadya »

puredemo wrote: post #7
psykovsky wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't it enough for your girlfriend not to drink it?

Not really, we share a lot of meals and we maintain a gluten-free household. Actually they do seem to be gluten-free now, fwiw.

According to their FAQ they are not gluten-free.

https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/201274745-Vegan-Or...

Re: How Soylent Ships a Trillion Calories per Month

#16

Post by gtk40 »

ldayley wrote: post #6

"a Trillion Calories" -- what a fantastic way to represent what they do in a way that sounds HUGE but is also both true and not hyperbolic sounding.

That is a lot no matter how you look at it though. If you assume someone eats 2,000 calories a day and 60,000 calories a month of only this one product, that would still be providing a month worth of food for 15 billion people.

Re: How Soylent Ships a Trillion Calories per Month

#17

Post by bryanlarsen »

apsec112 wrote: post #13

I think they mean "billion", not "trillion", two words that are sadly very close together. A typical person might consume 60,000 calories a month, so a trillion calories a month is the equivalent of 17,000,000 people consuming nothing but Soylent. Soylent's not that popular.

They're not wrong, just misleading. A typical person consumes 60,000 kilogram calories a month, AKA 60 million gram calories.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie

Re: How Soylent Ships a Trillion Calories per Month

#18

Post by rgacote »

vermontdevil wrote: post #2

Has anyone tried the drink? Is it good?

I've been using Soylant as my daily lunch meal for several months now. Enjoy the convenience. Taste and texture are acceptable. Not in any hurry to switch to Soylant for all my meals -- just enjoying the lunchtime convenience.

Re: How Soylent Ships a Trillion Calories per Month

#19

Post by JohnTHaller »

puredemo wrote: post #3
vermontdevil wrote: post #2

Has anyone tried the drink? Is it good?

It's alright, sort of tastes like bland vanilla rice. Had to stop 'cause the girlfriend is celiac and they can't guarantee gluten free.

In 2014 they wrote: "Soylent is vegetarian but does contain fish oil. While no ingredients by nature contain gluten a preliminary test has shown gluten present at around the FDA limit of 20ppm, likely from the oats. We are working on sourcing certified GF oats but for now cannot claim to be fully GF."

So, they were GF by the US definition of gluten free, but not fully as in certified GF.

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