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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

#21

Post by Roodgorf »

MrUnderhill wrote: post #12

For Europeans wanting to try it, check out Joylent[1] as well, a Soylent fork based in Netherlands. They do a few different tastes too (vanilla, strawberry, banana, chocolate and soon mango). [1] https://joylent.eu

I get a certain amount of joy in the terms in which these products are referred to due to the background of the founder as an engineer and, I assume, the audience that seems to champion it. Something about referring to a food product in terms of version 1.3 vs. 1.4 or a forked (heh) version always gives me a bit of a laugh.

Re: How Soylent Ships a Trillion Calories per Month

#22

Post by criley2 »

gtk40 wrote: post #16
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.

I think a person eats 2,000 kilocalories a day and 2,000,000 calories per day.

When one person eats 2M calories a day, selling trillions of calories is suddenly not so hard!

Re: How Soylent Ships a Trillion Calories per Month

#23

Post by [deleted] »

gtk40 wrote: post #16
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.

[deleted]

Re: How Soylent Ships a Trillion Calories per Month

#24

Post by jules »

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.

Maybe they are using the physics definition of calorie rather than the dietary definition of calorie (a 1000x difference).

Re: How Soylent Ships a Trillion Calories per Month

#25

Post by Roodgorf »

thisone wrote: post #9
vermontdevil wrote: post #2

Has anyone tried the drink? Is it good?

Haven't tried it myself, but this month's Oh No Ross and Carrie was all about Soylent http://ohnopodcast.com/investigations/2015/6/3/ross-and-carr...

I came here to mention exactly this. A lot of the comments on this thread also seem to corroborate their general reaction to it (assessment of taste, bodily response, etc.).

Re: How Soylent Ships a Trillion Calories per Month

#26

Post by jamii »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #14
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 versi…

Their launch comments on hn explained why they believe that using whole foods is a lower risk way to get 'everything the body needs' to actually end up in the body - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7314183

Re: How Soylent Ships a Trillion Calories per Month

#27

Post by gulpahum »

MrUnderhill wrote: post #12

For Europeans wanting to try it, check out Joylent[1] as well, a Soylent fork based in Netherlands. They do a few different tastes too (vanilla, strawberry, banana, chocolate and soon mango). [1] https://joylent.eu

I was also disappointed that Soylent doesn't ship to Europe.

So, I have been drinking Ambronite [1]. It has a similar idea, but it is a bit more expensive, because it is made of real food ingredients.

[1] http://ambronite.com

Re: How Soylent Ships a Trillion Calories per Month

#28

Post by fweespeech »

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…

http://www.mealsquares.com/nutrition-facts.html

2000 calories of it is 130% of your daily saturated fat...and 126% of total fat.

Eh. Soylent you could get away with eating it all day [theoretically]. MealSquares you need to supplement with other foods due to the fact content or you'll end up screwing your health with that much saturated fat.

http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/GettingHealthy/NutritionCenter...

Additionally:

> The American Heart Association recommends aiming for a dietary pattern that achieves 5% to 6% of calories from saturated fat. That means, for example, if you need about 2,000 calories a day, no more than 120 of them should come from saturated fats. That’s about 13 grams of saturated fats a day.

Its 6g per square, so you really shouldn't eat more than 2 and get the rest from other sources. At which point, its a minority of the calories you consume.

Re: How Soylent Ships a Trillion Calories per Month

#29

Post by damoncali »

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.

calories vs kilocalories, I suppose.

Re: How Soylent Ships a Trillion Calories per Month

#30

Post by mcdougle »

rgacote wrote: post #18
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.

I think that's how most people do it, and the founder has implied in the past that it's kind of how he intends/expects it.

The biggest criticism of Soylent seems to be "Who would ever want to give up food for all meals forever?" when that's not really what the point is.

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