How Soylent Ships a Trillion Calories per Month • Hacker News Board

Re: How Soylent Ships a Trillion Calories per Month

#211

Post by crusso » Sat, Jun 06, 2015, 1:37 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #205

Nrsolis wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is some anecdotal evidence that varying macronutrient levels affect hormone levels in significant ways. Screwing with hormone levels is a great way to affect the metabolism rate and lipid storage capability of the human body. That's what bodybuilders have been doing for decades. Steroid use is the ultimate manifestation of that school of thought. The truth is that we know very very little about nutrition becaus…

We know this about nutrition: activity burns calories at extremely predictable rates. Food has calories at extremely predictable densities. Physics works. And see? Even these fundamental facts about physics get disputed/denied by the nutrition nuts.

While your are correct in a fundamental physics way, you might be ignoring the details of human chemistry and its resulting psychology impact. There's are reasons for the relatively recent obesity epidemic. Those reasons are rooted in the misguided dietary recommendations to reduce fat in favor of increasing carbs.

https://www.thebairs.net/2015/05/recommended-reading-why-we-...

Re: How Soylent Ships a Trillion Calories per Month

#212

Post by crusso » Sat, Jun 06, 2015, 1:45 PM UTC

Shivetya wrote: post #82

cblock811 wrote: post #79

The value prop that people will save money is kind of funny to me. My diet: Breakfast: Oatmeal, honey, cinnamon $0.20 Lunch: Large Salad(spinach, carrot, tomato, cucumber, mushroom, bell pepper, sometimes almonds) $2.50 Dinner: Steamed Veggies and Seared Tilapia (kale, carrot, tomato, capers, tilapia) $3.50 If people just budged properly they would be fine. That being said, I'm curious to try soylent and have purchas…

I would purchase a days worth but I am not going to toss eighty odd bucks on something I might not like. At least mealsquares has a sample pack at twenty five that is about my threshold for trying specialized food products.

Soylent 1.4 has a grainy/nutty taste, similar to almond milk with oats.

If you like those flavors, then you'll probably like Soylent. I spike mine with a healthy amount of chocolate protein powder (Isopure) and coconut oil since I do better with less carbs in my diet.

Re: How Soylent Ships a Trillion Calories per Month

#213

Post by crusso » Sat, Jun 06, 2015, 1:46 PM UTC

T-hawk wrote: post #8

vermontdevil wrote: post #2

Has anyone tried the drink? Is it good?

I like it, but can certainly see where some wouldn't. Tastes like slightly sweeter and thinner oatmeal. Reddit has a good amount of discussion and is probably a better place than HN for it: http://reddit.com/r/soylent

I've gotten some great information from that reddit subgroup, especially on some of the variants of Soylent that people have created.

I have some Keto Chow on order to see how that goes.

Re: How Soylent Ships a Trillion Calories per Month

#214

Post by pharke » Sat, Jun 06, 2015, 1:51 PM UTC

tetraodonpuffer wrote: post #132

cblock811 wrote: post #79

The value prop that people will save money is kind of funny to me. My diet: Breakfast: Oatmeal, honey, cinnamon $0.20 Lunch: Large Salad(spinach, carrot, tomato, cucumber, mushroom, bell pepper, sometimes almonds) $2.50 Dinner: Steamed Veggies and Seared Tilapia (kale, carrot, tomato, capers, tilapia) $3.50 If people just budged properly they would be fine. That being said, I'm curious to try soylent and have purchas…

it depends on where you live, over here a medium sized bunch of organic kale is $2.99 at whole foods by itself, and $0.20 won't get you that many oats, let alone honey or cinnamon. The advantage of things like Soylent is that the price is the same no matter where you live, whether you are in a small town with great produce where it's cheap or whether you live in an expensive downtown with limited access.

Where I live, buying rolled oats off the shelf from a regular grocery store will run you $0.00244 per gram. A serving of oats as indicated by the packaging is 3/4 cups or 65.7g of oats by weight. That works out to a whopping $0.1647 per serving. Prices are fairly average if not a little higher where I live so yes most people can get oats for $0.20 a serving. The secret is probably not buying at whole foods.

Honey can be a bit more expensive, for me it's about $0.012 per gram when not on sale. I use around a tablespoon in the morning so that's about 21.25g by weight which gives $0.255 in cost. Once again, that's hardly unmanageable on a daily basis. I don't know how much cinnamon you generally put in your oatmeal but a couple of shakes usually does it for me, not sure what it would be if measured but certainly less than 1/4 tsp. and it takes me a long time to go through a bottle (125g) or bag if I buy the cheaper stuff and refill a bottle ;) so the couple dollars I spend on it only gets shelled out every 2 - 3 months.

You can also order those ingredients from amazon:

50lbs bag of rolled oats $57.99 (0.00255/g) [1]

220z x 3 raw honey $28.80 ($0.0154/g) [2]

18oz. ground cinnamon $8.48 ($0.0166/g) [3]

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Regular-Rolled-Oats-Bulk-Pound/dp/B007...

[2] http://www.amazon.com/Y-S-Eco-Bee-Farms-Honey/dp/B000Z93FQC/...

[3] http://www.amazon.com/McCormick-Ground-Cinnamon-18-oz/dp/B00...

Re: How Soylent Ships a Trillion Calories per Month

#215

Post by crusso » Sat, Jun 06, 2015, 1:56 PM UTC

dcosson wrote: post #48

3pt14159 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, saturated fat isn't great, but it isn't as terrible as we used to think. Check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat#Association_with... To me the problem is the sugar content. It's easily double, even for a large man, and almost triple for a small woman.

The sugar content here does seem higher than ideal, and soylent is about the same. I'm currently experimenting with making a DIY soylent and I've noticed that if you're trying to get all the carbs from whole-grain, real sources you end up getting a lot of fiber (~50g/day even when doing a relatively low amount of carbs like 35% of your daily calories). A lot of people report feeling bloated and painful from too much…

Make sure you check out http://www.reddit.com/r/soylent/ and the resources there. Lots of people are experimenting with variations of the Soylent formula/concept.

Re: How Soylent Ships a Trillion Calories per Month

#216

Post by crusso » Sat, Jun 06, 2015, 2:04 PM UTC

tunesmith wrote: post #5

vermontdevil wrote: post #2

Has anyone tried the drink? Is it good?

It tastes just like the more pleasant protein powder drinks. No awful aftertaste. It's also not sweet, they are going for as neutral a taste as possible. I like the idea but unfortunately I don't do well with oats. They've been decreasing it over time but I still get major indigestion from it that I don't get from other food. I'm in the minority on that, though. I'll try again with v1.5 which was just announced.

I had some acid reflux from Soylent about 2/3 of the time. This decreased as I continued to use it and then has gone away completely now that I put a bunch of protein powder and coconut oil in it to get a protein/fat/carb balance that I'm happier with.

Re: How Soylent Ships a Trillion Calories per Month

#217

Post by pharke » Sat, Jun 06, 2015, 2:04 PM UTC

bane wrote: post #60

oconnor663 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if I go above 50% Soylent for my meals, I get ultra-intense dreams -- often about eating meat I wonder if people who do have nightmares would get the same effect. For $5 a day, replace your nightmares with nightmeats!

I've checked around various forums and I've found a number of reports that indicate drinking lots of Soylent can bring on intense dreams - I wonder how much more common it is.

Anecdotal but I've known people who have been on severely restricted diets that have also reported intense dreams about food, particularly meat.

Re: How Soylent Ships a Trillion Calories per Month

#218

Post by 3pt14159 » Sat, Jun 06, 2015, 2:05 PM UTC

baddox wrote: post #143

3pt14159 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, saturated fat isn't great, but it isn't as terrible as we used to think. Check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat#Association_with... To me the problem is the sugar content. It's easily double, even for a large man, and almost triple for a small woman.

Why does the sugar content seem too high? It looks right for me based on the usual sources. Perhaps it's too high for a weight loss diet, but I don't think it's intended for that.

65 grams of normal sugar if you ate 5 of these meal squares is double the recommended 25-37.5 grams for an adult male. This isn't even counting the sugar alcohol.

Re: How Soylent Ships a Trillion Calories per Month

#219

Post by Theodores » Sat, Jun 06, 2015, 2:06 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #88

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.

OK, so that's about 17,000 users, or maybe twice that many orders if the typical order is the 2-week size. That's about 1000 transactions a day, or about 2 transactions a minute. That transaction volume could be handled on a shared server with CGI programs. Why do they need so much computer infrastructure?

Exactly!

Re: How Soylent Ships a Trillion Calories per Month

#220

Post by crusso » Sat, Jun 06, 2015, 2:12 PM UTC

jules wrote: post #32

This is very interesting and strange to me. Cooking and eating tasty and new food in the company of other people is a major source of enjoyment in my life. I understand that most people may not enjoy cooking, but surely most people enjoy eating tasty food. Why would you give that up for Soylent?

Seriously, what percentage of your meals are "tasty new food in the company of others" vs mundane fare eaten to get a meal in?

Are you missing that much if you don't have your scrambled eggs most mornings or skip that mediocre sandwich from the deli down the street for lunch?

People drinking Soylent typically replace those boring meals that waste time with a bunch of food prep and cleanup while still enjoying new food in the company of others.

Once you have a jug of Soylent in the fridge, it's your choice whether to pour yourself a hassle-free meal or make the extra effort to consume other foods. When you're used to Soylent, you have more choices in life. It's a tremendous tool to have in your meal toolbox.