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Soylent now accepting Bitcoin for preorders

blog.soylent.me

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Re: Soylent now accepting Bitcoin for preorders

#11

Post by jgrahamc »

Lemmih wrote: post #7
jgrahamc wrote: post #2

Just as Soylent is disrupting the traditional food industry Huh? I've asked this before and never got an answer. How is Soylent different from Ensure Complete? Is it cheaper? Better made? Easier to order? Tastes better? Better for me? Higher quality? Because if it isn't really any different then what Soylent will need to do is market better than those other companies. Because I'd definitely trust Abbott with my healt…

I wanted to compare the ingredients and their amounts but I can't seem to find the formula for Ensure Complete. If you know where to find it, please post a link. If not, I guess that would be one reason why Soylent is preferable to Ensure Complete.

http://ensure.com/products/ensure-complete-shakes

Click the [+] to expand ingredients etc.

Re: Soylent now accepting Bitcoin for preorders

#12

Post by anonymoushn »

alainmeier wrote: post #5
jgrahamc wrote: post #2

Just as Soylent is disrupting the traditional food industry Huh? I've asked this before and never got an answer. How is Soylent different from Ensure Complete? Is it cheaper? Better made? Easier to order? Tastes better? Better for me? Higher quality? Because if it isn't really any different then what Soylent will need to do is market better than those other companies. Because I'd definitely trust Abbott with my healt…

Here's a very thoughtful response from Rob, the creator of Soylent answering your very question: http://discourse.soylent.me/t/comparing-soylent-to-existing-... tldr; There's room in the market for more than one non-solid dietary product, the goal of Soylent is to be a complete alternative that supports an active life rather than something that just lets you survive, ensure is expensive and low calorie.

The response is definitely worthwhile, and a bit of it seems to be that the use case is different. It would be a bit expensive to replace a majority of one's diet with Ensure Complete. A 16-pack of 8oz Ensure Complete is 5600 Calories for $42, so eating for a day costs $15. The preorder price of 1 week of soylent is $9.29/day, but worryingly we don't know how many Calories that is...

A quote from Vice on the crowdfunding page indicates that it should be about 700 Calories/day[1] (making it several times as expensive as Ensure), while Rob Rhinehart's blog indicated that he was consuming a reasonable number of calories earlier this year (2629 C/day)[2].

[1] https://campaign.soylent.me/soylent-free-your-body

[2] http://robrhinehart.com/?p=474

Re: Soylent now accepting Bitcoin for preorders

#13

Post by anonymoushn »

Lemmih wrote: post #7
jgrahamc wrote: post #2

Just as Soylent is disrupting the traditional food industry Huh? I've asked this before and never got an answer. How is Soylent different from Ensure Complete? Is it cheaper? Better made? Easier to order? Tastes better? Better for me? Higher quality? Because if it isn't really any different then what Soylent will need to do is market better than those other companies. Because I'd definitely trust Abbott with my healt…

I wanted to compare the ingredients and their amounts but I can't seem to find the formula for Ensure Complete. If you know where to find it, please post a link. If not, I guess that would be one reason why Soylent is preferable to Ensure Complete.

Where can one find a list of ingredients in Soylent?

Re: Soylent now accepting Bitcoin for preorders

#14

Post by tlb »

jgrahamc wrote: post #2

Just as Soylent is disrupting the traditional food industry Huh? I've asked this before and never got an answer. How is Soylent different from Ensure Complete? Is it cheaper? Better made? Easier to order? Tastes better? Better for me? Higher quality? Because if it isn't really any different then what Soylent will need to do is market better than those other companies. Because I'd definitely trust Abbott with my healt…

Do you believe generally that Big Food makes healthier products than independents? I believe the reverse is usually true in the US.

You can trust Big Food to pump their products full of sugar because testing shows it makes consumers buy more. Sugar is second on Ensure's ingredient list (http://ensure.com/products/ensure-complete-shakes) while Soylent is not sweet.

Re: Soylent now accepting Bitcoin for preorders

#15

Post by loceng »

falk wrote: post #8
jgrahamc wrote: post #2

Just as Soylent is disrupting the traditional food industry Huh? I've asked this before and never got an answer. How is Soylent different from Ensure Complete? Is it cheaper? Better made? Easier to order? Tastes better? Better for me? Higher quality? Because if it isn't really any different then what Soylent will need to do is market better than those other companies. Because I'd definitely trust Abbott with my healt…

It seems like marketing mostly. Maybe I'm just too old to understand all these crazy kids these days, but I don't see the appeal in drinking my meals. I really don't think this is going to work out.

I agree with it mostly being marketing, though this could gain a regular group of consumers, assuming the product ends up being good enough.

Re: Soylent now accepting Bitcoin for preorders

#16

Post by ynniv »

jgrahamc wrote: post #2

Just as Soylent is disrupting the traditional food industry Huh? I've asked this before and never got an answer. How is Soylent different from Ensure Complete? Is it cheaper? Better made? Easier to order? Tastes better? Better for me? Higher quality? Because if it isn't really any different then what Soylent will need to do is market better than those other companies. Because I'd definitely trust Abbott with my healt…

I suspect that the interest comes from the radical branding. "Ensure" is associated with hospitals and the aging population, whereas "Soylent" is historically associated with dystopia and recently with some ambitious kids. One exit would be to create an energy drink-like (young target market) product that's just a re-branded Ensure.

But if you're currently using Ensure, perhaps you know of other ways to improve on it? They're both basically ramen for the well-off.

(And +1 to tlb: simply removing sugar is an improvement in my eyes.)

Re: Soylent now accepting Bitcoin for preorders

#17

Post by princess3000 »

baddox wrote: post #6
jgrahamc wrote: post #2

Just as Soylent is disrupting the traditional food industry Huh? I've asked this before and never got an answer. How is Soylent different from Ensure Complete? Is it cheaper? Better made? Easier to order? Tastes better? Better for me? Higher quality? Because if it isn't really any different then what Soylent will need to do is market better than those other companies. Because I'd definitely trust Abbott with my healt…

> How is Soylent different from Ensure Complete? Is it cheaper? Better made? Easier to order? Tastes better? Better for me? Higher quality? More popular and prominent in certain demographics. Which is what "disrupt" implies, versus "improves upon."

So, marketing?

Re: Soylent now accepting Bitcoin for preorders

#18

Post by nobodysfool »

tlb wrote: post #14
jgrahamc wrote: post #2

Just as Soylent is disrupting the traditional food industry Huh? I've asked this before and never got an answer. How is Soylent different from Ensure Complete? Is it cheaper? Better made? Easier to order? Tastes better? Better for me? Higher quality? Because if it isn't really any different then what Soylent will need to do is market better than those other companies. Because I'd definitely trust Abbott with my healt…

Do you believe generally that Big Food makes healthier products than independents? I believe the reverse is usually true in the US. You can trust Big Food to pump their products full of sugar because testing shows it makes consumers buy more. Sugar is second on Ensure's ingredient list ( http://ensure.com/products/ensure-complete-shakes ) while Soylent is not sweet.

Doesn't matter, what's your hangup with sugar anyway? Maltodextrin has the same calorie content as sugar.

Re: Soylent now accepting Bitcoin for preorders

#20

Post by baddox »

princess3000 wrote: post #17
baddox wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is Soylent different from Ensure Complete? Is it cheaper? Better made? Easier to order? Tastes better? Better for me? Higher quality? More popular and prominent in certain demographics. Which is what "disrupt" implies, versus "improves upon."

So, marketing?

Well, sure, everything can be thrown under "marketing," because obviously if no one knew about it no one would be talking about it.
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