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Soylent Closes $50M Series B Round Led by GV

blog.soylent.com

211–220 of 665 posts

Re: Soylent Closes $50M Series B Round Led by GV

#211
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Do you use it as the occasional convenient meal replacement or how far do you go into replacing all real food? I replace the majority of my meals with Soylent, but the point isn't to replace all meals... >I suspect there is both, but what I am getting at is how much Soylent's long-term success depends on people seeing eating as a nuisance that should be optimized away versus something that should be savoured and enj…

I know this doesn't help people who already have that notion that everything should be fast and simple, but why is it that some people just "can't find the time" to feed themselves? It's a basic premise in life. It's like not finding the time to shower, to sleep, to have sex, to brush your teeth. You make the time. Cooking doesn't take long. At all. You can prep an entire week worth of meals in 1 hour. Refrigerate th…

To be clear, I never said cooking was expensive. What I said was that if you want to eat "real food", you have the option between cooking it yourself from inexpensive ingredients or buying it premade at a premium.

>Cooking doesn't take long. At all. You can prep an entire week worth of meals in 1 hour. Refrigerate them, freeze them.

If I don't know how to cook, then I have to spend a decent amount of time learning. I also have to learn what ingredients are worth buying, and how much to buy such that it doesn't go bad before I get around to using it. I also need a way to source and transport the food -- what if I don't have a car, and there's no grocery store within walking distance?

My point isn't that it would be impossible for me to cook my own food. My point is that it's more effort than you are letting on, especially for people who genuinely do not know how to cook because they never learned, and I feel that there is no impetus for me to learn now that I can just eat Soylent.

>Soylent, to me, is simply about people who want to "hack" their bodies and be on the futurist side of things.

You can believe what you want, but this doesn't describe how I view Soylent in the slightest. Soylent is convenient and is healthier and/or cheaper than other convenient (relative to cooking yourself) alternatives.

Re: Soylent Closes $50M Series B Round Led by GV

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is kinda silly. Like, the problem here isn't Soylent, it's that you were depressed. And the problem with your friend using Soylent to watch her weight isn't Soylent, it's that she ate more of other crap when she drank Soylent as a meal replacement. I drink Soylent occasionally -- once every two or three weeks, maybe. Normally I use it if I know I'm going to eat a huge dinner, or if I ate a giant lunch an…

Sure, the underlying problem is depression. We can still have a reasonable discussion about things that enable that depression, or extend it. That's not at all a silly concern.

Convenience of any form enables unfavorable outcomes. Delivery pizza may have caused suicide, from this perspective.

Re: Soylent Closes $50M Series B Round Led by GV

#213
post #5

Soylent gets a lot of hate (I'm looking forward to skipping out on this thread before the inevitable negative comments from people who assume that Soylent consumers will eat nothing but Soylent for the rest of their lives), but to me, it's solved a large problem in my life: what to eat when I'm hungry but I don't have enough time to prepare a full meal. It can happen every now and then when I'm rushing around, and so…

>what to eat when I'm hungry but I don't have enough time to prepare a full meal.

In what way is Soylent any better than a handful of almonds and a banana?

Re: Soylent Closes $50M Series B Round Led by GV

#214
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ensure, like Slimfast, has much more sugar than Soylent. Per 2000 calories, Ensure has 135g sugar to Soylent's 45g. https://ensure.com/nutrition-products/ensure-original#vanill... http://files.soylent.com/pdf/soylent-drink-nutrition-facts-e...

So what.

Consuming 135g (a cup, give or take) of sugar daily is pretty crazy, nutritionally speaking.

Re: Soylent Closes $50M Series B Round Led by GV

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eating is a complex process, usually intertwined with social interactions, stimulation of multiple sensory organs, and activation of jaw muscles and blood flow. I think by short circuiting many of those processes, along with possibly the negative nutritional aspects of Soylent and my mental state back then, I was suffering as a result.

Your original comment is very confusing. It's difficult to tell whether you are blaming Soylent for the onset of depression due to nutritional deficiencies, or whether you Soylent was simply an enabler but not the direct cause.

The comment doesn't claim that it's the cause. It notes that their use of Soylent as a solution was a symptom of a deeper problem.

Re: Soylent Closes $50M Series B Round Led by GV

#216
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because I don't intend to replace 100% of all meals with Soylent doesn't mean that its nutritional content is irrelevant. The fact that I could replace all meals with Soylent if I wanted to suggests that it has a better nutrient profile than something like Ensure or Slimfast, which is not intended to replace all meals. If you look at the macronutrient profiles of those three drinks, Soylent comes out head and sh…

Soylent has a very high glycemic index, and isn't far off of eating a bowl of sugar. From that angle alone I would categorize it as an extremely poor choice (and indeed this whole discussion is a little surreal -- Soylent would be categorized as garbage, ultra-processed junk food if it didn't have the VC/valley aura around it). I've never bought into the super-food fantasy, because there is utterly nothing qualifying…

>Soylent has a very high glycemic index

This is false, particularly for Soylent 2.0. https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/212769503-Glycemic...

I'm not saying Soylent is a super-food, but it is a food that isn't horrible for you (at least not as horrible as you're letting on!)

Re: Soylent Closes $50M Series B Round Led by GV

#217
post #29
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ample which is similar to Soylent but a bit more health conscious with ingredient choice What does that mean? How did you make this judgement?

If you go to what they've written up on their website, https://www.amplemeal.com/products/ample , you can see they've taken and written about a lot of care in selecting ingredients. Off the top of my head, probiotics are a big thing that you don't see in Soylent. Spirulina is included. Omega 3 fatty acids. The emphasis on whole foods rather than nutrients is another thing important to me. From what they've written it…

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Re: Soylent Closes $50M Series B Round Led by GV

#218
post #29
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ample which is similar to Soylent but a bit more health conscious with ingredient choice What does that mean? How did you make this judgement?

If you go to what they've written up on their website, https://www.amplemeal.com/products/ample , you can see they've taken and written about a lot of care in selecting ingredients. Off the top of my head, probiotics are a big thing that you don't see in Soylent. Spirulina is included. Omega 3 fatty acids. The emphasis on whole foods rather than nutrients is another thing important to me. From what they've written it…

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Re: Soylent Closes $50M Series B Round Led by GV

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eating is a complex process, usually intertwined with social interactions, stimulation of multiple sensory organs, and activation of jaw muscles and blood flow. I think by short circuiting many of those processes, along with possibly the negative nutritional aspects of Soylent and my mental state back then, I was suffering as a result.

Your original comment is very confusing. It's difficult to tell whether you are blaming Soylent for the onset of depression due to nutritional deficiencies, or whether you Soylent was simply an enabler but not the direct cause.

I apologize, and let me clarify. I don't think Soylent was the cause of any of my problems. I had a problem before I started drinking it, but I had hoped the drink would be beneficial to my life. However, I started to spiral into my problems once again even with Soylent, and I believe that many others who are attempting to solve a personal problem using the drink will also do so.

Re: Soylent Closes $50M Series B Round Led by GV

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eating is a complex process, usually intertwined with social interactions, stimulation of multiple sensory organs, and activation of jaw muscles and blood flow. I think by short circuiting many of those processes, along with possibly the negative nutritional aspects of Soylent and my mental state back then, I was suffering as a result.

Spot on. I don't know why we would apply reductionism something as pleasurable and healthful as food.

This is you not looking past your own world view. If you have a healthy and pleasurable relationship with food, great, good for you.

Some of us like food too much, and replacements can help with that. Some people don't care about food, and replacments are just as good to them, but easier.

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