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The Biggest Pivot in YC History

blog.soylent.me

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Re: The Biggest Pivot in YC History

#31

Post by arkitaip »

buro9 wrote: post #15
arkitaip wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I share your worries but "I will happily stay a relic of the olden days, when we ate food not only for being able to hack the next day" has never really been true. It's only very recently -- say last 100 years -- that people in the West have been able to eat for pleasure on a more massive scale instead of eating so you don't starve or get enough energy to work. Things like meat or variety in diet were mostly reserved…

Epicurus might disagree with your assertion that the pleasure of eating is only a recent thing or the fare only of the rich. Although he's much misunderstood upon the layman as meaning luxurious foods and pleasures, it's understood he really meant to enjoy basic foods (usually grown in the communal garden) amongst friends. Soylent would be great for many reasons; third world, developing world, a trip to Mars. But I a…

Oh, no doubt eating for pleasure has a very long history in the West (and East, and other regions) but Epicurus was something as rare as a man who didn't do manual work in antiquity where 99% were farmers, soldiers or slaves who either didn't have their own plots of land, or did so and still ate poorly or even starved because that was the reality of life. I think it's safe to say that Epicurus lived a very privileged life - how many Greeks could study philosophy let alone start his own school? - and that his dietary ruminations never reached nor could be implemented by the waste majority.

Re: The Biggest Pivot in YC History

#32

Post by adlpz »

yesimahuman wrote: post #28
adlpz wrote: post #5

There has been a lot of criticism around here about this Soylent thing, and it's understandable: it's dangerous to trust your health to some guys without any medical or nutritional background. But I am really happy to hear they are getting YC support and funding, now they will be able to develop it further with good input from specialists. This could become something really big.

Just to clarify: they aren't getting YC support and funding for this idea, but rather they were in YC for their previous idea and then pivoted to Soylent later.

I see, I understood it wrongly. I thought they were still under the YC umbrella, but just with the new product.

Re: The Biggest Pivot in YC History

#33

Post by DanBC2 »

ig1 wrote: post #14
adlpz wrote: post #5

There has been a lot of criticism around here about this Soylent thing, and it's understandable: it's dangerous to trust your health to some guys without any medical or nutritional background. But I am really happy to hear they are getting YC support and funding, now they will be able to develop it further with good input from specialists. This could become something really big.

Do you have a professional nutritionist who designs every meal for you, or do you rely upon restaurants and self-made foods ? With any diet there's risks, assuming it's not missing any major dietary component it's unlikely to be any unhealthier than your average fast-food diet.

> assuming it's not missing any major dietary component

It has some fibre, but it's missing solids. Who knows if that's important or not?

They claim it has a long shelf life. I'm not sure what they're doing to maintain shelf life. Vitamin C, for example, has a short shelf life. Soylent aren't saying how long the shelf life is, or which nutrients might degrade sooner.

That's the kind of thing they'll need help with. Sealed containers, maybe with weekly supplies per container, dark light-proof containers will help.

(While I'm strongly anti-Soylent, I'm trying to be more constructive.)

Re: The Biggest Pivot in YC History

#35

Post by marknutter »

brandoncarl wrote: post #22

A few points of warning to the creators of Soylent: 1. Chewing is important. It helps trigger the brain to stimulate the digestive process. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7568724.stm 2. "Meal time" appears to be an important social construct. For example, the single strongest predictor of school achievement scores was the frequency and duration of family meals. http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.4…

1. So click your teeth together a few times while you drink Soylent. Or better yet, chew some gum afterwards!

2. Don't replace your family dinners with Soylent then. Just replace the meals you typically eat alone. Problem solved.

3. Don't replace every meal with Soylent. Only the ones for which the preparation is inconvenient for you. Again, problem solved.

4. Getting the right mix of nutrients is difficult whether or not you're drinking Soylent. I would argue most, if not all people are deficient in one nutrient or another. Adding Soylent to your diet would probably ensure (no pun intended) that you'd get more nutrients than you do now, not less.

Re: The Biggest Pivot in YC History

#37

Post by marknutter »

JDGM wrote: post #13

It is not clear to me from the article their relationship with YC. It begins "YC accepted our original idea, to build affordable wireless networks for developing countries, for the summer 2012 batch", before explaining how that didn't work out and they moved to "working on a handful of projects. Sometimes collectively, sometimes independently". Then the article begins on Soylent and, aside from a few appearances from…

> Delicious? I was under the impression Soylent was either fairly tasteless or mildly unpleasant-tasting. Is it really delicious? In what way? Why? How?

It has quite a bit of sugar. Just go back and read the many articles that have been written by both the founders and the press.

Re: The Biggest Pivot in YC History

#38

Post by jacquesm »

mike_esspe wrote: post #27
jacquesm wrote: post #16

Food is more than just nutrition, food is a way to share time with friends and family, to connect. To actually chew your food is good, not a waste of time, it also slows you down to the point where you appreciate the taste of it and the work that went into making it. You mess with such mechanisms at your peril. Eating is not about 'efficiency' unless you're an astronaut or a person doing a round-the-world flight in s…

Do you share every meal with friends? How do you arrange the invitations? It seems, that soylent is for time, when you eat in solitude, and for me it's the majority of my dinners.

I eat every meal with at least one other person, and usually with at least three and if I were to be alone and thought about eating as 'fuelling up for the next round' I'd slow down and take out my phone to invite someone to have dinner with me.

Friends are always welcome to eat at our house, and to stay if they want to. Plenty of HN'ers have already found out that that is not idle talk.

Re: The Biggest Pivot in YC History

#39

Post by jacquesm »

marknutter wrote: post #29
DanBC2 wrote: post #21

Soylent have some fierce competition. Liquid feeding is not new. Many companies do it already. Liquid feeding for developing world also isn't new. There are a number of foods developed especially for that market. Here are some of the competitor products: ( http://ensure.com/ ) Ensure ( https://www.nutricia.co.uk/fortisip// ) Fortisip ( http://www.complan.com/ ) Complan ( http://abbottnutrition.com/brands/abbott-brand…

Why doesn't anyone post stuff like this when other startups are trying to disrupt well established industries?

Because in this case there is a public service angle to making sure people make an informed decision?

If you make a new A/B testing tool or a spiffy way to choose colours for a website nobody is going to wonder what the long term health consequences might be.

Re: The Biggest Pivot in YC History

#40

Post by marknutter »

It seems I'm late to the thread but I want everyone to realize that you don't need to drink Soylent or any other meal replacement solution for every meal. Attacking the idea of meal replacement on that assumption is attacking the straw man. The founder of Soylent only replaced every single meal of his to test out the product, not as a recommendation for how it should be used.

If you enjoy preparing every meal you eat, or eating social for every meal, Soylent isn't for you so save the specious criticisms. If you do, however, get annoyed by having to prepare certain meals and wish you could just get the food into your belly immediately without the work on occasion, then Soylent or some other meal replacement drink is a great solution.

It's not going to kill you, or mess up your health, or do any of the many terrible things people have been warning about in every thread having to do with Soylent. It's going to perhaps save you some time and give you a few essential nutrients you may not have been getting otherwise. That's it.

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