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Soylent Closes $50M Series B Round Led by GV

blog.soylent.com

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

#421

Post by leshow »

metamet wrote: post #349
hammock wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"eat what your grand-grand parents ate" Not possible, unfortunately. Meat and vegetables are so totally different now. For example meats are raised on GM corn and antibiotics, altering their balance of omega 3's, impact on gut health, and other things. While today's vegetables are massively decremented in micronutrients- and may have less arsenic-based pesticide residue than your greatgrandparents', but more of othe…

They still exist. Eat locally from farmers. All my beef is grass fed (which have higher omega 3's), for example. And if you can't because of where you live, there's a good chance neither could your grandparents had if they lived there as well.

Or you could take an omega-3 supplement and eat normal beef. There isn't much evidence to show that grass-fed beef has any measurable effect on health.

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

#422

Post by leshow »

hammock wrote: post #344
deeth_starr_v wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, while the intentions of Soylent are probably sincere, when I first heard about it my response was "nope nope nope". My parents were hippies and we grew/raised most of our food when I was a kid. But my grandparents had embraced the new space-age diet: margarine in place of butter, tang instead of orange juice, kraft instead of cheese, etc. I thought it tasted awful compared to real food. As we have found out,…

>"eat what your grand-grand parents ate" Not possible, unfortunately. Meat and vegetables are so totally different now. For example meats are raised on GM corn and antibiotics, altering their balance of omega 3's, impact on gut health, and other things. While today's vegetables are massively decremented in micronutrients- and may have less arsenic-based pesticide residue than your greatgrandparents', but more of othe…

Do you have any evidence? I'd love to see a comparison of nutrients in produce over the decades.

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

#423

Post by ambrice »

DanBC wrote: post #368
brilliantcode wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except Soylent marketed itself as a replacement. All those shakes you talk about are aimed at supplementing. They weren't stupid enough to tell people to live on it because of the legal liability.

I agree Soylent used irresponsible marketing. But many of those other products can be used as sole source of nutrition. EG fortisip: http://www.nutricia.ie/products/view/fortisip > Fortisip is a Food for Special Medical Purposes for use under medical supervision. Fortisip is a nutritionally complete, 1.5kcal/ml, ready to drink, milk shake style nutritional supplement, for the management of disease related malnutritio…

How is it irresponsible marketing?

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

#424

Post by dualogy »

dreammakr wrote: post #347

Long-time lurker, first time commenter. I've seen several people mention that there have not been meal replacement products like Soylent ever. The nutritional profile reminds me of EAS Myoplex + additional vitamins. Myoplex has been around since the mid 90s and was always marketed as a meal replacement. Learned about it from a bodybuilder website when trying to gain weight and easily "eat" extra meals. They have neve…

Doesn't seem to matter to investors nor consumers, so why care =) Baby formula has been around for long (I don't think it's as good as mother's milk, but seems geared towards "complete nutrition as far as survival goes, as best as we know today" --- same as Soylent then), ready-to-drink raw eggs have been around for our entire pre-history (but who likes to make a mess, that'd be too primal), etc..

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

#425

Post by dualogy »

elvinyung wrote: post #340
tonydiv wrote: post #49

It amazes me that VCs find this type of business interesting because it's not defensible in many of the ways a software company is. I am also not sure why the company wants to raise this much money -- they need to continue growing like crazy (outside of tech regions where engineers who are unwilling to cook live) or go bust. Nonetheless, the drink is ok. I tried it for a few months. Instead of avoiding cooking, I hav…

I've owned an Anova for a bit more than a year. Amortized over all the meals I've cooked, mostly super cheap cuts of meat that have been cooked over 24-72 hours to incredible quality, I would say that it is probably the essential tool in my kitchen.

> mostly super cheap cuts of meat that have been cooked over 24-72 hours to incredible quality

People getting excited over devices that do what ovens or hearths do at a 24x slower pace? Figures the popularity of soy formula.

(And yes, my oven turns even the toughest cut into "incredible quality" in 3h tops =)

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

#426

Post by jimmar »

mks40 wrote: post #32

A question to Soylent customers: Do you use it as the occasional convenient meal replacement or how far do you go into replacing all real food? 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 enjoyed. To me this is in the context of the larger question of p…

> how far do you go into replacing all real food?

Why do you make a distinction between Soylent and "real" food? Its ingredients are not terribly different than other stuff I buy at the grocery store.

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

#427

Post by matart »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #408
Judgmentality wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I actually decided to look for the source and you're right - the results are a lot more complicated than I thought. I guess I'm a victim of confirmation bias. http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/09/07/49287102...

Thank you for checking it out. This "Facebook causes depression (studies show!)" meme is being repeated left and right, even on HN, and it's kind of annoying at this point.

Reminds me of the "Diet Coke causes depression" over depressed people could be more likely to drink diet coke.

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

#428

Post by shas3 »

I am one of those people who got horrible nausea eating a couple of batches of the Soylent bar. I really liked the taste and the nutrition profile. But I simply cannot tolerate any Soylent products after the episodes of nausea. There is only one other food (an obscure Indian snack) that ever created a similar aversion in me. I don't know when, if ever I'll get over the association of Soylent with nausea in my head. I wish it had never happened so that I could have continued using their products.

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

#429

Post by squeaky-clean »

crispyambulance wrote: post #244
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What advantage does Soylent have over say, other meal replacements e.g. Slimfast, weight watcher shakes, juices etc Which of those examples are actual food replacements instead of liquid candy blasted with vitamins? Slimfast high protein is the only option I see online that doesn't include huge amounts of sugar, but a single 180 calorie shake also gives way too much vitamins and protein to be sane times 10, which i…

>... haven't pointed to a realistic replacement for it. The "realistic replacement" is to not worry too much about perfectly balanced nutrition if you need skip an actual real meal occasionally. The body can handle it.

Buy why not Soylent? Why is it so offensive compared to not eating at all or eating Taco Bell or a few granola bars?

A better alternative to Soylent is going hungry? Why?

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

#430

Post by elvinyung »

dualogy wrote: post #425
elvinyung wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've owned an Anova for a bit more than a year. Amortized over all the meals I've cooked, mostly super cheap cuts of meat that have been cooked over 24-72 hours to incredible quality, I would say that it is probably the essential tool in my kitchen.

> mostly super cheap cuts of meat that have been cooked over 24-72 hours to incredible quality People getting excited over devices that do what ovens or hearths do at a 24x slower pace? Figures the popularity of soy formula. (And yes, my oven turns even the toughest cut into "incredible quality" in 3h tops =)

I would defend sous vide by saying that I've been able to have much better control of the internal temperature. For example, I can cook short ribs at 72 hours at close-to-pasteurization temperatures to get a very unique consistency.
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