Soylent Closes $50M Series B Round Led by GV • Hacker News Board

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

#601

Post by CaptainZapp » Fri, May 05, 2017, 9:50 AM UTC

deeth_starr_v wrote: post #256

giaour wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The founder of Soylent has repeatedly pushed his product as a solution for world hunger, unhealthy diets in the first world, and poor time management. I think critiquing the product on those terms is fair.

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,…

I would add:

And refrain from "food" that comes with a version number. But that's just me.

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

#602

Post by rubber_duck » Fri, May 05, 2017, 9:52 AM UTC

lambdadmitry wrote: post #597

rubber_duck wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You went from 55kg to 90kg (I'm assuming those numbers are lbs beacuse I highly doubt someone eating 20% protein can bench 200kg) ? That's just your CNS learning how to activate the muscles with intensity - you probably gained very little lean mass. For comparison I made a bigger jump in first 3 months of training on a 500 kcal deficit - but I plateaued after that because I just wasn't getting enough calories and pro…

You know, there is a world of difference between each of those things: > good luck with that if you do any physical activity > close to a competitive > on recreational level (how is this is even a thing? "competitive on a recreational level"?) > you won't look like you lift You've just substituted "any physical activity" for the "do you even lift bro" culture. Please don't do this and try to understand that the major…

There's a huge gap between DYEL and BB - you can have a physique most would find desirable/attractive without even coming close to BB level - but you can't do it on 20% protein, the best you can do on that is be skinny.

When I said "any physical activity" I should have said "actively engaging in a sport" fair enough - but it doesn't have to be lifting, that's just the example you mentioned with benching. Your performance will go to shit in endurance sports on that low protein as well simply because catabolism would wreck your muscles and you wouldn't have enough protein to recover.

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

#603

Post by glenstein » Fri, May 05, 2017, 10:22 AM UTC

duncan_bayne wrote: post #562

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…

> So here you are crapping on the product, but you actually haven't pointed to a realistic replacement for it. Why should suggesting a replacement be a requirement for criticism?

In this particular case, the criticism was that there are better replacements.

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

#604

Post by DanBC » Fri, May 05, 2017, 10:25 AM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #471

DanBC wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have it disproportionately more often with Soylent. Other food manufacturers go for years, with tens of millions of units sold each day, without having a recall.

Other food manufacturers have been around for a lot longer.

So what?

Plenty of new companies are capable of producing food in similar or greater volumes than Soylent is without any recalls, why has Soylent had more than one recall?

Soylent aren't even doing the production; they're sub-contracting it out to existing companies.

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

#605

Post by DanBC » Fri, May 05, 2017, 10:30 AM UTC

andygates wrote: post #587

nommm-nommm wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Products for people on feeding tubes like Jevity? Last I checked Soylent contained Sucralose (Splenda).

Not speaking to that specific product, but actual medically-approved food replacements are at a big price premium, because their use is so niche. (And if it's not going in your mouth, it can taste like ass.)

> but actual medically-approved food replacements are at a big price premium, because their use is so niche

No, they're expensive because no food manufacturer wants to kill the customers, and these customers tend to be at significantly increased risk of death.

> And if it's not going in your mouth, it can taste like ass.

Medical sole-source of nutrition products can be given through a naso-gastric tube, but many of them are designed to be drunk. Manufacturers have increased the range of flavours because they recognised that people hated the vanilla / chocolate / banana / strawberry limited range.

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

#606

Post by nommm-nommm » Fri, May 05, 2017, 10:32 AM UTC

xeromal wrote: post #524

nommm-nommm wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like artificial sweeteners because I am worried about changes in gut bacteria. There's some research suggesting it may.

Meaning they'll eventually become capable of digesting sucralose? Or that the artificial sugars are killing our gut bacteria. One I care about. Haha.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/artificial-sweete...

Last year, though, a team of Israeli scientists put together a stronger case. The researchers concluded from studies of mice that ingesting artificial sweeteners might lead to—of all things—obesity and related ailments such as diabetes. This study was not the first to note this link in animals, but it was the first to find evidence of a plausible cause: the sweeteners appear to change the population of intestinal bacteria that direct metabolism, the conversion of food to energy or stored fuel. And this result suggests the connection might also exist in humans.

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

#607

Post by DanBC » Fri, May 05, 2017, 10:34 AM UTC

squeaky-clean wrote: post #429

crispyambulance wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>... 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?

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

When Soylent launched they made several misleading, unethical, medical, claims.

They've since dropped every single one of those.

Soylent have had a number of product recalls. They don't have a huge volume of product, and they've only been in business for a short time, so it's a bit worrying that they haven't fixed their problems.

Some people think that when you're raising money from the public you should be honest. Some people think that when you're providing a safety critical product you should be competent.

There's also an element of backlash against the massive hype / very successful marketing - we see this with any product.

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

#608

Post by jronald » Fri, May 05, 2017, 10:54 AM UTC

cptskippy wrote: post #376

vidarh wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Estimates like 2400kcal might work if you have a physically demanding job 40 hours a week. Running 30 miles a week and spending 2+ hours a week rock climbing will lift cause you to expend only maybe 500kcal a day extra on average, but if you spend the rest of that time being sedentary, you're still unlikely to end up at any more than 2000-2200kcal. Overall I think the typical old advice of 2500kcal for men and 2000 f…

Source?

You've done a great job proving it yourself - despite only consuming 2000 calories, you were still gaining weight. Unless you weren't counting anything aside from soylent (drinking, snacks, etc) you were past your maintenance consumption.

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

#609

Post by lambdadmitry » Fri, May 05, 2017, 11:28 AM UTC

hammock wrote: post #571

BHSPitMonkey wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of naturally-occurring compounds found in various plants and animals are toxic for humans to consume. To say that naturally-occurring foods are inherently better for us to eat requires an awful lot of cherry-picking (no pun intended).

Right, and we don't eat them....what's your point

We do. The most obvious example is read meat (which is now officially designated cancerogene), a bit less obvious is various "natural" herbal medications that induce renal failure [1] and cancer [2]. People consumed those substances for centuries, only to find out recently that they are harmful.

[1]: https://www.hindawi.com/journals/crim/2015/150204/

[2]: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/1343598/Chinese-herb-...

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

#610

Post by nf05papsjfVbc » Fri, May 05, 2017, 11:28 AM UTC

Questron wrote: post #348

vidarh wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If meal replacement shakes have been around, then what is Soylent's value proposition and what makes it different? Marketing. Initially based around the idea of replacing all food with it (which even the founder stopped doing during his initial trial). It's tapping into a lot of sentiments around food as a "problem" or "nuisance", where a lot of the other shakes on the market have gone for the health and fitness an…

It's: "Look! I'm busy! I'm important! I eat special food!"

Are you unwilling to consider that there are people for whom food is not a priority and is actually a nuisance? Like say cleaning one's home - which some enjoy and some find a chore.