A young engineer is trying to create a total food substitute for those who want to eat healthy with minimal hassle:
Is it healthy though? Seems to me food is something very hard to recreate in a single formula.
There are already powdered/liquid diets that hospitals give to people who can’t eat normally. They are presumably nutritionally sufficient enough to at least maintain life.
Soylent, on the other hand, is an experimental thing made by a software engineer and a team of computer geeks with no formal nutritional experience. I would not trust their product without a lot more research. They’ve already had to tweak a few substances in their prototype because they weren’t getting sufficient amounts of one nutrient or another.
There’s a guy over at Ars who is living on it for a week and reporting how it goes.
It’s a good thing that it was an old movie, but I’m sure there are many folks in my generation who can’t help but think “SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!!!” (in a Charlton Heston voice, of course) every time they see the name of this stuff.
I guess the younger generation doesn’t have a clue what I’m talking about.
That’s a fun bit of journalism, but I don’t think it will prove anything one way or another. It takes much longer than a week for most dietary issues to surface. You could eat boiled potatoes for a week and not really suffer any noticeable affects.
To the OP: Is Soylent a magic food you could eat forever and be healthier than people eating a varied healthful diet? I doubt it. But I bet it’s better than most mass produced prepared foods. At least it’s intended to include vitamins and nutrients in the proper proportions. Can’t say that much about a Hot Pocket or a Big Mac.
Getting closer to people kibble!
We’ve been over this a few times and there are already some relevant products out there.
zoo-grade Primate chow (pretty gross, according to people who’ve tried it)
This disgusting gruel they feed to famine areas called Unimix
This tasty peanut spread they feed in famine areas called by the rather disgusting name of Plumpy’nut.
Here is a hilarious ongoing experiment on the stuff:
Oops sorry already posted
Heck, Kashi Go Lean crunch would power you for quite some time. Not much Vit C, tho.
The problem with eating just one thing is micronutrients.
Many foods out there are just fine if you take a Multi-vite with them. Really, there’s little need for a Soylent.
If that’s the best name they could come up with, I don’t think I trust the brains behind this. Either that, or this is a giant hoax. (didn’t click link)
Thus far the stuff seems to be pretty squarely aimed at nerds who are generally going to be familiar with the movie (albiet perhaps only from Simpsons or Futurama references). The name seems like a pretty convenient shorthand for what they’re trying to do without just calling it “Food Replacement Sludge” or whatever.
Given the current discomfort I get when I eat, I like the idea of ‘Food Replacement Sludge’.
It’s a reference to Make Room, Make Room, not the movie based on Make Room, Make Room.
Soy and lentils. Not that modern soylent is really just soy and lentils. So yes, bit of unnecessarily tin ear there.
I was surviving on a product called 2cal./HN for two years while under cancer treatment. Tasted like an artificially flavored melted vanilla milkshake. But most of that time I was direct injection. I still have trouble getting solid food so this would probably supplement my diet very well.
Longer than that; as some of my ancestors could no doubt testify, it’s when the potatoes stop coming, the problems begin.
[ My GG-Grandfather left Dublin around 1850. ]