I agree with you. In fact it makes me wish I could design an “anti Soylent”. Like something you could add to food that changes the way your body interprets textures and flavors. I know some people are in terrible health because all the foods that are good for them taste terrible. But how awesome would it be if there was a way for a picky eater to enjoy a meal the same way a foodie does? Trying new dishes would be FUN, making better dietary choices would be far easier, etc. If there’s anything the Soylent Koolaid guzzlers need it is ways to enjoy things more, not less.
I had a chance to try it… it was pretty bland, slightly vanilla and slightly malty, sort of like plain Ovaltine in taste. My biggest issue was the texture - it was gritty, the stuff never really dissolved.
YMMV, as always.
I think the Soylent guy was lucky to some extent. There are other, cheaper options, and if someone with a meal substitution had started marketing their product to tech nerds and other workaholic types a few years ago, then Soylent would never have been invented. But no one else saw the marketing opportunity, and Soylent came along, and now it’s a big thing.
As God is my witness, I was at least five or six posts in before I realized that Soylent was an actual, available, real-life product. I thought this thread was a parody of the world of the movie Soylent Green and its merits were being discussed as though we lived in that world. :eek:
Sort of like that thread several years ago where we all pretended we were in the world of The Stand and people were coming down with Captain Trips.
As a nerdy engineer type, I find this generalization mildly offensive. I actually do love to cook, but that’s beside the point. I’ve met too many people from too many different professions to feel comfortable making sweeping judgments about any of them based solely on what they do for a living. The engineers I’ve met over my lifetime have run the gamut from sociable to introverted, athletic to sedentary, and everything in-between. You know, just like any population does if you take a sample size greater than one.
Thinking like an engineer, trying to determine more optimal ways to do something, doesn’t imply a desire to reduce social interaction. All it implies is a desire to do things more efficiently so more time is available to spend doing something else, be it more work, more cooking, more video games, more soccer, more charity, or more cocktail parties. Finding joy in solving problems doesn’t automatically make someone a workaholic, anti-social loner.
That said, I did raise my eyebrows at the idea of a software engineer pushing a nutritional product. I would certainly be more at ease if a panel of nutritional experts actually signed off on the thing. Still, this doesn’t bother me as much as that Airborne immune booster that was “created by a school teacher.”
I’m not personally interested in a product like Soylent, but I don’t really care that it exists (assuming that it’s FDA regulated). I love to cook and eat delicious things, but there are times that I’m not sure I would mind being able to drink a shake and get the equivalent nutrition of a healthy lunch. Sometimes I’m busy enough that making food is a chore instead of a hobby. This is why I often make large batches of things and then portion them out for lunches during the work week. Soylent feels like the far end of the same branch. Not my thing, but it doesn’t make the food I choose to eat taste any worse.
Not only that, but cooking healthy can often take a lot of time that many people don’t have. Most of our options for eating quickly are quite unhealthy. If this is a truly healthy option that appeals to people who don’t have the time or patience to make their own healthy meals, then it’s probably a good thing.
Yes, just imagine all that social time we used to spend doing all those mundane household tasks with our kids, until engineers coming along and ruined it all with dishwashers, clothes dryers, vacuums, etc. They took the human element out of getting your water from the well and feeding the horses!
I built my own sous vide machine. I made my own silicone molds for LEGO-shaped candies. I’m about to build a chocolate tempering machine. I have a book called “Cooking for Geeks”. At this very moment, I have a vacuum chamber in my kitchen that I’ve been running various food-related experiments with.
Experimentation in the kitchen is fantastic. I just don’t want to do this stuff all the time.
A huge part of technological progress is separating the functional and pleasurable bits of the things we need to do. Technology allowed us to separate sex for pleasure from sex for reproduction. It separated transportation for function (cars, airplanes) from that for pleasure (going on a walk in the countryside). The separation doesn’t eliminate one or the other; on the contrary, it improves both.
No, no… I think you’re misunderstanding. I was saying that Rhinehart’s (the Soylent guy) attitudes toward food aren’t so meritorious, not that his opinions about how he perceives things to taste aren’t so meritorious.
I mean, meals are one of the primary ways that people connect and bond with each other, and food is an excellent way to learn about other people, families and cultures. If you learn how to cook food, you tend to learn something about agriculture, chemistry, physics and even physiology as part of the learning about choosing, preparing and serving food.
IMO, if your goal is to reduce all that stuff down to a bland shake that you can mix up, drink and forget about a few times a day, you’re seriously short-changing yourself. Anyone’s welcome to think that way and do that, but it doesn’t mean that I have to respect it, think it’s a good idea, or not subject it to scrutiny and criticism.
You could find the same advantages on being passionate about everything that exists ever. Are you subject to criticism for not being all that interested in everything?
So the amount of misinformation in this thread based on the one interview I remember seeing during the kickstarter campaign sent me off on a research quest.
During that interview he specifically addresses the fact that while the problem he set out to solve was an easy way to feed people, he recognized through the project that the social aspect was important too and that although they were engineering Soylent for it to be possible for you to subsist only on it that was not the ideal circumstance.
So although I have no desire to give up food, the option to give up a few meals a week would be awesome and I used to use meal replacement drinks for breakfast but they are generally sugar loaded and protein light.
For example here is Ensure (and I used the Ensure Muscle heath for the largest protein amount)
Nutrition Facts
Serv. Size 1 bottle
(8 fl oz)
Calories 250
Calories from Fat 70
Amount Per Serving
%DV§
Amount Per Serving
%DV§
12%
8g
Fat
8%
1.5g
Saturated Fat
0g
Trans Fat
3.5g
Polyunsaturated Fat
2.5g
Monounsaturated Fat
3%
10mg
Cholesterol
10%
240mg
Sodium
18%
630mg
Potassium
10%
31g
Carbohydrate
8%
2g
Dietary Fiber
22g
Sugars
30%
15g
Protein
25%
Magnesium
Ingredients [+]
Vitamins and Minerals [–]
Vitamin A • Vitamin C • Calcium • Iron • Vitamin D • Vitamin E • Vitamin K • Thiamin • Riboflavin • Niacin • Vitamin B6 • Folate • Vitamin B12 • Biotin • Pantothenic Acid • Phosphorus • Iodine • Zinc • Selenium • Copper • Manganese • Chromium • Molybdenum • Choline
Vitamins and minerals are listed but no amounts are included.
Here is Soylent:
Nutrition Facts Serving Size 1/3 pouch Soylent (148g) 1/3 bottle Oil Blend (.66 fl. oz.) Servings Per Pouch 3 Amount Per Serving with Oil Blend Soylent Pouch Calories 510 670 Calories from Fat 45 210 %Daily Value** Total Fat 5g* 8% 37% Saturated Fat 1g 5% 13% Trans Fat 0g Cholesterol 0mg 0% 0% Sodium 350mg 15% 15% Potassium 1155mg 33% 33% Total Carbohydrate 84g 28% 28% Dietary Fiber 9g 36% 36% Sugars 2g Protein 38g Vitamin A 33% 33% Vitamin C 33% 33% Calcium 40% 40% Iron 40% 40% Vitamin D 33% 35% Vitamin E 33% 47% Vitamin K 37 % 52% Thiamin 33% 33% Riboflavin 33% 33% Niacin 33% 33% Vitamin B6 33% 33% Folate 33% 33% Vitamin B12 33% 33% Biotin 33% 33% Pantothenic Acid 33% 33% Iodine 57% 57% Magnesium 33% 33% Zinc 33% 33% Selenium 33% 33% Copper 37% 37% Manganese 33% 33% Chromium 33% 33% Molybdenum 33% 33% *Amount in Soylent Powder with Oil bottles contributes an additional 160 Calories (170 Calories from Fat), 19 g Total Fat (1.5 g Saturated Fat). **Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet. Your daily values may be higher or lower depending on your calorie needs: Calories: 2,000 2,500 Total Fat Less than 65g 80g Saturated Fat Less than 20g 25g Cholesterol Less than 300mg 300mg Sodium Less than 2,400mg 2,400mg Potassium 3,500 mg 3,500 mg Total Carbohydrate 300g 375g Dietary Fiber 25g 30g Calories per gram: Fat 9 • Carbohydrate 4 • Protein 4
Bolding mine because the formating is awful - 22g Sugar and 15g of protein vs 2g Sugar and 38g protein. A larger list of vitamins and minerals all with at least 33% of the RDA in a one meal serving.
Also the delay in delivery is because during the testing phases there was no need for an FDA approved manufacturing facility but for shipment there is, so that takes the whole ‘rat feces and insect parts’ drama off the table. They have now contracted with one of their suppliers to manufacture in their facility.
Basically it’s like every other product on the shelf. Some will use it, others won’t and it will live or die on it’s marketing.
I didn’t have time to make lunch this morning, and I forgot it was a holiday for most people. Thinking I could just grab a sandwich at the nearby deli, I bundled up and jogged across the business park in the bitter cold, only to find that the deli was closed for the holiday. It’s times like this that I think it might be nice to have a couple meals worth of Soylent stashed in my office to occasionally insulate me from my own lack of planning.
Apparently, both the powder and oil have a one year shelf life. I’m not sure I’m willing to commit to the current minimum order of 7 pouches, but this is the exact situation where I could see myself actually using it. Eating it even once a day every day would probably drive me mad, but I see potential as an occasional backup plan.
I currently have a large bag of Life cereal that serves this purpose, but Soylent looks like it has a better nutritional mix.
Dextrin is just glucose: pour sugar into water, give it a stir and a few minutes and you have a dextrin solution.