Aside from the nutritional benefits, I'm sure you guys have looked at the environmental benefits of soylent as well. I'd love to try the product (but I'm in Australia).
I don't know about the biggest pivot, but I'd say it could be the biggest disruptive business, possibly ever.
I've always envisioned a future where you'd eat a meal as a special social occasion, otherwise, get your nutrition from something like soylent (though I imagined a pill).
EDIT: I have to concede that while the Soylent team's lack of health/nutrition expertise is worrying, the promise of their business is so important on a global scale that they deserve to get funded and further research their ideas. Very rarely do you see a startup operate in this space, even more rare one that could end up fighting world hunger.
Though I agree it's a dystopia for some (I'm working on a cooking start-up, I love to cook), it also is a saviour to many, and possibly to the environment.
I was thinking earlier today that if they are just capable of getting people to use soylent twice a day for a hurried breakfast before work, and for many (like me) who work through their lunchtime, that would have not only a massive market.
The thing is, how much of this is just the right marketing. Meal replacement drinks have been around forever, and though the name says it all, we don't believe that the product is actually a replacement for our meals, rather it's an occasional helper to get us to the next meal.
Nutrition... I wonder what the core data looks like for what you need to consume, and how agreed upon it is.
I've always read differing and greatly conflicting views on what a person should have as intake, obviously because it's very subjective and so many factors are being balanced (who's saying it, why, motives, height, age, activity levels, etc).
The greatest part of this experiment that interests me is less about providing the product and more to do with determining the exact mix for someone.
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.
Well, no. As during any week I eat from several different restaurants, grocery stores and supermarkets, with a large variety of products and cooking styles, it is largely more unlikely that I'm missing any important part of my nutrition.
Soylent is a single product, from a single supplier, with a single ingredient list, for every meal, everyday.
Why does everyone seem to think that Soylent is "for every meal, everyday"? Rob has stated several times that he still eats out with friends occasionally. Soylent is just his way of getting through food preparation ad nauseam.
Also, it doesn't have a single ingredient list. It's been stated several times that the measurements would be modified according to each individual that would use Soylent.
> Why does everyone seem to think that Soylent is "for every meal, everyday"?
Because they're selling it as that. Perhaps Soylent could consider reading these threads and improving their website information?
>Also, it doesn't have a single ingredient list. It's been stated several times that the measurements would be modified according to each individual that would use Soylent.
This version of the product comes, I think, in just two forms, Male and Female. Ingredients are crucial. (Perhaps a legal requirement? I don't know about the US market.) Certainly a list of ingredients for the base product is possible.
It'll be interesting to see how Soylent do the tailoring to each individual. It'll be interesting to see what information they use to do that modification.
> 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.)
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.
Why doesn't soylent just pivot to being a giant blender as a service company. Then you can just select what you want to eat: like a three-course meal, everything from soup to desert. Then they just blend all that up just-in-time and ship it out to you as one disgusting mush.
so, let me get this straight: the backers bought a powder substance from a random guy on the internet, consumed it for a week, excitingly report less sleep, more energy, better mood, and come back asking for more...
While I appreciate the efficiency of this, I will happily stay a relic of the olden days, when we ate food not only for being able to hack the next day, but also took pleasure out of every meal.
I am happy to spend a considerable part of my budget to procure groceries that have been grown in a sustainable way and meat from animals that were not industrially produced.
I am also happy to spend considerable time preparing these ingredients into Dishes that are not only nutritious but also a good enjoyment for all senses.
For people that otherwise get their food from budget Walmart microwave dishes or McDonalds and the likes, Soylent might be a good alternative. It is probably easy to add all kinds of spices to create the illusion of variation that is very important for most human taste buds.
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 for the upper classes.
Lots of people on the planet are still going hungry or even starving and for those people Soylent - provided it's actually cheaper and proven to be safe - could mean having access to regular nutritious meals for the first time in their lives.
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 also share the thought that food is a pleasure and I won't want to give that up.
For Epicurus, pleasure was the absence of discomfort. The pleasure of eating, for example, came from the fact that he was no longer hungry. His feasts were famously simple. Vegetables and cheese.
Epicurus, if he were alive today, might be an early adopter of Soylent.
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.
Of course the olden days have to be taken with a grain of salt. I am aware that it was (and still is) true only for a small number of privileged people, and I am thankful to fall in that category.
If Soylent plays a part in reducing the hunger in the world, then I am a big fan. I reserve the hypocrisy for me to not be a fan of it in my own diet.
I would be perfectly happy with decoupling "satisfying hunger" from "enjoying food", though: if I was never hungry, ever, but still able to eat and enjoy tasting (and consuming) food, that would be great; it would be like a guaranteed basic income for my body.
I don't need to have fancy gastronomical adventures three times a day; I imagine that really, without a need for it, it would be an indulgence to be pursued with about the same frequency as sex.
Soylent isn't necessarily about forcing you to eliminate food and preparation - it's about giving you the option. And like Rob did, you can still enjoy a regular dinner with friends, and just have it for breakfast or lunch.
I love cooking, I love food, but it does take a lot of my time, of which after sleeping and working I only have 7 hours of the day. Other people can't or don't like cooking - what joy is cooking your own food to someone who burns a bowl of cereal?
And for anyone who simply doesn't care about cooking or food, this could be a huge improvement over eating McDonald's or Lean Cuisine every day. Right now, 'not caring' about what you eat has a huge, negative impact on your health. They're trying to eliminate that.
It's a shame that they (and many of their prospective customers) appear to be unaware of the existing liquid feed products.
Eventually they claim they'll tailor the product for each individual. That'll be interesting. Maybe combine it with life planning for exercise and healthier eating? People could wean their selves off junk foods (subbing Soylent for those) and tapering in better food.
Does anyone have a link to any article about their previous white space radio effort? I'm interested in learning more about their failure in that field and what were the hurdles he is referring to.
I can't seem to find them on the YC summer 2012 list and their new nutrition thing is all that comes up in my web searches.
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 Paul Graham, YC isn't mentioned again (literally, I even used the find function to check I hadn't read too quickly and missed a crucial paragraph).
From when "YC accepted our original idea" has everything these guys have done been under a kind of YC umbrella? Did they break away then re-establish with YC when Soylent started taking off? I have no idea how any of this works. Could someone fill in what is between the lines here please?
On another note, I've enjoyed the passion and controversy of the Soylent topics on here and avoided commenting because someone has always said what I was going to - except they've said it hours ago and four people have made good rebuttals, and four more have made rebuttals to each those, and so on, to the point where I just want to drink it all in rather than join the noise. However, this part seems a new one on me:
"Rob would simply go to the pitcher, shake it once, and pour a delicious meal for himself"
Delicious? I was under the impression Soylent was either fairly tasteless or mildly unpleasant-tasting. Is it really delicious? In what way? Why? How?
> 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.
I've just done a google and the only person I can find describing Soylent as 'delicious' in the first few hits is Rob himself, who even says "I'm not trying to make something delicious; there are already a lot of delicious things" - that's defending Soylent's taste in this Gawker article http://gawker.com/we-drank-soylent-the-weird-food-of-the-fut.... The piece contains the following:
"Soylent tastes like the homemade nontoxic Play-Doh you made, and sometimes ate, as a kid. Slightly sweet and earthy with a strong yeasty aftertaste."
"It tasted like when you're baking and you taste the ingredients even if there's not sugar or vanilla in there, you just have a compulsion to taste wet food."
"My mouth tastes hot and like old cheese."
"It tasted like someone wrung out a dishtowel into a glass."
As a health food Soylent had my curiosity. As a 'delicious' food it has my attention. However, that attention appears to have been misallocated.
"It was delicious! I felt like I'd just had the best breakfast of my life. It tasted like a sweet, succulent, hearty meal in a glass, which is what it is, I suppose." --http://robrhinehart.com/?p=298
Gawker staff tried Soylent. Feedback was mixed. Including:
"[It] made me feel like joining a cult, after just one sip."
"It tasted like when you're baking and you taste the ingredients even if there's not sugar or vanilla in there, you just have a compulsion to taste wet food."
"My mouth tastes hot and like old cheese."
"It tasted like someone wrung out a dishtowel into a glass."
"It was great and I love it. I don't want to eat anymore."
--http://gawker.com/we-drank-soylent-the-weird-food-of-the-fut...
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 some exotic aircraft.
I'm sure that in a world where people are all about getting the most out of their day and shaving off a few minutes by reading on their mobiles whilst in the toilet a thing like this might be popular. But I'd rather sit down with my family and/or a bunch of people and share a meal rather than to fuel up.
Right, I think the Soylent people mostly agree with you. The thing is, they say, most people aren't having 21 emotionally enriching delicious meals a week. Sometimes you are just eating to get things done, and that's where you throw in a soylent and then stop thinking about it.
Beautiful artwork is important, but sometimes you just want to paint a wall white so you can get on with doing other important things.
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.
So Soylent isn't for you. Why even bother criticizing it? It'd be like a BMW owner criticizing a Kia owner for choosing an inferior driving experience. There are people out there who don't have the luxury of eating every single meal with a friend and for whom food isn't such a religious experience. There's clearly a market need for a quick, nutritious meal.
"Share it with your friends and family -- they like getting good nutrients too, we promise!"
"Soylent frees you from the time and money spent shopping, cooking and cleaning, puts you in excellent health"
A bunch of unsourced (anonymous) 'early adopters' raving about the product.
This is wrong at so many levels that a bit of skepticism to counter it is a good thing.
Disrupting eating, what could possibly go wrong?
Soylent is definitely arguing that people should switch wholesale to their diet, and that's a move that would require a lot of hoops to be jumped through before any kind of claims hinting in that direction could be made.
It's nothing to do with BMW vs KIA, it's everything to do with taking significant risks with other peoples' health.
If they truly are recommending people replace every meal - and I've not heard them explicitly say that - then I myself have misgivings. But that doesn't ruin the entire idea for me. I personally wouldn't replace every single meal and think there's a definite benefit to having access to a quick, nutritious meal when you need it. I doubt very many people outside of the founder himself will actually go on an all Soylent diet, so why bother attacking that premise?
As I type this I am eating, for breakfast, a sausage biscuit. I am unlikely to switch to Soylent. Now that you know my opinion, should I pretend to believe I have made you smarter? Maybe we can pretend to have made each other smarter together by expressing the same opinion.
Who gives a fuck if I am in the target market segment? The important lessons of Soylent are applicable beyond the specifics. They scratched their own itch, they're shipping, they're gaining the traction needed to build a clear brand, and above all the founders were not so in love with the contents of their own heads that they failed to recognize failure nor seize opportunity.
Sure it's not a product that contains interesting ideas expressed as computer code. Ain't the point. What matters is not the operands but the implementation of the operands.
Good luck to the Soylent team. Maybe you will convince me to be a customer, but no hard feelings if you forego wooing me.
These are big companies. They have dieticians and nutritionists working for them. They have established manufacturing channels sorted out. They supply a known, quality product to a variety of sources. They have existing contracts with big customers. They have expertise in selling to healthcare markets.
Note also the caution they use when describing their products - they don't claim that these are suitable for anyone. They certainly don't suggest that you stay on a liquid diet if you don't need it. They strongly suggest doctor's supervision.
It's your body, and what you do with it is up to you. But Soylent are being irresponsible by selling this product as "safe", for everyone, as "tested", when it hasn't had any testing, and we don't know that it is safe, and we do know that it is not safe for everyone.
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.
I'm not in the target demographic for products like Soylent. But someone in my social circle sells AdvoCare and others within that circle eat it up. Soylent is entering a market at least as accepted and established as the technologies mentioned in your comment.
Your logic can be applied in regard to the consequences of a whole host of technology ideas which involve personalizing user experience, providing relevant advertizing content or analyzing user behavior.
As a parent, I certainly wonder about the long-term consequences of online behavior, and expect they are of a far more irreversible nature.
To disrupt the industry Soylent need to know what that industry is.
So far I haven't seen any sign that they have any idea about what going on in that domain.
There's a bunch of stuff about "Hey! What if food was a simple easy liquid?" - well, fine, except that's been in existence for many years. There's some stuff about "optimal health" - which is a bit scary when you have a bunch of people with (as far as we can see) zero medical knowledge, zero dietary knowledge, and zero nutritional knowledge. Apart from what they've got from Wikipedia. And then there's the "Soylent will feed the world" - except we've been trying to feed the world with similar products for years and there's still a problem.
For the world hunger stuff: Who are they selling to? Charities and NGOs? The WFP and UNICEF? Will they just sell the raw product, or will they sell distribution too? What makes them better than whoever the WFP / UNICFEC are buying from?
This is why it doesn't feel disruptive. Most disruptive companies see what other people are doing, and target the inefficiencies or target what people want done differently.
Soylent claims to be different, but is the same as existing products (but with much bolder claims and much less quality control).
Everything I've seen with Soylent so far feels very rushed, and not thought-through. MVPs are fine for most things, but I'm pretty cautious about what I live on.
Most YC startups are not going to cause you direct physical harm. Soylent might. And I'd be fine with that if they had stuck to the original self-experimental approach. But they're not. They saying, clearly, unambiguously, that the product is tested and is safe and is safe for everyone.
The founders of Uber were not experts in the public transportation space when they started their company. The founders of AirBnB were not experts in the hospitality industry wen they started their company. The founders of Hipmonk were not experts in travel planning when they started their company. The founders of Warby-Parker were not eyewear or vision experts when they started their company. The founder of Oculus Rift wasn't an expert in VR and head-mounted displays when he started his company. And so on..
Makes me wonder how long they hold on to the sales pitch:
"Soylent is a simple and affordable nutritional drink that has everything the healthy body needs"
"Everything the healthy body needs"?
If I use it exclusively for a decade, will Soylent be liable for health issues arising from any potential nutritional issues?
I find the experiment interesting and don't wish to rain on the parade as I'd love to see some solution to nutrition in general (understand and communicating, figuring out a plan given height, age, sex, activity levels, dietary preferences, etc).
But I really hope the experiment stays out of the third/developing world until it's proven... if you're going to risk someone's health then at least let that be someone who has access to health care, clean water, other food, etc.
The worst thing they could do is to use the potential third world market as a sales pitch, experiment there, and then screw it up and leave people with a whole new set of problems and no recourse. Though, I guess that other industries do exactly that and treat it as an externalisation of the cost (oil industry practices, etc).
Where is the disruption? My supermarket has half an aisle full of meal replacement powders, drinks, and bars. HN (and soylent) seem to be unaware of such a thing. Does Soylent bring anything new to the table other than guerrilla marketing and willful ignorance of FDA regulations ("These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.")
The disruption I think is in the marketing and could be in the product itself. The other 'meal replacements' aren't pitched as actually replacing a meal, or at least I don't think we view them that way. They're viewed as 'good enough if you can't get a meal', or 'helps me get to the next meal'. A true meal replacement is a completely different marketing approach, and the product 'could' be significantly different. I don't know, but I'll do what I can to support them so WE can all find out.
Most people have lived very healthily on diets consisting 90%+ of various cereal or potato gruels. I just don't see how a high-tech powder really simplify things. You can almost live on mashed potatoes. That's barely more effort than buying and mixing this powder.
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.
3. Scientists are just now discovering the importance of bacteria in food consumption. Bacteria can be difficult due to the need for some of them to be refrigerated. NYT ran a great article recently on the problems with baby formula (arguably an infant-stage competitor :)).
4. Finally, getting the right mix of nutrients can be fairly difficult. I was surprised to find the "dark side of antioxidants". Thus far, in the studies I've read, it has been extremely difficult to "beat" a "whole" foods diet.
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.
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.
Give me a break. People have gone on crazier diets for a lot longer than this guy has and not died. Steve Jobs famously went on an all fruit diet for years and did not die as a result. There are people out there who literally eat nothing but McDonalds for breakfast lunch and dinner and it takes decades for them to die. We are more resilient than you're giving us credit for.
So you don't know? Yet you're happy for them to sell it as safe for everyone, as providing optimal nutrition, as bring people to perfect health, as being tested, when we don't know if any of that is true? (And we know the tested part is a lie).
This is ridiculous reasoning. Do you think every new food product that hits the market is tested for years beforehand to make sure it doesn't kill anybody? Soylent is just food, not some new medicine.
Soylent is being sold as a complete food. We've seen a couple of mistakes during the testing process. The ingredients list is not easy to find, and the sources of those ingredients are not available, so we cannot check if it is a complete food or not.
Soylent is being sold as something that you can eat for every meal. You can argue that most people aren't going to do that, but that's how Soylent are selling it.
Soylent claim, unambiguously, that it is safe for everyone. People with Crohn's disease sometimes need to eat a liquid feed. Is Soylent safe for them? Because Soylent claim that it is safe for them, and that it'll provide them with optimum nutrition and bring them to good health.
> Soylent is being sold as something that you can eat for every meal. You can argue that most people aren't going to do that, but that's how Soylent are selling it.
I agree with you that they should not be selling it in that way.
I apologise if I've been too harsh on Soylent. I have, previously, been strongly against Soylent. I'm against some of the techniques they're using to sell it now.
But I'm trying to be more a "critical friend" rather than just "negative". I realise that I don't yet have the right balance.
Is it really so ridiculous to question the claims being made here, though? Also "there are crazier things than this" is an incredibly bad argument when defending a product that has, in early stages, claimed it "automatically puts you at an optimal weight, makes you feel full, and improves your focus and cognition"[1] prior to any published tests. Admittedly they have dialed back the rhetoric, but is that enough to dismiss someone asking for some demonstration of proof?
Isn't Jobs fruitarianism considered to be a potential cause/contributor to his pancreas problems, which ultimately killed him?
The first two sentences made me think of Atkins, who I've heard (yes hearsay again) was hastened to his death by the high fat content of his low-/no-carb regime?
FWIW I'm not saying Soylent is worse than any other diet, I don't know. Just that your opposition to the parents scepticism seems a little too strong.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 139 ms ] threadI don't know about the biggest pivot, but I'd say it could be the biggest disruptive business, possibly ever.
I've always envisioned a future where you'd eat a meal as a special social occasion, otherwise, get your nutrition from something like soylent (though I imagined a pill).
EDIT: I have to concede that while the Soylent team's lack of health/nutrition expertise is worrying, the promise of their business is so important on a global scale that they deserve to get funded and further research their ideas. Very rarely do you see a startup operate in this space, even more rare one that could end up fighting world hunger.
I was thinking earlier today that if they are just capable of getting people to use soylent twice a day for a hurried breakfast before work, and for many (like me) who work through their lunchtime, that would have not only a massive market.
The thing is, how much of this is just the right marketing. Meal replacement drinks have been around forever, and though the name says it all, we don't believe that the product is actually a replacement for our meals, rather it's an occasional helper to get us to the next meal.
I've always read differing and greatly conflicting views on what a person should have as intake, obviously because it's very subjective and so many factors are being balanced (who's saying it, why, motives, height, age, activity levels, etc).
The greatest part of this experiment that interests me is less about providing the product and more to do with determining the exact mix for someone.
Poor developing countries. I hope they get their ubiquitous wireless soon. (Alternately, I wonder what this project will pivot into: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1776324009/brck-your-bac... ).
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.
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.
Soylent is a single product, from a single supplier, with a single ingredient list, for every meal, everyday.
Also, it doesn't have a single ingredient list. It's been stated several times that the measurements would be modified according to each individual that would use Soylent.
Because they're selling it as that. Perhaps Soylent could consider reading these threads and improving their website information?
>Also, it doesn't have a single ingredient list. It's been stated several times that the measurements would be modified according to each individual that would use Soylent.
This version of the product comes, I think, in just two forms, Male and Female. Ingredients are crucial. (Perhaps a legal requirement? I don't know about the US market.) Certainly a list of ingredients for the base product is possible.
It'll be interesting to see how Soylent do the tailoring to each individual. It'll be interesting to see what information they use to do that modification.
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.)
I am happy to spend a considerable part of my budget to procure groceries that have been grown in a sustainable way and meat from animals that were not industrially produced.
I am also happy to spend considerable time preparing these ingredients into Dishes that are not only nutritious but also a good enjoyment for all senses.
For people that otherwise get their food from budget Walmart microwave dishes or McDonalds and the likes, Soylent might be a good alternative. It is probably easy to add all kinds of spices to create the illusion of variation that is very important for most human taste buds.
Lots of people on the planet are still going hungry or even starving and for those people Soylent - provided it's actually cheaper and proven to be safe - could mean having access to regular nutritious meals for the first time in their lives.
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 also share the thought that food is a pleasure and I won't want to give that up.
Epicurus, if he were alive today, might be an early adopter of Soylent.
If Soylent plays a part in reducing the hunger in the world, then I am a big fan. I reserve the hypocrisy for me to not be a fan of it in my own diet.
I don't need to have fancy gastronomical adventures three times a day; I imagine that really, without a need for it, it would be an indulgence to be pursued with about the same frequency as sex.
I love cooking, I love food, but it does take a lot of my time, of which after sleeping and working I only have 7 hours of the day. Other people can't or don't like cooking - what joy is cooking your own food to someone who burns a bowl of cereal?
And for anyone who simply doesn't care about cooking or food, this could be a huge improvement over eating McDonald's or Lean Cuisine every day. Right now, 'not caring' about what you eat has a huge, negative impact on your health. They're trying to eliminate that.
It's a shame that they (and many of their prospective customers) appear to be unaware of the existing liquid feed products.
Eventually they claim they'll tailor the product for each individual. That'll be interesting. Maybe combine it with life planning for exercise and healthier eating? People could wean their selves off junk foods (subbing Soylent for those) and tapering in better food.
I can't seem to find them on the YC summer 2012 list and their new nutrition thing is all that comes up in my web searches.
Then the article begins on Soylent and, aside from a few appearances from Paul Graham, YC isn't mentioned again (literally, I even used the find function to check I hadn't read too quickly and missed a crucial paragraph).
From when "YC accepted our original idea" has everything these guys have done been under a kind of YC umbrella? Did they break away then re-establish with YC when Soylent started taking off? I have no idea how any of this works. Could someone fill in what is between the lines here please?
On another note, I've enjoyed the passion and controversy of the Soylent topics on here and avoided commenting because someone has always said what I was going to - except they've said it hours ago and four people have made good rebuttals, and four more have made rebuttals to each those, and so on, to the point where I just want to drink it all in rather than join the noise. However, this part seems a new one on me:
"Rob would simply go to the pitcher, shake it once, and pour a delicious meal for himself"
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.
I've just done a google and the only person I can find describing Soylent as 'delicious' in the first few hits is Rob himself, who even says "I'm not trying to make something delicious; there are already a lot of delicious things" - that's defending Soylent's taste in this Gawker article http://gawker.com/we-drank-soylent-the-weird-food-of-the-fut.... The piece contains the following:
"Soylent tastes like the homemade nontoxic Play-Doh you made, and sometimes ate, as a kid. Slightly sweet and earthy with a strong yeasty aftertaste."
"It tasted like when you're baking and you taste the ingredients even if there's not sugar or vanilla in there, you just have a compulsion to taste wet food."
"My mouth tastes hot and like old cheese."
"It tasted like someone wrung out a dishtowel into a glass."
As a health food Soylent had my curiosity. As a 'delicious' food it has my attention. However, that attention appears to have been misallocated.
"It was delicious! I felt like I'd just had the best breakfast of my life. It tasted like a sweet, succulent, hearty meal in a glass, which is what it is, I suppose." --http://robrhinehart.com/?p=298
Gawker staff tried Soylent. Feedback was mixed. Including:
"[It] made me feel like joining a cult, after just one sip." "It tasted like when you're baking and you taste the ingredients even if there's not sugar or vanilla in there, you just have a compulsion to taste wet food." "My mouth tastes hot and like old cheese." "It tasted like someone wrung out a dishtowel into a glass." "It was great and I love it. I don't want to eat anymore." --http://gawker.com/we-drank-soylent-the-weird-food-of-the-fut...
Eating is not about 'efficiency' unless you're an astronaut or a person doing a round-the-world flight in some exotic aircraft.
I'm sure that in a world where people are all about getting the most out of their day and shaving off a few minutes by reading on their mobiles whilst in the toilet a thing like this might be popular. But I'd rather sit down with my family and/or a bunch of people and share a meal rather than to fuel up.
Beautiful artwork is important, but sometimes you just want to paint a wall white so you can get on with doing other important things.
It seems, that soylent is for time, when you eat in solitude, and for me it's the majority of my dinners.
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.
"Soylent - Free Your Body"
"Share it with your friends and family -- they like getting good nutrients too, we promise!"
"Soylent frees you from the time and money spent shopping, cooking and cleaning, puts you in excellent health"
A bunch of unsourced (anonymous) 'early adopters' raving about the product.
This is wrong at so many levels that a bit of skepticism to counter it is a good thing.
Disrupting eating, what could possibly go wrong?
Soylent is definitely arguing that people should switch wholesale to their diet, and that's a move that would require a lot of hoops to be jumped through before any kind of claims hinting in that direction could be made.
It's nothing to do with BMW vs KIA, it's everything to do with taking significant risks with other peoples' health.
Who gives a fuck if I am in the target market segment? The important lessons of Soylent are applicable beyond the specifics. They scratched their own itch, they're shipping, they're gaining the traction needed to build a clear brand, and above all the founders were not so in love with the contents of their own heads that they failed to recognize failure nor seize opportunity.
Sure it's not a product that contains interesting ideas expressed as computer code. Ain't the point. What matters is not the operands but the implementation of the operands.
Good luck to the Soylent team. Maybe you will convince me to be a customer, but no hard feelings if you forego wooing me.
Only one aspect of our eating habits should be the nutritional value. Enjoyment of your food and the people you eat with are also very important.
Very interesting post - I know many people will eat this product right up.
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-brands) Abbott Nutrition Brands
These are big companies. They have dieticians and nutritionists working for them. They have established manufacturing channels sorted out. They supply a known, quality product to a variety of sources. They have existing contracts with big customers. They have expertise in selling to healthcare markets.
Note also the caution they use when describing their products - they don't claim that these are suitable for anyone. They certainly don't suggest that you stay on a liquid diet if you don't need it. They strongly suggest doctor's supervision.
Soylent claim to be interested in the developing world markets. About 20% of the world live on less than $1.25 per day. (http://povertydata.worldbank.org/poverty/home)) And the main ingredient of Soylent is water, supplied by the user. About one billion people don't have access to clean drinking water. (http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/mdg1/en/index.htm...)
The World Food Program and UNICEF have some information. (https://www.wfp.org/nutrition/special-nutritional-products) -- see how cheap they're aiming for?
It's your body, and what you do with it is up to you. But Soylent are being irresponsible by selling this product as "safe", for everyone, as "tested", when it hasn't had any testing, and we don't know that it is safe, and we do know that it is not safe for everyone.
And this is the company selling most of the ingredients for these various nutri-stuffs (http://www.dsm.com/en_US/foodandbeverages/public/home/pages/...)
Good Luck and everything, but I don't think they have any clue what they're doing, or who the established competitors are.
(Using secondary account because I'd set noprocast a bit too long)
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.
Your logic can be applied in regard to the consequences of a whole host of technology ideas which involve personalizing user experience, providing relevant advertizing content or analyzing user behavior.
As a parent, I certainly wonder about the long-term consequences of online behavior, and expect they are of a far more irreversible nature.
So far I haven't seen any sign that they have any idea about what going on in that domain.
There's a bunch of stuff about "Hey! What if food was a simple easy liquid?" - well, fine, except that's been in existence for many years. There's some stuff about "optimal health" - which is a bit scary when you have a bunch of people with (as far as we can see) zero medical knowledge, zero dietary knowledge, and zero nutritional knowledge. Apart from what they've got from Wikipedia. And then there's the "Soylent will feed the world" - except we've been trying to feed the world with similar products for years and there's still a problem.
For the world hunger stuff: Who are they selling to? Charities and NGOs? The WFP and UNICEF? Will they just sell the raw product, or will they sell distribution too? What makes them better than whoever the WFP / UNICFEC are buying from?
This is why it doesn't feel disruptive. Most disruptive companies see what other people are doing, and target the inefficiencies or target what people want done differently.
Soylent claims to be different, but is the same as existing products (but with much bolder claims and much less quality control).
Everything I've seen with Soylent so far feels very rushed, and not thought-through. MVPs are fine for most things, but I'm pretty cautious about what I live on.
Most YC startups are not going to cause you direct physical harm. Soylent might. And I'd be fine with that if they had stuck to the original self-experimental approach. But they're not. They saying, clearly, unambiguously, that the product is tested and is safe and is safe for everyone.
"Soylent is a simple and affordable nutritional drink that has everything the healthy body needs"
"Everything the healthy body needs"?
If I use it exclusively for a decade, will Soylent be liable for health issues arising from any potential nutritional issues?
I find the experiment interesting and don't wish to rain on the parade as I'd love to see some solution to nutrition in general (understand and communicating, figuring out a plan given height, age, sex, activity levels, dietary preferences, etc).
But I really hope the experiment stays out of the third/developing world until it's proven... if you're going to risk someone's health then at least let that be someone who has access to health care, clean water, other food, etc.
The worst thing they could do is to use the potential third world market as a sales pitch, experiment there, and then screw it up and leave people with a whole new set of problems and no recourse. Though, I guess that other industries do exactly that and treat it as an externalisation of the cost (oil industry practices, etc).
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/2027.42/73393...
3. Scientists are just now discovering the importance of bacteria in food consumption. Bacteria can be difficult due to the need for some of them to be refrigerated. NYT ran a great article recently on the problems with baby formula (arguably an infant-stage competitor :)).
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/magazine/say-hello-to-the-...
4. Finally, getting the right mix of nutrients can be fairly difficult. I was surprised to find the "dark side of antioxidants". Thus far, in the studies I've read, it has been extremely difficult to "beat" a "whole" foods diet.
http://bigthink.com/devil-in-the-data/the-dark-side-of-antio...
No kickbacks, but the best "drink" I've found in this arena so far has been Xymogen's i5: https://www.xymogen.com/products/product-detail.aspx?pid=78. I use it for reasons alluded to below in background.
Background: wife is a food and travel writer. Some major life hurdles have required us to study and be extremely cognizant of what we eat.
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.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sp-VFBbjpE
At $70 BOM cost, it failed, but at $15 BOM cost it might succeed. Why not put the work into the public domain and let someone else do good with it?
Their big "campaign" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5745707
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.
How do you know?
Soylent is being sold as something that you can eat for every meal. You can argue that most people aren't going to do that, but that's how Soylent are selling it.
Soylent claim, unambiguously, that it is safe for everyone. People with Crohn's disease sometimes need to eat a liquid feed. Is Soylent safe for them? Because Soylent claim that it is safe for them, and that it'll provide them with optimum nutrition and bring them to good health.
I agree with you that they should not be selling it in that way.
But I'm trying to be more a "critical friend" rather than just "negative". I realise that I don't yet have the right balance.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5745707
The first two sentences made me think of Atkins, who I've heard (yes hearsay again) was hastened to his death by the high fat content of his low-/no-carb regime?
FWIW I'm not saying Soylent is worse than any other diet, I don't know. Just that your opposition to the parents scepticism seems a little too strong.
Come on, HN.