I really like the idea but am hesitant at this early stage to buy soylent. If the general impression is still good after it has been on the market for quite a while I am pretty sure I will order. I don't think I could switch completely, but it sounds like the perfect food to have when you just don't want to invest time to cook something. This would definately be better than to just have a pizza.
I'd be interested in seeing a comparison of Soylent against Ensure Complete. They seem to be very similar in intent: http://ensure.com/products/ensure-complete-shakes and based on the nutrition information for Ensure Complete from that page and the rough description of Soylent (http://robrhinehart.com/?p=424) I do not see a major difference.
It would appear that to get the same nutrients as Soylent I would need to drink 4 bottles of Ensure Complete per day. From the Abbott store they are $41.99 for 16 bottles: a week's supply works out at $73.48. Very close to Soylent pricing.
Ensure products deliver complete and balanced nutrition that is always beneficial. There is no time limit to using Ensure products. In fact, long-term use is encouraged if you’re at a nutritional risk (for example, if you’re an older adult).
>Can Ensure replace a meal?
Yes. Ensure products are complete and balanced, when used in appropriate amounts they can be used to replace meals.
"
I believe it is also used in hospitals with a feeding tube for long term sustenance however, I'm not finding a great source for that with a quick google.
The creator of Ensure know that the products are used for force-feeding. It happens with anorexics all the time.
EDIT: But kefs makes a good point; you think you're making food and then you find out it's being used for something that you strongly disagree with. what do you do? Take the money? Or don't sell to certain markets?
People who have to live for years with a gastric tube rather than chewing their food to eat it (for example, some quadriplegics, like my late dad for the last six years of his life) life largely on Ensure or one of the very similar products from competing companies. Liquid nutrition products are very time-tested products, into which many hours of clinical observation and laboratory experiments have been devoted.
I agree. I can't imagine it is better than Ensure but, I'm not doctor or nutritionist. Ensure has the exact same intent and has been used, tested, and refined for ~40 years.
Ensure's goal is as supplement, or to fight food-related diseases (diabetes etc).
Solyent's goal is to provide every day healthy food replacement for regular people.
The Soylent guy is an engineer who approached it like an engineering problem. It is supposed to contain everything your body needs on a regular basis.
Ensure is a food replacement that has a long history of helping people with medical concerns. My great-grandmother lived mostly on this stuff while going through chemo.
So far as I know, Ensure has never been advertised as the magic bullet to replace every food ever.
That's because if Ensure tried to the parent company would get sued/fined into oblivion the first time some one wasn't close enough to their assumptions on nutrient needs/uptake.
Not saying it makes Soylent better or not, but Ensure isn't great. In one study, where Ensure was used instead of the standard glucose solution for an Oral Glucose Tolerance Test, some subjects ended up with 2 hour blood glucose levels over 180 mg/dL. It's marketed as having a low Glycemic Index, but the GI of chocolate cake and ice cream are actually even lower...
AFAICT, though, the only "better" about Soylent is that it's, like, disruptive.
Typical consumer products are loaded with sugar, as most people are now accustomed to a large amount in the diet.
Looks like 4 bottles would be 204g total carbs, 80g of it sugar. Not as bad I was expecting, but not great. Soylent claims 200g carbs, but there is no further breakdown. From its positioning I'd guess it is lower, but I can't confirm it yet.
My father, whom after having some terrible lymph-node cancer about 15 years ago, finally couldn't eat. Due to scar tissue he was breathing in more food than he was eating so now he taking what is more close to Soylent called Jevity through a stomach tube.
I doubt they really care about HN's opinion given the vast number of criticisms put forward, but I do really hope that they'd post more product information, perhaps more of the science, more of the research. Again, as I've said before, hiring a few more relevant scientists would help with their credibility, and might it be possible? -- improve their product. That is all. May there be no more flamewars.
(Granted, I've stopped following this story, so my information might be way out of date)
I believe in a previously shared blog post, the founder mentioned that he was planning a "large-scale controlled trial". However, I haven't seen any additional details about these plans.
I just skimmed through their discussion board for a while, and it seems they are planning to employ a couple of industry experts (whatever that means) fulltime or for consultation with the money they made from their crowdfunding campaign.
The problem is that you're average twenty-something can live off of all sorts of crap for an extended period of time before feeling sick. How many of you live off of fast food and Mountain Dew?
I agree. I buy local from the farmer's market and I buy raw and fresh, I have lost more weight just eating like a caveman than any fad diet has done for any of my co-workers or friends.
The following is ideal for me:
1. raw/fresh food
2. general fitness every day
3. intermittent fasting once or twice a week
Food has a lasting effect on the body, some of which science is yet to understand, I'll stick with what I can hunt and pick from the wild.
Not quite sure why I've always cracked eggs into a cup first, cracking them directly into the pan seems obvious (and no beating, I'm not cruel!). You've just saved me one minute for every future scrambled eggs!
And as jack-r-abbit suggested, I do like to chop some onion/peppers/tomatoes into scrambled eggs. I'll time it and try to get under 10 minutes next time!
This is perhaps the worst example of people who learn their science and medicine from reading Reddit that I have yet seen in the Hacker News community. It illustrates the fallibility of human nature behind every new business scheme, and shows that a business doesn't have to be a big, multinational publicly traded corporation to engage in business with little regard for customer safety or public benefit.
AFTER EDIT: I have read the numerous stories submitted here about this YC-affiliated company before, and, yes, I am painfully aware of the company founder's appalling lack of background in nutrition and medicine.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that you don't actually know where this guy learned his science and medicine. Let people experiment on themselves. IMO there are enough humans that if a few get slightly ill from this, it is worth it for the chance that it does work (which seems significant given the experimentation he did on himself, the presence of similar, competing products, etc.).
I agree with the first part of your comment. But let's not play up his self-experimentation as anything more than whimsical. His result are not significant in any way. Ffs he has been on it for how long? Months? Maybe a year? And n=1 as well.
Right, for me "chance that this does work" is valued somewhere around 5-25% right now. It is worth that chance for more people to try it and really see.
Rob Rhinehart's bio starts: "Rob is a Y Combinator alumnus with professional experience in electrical engineering, computer science and entrepreneurship."
If he had some powerful degree in nutrition or a medical degree, it would be mentioned in this sentence. It's not. He doesn't.
And he's not experimenting on himself. He's selling a product that he's advertising as a food replacement with all sorts of health benefits.
As far as "it's cool if a few people get sick..." Are you insane?
The person I'm responding to claimed that he learned the science from Reddit. I am not claiming he learned it in medical school. I'm claiming that there's no evidence he got it from Reddit.
> As far as "it's cool if a few people get sick..." Are you insane?
They know what they are getting themselves into. I don't have any problem with people who choose to binge drink or the alcohol manufacturers that sell that product. If people know what they are getting themselves into -- and they'd have to go out of their way to not know with this product -- I'm normally OK with the outcome. Especially if the probable worst-case outcome is a few months of suboptimal nutrition followed by a return to a normal diet. Nope, not insane.
Really? I've got to explain the difference between something touted as a health supplement / meal replacement and booze? (Which, if you'll notice, is covered in warnings and regulated out the wazoo.)
> I've got to explain the difference between . . .
My point is merely that I'm fine with people choosing to do risky things as long as the risk involved is obvious. I'd be a little more comfortable with this campaign page if they made slightly less grandiose promises, but for the most part I think the people ordering it will be aware of the shallowness of the testing so far and can decide for themselves if that is a risk they are willing to accept.
Despite my snark, I do understand what you're saying. It's the "as long as the risk involved is obvious" part that bothers me. Soylent has had a presence on sites like Hacker News, so we kind of know what it's about. But not everyone does. And I really do believe that honest food labeling is very, very important.
They're passing this off as a cure. That's what really irks me. None of the presentation I've seen so far communicates "participate in our experiment!" It's all stuff like "For anyone who struggles with allergies, heartburn, acid reflux or digestion, has trouble controlling weight or cholesterol, or simply doesn't have the means to eat well, soylent is for you." That's a health claim they simple can't back up in any reasonable way. And it's a claim that many people are likely to assume is true! Not everyone will dig into the site and see that Rhinehart has a background in engineering, not nutrition, and that these claims haven't actually been backed up at all. You and I might know to do that, but many people won't. Which is why we have food labeling laws in the first place.
I agree that that sentence is very unfortunate. It's in total contradiction to what they say below, which is that Soylent has not been evaluated by the FDA to treat any disease.
One of the reasons we have consumer protection laws and the FDA is so that people _don't_ have to experiment on themselves in order to verify the more extravagant claims made by products.
People should have a reasonable expectation that when they buy a product, it will work as expected and as advertised. And they should have recourse if this turns out not to be the case.
I'd totally have a problem with this if it were being advertised as a highly tested, rock solid product rather than a nutritional experiment. Since that's not the case, I'm fine with it.
> For anyone who struggles with allergies, heartburn, acid reflux or digestion, has trouble controlling weight or cholesterol, or simply doesn't have the means to eat well, soylent is for you.
> Soylent frees you from the time and money spent shopping, cooking and cleaning, puts you in excellent health,
> By taking years to spoil
> The founders and scores of DIYers have been living on Soylent for months and there is much evidence that is considerably healthier than a typical diet.
There's no mention on the crowd-funding page that this is an experiment.
I tend to agree with you - people can do what they like with their bodies and this product would fit a lot better if it was sold as an experiment, with access to discussion forums and etc.
I think we are more aware of the product's experimental nature due to having read and discussed his blogs. I'm not sure that reading the sales page discloses this as much.
It definitely doesn't look like an experiment. There is no data collection, no controls, no clear or explicit warning that the product is untested.
I'm really interested in learning more. I like the concept but am also wary of the science behind it. Is there a legitimate/credible scientific review of it out there?
Absolutely. It's one thing to experiment with your own body, it something else entirely to sell a product with no scientific backing as a cure-all for all variety of ailments.
I find the HN hate for this guy incredible. The NSA is less loathed. Do you need to be a nutritionist with a PhD to open a restaurant? Why does he need to be one?
500k in croudfunding for a guy with absolutely no academic education behind the subject which by it's idea is as simple as Soylent is must surely rub the fur of a few the wrong way. "It just can't work!".
How? People in this world suffer malnutrition because of socio-political and logistical problems. A maybe shelf stable maybe meal-replacement isn't going to solve any problems, because as is kind of a theme in this version of the soylent thread WE ALREADY HAVE THIS.
Saving the world is obviously(yes it is, lets not even argue) an extreme case formulation in this case.
My point stands, the man came up with something as ancient and as simple as "generic stuff you can just eat and get all you need without preparation or other stuff you need to ever care about", and people go absolutely nuts over it.
It is my belief that the problem is not the product, but the idea. I do not hold any qualified education to argue for or against whether or not something like that is ever possible, but considering the heated debate back and forth, to me it seems as if it's not about Soylent itself or anything, but rather about the whole principal idea.
I enjoy cooking and good food, and put some effort in what I eat and what I don't eat, so I am not even personally interested let alone invested in this. Also the marketing speeches of Soylent fixing everything are outright laughable, but I can't stop wondering the knee jerk reaction against the idea behind Soylent itself even.
You don't need a nutrition Ph.D to open a restaurant, but if you are going to claim that your restaurant provides certain health benefits, or that it is specifically tailored to certain body types and lifestyles, being a trained nutritionist who can support your claims with data makes you much more credible.
I was interested when it was one guy on a mission for himself. I've become less so now that its clear he wanted to go worldwide with this as soon as possible.
I do not wish the project ill will, but I won't be signing on at this time unless things (re: testing) get a lot more transparent.
When huge numbers of people take intense interest in your hobby and keep shouting "shut up and take my money!", to the tune of millions of dollars, it kinda motivates you to go worldwide with it as soon as possible.
I'm not liking how they are going about this at all. They should ensure it is safe first before trying to sell everywhere. I don't like the perception of their intents.
They aren't crowdfunding with the intent of verifying the safety of their product. They are just crowdfunding to make ample amount of product to start the cycle of selling. The fact that they already have anticipated shipping dates shows that verifying the use of this product from a health standpoint is secondary to their goals.
Why soylent has intrigued me since this first started out. The way they are going about everything makes it feel so much like snake oil...
How the heck are people enthusiastic about this? Are there really that many people that take no enjoyment from the flavours, colours, textures and smells of the food they eat? And that's not to mention the fact that the body craves variety, the need for which it manifests by making you feel sick of eating the same thing over and over again.
Yep. I hate cooking, and honestly I end up eating like the same exact 5 meals every week. Apparently there are $500000 worth of us, so there's a market.
That's still 5 meals worth of variety. Also, what about breakfast and lunch? Are you having the same thing for breakfast, lunch and dinner on each day?
Care to cite how the body makes one feel sick for eating the same again and again granted that the food delivers required nutrients with no deficiencies?
I have no personal experience nor have I ever heard of this occuring, although I have never heard of someone actually following such a diet either.
If someone tells you, "hey, the cook spit in your food" -- it doesn't matter if the cook actually did, you're going to be grossed out by the food because you're in an icky state of mind.
So, while I know Soylent is not made out of people, it just makes the product less appetizing than it would otherwise be.
However, maybe this is just a problem for people who dig old scifi.
Here's how you create a Soylent without losing the DIY aesthetic:
1) You make it an open source project under an open license, OpenSoylent
2) You leave any health claims to be made by the OpenSoylent community. If this is unsatisfactory, you put out a bounty for MetaMed to write an independent report on the OpenSoylent wiki with references.
3) You accept people's patches to OpenSoylent
4) You create a separate, unaffilliated company to provide Soylent(tm), an implementation of OpenSoylent, with zero health claims, in a commercial kitchen, and link back to the OpenSoylent wiki for more information
Whether the above is legal or not, I'm not certain, but A) it's a hell of a lot closer than the present situation, and B) it doesn't offend geeks who apply critical thought to businesses that blog.
More power to Soylent to monetize this, become a business just like Ensure or Slim Fast (succumbing to all the commercial pressures such products face, like, "Y'know, let's drop pricey molybdenum and just encourage people to have normal food once a day.")
I guess I was way more excited about the project when I thought he was starting a discussion where we can all pool information on self experimentation to help each other generate a cheap, nutritionally complete chemical sludge.
EDIT: And even here micronutrient powders are nothing new. See the link to DSM embedded in WFP page above. Here's their corporate page (http://www.dsm.com/corporate/investors.html). They're pretty big.
Note that an important part of Soylent, which is offloaded onto the consumer, is a source of clean water. Much of the world, especially in the target hungry world market, does not have access to clean water. I think people would criticise Soylent for that, so it's something for them to be thinking about.
I have no idea how Soylent is in anyway "disruptive" to that market.
Ignoring the "fixing world hunger" bit, liquid foods are not new. Here's a list:
Again - I have no idea how Soylent are disruptive.
Selling into other markets is interesting. I hope they've put disclaimers on some of the more outrageous claims, or they may find resistance. For example "For anyone who struggles with allergies, heartburn, acid reflux or digestion, has trouble controlling weight or cholesterol, or simply doesn't have the means to eat well, soylent is for you." contains medical claims which are treated very differently in the UK than they are in the US.
I see no evidence that Soylent have done any research at all.
I've checked with someone in the industry[1], and yes, Soylent would be required to be regulated by the FDA and the like.
[1] Conflict of interest, as they work for a potential competitor in the market. However they come from a medical background, and put patient health first. Surprising exactly how important nutrition is, actually!
90 comments
[ 6.1 ms ] story [ 157 ms ] threadIt would appear that to get the same nutrients as Soylent I would need to drink 4 bottles of Ensure Complete per day. From the Abbott store they are $41.99 for 16 bottles: a week's supply works out at $73.48. Very close to Soylent pricing.
What makes Soylent better?
It looks more like a meal substitute (liquid nutrition bar) than a food substitute.
" >For how long can I use Ensure?
Ensure products deliver complete and balanced nutrition that is always beneficial. There is no time limit to using Ensure products. In fact, long-term use is encouraged if you’re at a nutritional risk (for example, if you’re an older adult).
>Can Ensure replace a meal?
Yes. Ensure products are complete and balanced, when used in appropriate amounts they can be used to replace meals. "
I believe it is also used in hospitals with a feeding tube for long term sustenance however, I'm not finding a great source for that with a quick google.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/04/29/3370916/more-navy-medi...
EDIT: But kefs makes a good point; you think you're making food and then you find out it's being used for something that you strongly disagree with. what do you do? Take the money? Or don't sell to certain markets?
http://www.nutritioncare.org/wcontent.aspx?id=266
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensure
Ensure is a food replacement that has a long history of helping people with medical concerns. My great-grandmother lived mostly on this stuff while going through chemo.
So far as I know, Ensure has never been advertised as the magic bullet to replace every food ever.
AFAICT, though, the only "better" about Soylent is that it's, like, disruptive.
Looks like 4 bottles would be 204g total carbs, 80g of it sugar. Not as bad I was expecting, but not great. Soylent claims 200g carbs, but there is no further breakdown. From its positioning I'd guess it is lower, but I can't confirm it yet.
http://www.abbottstore.com/therapeutic-nutrition/jevity+reg/...
Comes in many varieties of being calorie dense, and can work out to almost 50 cents a day at 1200 cal diet.
I'd be interested as well.
(Granted, I've stopped following this story, so my information might be way out of date)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5815108
Vegetables steamed in the microwave take less than 5 minutes to prepare. (More on my eating habits: http://blog.tasuki.org/how-i-didnt-stop-eating-food/)
I think eating only Soylent exposes you to a significant risk of missing something vital that we usually get incidentally from regular food.
1. raw/fresh food 2. general fitness every day 3. intermittent fasting once or twice a week
Food has a lasting effect on the body, some of which science is yet to understand, I'll stick with what I can hunt and pick from the wild.
How the hell does it take 15mins to prep scrambled eggs? It should take less than 5 and your cleanup should take all of a minute
1. Put Small/medium saucepan on stove
2. Add 1/2 Tbsp butter
3. Crack 2 eggs into pan (Do no beat beforehand)
4. Put pan on mid-low flame and stir briskly for 2-3mins or until eggs are at a runny-curds texture (soft but "together").
5. Plate
And as jack-r-abbit suggested, I do like to chop some onion/peppers/tomatoes into scrambled eggs. I'll time it and try to get under 10 minutes next time!
AFTER EDIT: I have read the numerous stories submitted here about this YC-affiliated company before, and, yes, I am painfully aware of the company founder's appalling lack of background in nutrition and medicine.
http://blog.soylent.me/post/51007573199/the-biggest-pivot-in...
If he had some powerful degree in nutrition or a medical degree, it would be mentioned in this sentence. It's not. He doesn't.
And he's not experimenting on himself. He's selling a product that he's advertising as a food replacement with all sorts of health benefits.
As far as "it's cool if a few people get sick..." Are you insane?
> As far as "it's cool if a few people get sick..." Are you insane?
They know what they are getting themselves into. I don't have any problem with people who choose to binge drink or the alcohol manufacturers that sell that product. If people know what they are getting themselves into -- and they'd have to go out of their way to not know with this product -- I'm normally OK with the outcome. Especially if the probable worst-case outcome is a few months of suboptimal nutrition followed by a return to a normal diet. Nope, not insane.
My point is merely that I'm fine with people choosing to do risky things as long as the risk involved is obvious. I'd be a little more comfortable with this campaign page if they made slightly less grandiose promises, but for the most part I think the people ordering it will be aware of the shallowness of the testing so far and can decide for themselves if that is a risk they are willing to accept.
They're passing this off as a cure. That's what really irks me. None of the presentation I've seen so far communicates "participate in our experiment!" It's all stuff like "For anyone who struggles with allergies, heartburn, acid reflux or digestion, has trouble controlling weight or cholesterol, or simply doesn't have the means to eat well, soylent is for you." That's a health claim they simple can't back up in any reasonable way. And it's a claim that many people are likely to assume is true! Not everyone will dig into the site and see that Rhinehart has a background in engineering, not nutrition, and that these claims haven't actually been backed up at all. You and I might know to do that, but many people won't. Which is why we have food labeling laws in the first place.
Can you show me where "experimental" is used on the crowd-funding page? (https://campaign.soylent.me/soylent-free-your-body)
Whats the value here? This is just another proprietary nutrient slurry. We already have those.
People should have a reasonable expectation that when they buy a product, it will work as expected and as advertised. And they should have recourse if this turns out not to be the case.
> For anyone who struggles with allergies, heartburn, acid reflux or digestion, has trouble controlling weight or cholesterol, or simply doesn't have the means to eat well, soylent is for you.
> Soylent frees you from the time and money spent shopping, cooking and cleaning, puts you in excellent health,
> By taking years to spoil
> The founders and scores of DIYers have been living on Soylent for months and there is much evidence that is considerably healthier than a typical diet.
There's no mention on the crowd-funding page that this is an experiment.
I tend to agree with you - people can do what they like with their bodies and this product would fit a lot better if it was sold as an experiment, with access to discussion forums and etc.
I notice they now have a disclaimer on that page.
It definitely doesn't look like an experiment. There is no data collection, no controls, no clear or explicit warning that the product is untested.
They're selling it as tested, as safe, as suitable for anyone, and as something that will put you in optimum health. It's sleazy and scummy.
If Soylent delivers and can be capitalized on, this guy saves the world. On an ancient idea, simplest of them all, which everyone said was impossible.
500k in croudfunding for a guy with absolutely no academic education behind the subject which by it's idea is as simple as Soylent is must surely rub the fur of a few the wrong way. "It just can't work!".
Saves the fucking world?
How? People in this world suffer malnutrition because of socio-political and logistical problems. A maybe shelf stable maybe meal-replacement isn't going to solve any problems, because as is kind of a theme in this version of the soylent thread WE ALREADY HAVE THIS.
My point stands, the man came up with something as ancient and as simple as "generic stuff you can just eat and get all you need without preparation or other stuff you need to ever care about", and people go absolutely nuts over it.
It is my belief that the problem is not the product, but the idea. I do not hold any qualified education to argue for or against whether or not something like that is ever possible, but considering the heated debate back and forth, to me it seems as if it's not about Soylent itself or anything, but rather about the whole principal idea.
I enjoy cooking and good food, and put some effort in what I eat and what I don't eat, so I am not even personally interested let alone invested in this. Also the marketing speeches of Soylent fixing everything are outright laughable, but I can't stop wondering the knee jerk reaction against the idea behind Soylent itself even.
I do not wish the project ill will, but I won't be signing on at this time unless things (re: testing) get a lot more transparent.
You know, what ycombinator is all about.
Why soylent has intrigued me since this first started out. The way they are going about everything makes it feel so much like snake oil...
I have no personal experience nor have I ever heard of this occuring, although I have never heard of someone actually following such a diet either.
If someone tells you, "hey, the cook spit in your food" -- it doesn't matter if the cook actually did, you're going to be grossed out by the food because you're in an icky state of mind.
So, while I know Soylent is not made out of people, it just makes the product less appetizing than it would otherwise be.
However, maybe this is just a problem for people who dig old scifi.
1) You make it an open source project under an open license, OpenSoylent
2) You leave any health claims to be made by the OpenSoylent community. If this is unsatisfactory, you put out a bounty for MetaMed to write an independent report on the OpenSoylent wiki with references.
3) You accept people's patches to OpenSoylent
4) You create a separate, unaffilliated company to provide Soylent(tm), an implementation of OpenSoylent, with zero health claims, in a commercial kitchen, and link back to the OpenSoylent wiki for more information
Whether the above is legal or not, I'm not certain, but A) it's a hell of a lot closer than the present situation, and B) it doesn't offend geeks who apply critical thought to businesses that blog.
More power to Soylent to monetize this, become a business just like Ensure or Slim Fast (succumbing to all the commercial pressures such products face, like, "Y'know, let's drop pricey molybdenum and just encourage people to have normal food once a day.")
I guess I was way more excited about the project when I thought he was starting a discussion where we can all pool information on self experimentation to help each other generate a cheap, nutritionally complete chemical sludge.
Also, I think the difficulty in preparing food part is overblown. Haven't any of these guys heard of Trader Joe's?
Here's the list of WFP food products (https://www.wfp.org/nutrition/special-nutritional-products) - especially look at the price. I guess they're making full use of charitable status and economies of scale.
Here's Plumpy'Nut, a fortified food product for starving children (http://www.irinnews.org/report/83124/malawi-cheaper-recipe-f...)
EDIT: And even here micronutrient powders are nothing new. See the link to DSM embedded in WFP page above. Here's their corporate page (http://www.dsm.com/corporate/investors.html). They're pretty big.
Note that an important part of Soylent, which is offloaded onto the consumer, is a source of clean water. Much of the world, especially in the target hungry world market, does not have access to clean water. I think people would criticise Soylent for that, so it's something for them to be thinking about.
I have no idea how Soylent is in anyway "disruptive" to that market.
Ignoring the "fixing world hunger" bit, liquid foods are not new. Here's a list:
(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
(http://www.medifast1.com/index.jsp) Medifast
(http://www.optifast.com/Pages/index.aspx) Optifast
(http://www.slim-fast.com/products/) Slimfast
Again - I have no idea how Soylent are disruptive.
Selling into other markets is interesting. I hope they've put disclaimers on some of the more outrageous claims, or they may find resistance. For example "For anyone who struggles with allergies, heartburn, acid reflux or digestion, has trouble controlling weight or cholesterol, or simply doesn't have the means to eat well, soylent is for you." contains medical claims which are treated very differently in the UK than they are in the US.
I see no evidence that Soylent have done any research at all.
[1] Conflict of interest, as they work for a potential competitor in the market. However they come from a medical background, and put patient health first. Surprising exactly how important nutrition is, actually!