Maybe they can use some of their millions to ship orders faster than, I don't know, 3-6 months? Get it in the Amazon supply chain and have next day delivery. I'm still waiting on a reorder from a month ago and haven't heard anything since I emailed customer support.
"First and foremost, we will be significantly expanding our manufacturing and shipping capabilities. This process has already begun with two new manufacturers that will ramp up our production to more than fifty times its previous rate allowing us to vigorously tackle our order backlog while working toward imminent real-time shipping fulfillment."
> First and foremost, we will be significantly expanding our manufacturing and shipping capabilities. This process has already begun with two new manufacturers that will ramp up our production to more than fifty times its previous rate allowing us to vigorously tackle our order backlog while working toward imminent real-time shipping fulfillment.
Amazon just "picks and packs" your product. They don't manufacture it for you. I'm sure 90% of Soylent's supply chain issues aren't in the shipping process but in raw material procurement and manufacture.
Soylent's website claims they've shipped "over 3 million meals" (1 million bags) since launch. From what I can tell, the first bag was shipped in May 2014.
That's roughly 111/k bags per month since launch. For the first nine months of a company, that's operationally extremely impressive.
The delays for new customers (3-6 months, yikes) seem ridiculous, but if you do the math, I'm surprised it isn't more.
Hoping this includes eventual international shipping. I'm an Australian, been eager to give Soylent a whirl. I've ordered a batch from a 3rd party to see how I go with it, but would be nice to have access to the genuine article.
The FDA recommendations are not great, but 300g of carbs is totally reasonable if you are on a low fat diet. The problem is people on high carb diets tend to have a hard time keeping it at just 300g due to insulin level effects. But it's a behavioral issue: control the level of carb intake and you'll be fine.
No because it will be extremely difficult for you to fit within your caloric balance and still get all the micronutrients you need. But the issue here is that the carbs are paired with something that doesn't also give you those micronutrients so you'd have to eat even more calories to get there, not the carbs themselves.
A lot of carbohydrates are extremely bad for you (e.g. sugar). However some are good for you (e.g. green veggies). The devil is in the details as they say.
From what I've read of this product, it doesn't contain excess anything by design. So it likely isn't problematic, but as a general rule "bad" carbs can be very bad for you and give you things like diabetes if over-consumed.
First off, there is absolutely no science showing sugar is bad for you, or that it behaves differently from other carbs when combined with equal amounts of fiber (which is why vegetable carbohydrates tend to be "ok").
Second, even without the fiber, for the vast majority of people a high sugar diet (within reasonable max carbohydrate intake) is not going to adversely affect you directly, the issue usually comes in with behavioral impact, causing you to eat more, causing you to get fat, causing you to have diabetes.
> as a general rule "bad" carbs can be very bad for you and give you things like diabetes if over-consumed
This concept of "bad" carbs is really not useful. Carbs are pretty much carbs. Anything (other carbs, fat and protein) can also be over-consumed but are simply less likely to.
TLDR: assuming equal amounts of carbohydrates, the source doesn't actually seem to have a big impact.
> First off, there is absolutely no science showing sugar is bad for you, or that it behaves differently from other carbs when combined with equal amounts of fiber (which is why vegetable carbohydrates tend to be "ok").
I just stopped reading there. No point going on, that's just jaw droppingly ignorant.
Did you even read the link you sent? Here are some quotes:
> Some studies involving the health impact of sugars are effectively inconclusive. The WHO and FAO meta studies have shown directly contrasting impacts of sugar in refined and unrefined forms[66] and since most studies do not use a population that do not consume any "free sugars" at all, the baseline is effectively flawed. Hence, there are articles such as Consumer Reports on Health that stated in 2008, "Some of the supposed dietary dangers of sugar have been overblown. Many studies have debunked the idea that it causes hyperactivity, for example.
> Studies on the link between sugars and diabetes are inconclusive, with some suggesting that eating excessive amounts of sugar does not increase the risk of diabetes, although the extra calories from consuming large amounts of sugar can lead to obesity, which may itself increase the risk of developing this metabolic disease.
So there is definitely controversy, and to call me jaw droppingly ignorant is pretty offensive.
The fact that you think I'm arguing green veggies and sugar are equally bad for people means you fundamentally did not understand what I was saying. What do you think the difference between veggies and other sources of sugar is? Hint: it's not the type of sugar, it's the absence of fiber. Here's another quote, from your link:
> Some experts have suggested that refined fructose is more damaging than refined glucose in terms of cardiovascular risk.
The refining process is essentially one that removes the fiber. Let's go back to my quote:
> First off, there is absolutely no science showing sugar is bad for you, or that it behaves differently from other carbs when combined with equal amounts of fiber (which is why vegetable carbohydrates tend to be "ok").
I think there is a valid argument against GMOs, but it revolves more around the dangers of creating a monoculture (i.e. one bad crop disease could then wipe out a large fraction of the food supply), rather than health risks, since as I'm sure many HN readers are aware, humans have been genetically modifying food since they've been cultivating it.
I know even Neil DeGrasse Tyson has been pushing the "we've been genetically modifying food for thousands of years!" line but I think it's a bit disingenuous.
Crossing a tomato and a deep sea fish is fundamentally different from crossing two strains of corn and we should expect different risks.
It's all DNA based, all from the same tree of life, true.
But is there any evidence of gene sharing between biological kingdoms in nature? Why can't an animal and a plant create an offspring that shares both of their genetic information? There's clearly lack of a mechanism for fish-tomato sex but evolution is known to create very elegant mechanisms for things that are beneficial.
Intra-species gene sharing has been selected for as being beneficial, inter-species gene sharing hasn't.
EDIT: I'm not allowed to comment on the response below? So, here it is...
> Given that it is observed in nature, what is your basis for that conclusion?
Clearly I was unaware this happens at all in nature which is why I asked if it happens. Horizontal Gene Transfer is fascinating. However, it's been around since the beginning but sexual reproduction supplanted it as the preferred method of gene sharing as the complexity of organisms increased.
> But is there any evidence of gene sharing between biological kingdoms in nature?
Yes. Horizontal gene transfer can operate between different kingdoms (or, more relevantly to how life is usually divided these days, between the three phylogenetic domains of archaea, bacteria, and eukaryota.)
> Intra-species gene sharing has been selected for as being beneficial, inter-species gene sharing hasn't.
Given that it is observed in nature, what is your basis for that conclusion?
It's a thing, though it didn't work. (Wiki links to more in depth sources):
> An early tomato was developed that contained an antifreeze gene (afa3) from the winter flounder with the aim of increasing the tomato's tolerance to frost, which became an icon in the early years of the debate over genetically modified foods, especially in relation to the perceived ethical dilemma of combining genes from different species as the tomato gained the moniker fish tomato.[18] The antifreeze protein was found to inhibit ice recrystallization in the flounder blood, but had no effect when expressed in transgenic tobacco.[19] The resulting tomato was never commercialized, possibly because the transgenic plant did not perform well in its frost-tolerance or other agronomic characteristics
Thanks for info. Yes I would have been surprised if such a radical transfer would have been found not to actually harm the agronomic viability. Skeptical a promoter could even be found, but anything is possible.
Helpful characteristics approaching commercial reality involve nothing of the kind such as the recent StAs1 and StAs2 Simplot potato or the AquAdvantage salmon opAFP-GHc2 construct.
> I know even Neil DeGrasse Tyson has been pushing the "we've been genetically modifying food for thousands of years!" line but I think it's a bit disingenuous.
Its not. Not that its his field or anything, but I suspect Tyson has educated himself somewhat on it before making that statement, and it certainly matches what I've learned from direct contact from people working in the field.
> Crossing a tomato and a deep sea fish is fundamentally different from crossing two strains of corn and we should expect different risks.
We don't cross tomatoes with deep sea fish; we might take genes from deep sea fish (or some other similarly distant species) and insert them into tomatoes, but then, one of the ways that the genetic changes occur that natural and artificial selection both work on is horizontal gene transfer between species (including ones that are very far apart on the tree/web of life), so this is not as fundamentally different from what goes on in traditional breeding as many people seem to think.
Is there anything specific about GMO that would lead to monoculture. Even with just normal artificial selection, I would expect farmers to converge on a few best strains and create a monoculture with those.
Certainly GMOs can be bad, such as crops that are "roundup ready". Others, like Innate Potatoes (that NPR recently did a story on), can be good. However there is not conclusive evidence on GMOs such as the Innate that prove they dont have negative effects as well. The laws on GMO labeling in American also fall very short of differentiating from "good" GMOs and "bad" GMOs.
Given that I rather not ingest crops modified to resist poison, I just pass on all GMOs.
There are healthy alternatives for Soylent. I've tried Ambronite. It's made of real food and is organic, but it's also more expensive. Its taste is quite strong when mixed with water. Mixing with juice or fruits makes it better. I just wish the price will come down.
Serious question: Do they have any actual nutritionists working on the product yet or just a bunch of hybristic 20-somethings who think they can "hack" the nutrition space without any real education, cause, you know, "disrupt!".
A better question is what really separates this from any of the other meal replacement drinks/bars out there? To me it just seems like another darling of the Valley built on hype.
I recall reading an interview, or perhaps someone's personal review, stating how it was difficult for them to eat meals and they'd often forget to eat. Soylent solved this problem for them because it gave them an instant meal any time of the day. Upon reading this I thought it was the most ridiculous thing I've read and stupid justification for buying Soylent.
Are you seriously asking this? What about their website/marketing video makes you think this is not aimed at millienials? Their founder is a 20-something.
It has to do with the hubris issue, for me. Typically with age comes the realization that, hey, maybe I don't have all the answers. If there are some hybristic 20-somethings "disrupting" and "hacking" the real estate market or the mobile games market for women from 35-55 years old, and they fail because they thought they knew it all, well, it doesn't really matter. In the case of Soylent, though, they're playing with people's health. This is a big deal and far more healthy skepticism regarding their product is morally warranted. There are millions of years of man-hours which have gone into the study of nutrition and everything I've seen from Soylent just seems to sweep it all under the table.
There's also the counter argument, that quite a bit of innovation was done by less than fully mature people. Part of this, is the life experience that makes one realize that something isn't possible or practical also is a barrier to trying anyway.
I know that for myself, I used to write a lot more code that I wouldn't even dream of starting now, just because I realize how much work is involved for the little return. But sometimes I which I could get temporary amnesia so that I could recapture that youthful enthusiasm.
I wholeheartedly agree that a certain healthy naivete or unbridled idealism or whatever can lead to wonderful things. My point is that when you're dealing with something as serious as health, this idealism has to be tempered with some sober acknowledgement of the pitfalls. As I said, everything I've seen from Soilent indicates to me their just brushing aside warnings from real nutritionists.
Soylent provides a means by which we can gain a greater understanding of nutrition. It is, in a very controlled form, an experiment. and Rob's blog posts on his own early usage of Soylent have indicated just that. I'm not sure why you are so vehemently against this, but your posts are full of logical fallacies including many ad hominem attacks at a person you seem to know relatively little about. You can disagree without resorting to such petty and embarrassing tactics.
Do they have any actual smart people working on this, or is it just a bunch of desk-riding "nutritionists" who went to med school 40 years ago when all the books were written by tobacco lobbyists in the 1920's?
Who needs to have a real conversation when you have snark!
So, next time you feel ill, I trust that, instead of going to a doctor, who went to med school 40 years ago and (in your world-view apparently) is only prescribing medications pushed on him by his pharmaceutical rep and only suggesting procedures that will make him money, you'll take care of your condition by reading up on it on webmd and leaving it at that.
Soylent 1.2 was developed under the close guidance of our nutritional advisor, Dr. F. Xavier Pi-Sunyer, M.D., MPH. Pi-Sunyer is professor of medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City. At St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center he serves as chief of endocrinology, diabetes, and nutrition, and is director of the New York Obesity Research Center. Dr. Pi-Sunyer is also a senior attending physician at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital and New York-Presbyterian Hospital.
Being created by a nutritional advisor and a professor of medicine is legitimately credible.
I just want to add that this:
> is approved as a food by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
Is utterly meaningless. All that means is that everything that goes into the product is "food grade" and that it was prepared in basically sanitary conditions. Nothing more. I highly doubt the FDA has examined their health claims (namely that you could live exclusively off of it). And likely won't unless there is public or political pressure to do so.
As an aside, I wonder if they could get a military or relief effort contract? Seems like the type of product perfect for both, as you "just add water!"
> As an aside, I wonder if they could get a military or relief effort contract? Seems like the type of product perfect for both, as you "just add water!"
A lack of readily available clean water may be a challenge for use in relief efforts. There are also already products out there e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumpy%27nut
The relief will have to bring in water regardless (so people don't die). If they add it to the product that isn't "wasted" water as your body just re-extracts the water and uses it like normal.
It's very much more expensive than existing products.
WFP needs a variety of different foods. Sometimes they just need calories. Sometimes they just need micronutrient. Sometimes they need a specific micronutrient.
Their recipe relies heavily on added vitamins and minerals. As I commented on the other thread today, it's possible to get all daily nutrition from just 5 cups broccoli, 1.5 cups peanuts, and 3 cups milk.
Couldn't you just take any smoothie recipe, blend in a multi-vitamin, and claim it's a food replacement? Don't products such as Boost already do this? I don't understand Soylent's edge here, except marketing.
The problem is that we're still very much in the dark regarding nutrition:
"This formula contains what we know we need but not what we might need and don't know how to measure or quantify yet," said Ayoob, at Albert Einstein. "There are hundreds of antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds, for example, that we're still learning about." (1)
The danger with Soylent is that they don't acknowledge these limits of our knowledge. Rather, "You can live on Soylent alone, Mr. Rhinehart claims" (2). Given the nutirition field believes differently and he really has no expertise in the field, a statement like this is mindbogglingly irresponsible. This is my basis for the accusation of hubris. (This also doesn't touch on the obvious monetary incentive he has for believing this/making this claim.)
The only affordable (in time and money) alternative to Soylent is crappy fast-food and microwave meals. Surely Soylent is better than a diet comprised of those alternatives?
1) Buy slowcooker
2) Buy a bunch of cans of beans, veges, ground meat, couple spices
3) Drop that slop in slowcooker
4) Turn on and go to sleep for 8 hours
5) Turn off, put in separate containers
Boom, chili meals for a week.
People who believe cooking needs to be expensive and time consuming really haven't put much effort into looking out for alternatives until some marketing scheme makes them believe they've solved a problem that didn't really exist.
I can literally put water in a pot and steam days worth of veges in mere minutes while I pick my nose. Or I take a roast and drop it in a slowcooker, or butter chicken, or any other myriad of choices that involve a highly nutritious set of ingredients. Bulk cooking can be extremely cheap and quick. If your priorities are time/money then put some effort into solving the issue.
Here's a fascinating concept... if you don't like the product/don't trust the company... don't buy it. Boom. Go back to buying whatever crap new vanilla melto-choc insta-coffee sachet Nestle thinks they can get a 4% ROI on. Or buy some unmilled wheat and chia pods from your local Spirit Journey Nutritionist and spend an hour making artisan flatcakes. Whatever you want really, it's a free world.
Yeah, I would agree with you if we were talking electronics and nerd stuff.
As the subject is nutrition, health and they're proposing a "nutrition revolution", your rant is futile and misplaced. Engineers proposing a "nutrition revolution" because "disrupt" is a problem. Maybe a public health problem, but definitely a mindset one.
Why don't you let people make their own decisions about what is good for them? It's none of your business "knowing better" than people.
And if you think Soylent's raison d'etre is "disrupt" then you're really stupid. Read Rob's blog. He writes a lot about the problems in contemporary food production and how he wants to tackle them with Soylent. If you ignore that in favour of portraying him as a blind hipster then you are not just stupid, but willfully so.
Let's not forget either that Rob and many others have been living healthily off of Soylent for years now.
> Why don't you let people make their own decisions about what is good for them? It's none of your business "knowing better" than people.
Because we're not discussing buying a new phone or laptop. If you look at guidelines for nutrition, you'll see that most of them advocate diversity. People are not simple computers, organic systems are way more complex. This is not sofware requirements analysis: you can't grasp all nutritional needs by fulfilling a table of nutrients and daily requirements, and this happens mainly because we don't have the knowledge to do so.
If we can't tell everything we need, nutrition-wise, how can we develop a full nutritional replacement? I'll answer you: by oversimplifying the problem, by simply being ignorant about the complexity at stake.
> ...
Your second paragraph deserves no response or consideration whatsoever.
> Let's not forget either that Rob and many others have been living healthily off of Soylent for years now.
That's anecdotal (at best, because there's surely a bias there). And let me remind you, again, that we're not talking "electronics" or gadgets. The fact that they're functioning for a few years doesn't mean that everything's okay. What if they're not "looking" at the right signs? And how do you know that problems won't be developing on the mid/long-term?
> Let's not forget either that Rob and many others have been living healthily off of Soylent for years now.
No. He has been living off a diverse diet that includes Soylent. Being a sole source of nutrition is a selling poit of Soylent - it's a claim you've made in this thread - but there's very little evidence to support that use apart from some anecdote and uncontrolled unblinded experiment with a tiny sample size.
Soylent have retreated from the extravagant irresponsible claims they made when they launched the Kickstarter, and that's good. But now Soylent is pretty much the same as all the other products but with less experience and differently targeted ads.
I still am optimistic about the idea and principles behind Soylent, but I got to say, I was not impressed with their initial product (v 1.0 and 1.1).
It gives users horrific smelling gas, and honestly, I generally felt worse on Soylent than after any other type of food I have ever eaten, including junk food. (I didn't mind the taste though.)
They are already at v 1.3 though. Here's hoping that this capital influx allows them to rapidly improve the recipe.
I honestly can't understand the appeal or novelty in it. Ready meals have been available for years. Vitamin tables have been available for years. Where exactly does the difference lie?
Ready meals are designed for taste and palatability, not for complete daily nutrition. (Except for military MREs, apparently.) The idea of Soylent is that it's an inoffensive, cheap, and simple way to eat healthily.
The theory is that, unlike ready meals, Soylent is designed to give you all the vitamins and nutrients a healthy, active adult needs to stay health, in a single package. No need to think about anything or worry about if you're missing anything in your diet, just chug it and go.
Total meal replacement products have also been available for many years. These come in a variety of forms - shakes, juice-style drinks, soups. There are versions for normal drinking or for naso-gastric tube feeding. There are versions suitable for a variety of special diet needs.
Most of the products that came before Soylent were either targeting people on a calorie restricted diet, recovering from some medical condition or otherwise had special dietary needs. They were also designed for being used either for limited periods of time or under medical supervision. Soylent was the first product directly targeting healthy active adults without any medical problems or specific dietary needs wanting to permanently replace the need for any other foodstuff in their diet.
Yes, products before soylent were careful not to mis-represent themselves and careful not to make unsubstantiated claims, unlike soylent which claimed it was suitable for everyone as a total meal replacement forever with no medical supervision which would return you to good health.
Look I'm not saying that soylent is a good idea or even that works, and I'm probably as far from a potential soylent customer as it is possible to get. I'm just trying to explain how their stated goals and ambitions make their product somewhat unique in the current landscape of similar products.
It is a completely self-contained eating system. If it works as advertised you just eat that and you're done, no spreadsheets, no calculating up to make sure you're consuming what you should be, and so on. You should be getting everything you need.
You're paying for the 100% system, not 98%, not 99%: 100% that is the USP. The price is only a little more expensive than eating out ($3.33/meal roughly).
Plus most off-the-shelf "Ready meals" are extremely unhealthy. Many contain transfats and other foot preservatives which are quite bad for you.
I think its based on FDA allotments. I completely agree though that we're still in our scientific infancy of understanding what the body needs and how best to get it those resources.
Totally agree. People have lived for millennia on completely different diets due to their geographical location. To say that one diet has the correct amount ignores this fact completely.
I've been reading HN's overwhelmingly negative treatment of Soylent (as the concept) with some amusement. I'm glad they're successful, and hope they become even more so.
That said, I was really underwhelmed with the taste of Soylent when I finally got mine. I understand that I can improve it by e.g. blending a banana into the shake, but if I need to take out my blender and prepare other food to add to Soylent, I might as well make a smoothie out of available fruits and veggies.
The next time I order Soylent will be when their price comes down to the point where it's cheaper than the food I buy.
This was my experience as well. I'm curious what percentage of people reorder. Nonetheless, I'm happy to see soylent doing well over some of the other startups I've seen addressing really trivial problems that probably are better off without VC funding.
I've been reading HN's overwhelmingly negative treatment of Soylent (as the concept) with some amusement.
It's interesting. HN is supposed to represent some of the world's most dynamic, forward-thinkers. However almost every truly disruptive development is greeted with small-minded negative thinking and parochialism. Bitcoin is scam money for paranoiacs who don't trust banks. Inflation is good for economies. The rich are too rich. We need more and higher taxes and more socialist redistribution of wealth. Soylent tastes bad and destroys traditional food cultures. Uber is too powerful and going to become a monopoly. Google is evil. Without the protection of friendly governments capitalism will exploit the poor. People are too stupid to protect themselves from predatory opportunists (and the government is somehow a perfect vessel to counteract them.) Everything is scary and the way things should be is how a small group of white men who are very good friends with the US government tell us how it should be, which happens to be very similar to today but with more friendly government intervention to fix everything white male programmers are scared of and don't understand.
I guess it'll be entertaining to watch people changing their tune over the coming decades.
You're using this as a platform to address other issues than what I think the OP is hinting at.
Soylent isn't "new". It isn't "disrupting" anything. Meal replacement alternatives have existed for decades and there are numerous brands out there that have a medical proven trackrecord that can be obtained for cheaper than the Soylent we're seeing pushed today.
What we have here is a case of "forward thinkers" believing that some crackpot idea from the startup culture is suddenly revolutionary because they marketed it best to this subculture of life. You're a sucker to believing Soylent offers anything revolutionary yet paying above market to have them feed you that lie.
The iPhone isn't "new". It isn't "disrupting" anything. Smartphones have existed for years and there are numerous brands out there that have a commercial proven trackrecord that can be obtained for cheaper than the iPhone we're seeing pushed today.
What we have here is a case of "forward thinkers" believing that some crackpot idea from Apple is suddenly revolutionary because they marketed it best to this subculture of life. You're a sucker to believing iPhone offers anything revolutionary yet paying above market to have them feed you that lie.
Great, except this is More like it could be one of those knock off iPhones from China that electrocutes you since they are "disrupting" the field by not having anyone who's qualified in food nutrition working on their product day to day?
The whole system sucked. Those things has little memory or CPU. Windows Mobile didn't have memory protections or preemptive multitasking. Pocket Internet Explorer sucked even worse than Internet Explorer 6. It was challenging to find apps for them.
But the real disruption was the disruption in the carrier relationship. A lot of smartphones didn't have WiFi, and the carriers would nickel and dime you for every kilobyte. Apple convinced them to do the flat rates and big chunks of data. Apple introduced manufacturer control of the user experience, instead of Verizon disabling every feature that would allow you to avoid the carrier's fees. When the iPhone was announced, the feature I was most impressed by was the visual voicemail. Voicemail was so tedious and inefficient before iPhone.
I don't know where you're getting these prices from. In Toronto Boost and Ensure cost CAD$11 for 2000 calories (in bulk at Costco!) while Soylent costs CAD$10.75.
The Soylent has more protein, a more balanced nutritional profile, less wasteful (and annoying) packaging, and is lactose free too.
Snowden didn't disrupt anything. We have always known that the NSA spies on electronic communications and interferes with encryption standards.
A lot of the time, it's not the specific artifact that is disruptive, but it's the vision behind it. The iPhone is Unix on a phone. Qt had that years before Apple. Apple actually shipped, and added freedom from the carriers' horrible user experience.
Ensure and Shakeology and Slimfast and Garden of Life have been around forever, but Rob is interested in Soylent being a complete replacement for your normal, everyday nutrition. He's not just resting on his laurels, having an obviously desirable product, but he's continuing to work on improving it, and he inspired a community to join him. Soylent is not big enough to disrupt the food industry yet, but if he succeeds, then it will.
What if Ensure had a cool name and didn't carry connotations of age and disease? What if it was sexily marketed? What if it was easy to flavour and make delicious? What if you signed up for a subscription and never thought about it again? What if you got it from vending machines that were everywhere you went and recognised you as you approached, having a glass perfectly formulated to your tastes and needs at that precise moment ready? What if it came out of a tap? What if your home 3D printer could form it into a multitude of shapes and textures (bar, cookie, cereal) and it would still be nutritionally balanced? What if it was surrounded by a devoted and inventive community of DIY hackers? What if the creator of Ensure was rapidly iterating it and discussing engineering microbes to produce pure versions of it?
Oh, or is it easier, instead of using your imagination and a bit of enthusiasm, to point to how it's similar to a crappy product that nobody bothered to market, and imply that it won't be sucessful - because we all know the success and impact of a product has nothing to do with the creativity, perserverance and vision of the creators, right?
I can go to the drugstore and get a day's nutrition worth of Ensure right now. How long is the waiting list for Soylent? Because it turns out that actually having product available is like, step 0 of marketing.
Besides, I already conceded that Soylent is marketed to hipsters. If its creators had "creativity" or "vision", they wouldn't have reinvented Ensure. It's marketing over substance.
>What if Ensure had a cool name and didn't carry connotations of age and disease?
"Soylent" carries connotations of being made of the ground up corpses of the poor, so...
> What if it was easy to flavour and make delicious?
Is it easier to do with Soylent than Ensure, or any other drink? You can put sugar into anything, and "delicious" is relative.
> What if you signed up for a subscription and never thought about it again?
Other services offer food delivery, and arguably, just going to the store is often more convenient and cost effective.
>What if you got it from vending machines that were everywhere you went and recognised you as you approached, having a glass perfectly formulated to your tastes and needs at that precise moment ready?
Soylent doesn't have vending machines networked to some sort of facial-recognition AI.
>What if it came out of a tap?
Soylent doesn't come out of a tap.
> What if your home 3D printer could form it into a multitude of shapes and textures (bar, cookie, cereal) and it would still be nutritionally balanced?
That's an argument for the transformational nature of 3d printing, not Soylent.
> or is it easier, instead of using your imagination and a bit of enthusiasm, to point to how it's similar to a crappy product that nobody bothered to market, and imply that it won't be sucessful - because we all know the success and impact of a product has nothing to do with the creativity, perserverance and vision of the creators, right?
It is similar. Everything you've mentioned about how revolutionary Soylent is, appears to be either marketing hype (Ensure doesn't iterate, it isn't hip, it's associated with old people, etc etc) or pie-in-the-sky stuff that doesn't even relate to Soylent as a product, and doesn't even exist. The argument that the Soylent which actually exists is basically Ensure for hipsters still seems valid.
Are you really stupid? Read Rob's blog. Everything I've mentioned is stuff he's discussed implementing. If you don't believe that he will or can do it, whatever, but he appears totally serious to me. I for one think he's visionary, and comparison with a crap product (Ensure isn't vegan, it has too much sugar) from the old food system is just stupid. What matters is someone seeing the potential and working towards that in the long-term - my main question for you is how can you be reading this site and be so blind to that fact?
Marketing hype. If you look at what the substance of Soylent is, and what the product actually accomplishes, it's basically Ensure, except marketed to hipsters instead of the sick and elderly. The fact that the founder can write science-fiction blog posts about facial recognition based vending machines and 3D printing? Big deal. Writing science-fiction blog posts about stuff you want to invent is the easy part.
Mmm, I hope you got some value from him when he made this pearler: "By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's."
While HN can be negative, it's not primary reason I don't read HN much anymore. It's because (as demonstrated by your comment) people just state opinions without any arguments attached. When people say "X is bad" rather "X is bad for Y reason" it's leaves all the argumentation up to the reader. It's these kind of attacks that make HN emotionally draining.
There is something productive about some of the negativity, but ultimately I end up feeling like some sort of fanboy when I start correcting some of the inaccuracies.
We should hold companies to higher standards; they don't pay us to be their PR team. But in the case of some of the negativity regarding Soylent, it feels more like jealously than genuine concern.
It certainly demonstrates that there are customer viewpoints that are not well represented by the commenters here.
The interesting thing for me is that 'eating' (and by commutation 'food') is plugged in so deeply into our psyche that it seems people have opinions on it that they developed very early in life. One of the things I noted at Google was the disproportionate backlash when they cut back on the free food available. It was like someone had instituted daily flogging or something, but it was just food. And yet through out our lives and our history food, sharing a meal, etc, is rooted deeply in our tribal culture. Not something you want to mess with lightly. Its not like Christians re-enact the Last Cocktail Party, rather it is the Last Supper.
Given those deep tendrils into our subconscious I wasn't surprised at the harsh response Soylent received. Nor the continuing resistance. And as someone who likes eating too much, I don't think it would be a good product for me but I certainly see how for some it would be ideal.
That the company has made it this far and their problems are "success" problems (can't ship enough, more demand than product) I expect they will grow into something quite a bit bigger than they are. And I too am glad that someone is thinking about this from the perspective of an 'everyday' kind of thing rather than a 'jaw wired shut so you have to' or 'get your kids some protein before school' sort of way.
I just wish they would do a low-carb version. I tried soylent for a couple of weeks. I then had my annual physical and my blood sugar level was much higher than it had been in the past. So much so that my doctor asked me what I had been doing and what I was eating. He said I was now suddenly "pre-diabetic." I stopped soylent immediately. I really wanted it to be a legitimate meal alternative. I'm disappointed.
As a side note, I now have four boxes of soylent for sale if anyone wants them... :)
I have never heard this before. Haven't people tried it for a month with health checks before and after? Couldn't it be anything else (did you run exclusively on Soylent)?
I've been thinking of ordering some for when I don't have time for lunch or don't feel like cooking or something, but this would obviously make it a no-go.
It was not exclusively soylent, I was having it for lunch every day. I was eating well otherwise for dinner. Of course everyone is different and some bodies react differently than others.
That was my thought, but still, think of eating only Soylent for weeks. That is something. But yeah only for lunch, and then an annual checkup... I don't know enough about this to say anything either way, but I wonder.
I sort of wigged out at the news and bought myself a blood sugar testing kit afterwards. I tested myself for a few days after ending the soylent and my blood sugar returned to normal (around 85 in the morning after waking up).
My next step is to try soylent again and test myself to see the direct effect... every hour or so.
Maybe in the future they will create a custom soylent for every user by analyzing how their bodies react with every ingestion using some kind of health/fitness watch + occasional blood exams, and iterating until you start feeling great :)
Then there's the community that Chris Dixon mentioned. Soylent may not currently be the best food for everyone (actually, I'm pretty certain it isn't), but it has inspired the DIY community. Personally, I find Aleh's 100%FOOD[1] to be more convenient to use than Soylent, and I've been meaning to try something from axcho's marketplace.[2]
At first I thought it was going to be a big deal, but I read a comment somewhere to 'chew' a little.. bite down on it. I was incompatible with Soylent, but 100%FOOD is awesome.
It's worth noting that the first ingredient, maltodextrin, is only "not a sugar" in the technical sense. Sure, it is a weakly bonded polysaccharide and not a mono or disaccharide (the FDA's definition of what to call sugar on your label), but it is absorbed by the body at the same rate as pure glucose. I think this is pretty deceptive for the non-nutrition geek crowd.
People in their 80's have been "hacking eating" for quite some time now. It's called Ensure. I think I know what's next. Depends (adult diapers) for the young tech set so you can just go to the bathroom and not disrupt that epic coding session. Because disrupt.
What if Ensure had a cool name and didn't carry connotations of age and disease? What if it was sexily marketed? What if it was easy to flavour and make delicious? What if you signed up for a subscription and never thought about it again? What if you got it from vending machines that were everywhere you went and recognised you as you approached, having a glass perfectly formulated to your tastes and needs at that precise moment ready? What if it came out of a tap? What if your home 3D printer could form it into a multitude of shapes and textures (bar, cookie, cereal) and it would still be nutritionally balanced? What if it was surrounded by a devoted and inventive community of DIY hackers? What if the creator of Ensure was rapidly iterating it and discussing engineering microbes to produce pure versions of it?
Oh, or is it easier, instead of using your imagination and a bit of enthusiasm, to point to how it's similar to a crappy product that nobody bothered to market, and imply that it won't be sucessful - because we all know the success and impact of a product has nothing to do with the creativity, perserverance and vision of the creators, right?
Ensure is heavily marketed. It is not irresponsibly marketed. Ensure does not claim to put you in good health. It doesn't claim o be suitable for everyone.
By the way: Ensure is available in unflavoured versions to allow users to add it to other food or add other food to it.
Cool story. It's not vegan though so it's useless for me. Plus I would far prefer to buy from a company (eg Soylent) that has a vision of clean, futuristic food production, rather than a company that stupidly accepts the dirty, nasty way we make food now.
We take out all of your teeth and fit you with a removable and easy-to-clean replacement. No more complex brushing and flossing. No more time-consuming trips to the dentist.
I'm not big on the time and commitment it takes to prepare some meals, so I instead opt for the "easy" option of grabbing whatever is in a bag that I can shove in my face hole.
This generally results in me pooping out a product that was subsidized heavily by Big Corn that is not digested, a bunch of preservatives and additives that benefit the storage of, not the digestion of food, and other crap that I'd rather not think about.
Some people just don't think eating is...interesting?
I hope that, as an international customer, they will expand not only their manufacturing and shipping capabilities in the time-domain but additionally in the location-domain. There are a number of competing products that have come to market since Soylent became huge, and their one advantage over Soylent is they are offering a similar product but will ship nearly world-wide, effectively beating Soylent "by default" which is kind of sad considering these products originate in Europe. This also means potentially setting up manufacturing facilities in other parts of the world so that shipping and customs costs remain low for everyone, regardless of location. I love the idea of Soylent but haven't had the chance to try it out because I live a 1 hour's drive outside the US border in Canada. Congrats to the team on their funding!
Great time for me to say that I'm selling all of my Soylent! 6 soylent bags, 6 fish oil canister guys and the original pitcher. zachfeldman (at) gmail dot com. Make me an offer!
Soylent is approaching the 'meal replacement' as an outsider to an industry that is rife with subsidization, existing partnerships, preconceived notions, and vast mires of bureaucracy. They are dogfooding their product, iterating based on feedback, publishing their findings and recipes, and still this isn't good enough for the "disruptive" community of HackerNews.
The two biggest competitors in this realm according to these discussions seem to be Ensure, a product from a 127 year old publicly traded company (Abbott) with 90k employees and 40 billion in revenue, and Carnation Instant Breakfast, a product from a Swiss candy company with a laundry list of other products that don't give me a lot of faith that they have my health as their primary interest.
Soylent isn't perfect yet, but neither is our understanding of the human body. I'm glad to see them get infused with more cash that will allow them to add more expertise to their roster and shore up better distribution. I'm more at ease with Soylent and it's backing than I am with the current DIY movement, at least until things settle down.
I'm glad its an option. I'm even more glad that it's fostering the discussion.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 217 ms ] thread"First and foremost, we will be significantly expanding our manufacturing and shipping capabilities. This process has already begun with two new manufacturers that will ramp up our production to more than fifty times its previous rate allowing us to vigorously tackle our order backlog while working toward imminent real-time shipping fulfillment."
That's roughly 111/k bags per month since launch. For the first nine months of a company, that's operationally extremely impressive.
The delays for new customers (3-6 months, yikes) seem ridiculous, but if you do the math, I'm surprised it isn't more.
Do you really think that is reasonable for anyone?
From what I've read of this product, it doesn't contain excess anything by design. So it likely isn't problematic, but as a general rule "bad" carbs can be very bad for you and give you things like diabetes if over-consumed.
Yes.
First off, there is absolutely no science showing sugar is bad for you, or that it behaves differently from other carbs when combined with equal amounts of fiber (which is why vegetable carbohydrates tend to be "ok").
Second, even without the fiber, for the vast majority of people a high sugar diet (within reasonable max carbohydrate intake) is not going to adversely affect you directly, the issue usually comes in with behavioral impact, causing you to eat more, causing you to get fat, causing you to have diabetes.
> as a general rule "bad" carbs can be very bad for you and give you things like diabetes if over-consumed
This concept of "bad" carbs is really not useful. Carbs are pretty much carbs. Anything (other carbs, fat and protein) can also be over-consumed but are simply less likely to.
TLDR: assuming equal amounts of carbohydrates, the source doesn't actually seem to have a big impact.
I just stopped reading there. No point going on, that's just jaw droppingly ignorant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar#Health_effects
The fact you're arguing that green veggies and sugar are equally bad for people is just, wow, just wow. That's a new low.
> Some studies involving the health impact of sugars are effectively inconclusive. The WHO and FAO meta studies have shown directly contrasting impacts of sugar in refined and unrefined forms[66] and since most studies do not use a population that do not consume any "free sugars" at all, the baseline is effectively flawed. Hence, there are articles such as Consumer Reports on Health that stated in 2008, "Some of the supposed dietary dangers of sugar have been overblown. Many studies have debunked the idea that it causes hyperactivity, for example.
> Studies on the link between sugars and diabetes are inconclusive, with some suggesting that eating excessive amounts of sugar does not increase the risk of diabetes, although the extra calories from consuming large amounts of sugar can lead to obesity, which may itself increase the risk of developing this metabolic disease.
So there is definitely controversy, and to call me jaw droppingly ignorant is pretty offensive.
The fact that you think I'm arguing green veggies and sugar are equally bad for people means you fundamentally did not understand what I was saying. What do you think the difference between veggies and other sources of sugar is? Hint: it's not the type of sugar, it's the absence of fiber. Here's another quote, from your link:
> Some experts have suggested that refined fructose is more damaging than refined glucose in terms of cardiovascular risk.
The refining process is essentially one that removes the fiber. Let's go back to my quote:
> First off, there is absolutely no science showing sugar is bad for you, or that it behaves differently from other carbs when combined with equal amounts of fiber (which is why vegetable carbohydrates tend to be "ok").
Emphasis added.
Crossing a tomato and a deep sea fish is fundamentally different from crossing two strains of corn and we should expect different risks.
But is there any evidence of gene sharing between biological kingdoms in nature? Why can't an animal and a plant create an offspring that shares both of their genetic information? There's clearly lack of a mechanism for fish-tomato sex but evolution is known to create very elegant mechanisms for things that are beneficial.
Intra-species gene sharing has been selected for as being beneficial, inter-species gene sharing hasn't.
EDIT: I'm not allowed to comment on the response below? So, here it is...
> Given that it is observed in nature, what is your basis for that conclusion?
Clearly I was unaware this happens at all in nature which is why I asked if it happens. Horizontal Gene Transfer is fascinating. However, it's been around since the beginning but sexual reproduction supplanted it as the preferred method of gene sharing as the complexity of organisms increased.
Yes. Horizontal gene transfer can operate between different kingdoms (or, more relevantly to how life is usually divided these days, between the three phylogenetic domains of archaea, bacteria, and eukaryota.)
> Intra-species gene sharing has been selected for as being beneficial, inter-species gene sharing hasn't.
Given that it is observed in nature, what is your basis for that conclusion?
> An early tomato was developed that contained an antifreeze gene (afa3) from the winter flounder with the aim of increasing the tomato's tolerance to frost, which became an icon in the early years of the debate over genetically modified foods, especially in relation to the perceived ethical dilemma of combining genes from different species as the tomato gained the moniker fish tomato.[18] The antifreeze protein was found to inhibit ice recrystallization in the flounder blood, but had no effect when expressed in transgenic tobacco.[19] The resulting tomato was never commercialized, possibly because the transgenic plant did not perform well in its frost-tolerance or other agronomic characteristics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_tomato
Helpful characteristics approaching commercial reality involve nothing of the kind such as the recent StAs1 and StAs2 Simplot potato or the AquAdvantage salmon opAFP-GHc2 construct.
Apparently fish tomatoes do exist, but have never been on the market.
Its not. Not that its his field or anything, but I suspect Tyson has educated himself somewhat on it before making that statement, and it certainly matches what I've learned from direct contact from people working in the field.
> Crossing a tomato and a deep sea fish is fundamentally different from crossing two strains of corn and we should expect different risks.
We don't cross tomatoes with deep sea fish; we might take genes from deep sea fish (or some other similarly distant species) and insert them into tomatoes, but then, one of the ways that the genetic changes occur that natural and artificial selection both work on is horizontal gene transfer between species (including ones that are very far apart on the tree/web of life), so this is not as fundamentally different from what goes on in traditional breeding as many people seem to think.
If you don't mind me asking, how far apart does this happen in nature? How many genes have made if from fish into plants?
It is bad, and GMO consumers should be aware of that.
Given that I rather not ingest crops modified to resist poison, I just pass on all GMOs.
http://ambronite.com
I recall reading an interview, or perhaps someone's personal review, stating how it was difficult for them to eat meals and they'd often forget to eat. Soylent solved this problem for them because it gave them an instant meal any time of the day. Upon reading this I thought it was the most ridiculous thing I've read and stupid justification for buying Soylent.
It's funny that this term is used every time Soylent is discussed on HN. Why is that?
I know that for myself, I used to write a lot more code that I wouldn't even dream of starting now, just because I realize how much work is involved for the little return. But sometimes I which I could get temporary amnesia so that I could recapture that youthful enthusiasm.
Real nutritionists? https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/no-true-scotsman
Soylent provides a means by which we can gain a greater understanding of nutrition. It is, in a very controlled form, an experiment. and Rob's blog posts on his own early usage of Soylent have indicated just that. I'm not sure why you are so vehemently against this, but your posts are full of logical fallacies including many ad hominem attacks at a person you seem to know relatively little about. You can disagree without resorting to such petty and embarrassing tactics.
Do they have any actual smart people working on this, or is it just a bunch of desk-riding "nutritionists" who went to med school 40 years ago when all the books were written by tobacco lobbyists in the 1920's?
Who needs to have a real conversation when you have snark!
Soylent 1.2 was developed under the close guidance of our nutritional advisor, Dr. F. Xavier Pi-Sunyer, M.D., MPH. Pi-Sunyer is professor of medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City. At St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center he serves as chief of endocrinology, diabetes, and nutrition, and is director of the New York Obesity Research Center. Dr. Pi-Sunyer is also a senior attending physician at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital and New York-Presbyterian Hospital.
I just want to add that this:
> is approved as a food by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
Is utterly meaningless. All that means is that everything that goes into the product is "food grade" and that it was prepared in basically sanitary conditions. Nothing more. I highly doubt the FDA has examined their health claims (namely that you could live exclusively off of it). And likely won't unless there is public or political pressure to do so.
As an aside, I wonder if they could get a military or relief effort contract? Seems like the type of product perfect for both, as you "just add water!"
A lack of readily available clean water may be a challenge for use in relief efforts. There are also already products out there e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumpy%27nut
(Which might be highly ironic to people in some places of the world.)
(You guys don't know what you are missing).
WFP needs a variety of different foods. Sometimes they just need calories. Sometimes they just need micronutrient. Sometimes they need a specific micronutrient.
http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/re...
http://wfp.org/nutrition/special-nutritional-products
http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/co...
Couldn't you just take any smoothie recipe, blend in a multi-vitamin, and claim it's a food replacement? Don't products such as Boost already do this? I don't understand Soylent's edge here, except marketing.
Soylent Recipe: http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0421/5993/t/12/assets/files...
How do you know you're not missing a few micronutrients? We don't know yet all the micronutrients our body needs, so how can you really say that?
"This formula contains what we know we need but not what we might need and don't know how to measure or quantify yet," said Ayoob, at Albert Einstein. "There are hundreds of antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds, for example, that we're still learning about." (1)
The danger with Soylent is that they don't acknowledge these limits of our knowledge. Rather, "You can live on Soylent alone, Mr. Rhinehart claims" (2). Given the nutirition field believes differently and he really has no expertise in the field, a statement like this is mindbogglingly irresponsible. This is my basis for the accusation of hubris. (This also doesn't touch on the obvious monetary incentive he has for believing this/making this claim.)
(1) http://www.medpagetoday.com/PrimaryCare/DietNutrition/46983
(2) http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/29/technology/personaltech/th...
1) Buy slowcooker 2) Buy a bunch of cans of beans, veges, ground meat, couple spices 3) Drop that slop in slowcooker 4) Turn on and go to sleep for 8 hours 5) Turn off, put in separate containers
Boom, chili meals for a week.
People who believe cooking needs to be expensive and time consuming really haven't put much effort into looking out for alternatives until some marketing scheme makes them believe they've solved a problem that didn't really exist.
I can literally put water in a pot and steam days worth of veges in mere minutes while I pick my nose. Or I take a roast and drop it in a slowcooker, or butter chicken, or any other myriad of choices that involve a highly nutritious set of ingredients. Bulk cooking can be extremely cheap and quick. If your priorities are time/money then put some effort into solving the issue.
That's pretty random. Provided you're not just being facetious, where are you getting that information from? I'm genuinely curious.
Food database: http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/
Daily recommended intakes: http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/DRI/DRI_Tables/recommended_inta...
Someone built this webapp that uses all that above data: https://cronometer.com/
I don't eat this exclusively but when I would otherwise be too busy to eat or shop properly, this is an easy solution.
Beware: I'm not a doctor or expert
I share your worries. It's frightening - it sounds like an engineering degree is enough for... everything.
As the subject is nutrition, health and they're proposing a "nutrition revolution", your rant is futile and misplaced. Engineers proposing a "nutrition revolution" because "disrupt" is a problem. Maybe a public health problem, but definitely a mindset one.
And if you think Soylent's raison d'etre is "disrupt" then you're really stupid. Read Rob's blog. He writes a lot about the problems in contemporary food production and how he wants to tackle them with Soylent. If you ignore that in favour of portraying him as a blind hipster then you are not just stupid, but willfully so.
Let's not forget either that Rob and many others have been living healthily off of Soylent for years now.
Because we're not discussing buying a new phone or laptop. If you look at guidelines for nutrition, you'll see that most of them advocate diversity. People are not simple computers, organic systems are way more complex. This is not sofware requirements analysis: you can't grasp all nutritional needs by fulfilling a table of nutrients and daily requirements, and this happens mainly because we don't have the knowledge to do so.
If we can't tell everything we need, nutrition-wise, how can we develop a full nutritional replacement? I'll answer you: by oversimplifying the problem, by simply being ignorant about the complexity at stake.
> ...
Your second paragraph deserves no response or consideration whatsoever.
> Let's not forget either that Rob and many others have been living healthily off of Soylent for years now.
That's anecdotal (at best, because there's surely a bias there). And let me remind you, again, that we're not talking "electronics" or gadgets. The fact that they're functioning for a few years doesn't mean that everything's okay. What if they're not "looking" at the right signs? And how do you know that problems won't be developing on the mid/long-term?
No. He has been living off a diverse diet that includes Soylent. Being a sole source of nutrition is a selling poit of Soylent - it's a claim you've made in this thread - but there's very little evidence to support that use apart from some anecdote and uncontrolled unblinded experiment with a tiny sample size.
Soylent have retreated from the extravagant irresponsible claims they made when they launched the Kickstarter, and that's good. But now Soylent is pretty much the same as all the other products but with less experience and differently targeted ads.
It gives users horrific smelling gas, and honestly, I generally felt worse on Soylent than after any other type of food I have ever eaten, including junk food. (I didn't mind the taste though.)
They are already at v 1.3 though. Here's hoping that this capital influx allows them to rapidly improve the recipe.
You're paying for the 100% system, not 98%, not 99%: 100% that is the USP. The price is only a little more expensive than eating out ($3.33/meal roughly).
Plus most off-the-shelf "Ready meals" are extremely unhealthy. Many contain transfats and other foot preservatives which are quite bad for you.
And it looks like it is not confirmed that this is especially healthy from comments on this thread.
That said, I was really underwhelmed with the taste of Soylent when I finally got mine. I understand that I can improve it by e.g. blending a banana into the shake, but if I need to take out my blender and prepare other food to add to Soylent, I might as well make a smoothie out of available fruits and veggies.
The next time I order Soylent will be when their price comes down to the point where it's cheaper than the food I buy.
It's interesting. HN is supposed to represent some of the world's most dynamic, forward-thinkers. However almost every truly disruptive development is greeted with small-minded negative thinking and parochialism. Bitcoin is scam money for paranoiacs who don't trust banks. Inflation is good for economies. The rich are too rich. We need more and higher taxes and more socialist redistribution of wealth. Soylent tastes bad and destroys traditional food cultures. Uber is too powerful and going to become a monopoly. Google is evil. Without the protection of friendly governments capitalism will exploit the poor. People are too stupid to protect themselves from predatory opportunists (and the government is somehow a perfect vessel to counteract them.) Everything is scary and the way things should be is how a small group of white men who are very good friends with the US government tell us how it should be, which happens to be very similar to today but with more friendly government intervention to fix everything white male programmers are scared of and don't understand.
I guess it'll be entertaining to watch people changing their tune over the coming decades.
Soylent isn't "new". It isn't "disrupting" anything. Meal replacement alternatives have existed for decades and there are numerous brands out there that have a medical proven trackrecord that can be obtained for cheaper than the Soylent we're seeing pushed today.
What we have here is a case of "forward thinkers" believing that some crackpot idea from the startup culture is suddenly revolutionary because they marketed it best to this subculture of life. You're a sucker to believing Soylent offers anything revolutionary yet paying above market to have them feed you that lie.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/tLIC_oIeeORWgna6kbpW1...
The iPhone isn't "new". It isn't "disrupting" anything. Smartphones have existed for years and there are numerous brands out there that have a commercial proven trackrecord that can be obtained for cheaper than the iPhone we're seeing pushed today.
What we have here is a case of "forward thinkers" believing that some crackpot idea from Apple is suddenly revolutionary because they marketed it best to this subculture of life. You're a sucker to believing iPhone offers anything revolutionary yet paying above market to have them feed you that lie.
How did I do?
The main problems with them were that the screens sucked.
But the real disruption was the disruption in the carrier relationship. A lot of smartphones didn't have WiFi, and the carriers would nickel and dime you for every kilobyte. Apple convinced them to do the flat rates and big chunks of data. Apple introduced manufacturer control of the user experience, instead of Verizon disabling every feature that would allow you to avoid the carrier's fees. When the iPhone was announced, the feature I was most impressed by was the visual voicemail. Voicemail was so tedious and inefficient before iPhone.
The Soylent has more protein, a more balanced nutritional profile, less wasteful (and annoying) packaging, and is lactose free too.
Edit: and the Ensure has 0 fiber!
A lot of the time, it's not the specific artifact that is disruptive, but it's the vision behind it. The iPhone is Unix on a phone. Qt had that years before Apple. Apple actually shipped, and added freedom from the carriers' horrible user experience.
Ensure and Shakeology and Slimfast and Garden of Life have been around forever, but Rob is interested in Soylent being a complete replacement for your normal, everyday nutrition. He's not just resting on his laurels, having an obviously desirable product, but he's continuing to work on improving it, and he inspired a community to join him. Soylent is not big enough to disrupt the food industry yet, but if he succeeds, then it will.
Google.com isn't "disruptive innovation", it's Altavista with the good links taken out.
Was that about right?
Ridiculing an argument is not the same as countering it.
What if Ensure had a cool name and didn't carry connotations of age and disease? What if it was sexily marketed? What if it was easy to flavour and make delicious? What if you signed up for a subscription and never thought about it again? What if you got it from vending machines that were everywhere you went and recognised you as you approached, having a glass perfectly formulated to your tastes and needs at that precise moment ready? What if it came out of a tap? What if your home 3D printer could form it into a multitude of shapes and textures (bar, cookie, cereal) and it would still be nutritionally balanced? What if it was surrounded by a devoted and inventive community of DIY hackers? What if the creator of Ensure was rapidly iterating it and discussing engineering microbes to produce pure versions of it?
Oh, or is it easier, instead of using your imagination and a bit of enthusiasm, to point to how it's similar to a crappy product that nobody bothered to market, and imply that it won't be sucessful - because we all know the success and impact of a product has nothing to do with the creativity, perserverance and vision of the creators, right?
Besides, I already conceded that Soylent is marketed to hipsters. If its creators had "creativity" or "vision", they wouldn't have reinvented Ensure. It's marketing over substance.
"Soylent" carries connotations of being made of the ground up corpses of the poor, so...
> What if it was easy to flavour and make delicious?
Is it easier to do with Soylent than Ensure, or any other drink? You can put sugar into anything, and "delicious" is relative.
> What if you signed up for a subscription and never thought about it again?
Other services offer food delivery, and arguably, just going to the store is often more convenient and cost effective.
>What if you got it from vending machines that were everywhere you went and recognised you as you approached, having a glass perfectly formulated to your tastes and needs at that precise moment ready?
Soylent doesn't have vending machines networked to some sort of facial-recognition AI.
>What if it came out of a tap?
Soylent doesn't come out of a tap.
> What if your home 3D printer could form it into a multitude of shapes and textures (bar, cookie, cereal) and it would still be nutritionally balanced?
That's an argument for the transformational nature of 3d printing, not Soylent.
> or is it easier, instead of using your imagination and a bit of enthusiasm, to point to how it's similar to a crappy product that nobody bothered to market, and imply that it won't be sucessful - because we all know the success and impact of a product has nothing to do with the creativity, perserverance and vision of the creators, right?
It is similar. Everything you've mentioned about how revolutionary Soylent is, appears to be either marketing hype (Ensure doesn't iterate, it isn't hip, it's associated with old people, etc etc) or pie-in-the-sky stuff that doesn't even relate to Soylent as a product, and doesn't even exist. The argument that the Soylent which actually exists is basically Ensure for hipsters still seems valid.
Personal attacks are not allowed here. Please follow the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Where in the hell did you get that idea?
We should hold companies to higher standards; they don't pay us to be their PR team. But in the case of some of the negativity regarding Soylent, it feels more like jealously than genuine concern.
The interesting thing for me is that 'eating' (and by commutation 'food') is plugged in so deeply into our psyche that it seems people have opinions on it that they developed very early in life. One of the things I noted at Google was the disproportionate backlash when they cut back on the free food available. It was like someone had instituted daily flogging or something, but it was just food. And yet through out our lives and our history food, sharing a meal, etc, is rooted deeply in our tribal culture. Not something you want to mess with lightly. Its not like Christians re-enact the Last Cocktail Party, rather it is the Last Supper.
Given those deep tendrils into our subconscious I wasn't surprised at the harsh response Soylent received. Nor the continuing resistance. And as someone who likes eating too much, I don't think it would be a good product for me but I certainly see how for some it would be ideal.
That the company has made it this far and their problems are "success" problems (can't ship enough, more demand than product) I expect they will grow into something quite a bit bigger than they are. And I too am glad that someone is thinking about this from the perspective of an 'everyday' kind of thing rather than a 'jaw wired shut so you have to' or 'get your kids some protein before school' sort of way.
As a side note, I now have four boxes of soylent for sale if anyone wants them... :)
I've been thinking of ordering some for when I don't have time for lunch or don't feel like cooking or something, but this would obviously make it a no-go.
That was my thought, but still, think of eating only Soylent for weeks. That is something. But yeah only for lunch, and then an annual checkup... I don't know enough about this to say anything either way, but I wonder.
My next step is to try soylent again and test myself to see the direct effect... every hour or so.
What, haven't you see the ingredient list of SoyLent? It's extremely carb loaded.
I've been saying this for months, we need a Ketoylent version.
o2kewl_at_gmail com
[1] http://www.spacenutrientsstation.com/ [2] http://custombodyfuel.com/
Oh, or is it easier, instead of using your imagination and a bit of enthusiasm, to point to how it's similar to a crappy product that nobody bothered to market, and imply that it won't be sucessful - because we all know the success and impact of a product has nothing to do with the creativity, perserverance and vision of the creators, right?
By the way: Ensure is available in unflavoured versions to allow users to add it to other food or add other food to it.
SoyDent.
We take out all of your teeth and fit you with a removable and easy-to-clean replacement. No more complex brushing and flossing. No more time-consuming trips to the dentist.
This generally results in me pooping out a product that was subsidized heavily by Big Corn that is not digested, a bunch of preservatives and additives that benefit the storage of, not the digestion of food, and other crap that I'd rather not think about.
Some people just don't think eating is...interesting?
The two biggest competitors in this realm according to these discussions seem to be Ensure, a product from a 127 year old publicly traded company (Abbott) with 90k employees and 40 billion in revenue, and Carnation Instant Breakfast, a product from a Swiss candy company with a laundry list of other products that don't give me a lot of faith that they have my health as their primary interest.
Soylent isn't perfect yet, but neither is our understanding of the human body. I'm glad to see them get infused with more cash that will allow them to add more expertise to their roster and shore up better distribution. I'm more at ease with Soylent and it's backing than I am with the current DIY movement, at least until things settle down.
I'm glad its an option. I'm even more glad that it's fostering the discussion.