
Soylent Month Three - septerr
http://robrhinehart.com/?p=570
======
hesdeadjim
I'm concerned less with the long term health effects of this diet as it
relates to missing nutrients, and much more concerned about quality control of
the individual ingredients themselves. Who's actually checking that, say, the
vitamin A palmitate coming from a supplier actually contains the dose
requested, and additionally that it contains no other contaminates?

The supplement world is like the wild west as far as this goes. And as
attracted as I am to a meal replacement like this, the worry about getting
accidentally dosed with high levels of arsenic or lead from a shitty supplier
really concerns me.

~~~
nbdbvcrea
I would be most concerned about overdosing some vitamin or mineral powder,
taken in miligram range.

Just one pinch can cause serious and painful injury.

Will it always be mixed evenly?

~~~
XorNot
Presumably this is a problem that's been long-solved in scale up manufacture,
and something you should just be concerned with on the small scale.

Generally though - yes - anything water-soluble is pretty easy to get very
controlled concentrations of, since you can dilute until your in the operating
range of your weighing machine.

~~~
antoko
I'm not much of a biologist and I may just be spouting what I've heard in the
past, but I think all the water soluble vitamins and such are totally safe and
impossible to OD on, it is the fat-soluble ones where there's the potential to
OD.

EDIT: Mostly correct! Fat-soluble vitamins build up in the fatty tissues and
are much slower to release and are almost always responsible for Vitamin
Poisoning, water-soluble vitamins are easily excreted in the obvious way.

There are exceptions though, you can overdose on some of the B vitamins which
are water-soluble, I didn't follow up to find out why that is.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_poisoning>

~~~
claudius
Nothing stops you from using a lipophile solvent rather than a hydrophile in
preparing these dilutions.

------
SoftwareMaven
He missed the sixth most abundant element in the human body, and, now that
it's there, he is sure _everything_ is OK? I can only say, "Wow".

I really believe that if an actual scientific study[1] was done on this, it
would rank right next to a pure fast food diet. It's not that it isn't
theoretically possible to make something that is "perfect" nutrition, it's
that we don't know enough today to say definitively whether carbs or fat
causes metabolic syndrome[2], much less how all the various micronutrients
interact with macronutrients, gut biota, and phases of the moon.

Until we understand every piece of the nutrition puzzle, this is just
dangerous. That he wants to take it out to others is even more frightening.

Until we get to where we really understand what the body needs at an
individual level, I'm sticking with whole foods. I really hope this guy
doesn't do long-term damage to himself, or anyone else, for that matter.

1\. Unfortunately, it is pretty hard to double-blind whether you get a Big Mac
or a cup of gray stuff. This isn't just a problem with Soykent, it is a
problem with every attempt to perform nutritional experiments. It is really
hard to perform good, predictive science in this space.

2\. We need to know like chemists know how chemicals will react and physicists
know how forces will behave. We don't.

~~~
marze
Overreaction.

I'd take the drink over the junk an average American eats any day. I'd take it
over my own well researched eating regime every other day if it seemed to be
working for me.

You underestimate the power of self experimentation. With a drug which if you
took 40x the daily dose you might die, or a drug that might cause significant
harmful side effects at normal dose, you need careful studies to prove a
benefit and quantify risks. With a dietary change, the risks are orders of
magnitude lower. I'd be surprised if the average American wouldn't improve
their nutritional status doing this for a while, with an existing diet likely
low in magnesium, copper, zinc, vitamin c and d and probably more.

~~~
xtracto
I like what this guy is doing and find offense in all the negativity shown in
news.ycominator. For a forum which is supposedly full with self called
"hackers", some comments really amaze me.

Sure, his experience is not scientific in the least, but then again, history
is full of these 'crazy people' who dared to do something that was considered
stupid, senseless and plain wrong at their time.

A very important fact is that the guy is documenting the process, and at least
it will wake interest in the idea of getting the necessary _day-to-day_
nutrients for living in a single-dose drink.

------
TheCapn
"surely we can make food that is tastier, cheaper, and more nutritious than
anything that exists naturally."

This premise assumes we understand, with no uncertainty, how the human body
functions and utilizes nutrients. Since this is still a huge mystery to
science (and much of what we "know" currently is just guesswork) any 100%
simulated food diet will only prove to be "better" by a stroke of luck.

We've seen his posts before and discussed it to great lengths, but the bottom
line is if he's created something that is truly capable of sustaining health
for the lifetime of a person he should be rewarded, but without scientific
proof of longterm health this will never, and should never, be taken
unquestionably.

~~~
tolmasky
So the way I look at this critique is that most people in the US are running a
parallel experiment with their bodies, only instead of the input being
Soylent, it's garbage like fast food. It's true, we _don't understand_ how the
human body operates - whether you're eating McDonald's, or organic, or
Soylent. So given that the baseline seems to be an equally untested and
probably more detrimental food choice, this completely voluntary experiment
doesn't seem so bad, it's not like the govt is teaching us to eat a certain
way (which they have been known to do incorrectly). In other words, Soylent vs
theoretically ideal diet (which we don't even know) - sure, bad choice. But
the reality is for the target audience (such as myself) its Soylent vs pizza
and burgers, which doesn't seem that bad.

~~~
jasallen
I think for this parallel to be valid he'd have to be eating McDonalds or
what-have-you every day. The point is variety (mostly) ensures we get
everything we need from _somewhere_. I think it's almost assured that in the
long run 100% (or so) soylent will turn out to be _more_ detrimental than even
the 'average diets' out there. BTW, I'm kinduva healthy eating nut myself, but
this just isn't 'healthy eating'.

~~~
tolmasky
Right, thats precisely my point: I think you underestimate how many people eat
McDonalds or what-have-you _every day_. The interesting thing about this
phenomenon is that I think it takes place all over the spectrum: the poor do
it as well as the rich. Perhaps you do not see this as much because you are a
self-described health nut (and thus this diet probably isn't for you, the same
way an Alienware computer isn't for someone who knows how to build a PC), but
in my developer circle I see eating trash food every day for all meals quite
often. And what I've found is often the problem is that you forget about food
and then are starving and make a bad decision so you can keep working, not
necessarily because you love pizza or whatever. If Soylent can deliver on
immediateness, then it has a chance of competing with this lifestyle. And, if
the end result is people thinking more about what they eat, it may be a win
either way.

~~~
jasallen
haha, I _really_ hope you are right about the problem space. I'm currently
building a company that hopes to solve exactly the "forget about food and then
are starving and make a bad decision" problem. Not ready to say more yet, but
again, sure hope you're right :-)

Anyway, if it's that thing to have on stand-by, I'm sure its ok, but so is an
Ensure, a Balance Bar, a Slim-Fast, etc, so again, no real innovation here.

~~~
sowhatquestion
Note that your argument began with "It's too radical, it won't work!" and
ended with "It's boring, there's nothing new here." When I see this particular
pattern of cognitive dissonance, I take it as a sign that the phenomenon being
dismissed has real merit. Not to single you out, either--this pattern
describes perhaps the majority of arguments I've heard against Soylent.

~~~
jasallen
to eat one thing 100% of the time "is too radical it won't work". yep. To eat
one thing as your 'go-to' filler is fine. but neither new nor radical. One
addressed one argument, the other addressed a different one.

------
nemo1618
Soylent is certainly polarizing on HN, and pretty much everywhere else as
well. This will only be resolved once it's widely available and people can
confirm/contest Rob's results.

Personally, I'm very curious to give it a trial run. It certainly can't be any
worse than what I eat now. Rob said it best:

>I'm touched so many people are concerned about my intake of possible unknown
essential nutrients. No one seemed to worry about me when I lived on burritos
and ramen and actually was deficient of many known essential nutrients.

~~~
corresation
_No one seemed to worry about me when I lived on burritos and ramen and
actually was deficient of many known essential nutrients._

This sort of nonsensical dichotomy seems to infect discussions of this.
Yesterday I had a Burger KingTM Whopper (it was, after all, Whopper
Wednesday). The day before I had a spring-mix salad with added tomatoes, green
onions, and cucumber, and a cucumber dressing, in a day that I also had a
peanut butter sandwich...

...and on, and on. Such is any normal diet where people tend to eat lots of
varied things, any of which, if the singular source of nutrients, would cause
concern for anyone.

The nonsense argument that it is either this or fast food, or ramen noodles,
or whatever, just highlights how utterly ridiculous this is.

~~~
XorNot
Except its not nonsense - doctors deal with people with this type of narrow
diet all the time. Or, not sufficiently varied diet on a day to day basis.

Humans are also awful statisticians - fat people don't think they eat much.
Thin people think they eat tons of food. Nobody accurately assesses what they
do and don't eat, and our entire society is negatively geared towards
maintaining healthy eating patterns anyway (your above example of variety will
get blown to hell for most people past a few stressful weeks).

Yes, _technically_ this is unnecessary but that's hardly the point.

------
huhtenberg
At the risk of stating the obvious - this is all good and the experiment he's
running is very interesting, but - no. I really like eating tasty food. Not
for the nutrients, but for the experience. Similarly to how I really like
sleeping in a comfortable bed and taking a hot shower daily even though,
technically, I can rest as well on a bare floor and shower once a week.

To each his own, but some things are just _too_ unorthodox.

~~~
zeteo
"This automobile business is all good and interesting, but - no. I really like
riding in a horse buggy. Not for the speed, but for the experience. Similarly
to how I really like candle light and wearing a top hat even though,
technically, I could do as well with a baseball cap.

To each his own, but some things are just _too_ unorthodox."

~~~
huhtenberg
You are very forward thinking. Soylent is in the aisle one.

Comfort and pleasure are subjective irrational metrics that have a lot of
inertia, but that change with time. I'm sure it's plausible that people would
love soylent just as much as a freshly baked croissant, but it takes time. The
way things stand _right now_ , soylent solves a problem that few people have
and it comes at a price that is awful. So, yeah, it's unorthodox.

~~~
zeteo
Even freshly baked croissants were once an odd novelty.

~~~
adambard
I encourage you to research what a croissant is and then find and devour one.
This comment makes me feel like you're missing out on that.

~~~
XorNot
A croissant is also about the most amount of butter you can possibly fit into
a pastry.

~~~
arethuza
I think that dubious honour probably belongs to the "buttery" from North East
Scotland:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttery_%28bread%29>

They are basically lumps of butter and salt held together with a trace amount
of flour. The versions available from mainstream stores (e.g. M&S) or from
recipes online are fairly tame - for the real effect they need to be purchased
from a small local baker in some remote fishing village.

Best butteries I've ever had were actually on a trawler in the North Sea -
where they were served hot awash in molten salted butter.

~~~
treerock
You'd be hard pushed to find a buttery actually made of butter these days.
Even the local bakers are using vegetable oil and fat. Still, they are
beautiful, flaky rolls of salty tastiness.

------
zacharyvoase
* “Bacon is high in Oleic acid, the principal component of adipose (fat) tissue so it is great for increasing body fat.[...] By the way, an acid is anything that donates protons. Only a few have corrosive properties like sulfuric acid, and bases can be corrosive too.”

So now I'm thinking, ‘does this guy even know what fats are, or how fat
digestion, assimilation and metabolism works?’.

* “We no longer live in a hunter-gatherer society. I have no use for bulging biceps. No one in the United States plows fields or hammers steel. It has all been automated. We need mental strength.”

Well, y'know, that's true until you're caught in a car accident, or a bombing,
or a fight, or any kind of natural disaster which actually tests your ability
to survive. It's simplistic and naïve to suggest that we've evolved beyond the
need to even _try_ to survive.

* “If people had more self-control obesity would take care of itself.”

There's just so much incorrectness here, I don't know where to start.

\- - -

Anyone can go ahead and try an experiment like this for themselves, and I
support their right to document and share the experience. But seriously,
anyone ignorant enough to try subsisting 100% on this 'soylent' concoction, in
its current or future form, deserves all the health problems that await them.

~~~
mamoswined
"I have no use for bulging biceps."

For the past two years, I've relied on the fact that I walk a lot to take care
of my exercise needs. But last year I started experiencing crippling neck and
shoulder pain. A visit to the doctor and a referral to a physical therapist
revealed that my upper body had atrophied to an alarming extent. Strength in
the upper body affects your posture among other things. Muscle mass also
affects your metabolism in a positive way. Now that I'm rebuilding I feel much
better.

Plus I look better!

------
jere
>We don’t live anything like our ancestors. We don’t work like them, talk like
them, think like them, travel like them, or fight like them. Why on earth
would we want to eat like them?

>After three months _I should be finding deficiencies, and I did_. I started
having joint pain and found I fit the symptoms of a sulfur deficiency.

I like the doublethink here. Reductionism works fine except when it doesn't.
And surely the only important components of food are the ones I've identified
after a few months of experimentation.

You know, we should eat like our ancestors because that's what we're adapted
to. When you try to invent your own environment to live in, there's a good
chance you won't be well adapted to that environment. Rhinehart's logic is
like asking "why should we want the same gravity as our ancestors? Wouldn't
life be better without the hassle of gravity?" Actually, no.
[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-does-
sp...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-does-spending-
prolong)

>If we can make transistors that are cheap, fast, and low power, surely we can
make food that is tastier, cheaper, and more nutritious than anything that
exists naturally.

This highlights the confusion. Does anyone think for a moment that a manmade
device like a transistor is anywhere close to the complexity of a biological
one such as a cell? This is laughable. A transistor is literally a device with
THREE terminals.

~~~
conjecTech
>When you try to invent your own environment to live in, there's a good chance
you won't be well adapted to that environment.

I guess this statement would necessarily include wearing clothes, living in
houses, using glasses, taking antibiotics, and anything else we do to actively
counter forces of nature. I'd say we do quite well at that.

I'd like to point out that the rest of that paragraph is simply a strawman
argument and is of absolutely no value to this discussion.

Finally, you obviously do not come close to understanding the complexity of
transistors if you think that it can be summarized by the number of terminals
it has. That is like saying the programming behind an API is simplistic
because the API only consists three functions. I've taken multiple semesters
of classes specifically on transistors and logic design have never even come
close to using the mathematical and physical techniques they use for designing
single transistors, let alone large integrated circuits consisting of billions
of them. I agree with your point that the complexity is not on par with
biological systems, but you are trivializing something far more complex than
you think. We are not that helpless.

~~~
jere
>That is like saying the programming behind an API is simplistic because the
API only consists three functions.

Actually, that's pretty close to my argument. I'm not saying the mechanisms
underlying a transistor are simple. I've taken (and struggled with) a
microelectronics course. I have a good idea how complex they are.

I'm saying that the metrics for success are really simple because we have
designed it to fit a very simple logical abstraction. If you want to make a
better transistor, the process might be extremely complicated, but it couldn't
be simpler to test what you have and see if it's correct.

On the other hand, it's simple to make food (I should, however, stop and point
out that when Rhinehart is "making food", mostly what he's doing is mixing
together other existing foods. Of course _that_ is simple.) But it's orders of
magnitude more complex to analyze the result of that food than doing the same
for a transistor. Because now instead of plugging a black box we understand
into another black box that we understand, you're plugging your invention into
the human digestive system. Not only do you have to consider the interaction
with human parts, you also have to consider dozens of species of gut bacteria.
I don't think that is simple and I think anyone who claims that it is is quite
confused.

------
mjmahone17
Personally, I'm really excited to see what the end product will look like.
Given he does enough trials beforehand, hopefully the purchase would look
something like this:

1\. Visit website. On the webpage, login and click "order 1-week supply."

2\. If you're a new customer, then put in some basic metrics (height, sex,
age, current weight, activity level, exceptional family diseases/allergies).
Then, a "standard" supply will be shipped to you, optimizing the ingredients
generally for what they think you'll need, with an ingredient list (how much
of each ingredient is in one serving).

3\. When logging in again, you're asked "Are you experiencing any symptoms?"
Then, you can list anything that feels off, such as aching joints, cravings,
etc. Then, the site would list common deficiencies/overdoses that would cause
those symptoms, and give you the option to purchase, for instance, a temporary
magnesium supplement, or recommend that, prior to receiving your next
shipment, you consume one less serving per day. After using the supplement,
you'd input whether the symptom improved, and the ingredient's quantity would
be adjusted in your next shipment.

The tricky bit about this system would be personalizing everyone's orders, at
scale. But it should be pretty possible (says the developer without an
understanding of manufacturing), and for far less than it would cost to order
a full meal.

------
rafski
I'm amazed with how much response this guy gets. This is nothing new. My
mother used Herbalife protein powder back in the 90's and it was packed with
nutrients, minerals and vitamins. It was advertised for weight loss but could
also be your nutrition base depending on dosage.

I am sure they weren't the only company to offer something like this, there
must be plenty.

~~~
agilescale
It must be because:

a. Somebody bothered to post the initial announcement of this guy

b. He describes his process in detail

c. He's a Software Engineer; it would be disingenuous to think that the fact
that he's a peer for the members of this audience isn't a factor

------
theyshookhands
> No one in the United States plows fields or hammers steel.

Wow. Talk about being disconnected from reality.

~~~
abstractbill
The implicit "by hand" was pretty obvious to me, fwiw. I don't think that
assertion is disconnected from reality at all.

~~~
mcguire
_"No one in the United States plows fields or hammers steel [by hand]."_

Wow, talk about being disconnected from reality.

~~~
epmatsw
Genuine question, is there a truly significant portion of American agriculture
that is based on plowing by hand? I was under the impression that most food
comes from commercial-level farms that use machinery to plow. My dad works on
a pretty small farm, and they definitely don't do anything by hand at this
point. I suppose that you could be referring to people who garden as a hobby,
but I don't know if I'd count that.

~~~
rdouble
Plowing is not done by hand but picking is.

Sugar beet field weeding used to be done by teams of migrant workers with
handheld hoes. I think they've figured out how to not have the weeds in the
first place with better pesticides. Most fruits and vegetables are picked by
hand.

~~~
abstractbill
You don't need big muscles to pick fruits and vegetables though, just
endurance (I've done it for a couple of summers as a job).

~~~
rdouble
I guess I didn't realize this was about muscles. I was just replying to the
guy asking if agriculture was done by hand. Maybe shouldn't follow threads via
the /comments page. I end up not knowing what the context is.

------
bsimpson
I'd be concerned about the long-term side effects of having little diversity
in one's diet. It's been alleged that diabetes is caused by overconsumption of
processed sugar and heart disease is caused by overconsumption of red meat.
Either of those things in moderation is fine.

Most people don't eat a consistent dose of for instance oat powder every day.
It's likely that he's chosen at least one ingredient that is harmless in
moderation, but is detrimental to your health over time.

It's also quite possible that there are other things he's underdosing on and
hasn't discovered yet (like sulphur before batch #7).

~~~
mistercow
But the whole point is that soylent _is_ moderation. Everything in it is
balanced, so if you eat only soylent, then (in theory) you shouldn't be
getting too much of anything.

>It's likely that he's chosen at least one ingredient that is harmless in
moderation, but is detrimental to your health over time.

Why do you believe that that is likely?

>It's also quite possible that there are other things he's underdosing on and
hasn't discovered yet (like sulphur before batch #7).

Yes, this does seem quite likely. There is probably a significant number of
necessary nutrients that nobody even thinks about because they're ubiquitous.

~~~
bsimpson
Because there probably hasn't ever been a person who consumed a particular
batch of refined nutrients for nearly every meal, and we don't know nearly
enough about how the body processes food considering how long we, as a
species, have been eating it.

Admittedly, I don't know much about what's in soylent, but I wouldn't be at
all surprised if it turns out that eating refined XXX powder in every meal is
bad for you, where XXX is an ingredient that he's using to get enough of a
particular nutrient.

~~~
mistercow
The problem with that is that fortification is already rampant in premade
foods, and so most first-worlders are _already_ eating these refined
ingredients in every meal. Moreover, many people take one-a-day multivitamins
which in a single dose, contain the same amount (and sometimes more) of the
same refined ingredients in a day's worth of soylent.

Extensive studies have been done on the safety and efficacy of multivitamins,
and while their utility for healthy people with balanced diets is a matter of
debate, their safety (when taken at the recommended dose) is well established.

------
calinet6
"Practically everything has gotten better over the past century but food has
gotten worse."

I highly disagree. Food as an art form and as a science has gotten leagues
better since 1913. Probably several orders of magnitude in whatever you're
measuring.

Except the French. They had it right the whole time.

If you look at the extremes, the negative side of food has gone from shit
(literally) to shit (figuratively) so not much change there either.

~~~
o0-0o
Have you tasted frog legs?

------
DennisP
A guy on reddit who said he was a medical student (and sounded like he really
was) said that the nutrients may be fine, but the digestive system needs solid
food. Patients stuck on liquid diets tend not to do well long-term, and they
try to get them on solid food as fast as they can. He had a technical
explanation I don't remember well enough to repeat.

I asked how the Soylent guy would do if he converted the stuff into some kind
of solid food bar, and the med student said "Probably much better!"

~~~
fernly
From the subject post: "I made a rather significant change to the formula...
I've replaced half of the maltodextrin carbohydrates with oat powder, which
... dramatically increases the fiber content ... I underestimated the
importance of fiber in a diet, and went from consuming 1.2g / day to 40g /
day."

~~~
delackner
Fiber mixed with a nutrient soup is not solid food.

------
hcarvalhoalves
> We no longer live in a hunter-gatherer society. I have no use for bulging
> biceps.

Pretty bad assumption.

Exercise is important, as building muscle tissue stimulates hormone production
(GH, melatonin) that affect even cognitive performance.

This guy has a pretty extreme reductionist view on things like health and
nutrition. No surprise he's trying to live on a nutrient shake, after all.

------
anigbrowl
_"surely we can make food that is tastier, cheaper, and more nutritious than
anything that exists naturally."_

You're not convincing me. The idea of consuming a nutrient shake on a daily
basis doesn't appeal in the least. I like chewing my food; texture is
important to me. There's a reason that we have teeth and powerful jaw muscles.
If we had evolved to consume our nutrients as a puree then we'd have mouth
parts, like flies who squirt digestive juices onto their food and then suck up
the partially-digested goop.

------
jjcm
I get lost in my work/play quite a bit and often forget about meals. I'd
definitely be interested in trying soylent simply as a meal replacement,
especially if ingestion/preparation of it is quick enough not to break my
workflow.

~~~
DanBC
There are a bunch of different liquid feeds available.

Well known brands include Ensure and Fortisip.

(<https://www.nutricia.co.uk/fortisip//>)

(<http://ensure.com/>)

These have the advantage of careful preparation and high standards of QA.

~~~
javert
I would order Soylent right now if I could. So I'm pretty excited to find out
about these. I had no idea they existed. FWIW, my diet now is like 95% red
meat, with some cheese occasionally added in.

What are the downsides of these compared to Soylent? I mean, what's the
motivation for Soylent if these already exist?

~~~
corresation
_What are the downsides of these compared to Soylent? I mean, what's the
motivation for Soylent if these already exist?_

I swear that this Soylent thing is all, as some others have opined, a long
troll.

But yes, there are a number of "meal replacement" drinks, some of them (like
Ensure), very widely known and heavily advertised.

~~~
fian
I guess the difference is that this guy is making the recipe available so you
can tweak it to your requirements.

Ensure or other prepackaged products are a predefined set ratio, which may not
be optimal for all consumers.

For example, highly active people will probably require a higher ratio of
carbohydrates than less active people. Similarly, some people will be
genetically predisposed to have higher/lower uptake of some
nutrients/vitamins.

Ultimately, for any one person to succeed with a Soylent style approach, they
will need to monitor their blood levels of a range of elements and compounds.

To my mind, developing a rapid, cheap, broad spectrum blood analysis to allow
people to monitor their diet (soylent or not) is what should be focused on.

Your mileage and diet may vary...

------
nhangen
Is it me or does it seem like everything is now a giant lead into a
Kickstarter marketing push? Is Kickstarter the new Internet marketing?

~~~
GuiA
Good question; I am launching a kickstarter campaign next week to fund my next
book, which will answer precisely that question :)

------
driverdan
I'm really surprised by people who act like this is some kind of new or novel
idea. Meal replacements have been around for a very, very long time. There are
some really common ones you can buy at any grocery store, such as Ensure.

Want to replace a meal with something similar? Throw some milk, oats, protein
powder and peanut butter in a blender. Drink it down with a multi-vitamin and
a fish oil capsule or two.

~~~
dpcx
> I'm really surprised by people who act like this is some kind of new or
> novel idea. Meal replacements have been around for a very, very long time.
> There are some really common ones you can buy at any grocery store, such as
> Ensure.

I read something yesterday that summed this up pretty much perfectly.

If there's more than one of something, it means that it wasn't done right the
first time. See: Cars, Computers, Telephones, Light Bulbs, etc...

------
nazgulnarsil
Another shameless plug for Soylent Orange. It's gratifying to see him bump his
recipe towards mine in switching to oats. If you've never seen this before SO
is the off the shelf version. It doesn't quite hit the same optimal
micronutrient profile, but it gets you close. I find this + one meat based
meal per day works pretty well.

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjA38cUd4BZBdGZ...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjA38cUd4BZBdGZYM012N0JZTzEtVk05MVF4dlZyZ2c&usp=drive_web)

I have yet to do a proper min-maxing of ingredients for optimal
nutrients/calorie.

~~~
GIFtheory
The author makes a good point in that what is perfectly safe for one person
may be deadly to another. Off the top of my head, one example of this is how
some people are congenital 'super-absorbers' of iron. These people can develop
iron overload from ingesting levels of iron that have no effect on ordinary
people. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_overload>

------
nicothieb
Am I the only one depressed by this idea ? I mean I have no doubt one can
craft a superior meal nutriment wise, but this is the fast track to abandoning
cuisine and a huge part of my culture.

Spend more time making your dreams come true. Yeah right, more facebook or
more tv time !

~~~
gordaco
No, you're not the only one. To me, this is also a fast way of ruining one of
the best things about life. If "making your dreams come true" prevents you
from enjoying a nice meals (which is not that much time-consuming, anyway), it
may be time to reconsider if those dreams are worth it. Don't live just for a
future that might not come, keep in mind your daily life.

------
GigabyteCoin
I continue to read nothing but cautious words on HN when approaching Soylent.

Let me remind you all that cautious and timid natures rarely pioneered
anything throughout history.

------
manmal
While I would be more than a bit anxious that I miss some nutrient (just like
the missing MSM/sulphur) because soylent is a blend of raw earths and isolated
ingredients - Rob's mentions of increased focus and better sleep really
inspire me to check on what major nutrients I could be missing, and fix that
by either supplementing or changing food habits. [I understand that Rob's
motivations for using chemically produced ingredients are political and
economical (resource consumption), but I'd rather eat live food as long as
it's possible :)]

E.g. I recently started increasing potassium (eating more lentils and
potatoes, and the occasional powder/pill) and my focus increased so much. Two
years ago, I discovered that keeping vitamin D up in winter stops me from
getting sick all the time. And I think MSM helps me recover faster after
workouts (interesting fact: cooking decreases MSM content radically, so one
could eat raw stuff instead of drinking it in powder-form).

Next step: Instead of swallowing pills, incorporate food that contains all
that stuff. And have a deeper look at Soylent's more exotic ingredients.

~~~
itchyouch
I've definitely noticed this. If at all anything it's really just provided a
framework for thinking about the nutrition that we typically lack on a daily
basis.

------
rdouble
I can't figure out if this is just an elaborate troll.

~~~
abstractbill
Well, he's making something people want; I'm an existence proof, as are a few
other commenters on this thread.

~~~
grhino
Will this be any different from Ensure or other meal replacement shakes but
marketed differently? Is what he's doing any different from what's been done
before?

~~~
lem72
I was looking into ensure after a few people mentioned it on this thread.
Something ensure promotes is that it's good for in between meals but doesn't
say outright that it is an entire meal replacement that I could see. I think
the difference is Soylent is meant to be a complete diet replacement where
Ensure is focused on being a supplement to your diet.

------
ricardobeat
Nature has solved this for us long ago. Buy a handful of vegetables, vary them
every week; slice them up, cook/grill/stir fry and eat them. Add meat once in
a while.

This will take you 20 minutes/day, maybe less if you make food in batches and
freeze it, and it's been tested for the past few thousand years with pretty
good results.

~~~
mrb
20 minutes/day? 6.7 minutes per meal? I doubt it. Plus you forgot the time to
buy groceries, wash dishes, eat (drinking something like soylent is 5x faster
than chewing food), etc. The average adult probably spends 45min-1h per day
doing something necessary for preparing food. The guy has a point: Soylent
does save time:

 _"I used to spend about 2 hours per day on food. Typically I would cook eggs
for breakfast, eat out for lunch, and cook a quesadilla, pasta, or a burger
for dinner. For every meal at home I would then have to clean and dry the
dishes. This does not include trips to the grocery store. Now I spend about 5
minutes in the evening preparing for the next day, and every meal takes a few
seconds. I love order of magnitude improvements, and I certainly don't miss
doing dishes. In fact I could get rid of the kitchen entirely, no fridge
sucking down power, no constant cleaning or worrying about pests, and more
living space. I just need a water source."_ Source:
<http://robrhinehart.com/?p=298>

~~~
rdouble
_I used to spend about 2 hours per day on food. Typically I would cook eggs
for breakfast, eat out for lunch, and cook a quesadilla, pasta, or a burger
for dinner_

It seems strange that it would take him 2 hours to cook a combination of eggs,
a quesadilla, pasta, or a burger. These are foods that only take a few minutes
to cook. Cooking either eggs or a quesadilla takes less than 1 minute. If
cooked longer, they are ruined. One could cook a meal for two containing every
one of those items in less than 20 minutes. He must have been taking a long
lunch break.

Any claim that this project arose from a need for time savings rings a bit
hollow, because he has spent an order of magnitude more time on this than any
non-foodie bachelor programmer person has ever spent cooking.

~~~
oneandoneis2
..how are you cooking eggs that they're done in under a minute? The only way I
can think of that stands any chance is by frying, which is hardly the
healthiest option. Soft-boiling an egg takes me six minutes, plus the time to
heat the water. About quarter of an hour all in, at a guess.

As for a burger, when I cook one of those it's an absolute minimum of half an
hour start to finish - peeling & chopping the onions & garlic, dicing the
bacon, mixing it all together with the beef, cooking it properly.. I can
easily take up an hour.

You seem to be confusing "Microwave crap from a packet" with preparation of
decent food.

~~~
6d0debc071
> ..how are you cooking eggs that they're done in under a minute? The only way
> I can think of that stands any chance is by frying, which is hardly the
> healthiest option. Soft-boiling an egg takes me six minutes, plus the time
> to heat

I've got ~5 minutes here:

Boil water in kettle ~2 minutes

Place in pan on hot ring on hob with eggs, comes to boil ~.5 minutes

Boil until cooked ~3 minutes

\- add a minute or two if you prefer hard boiled

And it doesn't require you to be standing over it so if you take away the time
you can be absent that's going to take you down to more like 3 minutes.

~~~
mrb
A hard boiled egg is 10min in boiling water. None of your times include: time
to clean dishes, time to eat and chew solid food, time to go out to a
restaurant to eat, etc.

You guys quoting "X minutes to cook food" really don't look at the big picture
of all the steps that are saved by just having to drink a pre-made substance.

~~~
6d0debc071
> time to clean dishes,

Dishwasher, not worth measuring. You do it when you walk back to the kitchen
after the meal.

And you'd have to clean the glass from your drink anyway. Or walk back to the
kitchen to throw the bottle away and then you've got the time for throwing the
extra trash away.

> time to eat and chew solid food,

Not mutually exclusive with that many other things that I'd be doing at home.
Hard to really count it as a loss.

------
jgrahamc
There's no science here. This so-called experiment is worthless IMHO.

Feeding people all-liquid diets to keep them alive is well known. That's what
happens to coma patients and lots of work in creating enteral nutrition
products has been done. Given that people's lives depend on this that's a good
place to start (take a look at, for example, Jevity [3]). And the people who
make that stuff worry about keeping your gastrointestinal system working, the
right balance of everything needed to keep a (in this case, sick) person
alive, how to keep the product from spoiling, etc.

So, he's not creating something new.

The other argument against the existing products is price. Here's a quick
comparison. He claims that it costs him $155 per month [1]. If he were to live
on Jevity 1.5 he'd need to drink 4.2 cans per day at a cost of $57/24 per can
(it's sold in packs of 24 cans [2]) or $9.98 per day which is roughly $300 a
month. (If he ups the kcal to 2,000 a day from the 1,500 he was on then he'd
need to drink 5.6 cans a day which is $400 a month).

So, he'd be spending 2 to 2.5 times what he currently is. But he'd be spending
it on a product that's been quality controlled and tested.

Is there any indication that he can fundamentally change the economics of this
type of food? I don't think so. Especially when you factor in all the work
that the makers of Jevity etc. are doing at that price point (the QA, the
distribution, the packaging).

And certainly not enough to meet all his other goals about solving world
hunger.

If a market for soylent emerges then I'd imagine that companies that make
things like Jevity would step in. Oh wait, they already do. There's Ensure
etc.

Also, there's so much other crap in his blog posts about how soylent lasts
forever [4], how no one need muscles anyway [5], how even stopping eating
soylent for a week led to massive cognitive problems [5], that it's hard to
take the whole thing seriously.

And then there's this [1]: "I for one would not miss the stereotype of the
housewife in the kitchen. Providing diverse, palatable, and nutritious meals
for an entire family every day must be exhausting. What if taking a night off
didn't mean unhealthy pizza or expensive take out? How wasteful society has
been with its women! The endless hours spent cooking and cleaning in the
kitchen could be replaced with socializing, study, or creative endeavors."

Ah yes, soylent is not only going to solve world hunger, make us more healthy,
save time, make us more creative, save money: it's going to emancipate women!

But there's more [5]: "We no longer live in a hunter-gatherer society. I have
no use for bulging biceps. No one in the United States plows fields or hammers
steel. It has all been automated. We need mental strength. We need creativity,
patience, discipline, and humility. If people had more self-control obesity
would take care of itself. Perhaps companies would be more productive if
managers had more humility and employees had more discipline."

Yes, soylent will result in an increase in humility and all those fat people
who lack self-discipline will be thin.

Hooray.

[1] <http://robrhinehart.com/?p=298>

[2] [http://www.abbottstore.com/jevity+reg/jevity-15-cal-8-oz-
can...](http://www.abbottstore.com/jevity+reg/jevity-15-cal-8-oz-can-case-
of-24/invt/57333/)

[3] <http://abbottnutrition.com/brands/products/jevity-1_5-cal>

[4] <http://www.soylent.me> claims it 'lasts for years'

[5] <http://robrhinehart.com/?p=570>

~~~
glomph
Jevity: "May be used for oral feeding of patients with altered taste
perception."

Made me laugh. Not that I have any reason to think it tastes worse than his.

------
thangalin
"If people had more self-control obesity would take care of itself."

Obesity might be partly genetic.

<http://www.cdc.gov/genomics/resources/diseases/obesity/>

~~~
marknutter
Genes don't feed your face.

~~~
prodigal_erik
Neither does cold-blooded logic. Nobody can understand obesity unless they've
had to ask themselves "wait, why did I eat all that?" Willpower seems to be
finite and its relationship to blood sugar may be genetic. I've had pretty
good luck losing weight using protein/fiber shakes between small meals to
reduce blood sugar spikes and blunt cravings that were hard to control
otherwise.

------
tocomment
Why is it so easy to make a food that dogs and cats can eat for every meal but
so difficult for humans? Anyone know?

------
chuckwnelson
As a science geek I love this. As a marketer, this name is unfortunate.

Interested in the outcomes though. keep it up.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Indeed, you don't want people screaming "Soylent Green is people!"

------
Mamady
You do realise that mastication is REQUIRED for healthy teeth and gums right?

You may not become malnutritioned, but you will suffer from various oral
problems due to lack of mastication. This may take a year or even a few years
to present itself - by then it will be too late to react.

------
nsxwolf
Still sticking with that horrible name, eh? I guess if you don't care about a
wider adoption...

------
webbruce
"We no longer need big biceps". Well true, unless you want to attract women.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Depends on whether you want to attract women that are into large biceps or
those that think men with large biceps are posers spend too much time at the
gym.

~~~
apalmer
Isn't it better to attract them all and then pick the ones you want? I am 50
lbs over weight just saying...

~~~
ZenoArrow
It's not possible to "attract them all", different people find different
things attractive, and honestly I don't think "attract them all" is a very
desirable predicament, better to have a deep connection with one person than
dealing with many shallow connections. Besides, and I know this is a cliche by
now, but repeated so much because it's true... confidence (not to be confused
with arrogance) is the most attractive quality. Be healthy, sure, but
ultimately be comfortable in your own skin.

------
cLeEOGPw
Those who say that this is wrong because humans should eat like our ancestors
because we evolved to eat in this way are on the same level with people that
say only man and woman should have sex because nature made it this way.
Naturalists are wrong from the very root because of assumption nature makes
everything on purpose and in the only right way possible. This soylent thing
exposes all the ignorance of the people in this regard.

------
jasallen
Futurama's Bachelor Chow

------
nakedrobot2
from the article: "No one in the United States plows fields or hammers steel.
It has all been automated."

And, I presume, no one in the world is poor. Nobody struggles. There is no
murder or injustice anymore.

Just which planet is this fellow living on?

------
juskrey
This guy definitely will leave gene pool. I bet on diabetes.

------
mipapage
My son and I watched Star Wars a New Hope this weekend and when that exact
scene hit I thought of Soylent. Spooky!

