
The real Soylent sickness - triplesec
http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-real-soylent-sickness
======
Afforess
Not terribly novel or interesting; the article entirely ignores that Soylent
culture is driven by a disinterest in cooking and a desire to avoid the time
spent during food preparation, cleanup, grocery shopping, etc.

Grocery shopping for one is frustrating; either I buy portions I know I can
not eat before they spoil, wasting money and food, or I buy only a few
ingredients and cycle through the same meals over and over. Last week I was
annoyed to discover Kroger discontinued its half-dozen egg cartons, and I
still have not found any reliable way of buying small enough quantities of
bread/buns before they grow stale or mold. I'm fairly confident I am doomed to
forever spoil cheese and milk. It seems that grocery chains market portions to
target a household size of four, exclusively. Soylent, on the other hand, has
a shelf-life of 1 year.

~~~
paulcole
> disinterest in cooking and a desire to avoid the time spent during food
> preparation

You say this like it's a feature not a bug.

> Grocery shopping for one is frustrating

Like other valuable skills, you can get better at it.

~~~
x1798DE
> You say this like it's a feature not a bug.

I think it sounds more like they are saying that it's a preference.
Preferences are generally neither features nor bugs (though they can be useful
in some situations and frustrating in others).

------
mmastrac
> Rob Rhinehart, to compress all the nutrition the human body needs to live
> into one single, easily digestible formula, like the twenty-first-century
> version of manna. But that is fundamentally the opposite of the way we
> increasingly want to eat in America and in much of the developed world.

Uh, speak for yourself.

I order Soylent from time-to-time. It's a nice way to simplify about 75% of my
meal prep, while remaining healthy and helping me avoid constant snacking. If
I was on my own I'd consider 100% Soylent.

You don't need three gourmet meals a day. Food is a convenient social
activity, but it's not the _only_ one.

So many issues with this article, but this one...

> the persistent effect that progress in food processing has had on our taste
> buds, as we amp up artificial flavors in an attempt regain the natural
> flavor we have stripped from our food with technology

If you'd ever had Soylent, you'd realize that it's entirely the opposite of an
"amped-up, artificial flavour". It's not bland - it has a light flavour that
isn't offensive no matter how much you drink.

~~~
collyw
> while remaining healthy

Thats yet to be seen. This food is a processed as you can get, I have my
doubts that it will be good for you in the long term.

~~~
shuntress
"We do not view processed foods as inherently bad or unhealthy. We believe
that the nutritional value of a foodstuff - regardless of whether it is
prepared in a factory, a restaurant, or at a backyard barbecue - is a direct
consequence of the variety of nutrients that it provides and their context
within one's overall diet."

from- [https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-
us/articles/203709619-Soylent-...](https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-
us/articles/203709619-Soylent-Approach-to-Nutrition)

~~~
krisdol
Well, I mean why would the Soylent FAQ say anything otherwise? Nutritionists
disagree. It's not some hippie new age anti-industry opinion, it's a fact.

In fact, this is such a stupid oversimplification that any amount of critical
thinking can debunk it. There is a lot more to food that the net nutrition
intake you have at the end of the day. The actual, physical composition of the
food determines how quickly you body digests it, which in turn affects your
energy levels, appetite, and mood. Your body does not digest apple juice the
same way as it does raw apples, even if both have the same exact ingredients.
You won't feel the same after a smoothie as you will after the same
ingredients delivered raw. One method of intake gives you a short, high burst
of energy followed by steeper drop off, while the raw form provides gentler
changes and is less likely to spike your blood sugar.

All of this interacts with your psychology, your metabolism, and your physical
and mental energy.

This is like saying I can safely fast for 4 days once If I eat 6000 calories
worth of [insert food/drink] today. You might survive for 4 days but good luck
not tearing up your body and feeling like a ghost by then.

More-processed foods are not inherently "bad" or "unhealthy", but they are
inherently worse and less healthy than less-processed foods (generally). They
contribute to shorter periods of feeling satiated and longer low-energy
periods. You will crave processed food more frequently and in greater
quantities than raw food.

~~~
shuntress
It's hard to compress so much information in to single page resources that
people can skim in internet arguments.

Though they do address things like blood sugar in similar articles:
[https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-
us/articles/212769503-Glycemic...](https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-
us/articles/212769503-Glycemic-Data)

Of course it's not perfect. Could you do better by meticulously cataloging
your intake, painstakingly measuring everything you cook, and going the extra
mile to determine the exact source of all your food? Yeah probably. My time is
worth more to me than that. I would rather waste my time on things other than
making sure I am _perfectly_ nourished.

How long had humans gone eating crude bread, grilled meat, and stuff they
found on the ground? Now we have processing techniques more advanced than
'Make it hot' and we live longer now than ever before.

At least Soylent, as a company, is very up-front with their goals and
concerns. They just sent me a message telling me not to eat the Soylent Bars I
bought (Jokes on them I already threw them out because they are gross)

Also, Unless you eat the core and the seeds I think an apple and the quantity
of apple juice you can make by squeezing one apple are probably going to be
digested in a similar fashion. I get your point, I just don't think that is a
good example.

------
herge
I think the root of these articles is that people don't understand what
Soylent is. It's not meant to replace your home made salad, or "Fish pulled
from a river and grilled over wood coals", but the frozen pizza you have when
you come home late, or the "fuck it, I forgot to bring my lunch to work, let's
just go to Arby's".

Do people complain that showers are meant to displace baths?

~~~
jedberg
> Do people complain that showers are meant to displace baths?

They did when showers first started replacing baths in the 1800's.

~~~
shuntress
Exactly, those people were wrong then and these people are wrong now.

~~~
jedberg
Sorry, yes that was my point. :)

------
nemo1618
If the author's assertion is true -- that "the most significant food movement
is the purposeful pushback against the postwar industrial food system" \--
then where is the demand for Soylent coming from? People clearly want it.

The real mistake here is the implication that everyone who consumes Soylent
replaces 100% of their meals with it. That isn't the use case, and this has
been explained many times. Soylent serves a specific purpose, just like
astronaut ice cream, Tang, and TV dinners. The author says: "no one in their
right mind would chose [astronaut ice cream] over the cold, creamy stuff on a
hot day," but he's wrong. Many people did for the novelty, and many people
prefer Soylent for its convenience.

------
rubidium
"Time spent at table doesn't age you" is one of my favorite sayings.

The real soylent sickness isn't replacing locally sourced, farm-to-table food
with disgusting "food", as the author claims. The real soylent sickness is the
culture of "meals are just input so I can keep working".

~~~
fernandotakai
i feel like this comes from the idea that "time spent not working is time
wasted" \-- as in, if elon musk works 90h weeks, everybody should too. and if
you are not, you are wasting your life (startups in particular are full of
those people).

i honestly feels like people forgot that there's more to life than working or
making money or disrupting an industry. go lay down on a park and watch the
sunset for goodness sake, it's good for you!

(in my case, i 1000% love cooking. it's a whole experience, even if it's just
for me. cooking for myself is "me time", when i do things for myself, so i can
enjoy)

~~~
shuntress
Is something stopping you from going to a park _right now_ and sleeping in the
grass until you wake up to watch the sunset? What, you would get hungry if you
don't go home and cook dinner?

If only there was some convenient food you could pack with you that takes no
time to prepare, little time to consume, and is easily transportable...

~~~
fernandotakai
honestly? no. i work remotely for a company that has flexible hours. i did
that a lot -- or even, go to the pool and enjoy a couple of hours of doing
nothing by the pool.

i specifically chose a job that allows me to enjoy my life and my family.

> If only there was some convenient food you could pack with you that takes no
> time to prepare, little time to consume, and is easily transportable...

like sandwich? it takes me 10min to prepare a really tasty BLT that i can take
anywhere.

------
rb2k_
I don't have a lot of insight into the science behind it, but one thing that
always makes my partner (PhD in Epidemiolgy) slightly angry is that while
Soylent does tick all of the "amount and type" boxes for what people consider
to be part of a healthy nutrition, the real long term effects are basically
untested.

Even in "naturally grown regular foods", the field is still pretty young and
we can barely make good recommendations for those. They just happen to be what
we eat and as long as they're not crazy processed, we have a few thousand
years of experience with them not necessarily killing us immediately.

Areas of research like Metabolomics or Proteomics
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omics))
are still in their infancy, so while Soylent does mix a bunch of ingredients
that all fall into the right areas, the long term effects are basically
unknown. And that doesn't even take personalized medicine into consideration
where your gene markup might actually have a lot to do with what might or
might not be good for your personally.

Again, I don't have any insight besides some armchair quarterback knowledge
about nutrition, but it seems like most people that do don't think it's a
particularly great idea to eat it more than 'every now and then'.

That being said, when compared to twinkies and sugary sodas it might still be
better for you. Having it as part of a daily diet though might not be a good
idea.

~~~
shuntress
So what, are they supposed to run a 100-year multi-generational clinical trial
before they can sell Soylent?

If you don't think it will work, you don't have to eat it. I'll keep eating
Soylent (or whatever the current best whole-food is) every day and get back to
you from my deathbed (to let you know if I blame Soylent)

~~~
tedunangst
Perhaps there's a difference between marketing a meal replacement and a diet
replacement.

------
dasil003
The thing which Soylent gets right is trying to come at it from a nutrition
standpoint first. That's definitely a much better starting place than the rest
of the industrialized food world.

That said, I think the idea of a single optimal meal replacement is
fundamentally flawed. Our understanding of nutrition and metabolism is still
very rudimentary. My opinion is that it's dangerous to move away from whole
foods _today_ , not because of some natural food fallacy, but simply because
we don't know everything that's going on with digestive and nutritional
health. It may very well be the case that no single food is optimal to eat all
the time, and that the body needs different rhythms of food intake over time
to create baseline stresses for the organism to respond to metabolically.

------
ubercore
This article is total FUD in my book. I drink soylent every day for at-work
meals. I really appreciate the time savings, and having a zero
effort/compromise way to go vegan (which I believe in both for ethical and
environment reasons, but I haven't been able to commit to sustainably,
personally).

Now here's why I disagree with this article so much: Besides programming, I'm
an award winning BBQ chef that's cooking for a local food truck and soon a
brick-and-mortar location. I am _very_ familiar with spending a lot of time on
food. A longer cook might take 13 or 14 hours. I do this every week. And I
_love_ that.

Understanding and enjoying the value of Soylent isn't an either/or thing. I
love cooking at home, I spend lots of time in front of an oven or a smoker. I
also appreciate Soylent as a healthy and inexpensive way to keep myself
nourished when I don't want to think about food.

I wonder why the author would write this article without even making an
attempt to understand how real people, not his hypothetical straw-man of a
Soylent consumer, use the product.

~~~
and0
> I wonder why the author would write this article without even making an
> attempt to understand how real people, not his hypothetical straw-man of a
> Soylent consumer, use the product.

That article wouldn't generate as many clicks :/

------
minitech
> What Soylent and the latest batch of food-tech startups are aiming for takes
> us back to the days of astronaut ice cream.

What?

> Remember that stuff? It was developed as part of the space program in the
> nineteen-sixties, and you bought it in the sort of science stores that were
> toy stores for nerds. It was sweet. It came in ice-cream flavors. But it
> wasn’t ice cream, it was a simulation of ice cream, and no one in their
> right mind would chose it over the cold, creamy stuff on a hot day. Not even
> an astronaut.

Soylent isn’t a simulation of food. I’m pretty sure it explicitly chooses
_not_ to simulate food. And people are choosing to eat it.

As others have said, speak for yourself.

~~~
splawn
Whats even more funny is that astronaut ice cream was never actually used by
astronauts. It always has only been sold in the mentioned science stores.
However I love the stuff, although I am probably not in my right mind. I have
been skeptical of Soylent in the past, but if its like astronaut ice cream
then sign me up! (yeah... i know... its nothing like astronaut ice cream)

~~~
whamlastxmas
I love freeze dried ice cream! Sold at camping supply stores too with all the
other freeze dried stuff.

------
greenshackle2
> the quackery of Dr. Oz-approved “superfoods” and the idea that you can live
> forever if you just eat enough pomegranate seeds

Have they even read the ingredients list of soylent? It just has the basic
macros, vitamins and minerals. It's less new age superfood than fortified
flour.

> that is fundamentally the opposite of the way we increasingly want to eat in
> America

That's for the market to decide, not you, little New Yorker writer.

> When you look at the recent arc of food culture, the most significant food
> movement is the purposeful pushback against the postwar industrial food
> system

Funny, I thought the main trend was the death of family farms at the hands of
Smithfield, Tyson et al.

The real sickness is modern animal agriculture, the rest is a rounding error
in comparison.

------
L_Rahman
I love the New Yorker. I have a subscription and I read it regularly.

I'm also a hedonistic participant in the "recent arc of food culture" that
embraces locally grown ingredients prepared lovingly by chefs with a creative
vision. Gramercy Tavern, the New York restaurant that most embodies this
recent arc, takes a bite out of my paycheck multiple times a month.

But what the New Yorker assumes is that this kind of food, and the time and
money to consume it is equally available to everyone at all times. That is
absolutely not the case.

There are three key demographics for Soylent in my mind:

1\. The efficiency obsessed engineer who will use Soylent as a primary food
source.

2\. Someone who has limited access to nutritious food due to geography or
income and frequently prefers Soylent to the alternatives.

3\. Someone who has the income and ability to enjoy well-prepared meals, and
does so frequent,ly but occasionally finds themself unable to do so because of
time or geography.

I'm in the last camp as are a number of my friends. Not enough time to get a
proper breakfast - Soylent/Coffiest. Commuting to a client office for lunch
and no good options nearby - Soylent. It is possible to make those choices and
then enjoy a dinner where you relish the flavor and texture of the tomatillos
in your salad.

~~~
greenshackle2
I know people in a fourth category:

4\. Does not really enjoy eating food.

Spending time/money/energy on good food is completely pointless for some
people (e.g. friend with anosmia).

------
DickingAround
The author seems to miss a critical part of why Soylent is a good options for
many people; it is all the benefits of a low-work food product that strives
not to be one that makes you fat or otherwise unhealthy. If anything, the
industrial food system let down a lot of people who liked the 'easy' but
didn't like the 'loaded with sugar' part. Also, of course, if you don't like
it don't buy it.

"When you look at the recent arc of food culture, the most significant food
movement is the purposeful pushback against the postwar industrial food
system, a system that was the food futurism of its day. This industry brought
us preservatives, Wonder Bread, Tang, and microwavable frozen TV dinners. It
lowered the price of food tremendously and increased convenience in
innumerable ways, but it also made us fatter and sicker, and robbed our meals
of their original flavors,replacing them with addictive but unhealthy
substances."

------
dahdum
"You can now buy reasonably priced organic foods at many supermarkets across
North America"

I think this is only true if you are upper middle class or above.

~~~
mordocai
Not to mention that "organic" doesn't mean what most consumers think it does.

~~~
mjevans
Probably true. Organic is 'a way of farming that is more traditional' is a
good way of phrasing it.

If you're looking for higher /quality control/ Kosher might be a good term to
look for.

I know that when I buy ketchup I just go for the 'simple' variants, the ones
that use the more traditional recipe and thus avoid HFCS (which I get too much
of from other sources).

~~~
mschuster91
> If you're looking for higher /quality control/ Kosher might be a good term
> to look for.

Meh. Kosher slaughtering forbids the use of stunning (or otherwise
incapaciting) an animal before slaughtering, so you're trading quality for
animal cruelty in my opinion.

Edit: looks like at least some Islamic communities allow for stunning the
animal prior to slaughter in order to qualify as "halal" meat
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhabihah#Stunning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhabihah#Stunning)).
Depending on how many Jewish vs Muslim markets you have access to, a Muslim
supermarket might be the better choice then.

------
kafkaesq
The various receptive components of your taste and olfactory system that have
gradually figured out, over millions of years, how to not just detect spoiled
or weak food sources, but to optimize for high-value sources also: by pinging
your brain stem in _just the right way_ , probably initiating signals within
around 100 milliseconds or so of detecting threshold quantities of whatever
awesome stuff your body has decided it needs (so it, in turn can deliver a
more or less immediate, perfectly proportioned neurohormone cascade throughout
both your brain and your upper torso, well before you've managed to actually
digest and metabolize any portion of what you're consumed; "paying it
forward", as it were) -- and not only that, but to literally train your brain
stem into getting more and more of that awesome stuff, on as regular a basis
as possible -- are really, really, _super fiendishly clever_ at what they do.

In other words -- taste and smell (and texture, and the overall pleasure-
centric aspects of the eating experience) matter _a lot_. And the primates
over at companies like Soylent would have to be very cocky to think they throw
all of that to the side, and replace it with a chemical formula or two.

------
99_00
The idea behind Soylent is a logical fallacy. On the one hand, Soylent relies
on nutrition experts for the nutritional makeup of their food. On the other
hand, no nutrition expert thinks it's a good idea eat Soylent instead of food.

So either you want to listen to nutrition experts or you don't. You can't have
it both ways.

~~~
logfromblammo
The number of scientifically rigorous and repeatable studies on human
nutrition is shockingly small. The majority of the research that is done for
the purposes of dietary recommendations involves survey or diary data.

I am aware of one controlled diet study--I think it was from the 1960s--where
the participants were fed a semi-liquid diet which contained all the chemical
components of what was then suspected to be complete human nutrition. The
results could not be used, because too many of the subjects quit, or ate foods
smuggled in from outside.

Knowing of that study, I have never feared that anyone would suffer some
deficiency disease from eating nothing but Soylent. Because I think no one
could accomplish such a feat for a long enough duration for any symptom to
appear. I guarantee that unless the person is strapped down to a table for 23
hours a day and violently kept away from edible items for the 24th, they are,
in fact, eating other things besides just Soylent from time to time.

So when nutritionists recommend against eating Soylent as a replacement for
food, I have to wonder why they even think that is even plausible enough to
say anything about it.

I understand completely why Cypher from _The Matrix_ would sell out all of
humanity for some virtual medium-rare tenderloin, instead of the nutrient
slurry they have no choice about eating in the real world.

------
k_sh
The article mentions "Silicon Valley" five times.

Soylent is based in Los Angeles.

------
corysama
The "End of Food" narrative for Soylent is artificial controversy created by
the media to grab clicks. It's encouraged by the Soylent company because
coverage -> sales. But, it was never the goal of the product and I don't think
a large minority of the products users intend to use it as such.

Soylent is a great option to have when you want it. Slowly enjoying
traditional food is still very nice. It's going to be OK.

~~~
DanBC
> The "End of Food" narrative for Soylent is artificial controversy created by
> the media to grab clicks.

That's how Soylent marketed it before and during the kickstarter.

------
pesenti
The article makes a very simple point: some things are not worth disrupting -
as in fundamentally changing/optimizing/modernizing - and sometime the
disruption can make things much worse. Food is an example of that. The 50-80s
saw huge disruption of the food business and it had dramatically bad side
effects (e.g., obesity in the US). Perpetuating that today doesn't sound like
a great benefit to society.

I believe it's a worthwhile subject, simply illustrated by the article. The
overwhelming "The author doesn't get the point of Soylent" reaction here tells
me that most people actually don't get the gist of the article itself: it's
not about Soylent in particular, it's about (food) disruption.

~~~
kazagistar
This seems like a really abusive use of the word "disruption". The only food
industry suffering disruption here is delivery pizza and microwave dinners.

~~~
pesenti
I am not following Soylent closely but the message/vision it marketed
initially was to replace all our food needs with Soylent. If that's not
disruption, what is?

------
ursus_bonum
Why is this written as though all of Silicon valley is behind Soylent? It's
mildly insulting.

------
6stringmerc
Naming this product Soylent and watching the market accept it never ceases to
amaze me; it's a lot like hearing Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life" on a Carnival
Cruise commercial but getting flashbacks to Mark Renton on heroin.

~~~
kazagistar
The target market is full of hipsters. The naming is perfect.

------
jorjordandan
Predictable reactionary article. Did they claim there was something wrong with
the philosophy of people who produce spinach when that caused massive
outbreaks of e-coli? Or blame the modernity of beef producers when mad-cow
disease broke out?

Our culture is full of manufactured food that doesn't even attempt to provide
nutrition. While it would be lovely if we could all eat out of our own private
gardens and vineyards, something like soylent seems like a step in the right
direction.

~~~
fdgdasfadsf
> Or blame the modernity of beef producers when mad-cow disease broke out?

The absolutely (and rightly) did blame modern beef production methods for
this. It is one of the reasons that EU beef is better quality than US beef
today.

------
qwertyuiop924
I never really "got" the Soylent craze. Maybe it's because I'm outside the
workforce (I'm in highschool), or maybe it's because I'm on the east coast
(where we're less on the cutting edge in general), or maybe it's because I
live in a house where we eat ~1 homemade meal every day (dinners, and
sometimes breakfasts on the weekends), and even I can make a half-decent meal
(sausage, spaghetti, and maybe a salad on the side) in about 10/20 minutes,
provided we've got the ingredients. Maybe it's because I'm hesitant towards
putting anything made by software engineers into my body (software failure
rates in a food product are unacceptable).

Nope, it's none of those: it's because I watch movies. Lots of movies. And I
live in a house with people who watch more movies than I do. So whenever I
hear the name "Soylent" there's a nagging voice in the back of my head:

 _it 's people, isn't it?_

Seriously, they need to change the name.

~~~
misingnoglic
If you're in high school, you have the privilege of a mom who would probably
rather die than have you drink soylent ;) (At least if your mom is anything
like mine).

~~~
qwertyuiop924
...there is that.

------
ared38
Where to even begin on an article this bad?

0\. The author doesn't bother to try a sip of soylent, but feels empowered to
judge its flavor based on the opinions of other reviewers. This itself is
meaningless, but it's representative of the amount of original thought in the
rest of the article.

1\. Implying the recall is due to reckless startup culture with no evidence
and ignoring recalls from traditional players.

2\. Telling people their every meal must be heirloom, artisan, and slowly
eaten reeks of aspirational privilege. Has the author never grabbed a burger
running late to a party? Can he really afford nothing but the finest
ingredients on a writer's salary?

3\. Most of the arguments are generic anti industrialized food and have
nothing to do with contemporary food startups. Not only is soylent a reaction
against those artificially flavored and unhealthy products from long
established companies, it completely ignores startups like blue apron that
promote slower food.

------
overcast
The only value I see in these Soylent type products, is for quick meals that
someone would otherwise eat trashy food for. Breakfast comes to mind, and it
what I use 100% Food mix for. It's quick and nutritional before I race off to
the office. For every other meal, normal food.

------
jly
What is the fascination with soylent? It's basically a supplement food bar /
meal replacement. There are a million of these things on the market, already,
right, in some kind of bar or powder form?

~~~
kazagistar
Supplement foods either don't have a good balance of nutrition, or are overly
expensive in relation, in my experience.

------
detaro
some comments yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12731059](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12731059)

------
jasonkostempski
They should just change the name to Bob and sell it to Walking Dead fans.

~~~
saddestcatever
I'm pretty sure there's a film about this...

------
sebastianconcpt
Would be eating processed food nutritionally illiterate?

