
Show HN: MealSquares, our whole food Soylent alternative - nazgulnarsil
http://www.mealsquares.com/
======
smacktoward
I have the same reaction to this as I did to Soylent: I'd be a lot more
inclined to try it if there was somebody involved with it who had some
demonstrable background or expertise in nutrition, health or medicine.

The human body is a complicated thing, but while it's hard to improve, it's
very easy to screw up. And screwing up someone's health can have consequences
for them that last for years or decades. It can literally _ruin their life._
If that happens it won't be much comfort for them that their sad story has led
you to pivot to a more promising approach.

For all the intellectual firepower of people in the tech community, there is a
curious strain of _anti_ -intellectualism that comes forth in projects like
this; an eagerness to discount the expertise of people who have studied a
subject for their entire lives, just because they weren't CS majors. It's like
trying to send a man to the moon without working with any aerospace engineers.
I honestly do not understand it.

~~~
throwu444
Rubbish.

Firstly, nutrition science is not real science - we don't have a full
understanding of how our body processes foods, etc to be able to model it
properly. So it's not real science.

Secondly, having a balanced nutrition isn't nearly as complicated as you make
it out to be. Variety and everything in moderation. Humans would have evolved
to be able to live off a variety of different diets and foods. Most of our
history involved a food shortage and so a very specific set of nutritional
requirements would definitely not have been selected for.

~~~
_dark_matter_
> nutrition science is not real science - we don't have a full understanding
> of how our body processes foods, etc to be able to model it properly. So
> it's not real science.

So, does this mean science is happening only when we have total understanding
of something? What have these physicists been doing all these years!? Of
course we don't know it well enough. Science is pretty simple, though: cause
and effect. If someone eats only celery, they will die (lack of calories). I
don't know what you're talking about when you talk about "real science".

>Variety and everything in moderation

And this is exactly the point op is making. You don't get that variety by
eating only these. So the options are:

1\. Have total faith that their good enough for you to eat every day (and thus
trust the makers)

2\. Don't eat them at all (don't trust them)

OP wants to trust scientists, not just some guys making food in their kitchen.
So he chooses the latter option.

~~~
throwu444
See my replies below regarding "not real science". I'm happy to accept your
point in that regard.

As for #1 and #2 - we've created a kibble/pellet formula for virtually every
other animal on planet earth. Why not humans? Seems incredibly narrow minded
to me.

Not to mention that the average american diet is atrocious so the bar for an
improvement is pretty low.

------
untog
I suppose products like these are positive, though I find them profoundly
depressing. That eating well has become such an after-thought that no-one
takes time to actually make themselves a whole meal, and rather than
reprioritise their lives they'll ask a group of people with no discernable
nutritional credentials to send them a square of food that they cut into 100
calorie segments, and eat day in, day out.

 _Scarfing down pastries or energy bars when you don 't have time to think
about food? You can do better._

Yeah, you can.

~~~
astrofinch
If you like spending time and effort preparing healthy meals for yourself,
more power to you. The MealSquares target user is a busy startup founder whose
diet is currently made up of microwavable meals or something like that. You
tell someone like this to eat healthier and they say "yeah, I really should",
but it's hard to fit in the time for cooking, nutrition research, and meal
planning in between all of the other important stuff they're doing.
Personally, I like the fact that people are doing important stuff, and I'm
hoping that MealSquares will allow people to spend their time doing lots of
important stuff and eat healthy while they're at it.

~~~
untog
_Personally, I like the fact that people are doing important stuff_

But that's exactly my point, eating well is "important stuff". I suppose it
reflects the general mentality that crunching away on your mobile photo
sharing startup is "important" while eating well, being healthy and being
happy are optional extras.

------
jonathanjaeger
What I love about this is it's less an alternative of Soylent and more an
alternative for the terrible meal replacement bars at the convenience store.
Those are packed with sugar or sugar alcohols and rarely have oats or other
ingredients I prefer. Although MealSquares does have a sizeable amount of
sugar, I can't wait to try MealSquares if it's a decent price since I like the
ingredient profile otherwise.

Edit: Price looks to be fair.

------
SyncTheory13
This looks great! I'm currently vegan and have known for a while that it is
not the best I could be doing nutritionally or morally. Rather than make my
diet more complicated, I've been looking toward a primarily whole foods diet,
sans animal products. With all the _convenience_ , sugar, etc. of processed
foods, making the jump has been much harder than I expected.

I'm excited about Soylent, but I'm not fully sold on the ingredients being
primarily from supplements. I very much look forward to a vegan version.

Please continue researching, and try to gain the volunteer support of some
nutritionists, then be quick to hire one when your Kickstarter succeeds!

Thanks for bringing your idea to everyone!

P.S. I also think this idea will be great for those who cannot afford the
luxury of researching and buying healthy foods. Convenience is a huge reason
the junk food industry is so large, especially in low-income areas. The price
of $12/day is a nice starting point, and the lower it becomes, along with the
more in-store availability - the healthier our population will become.

------
wc-
Despite all the controversy, soylent did show there is a market for this. If
MealSquare can actually deliver to early adopters in a timely fashion, I'd
imagine they could capture a lot of the Soylent market...

Looking forward to the crowdfunding and more timeline details!

------
wasd
Hey Romeo,

This is incredible. I love this idea and hope it can come to light.

Quick question, I took a look at the price in the FAQ:

"We're looking at $12/day as our absolute ceiling and aim to hit significantly
lower than that. MealSquares will come down in price as we scale. At $12 a day
a MealSquare costs $2.40, which is very competitive with other options."

Is this for 1 day worth (2000 calories) of MealSquares? Is this assuming a
bulk purchase (1 week or month)?

~~~
ph0rque
Right now, our family's meals cost ~$3.70/day (plus the "free" labor of
preparing it). Until it's within a dollar or two within that price, I won't be
able to try it out.

------
neilsharma
I'm usually on a low carb diet and I jog/weightlift a lot. Normally, I aim for
about 4000-5000 calories/day, so I may be atypical of your average American.
Also, my nutritional goals are high poly/mono fats, high protein, high fiber,
and low sugar/starches.

The carb content in these bars bother me (42g/bar x 5 bars a day), and I'd
prefer bars with more fiber and significantly less sugar even if that means
it'd taste more like bark.

Compared to the same weight of almonds, for example, these bars have 25% less
protein, ~4x more sugar, 1/3 the fiber, slightly more saturated fat, and
significantly less mono/poly. Now I know almonds aren't substitutes for meals,
but when I'm lazy to make or buy a meal and am looking for convenient finger
food, this is what you'd be up against.

I understand that meal replacements that look and taste like chocolate chip
cookies are appealing. These bars seem like a tastier version of your typical
chalk-like protein bar. I think if you cut back the carbs, you might be able
to stand out in that market.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
we're at a 40/40/20 macro split C/F/P for our V1, a low carb version might
happen in the future.

~~~
teach
40/40/20 is a very good macronutrient target. Kudos.

------
nawitus
It's unfortunate to see that the product uses animal-based foods, and eggs at
that. Something like Soylent should in my opinion be vegan (for the
environment and the animals). If I recall correctly, Soylent was pretty close
to vegan.

~~~
Pxtl
A bit offtopic, but I'm always sad that more research hasn't been done in
making eggs/milk cruelty-free - that the "cruely-free science" went straight
to synthetic meat. I'd love to see more research in mass-cloning female
chickens to avoid the "sexing" problem, or painless alternatives to de-
beaking, or hormonally-induced lactation in cows. Even the ideal pastoral
rural hobby egg-farmer has intrinsically cruel aspects because of the useless
male chicks and occasional violence between chickens... but it feels like
these would be lower hurdles to overcome with technology than weaving
synthetic beef on a magical meat-loom.

~~~
teach
I think it's because cruelty-free is already quite easy to get: just buy food
from local, organic farms that actually raise animals instead of mass-
producing them.

~~~
Pxtl
But my point is that even local organic farms have to deal with the useless
males problem. For eggs: if they have a rooster to breed more chickens, they
kill the male hatchlings as soon as they're old enough to be sexed (which can
be at birth or a few weeks later depending on the sophistication of their
sexing techniques). If they purchase their chickens from a breeder, the same
problem exists there.

I mean, simple respectable pain-management could help with de-beaking, but the
existence of unwanted male birds is a hard problem.

I'd be a lot more comfortable with ovo/lacto vegetarianism (which is what I
do) if those problems could be solved, and I'm no luddite - if there was a
high-tech solution to these problems using crazy cloning techniques or somehow
inducing parthenogenesis or something, that would be great.

------
jack-r-abbit
These have quite a lot of sugar and cholesterol. And are a bit higher on
sodium than Soylent. Maybe I've not been following the recent recommendations
but aren't these things we're supposed to avoid?

------
bbayer
I can understand the effort and I can support it if the main idea is to
prevent people from starving. But I cannot understand people reacting whole
foods as it is invented couple of years ago. My 4 years old kid don't consume
food other than PediaSure[1] for two years. He really did well until this time
and blood, urine test suggest everything is normal. So food replacement is not
miracle and works under some circumstances.

[1]
[http://abbottnutrition.com/brands/pediasure](http://abbottnutrition.com/brands/pediasure)

------
paragraft
There's a product in the Australia and NZ market called One Square Meal which
seems exactly this (which would seem to raise the spectre of trademark
conflict).
[http://www.onesquaremeal.com/productinfo.html](http://www.onesquaremeal.com/productinfo.html)

For something that's 1/3 DI, it's pleasant enough, though a can get a bit
tiring on the jaw if you're trying to wolf it down, which you often are if
you're in a situation where you need a meal substitute...

------
zyxley
It would be good to have more information on what these taste like, what the
mouthfeel is, and, possibly most importantly (since it's a prereq in my mind
to ever buying any at all), how long they last in the pantry or refrigerator.

That said, the idea already appeals to me much more than Soylent, not
particularly because of the whole foods part but because the image and info
given suggest that a MealSquare will have some chew, crunch, and contrasting
textures to it.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
We're still working on shelf life, we're within reach of a month and might be
able to do significantly better.

Texture/taste wise they are like a cinnamon bran muffin. We were actually
surprised we were able to get the prototypes tasting so good.

------
nazgulnarsil
Hi, this is Romeo Stevens, cofounder of MealSquares. We’re really interested
in feedback.

Since Soylent is a similar product in our space, I wanted to discuss some
points made by Rob Rhinehart in his post "The Fallacy of Whole Foods":
[http://robrhinehart.com/?p=874](http://robrhinehart.com/?p=874)

Rob likes to compare Soylent to medical meal replacements. But medical meal
replacements have taken a long time to mature. For example, it took a while
for professional nutritionists to realize maybe they shouldn’t pump newborns
full of soybean oil [1]. This may sound silly today, but that was the best
nutritionists could do based on the science available to them. And that's the
problem I see artificially constructed meal replacements running in to--if you
do the best you can based on the science available, that still may not be
enough.

Different forms of the same nutrient _do_ seem to affect the body differently.
We see negative health outcomes from substances such as beta-carotene, vitamin
E, and folic acid in supplemental form [2], while high levels in whole foods
demonstrate no such harms. So bioavailability is complicated, and for whatever
reason whole foods seem to have consistently healthier profiles than
supplements.

Many examples of strong nutrient synergy have been discovered. Vitamin D and
calcium, vitamin C and iron, the fat soluble vitamins and dietary fat are some
of the most well established. It seems likely that we've still got more to
discover. Rob himself seems to acknowledge this in his inclusion of many non-
essential nutrients like lycopene.

Even given these points, we don’t consider Soylent a bad thing. Rob is right,
the average diet is terrible, and anything that improves on that is great. We
know MealSquares aren’t perfect. Nutrition science has come up with no
substitute for regularly eating fish for example; supplements don’t cut it
[3]. But including MealSquares in your diet means you are getting a solid dose
of healthy, nutrient dense foods from a variety of sources. We don't think
nutrition is settled science, and we look forward to becoming a multi-billion
dollar corporation so we can improve the state of knowledge with our research
department. :P

On the topic of longevity in general, you can read some of my research here:
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/jrt/lifestyle_interventions_that_aff...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/jrt/lifestyle_interventions_that_affect_longevity/).

[1]
[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130814101429.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130814101429.htm)

[2]
[http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleID=205797](http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleID=205797)

[3]
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12848287](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12848287)

~~~
kenrikm
Hi Romeo, something to keep in mind. Most "Meal replacement" type bars (cliff,
power bar) etc.. are super sweet, lots of sugar. I'm actually not a fan of
sugar in general and would love an alternative that is more neutral or even on
the salty side. I see on your site what look like chocolate chip cookie chunks
and that turns me off. Maybe you can come up with something that has flavor
but is not sweet?

~~~
freefrancisco
+1 to this.

I would be very much in the market for meal replacements like MealSquares or
Soylent, but they both have lots of sugar and carbs. I try to follow a paleo
diet, I don't always succeed at following it closely, but the most important
thing that I try to do is avoid sugar, sugar substitutes, and artificial
sweeteners, and second I try to avoid carbs from grains. This pretty much
means that I have to buy free range eggs, grass fed beef, grass fed butter,
and make my own meals, or I have to eat at restaurants, but buying meal
replacements is out of the question. There is nothing out there yet that
eliminates sweeteners and carbs.

I know that there are people who want the carbs and the sugar, so here is a
suggestion. Why not refactor the current MealSquare into two parts, one that
is salty and paleo, and one that is vegan and low fat? That way people who
like them as they are now can eat one of each and get the same result, but
those of us who are paleo can get the sugar/grain free square separately, and
people who are vegan can get the animal free square separately as well.

~~~
tmikaeld
+1 on this, i have lived on a light lchf diet (60g carb per day) for more than
a year and would never go back to a sugary carby diet again, since if i do, i
start to feel really bad in just a few days.

And just as you describe, it takes a lot of hard work!

------
zhemao
I think you guys have an edge over Soylent in that this actually looks
somewhat appealing, as opposed to a generic beige liquid.

------
conductr
Feedback on the website. It's too much text and the "action" is not well
defined or prominent. Do a video. Give just links to the extra info, prominent
not hidden in the link list (mobile). Make your call to action the focus. The
images look stock, need improvement.

I'd be glad to elaborate on any of these points. Email me

------
livingparadox
Is there any reason that your compare page adds the qualifier "not from
soy/rice"? I get the soy part, even if I don't agree about its significance.
But why does rice as a source matter?

~~~
nazgulnarsil
bioavailability of plant proteins is much lower than from milk/eggs/whey.

------
mikegioia
I like this idea a lot, but honestly what are you showing us here? The
campaign hasn't started yet and there doesn't appear to be any actual product
created.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
MealSquares exist and myself and beta testers are getting significant portions
of our calories from them.

~~~
mikegioia
Ok great, but you posted a "Show HN" pointing to your product's web page. The
only thing that web page does is collect emails to notify when your crowd
funding campaign starts.

I just don't understand what you're showing us.

~~~
astrofinch
(Other MealSquares cofounder here)

The reason we haven't started our crowdfunding campaign yet is because our
following isn't big enough yet. Soylent hit its target within the first 24
hours because the DIY recipe already had a huge following, and the general
wisdom for kickstarters seems to be that you need at least 30-40% of your
funding nailed down _before_ you hit the "go" button. So in addition to
feedback on the product itself, we are curious if HN has any thoughts for
things like slogans and other product messaging, and customer verticals that
we might be able to market the product to.

------
rpedela
I like the concept, but unfortunately people like me cannot eat it because of
food allergies (eggs and tree nuts).

Why is <50% of carbs listed as an advantage?

~~~
nazgulnarsil
While it's true that studies have repeatedly shown that macro splits don't
matter much for body composition, we felt that the existing options were way
too sweet. So much so that eating more than one was actually unpleasant. Also,
quite a lot of people try to limit their carbs to something reasonable.

------
frakkingcylons
Very interested. If there is a way for me to buy some early samples for beta
testing, I would love to know.

------
tdees40
"Nutrient deficiencies are common, and supplements don't always work."

*Citation needed

~~~
nazgulnarsil
[http://www.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=15672](http://www.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=15672)

Magnesium, calcium, potassium, fiber, vitamin C, D, and E. Potassium is a good
example, as supplementation is impossible, supplements are limited to 99mg by
law. Vitamin E supplements have shown harm in clinical trials.

