Soylent: Gruel today, gruel tomorrow

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/05/nutrition

by fjk • 13 years ago

32 72 13 years ago

Wait, wait, wait. Are you saying that the kid that came up with this stuff only eats it five days a week? I feel cheated.

dnautics• 13 years ago

Yes, that's what he does now. For the first two months he ate it 7 days a week. Eventually, doing stuff like hanging out with friends at restaurants, etc, winds up being important in your life, and you do want to try other flavors and textures from time to time.

alemhnan• 13 years ago

If I recall correctly he did mention that somewhere in a post blog.

adriand• 13 years ago

This product is a sad example of the lengths to which some people will go in order to avoid spending time on tasks which are generally necessary and often quite enjoyable and rewarding. Cooking certainly fits this description: it's an enjoyable process, a rewarding skill, and something that others will love you for if you do it well.

The constant focus on saving time and increasing personal productivity is a recipe for mental illness, in my opinion. Most people would do well to slow down, tune out, and make themselves a decent meal. I suspect that some and perhaps many of the people obsessed with personal productivity and life hacking will at some point suffer from a stress or anxiety disorder and will realize that life is short and there's no point in trying to hurry through it.

This trend towards saving time by sacrificing basic requirements like eating and sleeping is increasingly absurd. In a year or two, I'll open Hacker News and there'll be an article in the top ten that describes how you, too, can Avoid Wasting Time Due To Lengthy Bowel Movements. Don't believe the hype. Have a good night's rest, followed by a leisurely shit and a tasty, gruel-free breakfast you made yourself, and you'll be a better person for it.

sp332• 13 years ago

The point of Soylent isn't to never think about food again. It's just a default so when you're not thinking about food, you don't start eating badly. The creator says he goes to get really good sushi a few times a week because he does enjoy it. But if you're preoccupied or pressed for time for some or most of your meals, you can just have Soylent instead of defaulting to fast food or whatever crap is laying around your apartment.

Cushman7• 13 years ago

Paraphrasing from their pitch video: "If you can eat out with friends, you should. I love food. But I don't eat twenty-one good meals a week."

I've seen before this idea that people would lose the ability to enjoy cooking or eating if it weren't literally required to survive. It's utterly nonsensical to me. Where does that idea come from?

genwin2• 13 years ago

Not from anyone I've known.

stephengillie• 13 years ago

It's a slippery slope argument. A logical fallacy, but identifying logical fallacies in casual argument is rude at best.

h3st• 13 years ago

There are some people who just don't seem to enjoy food, and who go for repetitive and bland meals. It's sort of like people who don't enjoy music, or books, or films, or ... you get the idea. Generally they're perceived as a little odd.

Even here in Norway, where food is advertised as "mild" (euphemism for "bland" if there ever was one) people have some concepts of tasty food. You probably know some people who don't enjoy spicy food? Now imagine someone who thought plain bell peppers were too hot (there's no capsaicin in bell peppers).

As for the origin of this culinary anhedonia, Idunno. Maybe poor people who were able to live off gruel without grumbling had better reproductive fitness in the past?

everyone2• 13 years ago

The idea is not to "sacrifice" food as you put it. Soylent is food and is probably fairly healthy. Eating traditional healthy food can be very expensive as fresh fruit and vegetables are usually expensive and also go bad quickly. If you dont feel like cooking dinner I believe soylent would be a much healthier and cheaper alternative to a take away pizza or frozen lasagna or somesuch.

geetee3• 13 years ago

I love to cook, but it can be extremely time consuming, especially when paired with the time to cleanup. A lot of dishes also require an amount of inactive time that is simply impossible for a weekday meal that you need to squeeze between coming home from work and going to sleep.

In a perfect world, I have time to shop for and prepare elaborate meals. I'd be able to sit down and enjoy these meals with loved ones. Reality is a bit different for many of us. I'm fortunate enough to have the financial means to eat or take out every day if I wanted, but that's not a terribly healthy solution.

The fact is, most of my meals are "utility" meals where I am eating to live. That said, it does not preclude me from living to eat. Food would never cease to be one of life's joys, for me at least. I am pro-Soylent, but I won't participate any time soon. I want to see how it plays out, because putting my body on the line is not in the cards. I hope it works out, because getting back an hour or two every day sounds fantastic.

jacques_chester16• 13 years ago

You're creating a false dichotomy between Perfect Cooking and No Cooking.

Many tasty meals can be prepared quickly. Many can be prepared without supervision. You can also prepare meals in bulk and reheat them when you need them.

Are some meals elaborate and time-consuming? Yes. Just don't make those ones.

1qaz2wsx3edc• 13 years ago

Cooking being enjoyable/rewarding is subjective. I could find it neither.

Recipe for mental illness? One could argue the potential time-savings could prevent some illness(s).

Maybe soylent-enfused-polyphasic-sleep-pomodoro-lifestyles suit the Hacker of Tomorrow.

Devil's advocate aside, we need long term studies & regulation around these products. And, well, regulation should be up to your local government.

cgag• 13 years ago

I feel like people probably said this same sort of thing about making fires or washing clothes by hand.

Cutting on sleep is bad I agree, but cooking doesn't feel like something worth thinking about on a regular basis.

bksenior• 13 years ago

Youre bias is substantially more harmful and ignorant than anything in soylent. This may be snake oil with protein, but the idea that someone is challenging a very deeply ingrained accepted truth (humans need food) creates a process that leads scientific progress and promotes at least an opportunity for innovation.

Not to be harsh, but your diatribe is exactly the opposite of what HackerNews stands for. Your armchair quarterback position offers nothing

That said I am passing on this until there is way more information.

Falling3• 13 years ago

>Not to be harsh, but your diatribe is exactly the opposite of what HackerNews stands for.

Says who?

kstenerud• 13 years ago

In many places, people of a minimum level of affluence hire maids, cooks, and butlers to handle the day-to-day tasks involved in running a household. Finding alternative means to offload tasks you're not interested in doing is not a bad thing if it allows you to employ your time and resources more productively.

Mental illness? Give me a break! Just because YOU don't like it doesn't mean that everyone else must meet your arbitrary standards.

fc2• 13 years ago

Totally man, we should go back to traveling by horse while we are at it.

pbreit7• 13 years ago

I disagree pretty emphatically. Not having to cook every meal is just one benefit of the product. Other benefits include cost, weight level, mental acuity, stamina, skin. You could eat soylent 14 times a week and still make a nice meal every day. And in fact, the creator suggested that he enjoyed regular food meals even more after being on soylent.

onan_barbarian• 13 years ago

It's a long time back (1023 days, actually), and I can't find a reference to the article itself, but I do believe we had an article about how to take a poo by none other than Zed Shaw. At least I felt moved to comment thusly:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1596830

I don't recall whether Zed was optimizing for speed or comfort.

therandomguy• 13 years ago

You could say this about anything and everything. Walking 8 miles to work instead of driving, washing clothes by hand instead of using the washer, buying meat from the store instead of hunting etc.

snogglethorpe• 13 years ago

> ...and a tasty, gruel-free breakfast

Hey, I love gruel!

I just wish I had more time to make it...

philwelch• 13 years ago

> This trend towards saving time by sacrificing basic requirements like eating and sleeping is increasingly absurd. In a year or two, I'll open Hacker News and there'll be an article in the top ten that describes how you, too, can Avoid Wasting Time Due To Lengthy Bowel Movements. Don't believe the hype. Have a good night's rest, followed by a leisurely shit and a tasty, gruel-free breakfast you made yourself, and you'll be a better person for it.

As it happens, it's much healthier for your colon to squat and have a nice quick shit rather than sitting on the toilet and taking your time. Unfortunately, no one does this in some places because they don't really have squatting toilets.

everyone2• 13 years ago

I do wonder what the long term effects of eating this would be. Ive read some of the creators blog posts and I get the impression he doesn't know what hes doing. He has no education or experience in nutrition. He seems to have this reductionist view of the human body and eating. For instance he will say I was feeling a little X today so I added a few grams more Y and today I'm fine! Basically he is being incredibly unscientific about it.

kumarski• 13 years ago

Haters gonna hate, builders gonna build. When's the last time the economist was correct with a prediction of the future?

jacques_chester16• 13 years ago

Sometimes, leaving stuff to experts is wise.

http://examine.com/blog/soylent-is-made-from-hype/

We complain when non-programmers tell us how to do our jobs because it takes a lot of study and experience to do it properly.

jckt3• 13 years ago

I understand Rob Rhinehart just playing around, some initial self-experimentation, that kinda thing. There's no reason to get the experts from the get-go. But when he got serious and made started his crowdfunding, and hired a bunch of marketers and finance people, a customer relations guy and only one scientist that isn't even a food scientist, you wonder -- is he really serious about the nutrition thing? His team might as well have been hand-picked for a social-networking startup.

Not saying that it's impossible for people outside the relevant field can't make breakthroughs, but to assume that such a result were a much more than improbable possibility, such that you didn't even need to hire one guy with the relevant credentials? That's chutzpah.

Good luck with the 300k. Hopefully they hire a few food scientists/nutritionists.

jacques_chester16• 13 years ago

You don't get it. He read some freshmen textbooks and noodled around on pubmed, that makes him the expert. /s

DanBC5• 13 years ago

> is he really serious about the nutrition thing? His team might as well have been hand-picked for a social-networking startup

They were a traditional tech startup. They pivoted when that market collapsed.

http://blog.soylent.me/

> YC accepted our original idea, to build affordable wireless networks for developing countries, for the summer 2012 batch. We spent the entire summer prototyping our technology and looking for a customer. By demo day, we had a white space radio with a Bill of Materials (BOM) of $70 operating around Silicon Valley. We didn’t have customers and were facing an intimidating set of regulatory hurdles. We spoke with some of the valley’s top VC’s but failed to raise. Instead of pushing for investment that wasn’t there, we went back to focusing on acquiring customers and finishing our product as soon as possible. We never found a customer.

It is irresponsible for them to launch a product, with massive publicity, and claim the product is safe for everyone (diabetics? pregnant women? People with Crohn's? Anorexics?) and to claim there is much evidence to support safety.

loupeabody3• 13 years ago

Thanks for the link. This article appears to be the most positive, least biased article criticizing Rob and Soylent I've come across. That's something I like to see, although the title is a bit link-baitey.

I'm in support of what Soylent aims to become, and if I'm not mistaken, so is the author of this article. All I'm seeing here are very direct suggestions for the next formulation of Soylent, nothing that lambastes Rob for his recklessness and ignorance.

What's more, this article, seemingly written by a nutrition expert, doesn't spread FUD over the potential dangers of exclusively consuming Soylent. Even in its infancy, if all I have to do is take a multivitamin for my psuedovitamin quotas, some extra whey and creatine for my gainz, and maybe a salad and a steak every few days in addition to Soylent, I'm still sold. It would still save plenty of time and effort to get the benefits of optimal nutrition. That is, if what's claimed about consuming Soylent is actually true.

jacques_chester16• 13 years ago

The tricky part is that there are:

1. Macronutrients, two of which are essential to life.

2. Micronutrients, of which

a. Vitamins are essential to life, and

b. Pseudo-vitamins are critical for health.

c. Other micronutrients with positive effects of various degrees and kinds.

You can absolutely survive for a long time on a reductionist soup. That's what's given to lots of very obese patients in protein-sparing modified fasts. The problem is that there are a metric buttload of micronutrients that improve health in the long term. And new ones are being discovered all the time. The easiest way to get the benefits is ... eat a varied diet. Just like they told you at primary school.

But most of the arguments in favour of soylent are daft. Really, just silly. Save time cooking? Cook something easier. Prevents eating the "wrong thing"? Why is the "wrong thing" even in your house? And so on.

HN is full of people who like to be hyper-rational and so this appeals. But I think it's an example of where myopically optimising one or two parameters leads to foolish outcomes.

pbreit7• 13 years ago

I think it is rarely, if ever, wise to "leave" things to the experts. Amateurs can make (and have made) valuable contributions in just about every subject.

jacques_chester16• 13 years ago

I think it's wise to leave things to experts most of the time, especially if you can be conversant with the experts.

DanBC5• 13 years ago

Unfortunately amateurs have a lousy track record with nutrition.

jonathanjaeger2• 13 years ago

There's a ton of maltodextrin in this according to the nutrition facts. Can we really say it's a good idea to have that much maltodextrin for carbs compared to whole wheat breads, whole grain/whole wheat pastas, or other "cleaner" carb sources? I'm no nutritionist, but all those bodybuilding supplements and nutritional drinks that are full of maltodextrin don't get a good rep from the health community. Correct me if I'm wrong.

jacques_chester16• 13 years ago

Maltodextrin is used in bodybuilding supplements because it's quickly digested. It causes an insulin spike which might help shuttle protein into muscle tissue.

jonathanjaeger2• 13 years ago

Right exactly. It's used as a postworkout supplement often (possibly with dextrose) and it's pretty cheap. I wouldn't want a quickly digested carb as my main carb source in Soylent.

aristus• 13 years ago

I'm curious why no one mentions Unimix, memorably described by Roy Blount Jr as "Purina Famine Chow", made and distributed by disaster relief organizations. This stuff has been done before.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unimix

jacques_chester16• 13 years ago

It gets mentioned most times that soylent is raised.

The thing is that soylent is a perfect storm of PR.

Lone genius has brilliant insight, develops perfect food. Just like those 60s pulp SF novels where people eat food in pill form! Why did nobody think of this before?

Lots of things that become popular or widespread do so because of the narrative they fit into.

For example, which story will get published:

"22 year old PhD student corrects famous scientist"

"14 year old student corrects famous scientist".

People correct famous scientists all the time, that's how science works. But it is the narrative (brilliant youngster vs establishment) that makes it a story worth printing.

And if a story is good enough, journalists won't look too hard at it. They're called "Too Good to Check" stories.

DaniFong• 13 years ago

I think the most interesting thing about this whole experiment is that it took this long for someone to do it. You would assume there'd be a wealth of information from military studies of battle-ready rations, or something.

DanBC5• 13 years ago

Some people want to try liquid feed. Here are some already existing companies making liquid feeds:

http://ensure.com/ Ensure

https://www.nutricia.co.uk/fortisip// Fortisip

http://www.complan.com/ Complan

http://abbottnutrition.com/brands/abbott-brands Abbott Nutrition Brands

http://www.medifast1.com/index.jsp Medifast

http://www.optifast.com/Pages/index.aspx Optifast

http://www.slim-fast.com/products/ Slimfast

Soylent make some claims about world hunger. As the article mentions Soylent is currently expensive. Their crowdfunding level was food replacement at about $7 per day. That's way outside the range of the 20% of the world population living on less than $1.25 per day. The main ingredient of Soylent is water. Unfortunately, about a billion people do not have access to clean drinking water.

Hopefully with mass manufacturing they can get the cost down. And they could plow back some of the profits into providing clean water.

There are other worrying things about Soylent.

> For anyone who struggles with allergies, heartburn, acid reflux or digestion, has trouble controlling weight or cholesterol, or simply doesn't have the means to eat well, soylent is for you.

> Soylent frees you from the time and money spent shopping, cooking and cleaning, puts you in excellent health, and vastly reduces your environmental impact by eliminating much of the waste and harm coming from agriculture, livestock, and food-related trash.

From (https://campaign.soylent.me/soylent-free-your-body)

Lots of 'problems with digestion' are going to be serious illness for which liquid feeds are used. It is irresponsible for Soylent to claim to be safe for those people without extensive testing.

There's no evidence that a liquid feed replacing all meals will put anyone in excellent health.

The product uses agricultural products. As the article mentions, milk proteins are significant impact.

Soylent also claims to have a shelf life of years. I'm still very curious about this. Many micronutrients will not have a shelflife of years. vitamin C needs to be kept in the dark, in an airtight container, away from heat and moisture.

It was a mild irritant when it was one guy experimenting on himself (but giving out the recipe for other people to follow along). Launching a product from that with these claims, especially that there's "much evidence", is irresponsible.

Soylent: Gruel today, gruel tomorrow

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