Hacker School Soylent

http://www.cookingfor20.com/2013/06/18/hacker-school-soylent-recipe/

by CesareBorgia • 13 years ago

40 98 13 years ago

So who is going to open the first branch of fast food soylent chain?

lifeformed• 13 years ago

A restaurant is overkill, how about just a vending machine? You could put quite a markup on them (like $5 a bottle) and people would buy them for the time savings.

DanBC13• 13 years ago

Walgreens sells Ensure. (http://www.walgreens.com/search/results.jsp?Ntt=ensure&x=-18...)

A six pack costs $8.50 (http://www.walgreens.com/store/c/ensure-nutrition-shakes-liq...). Each bottle is one serving, and contains 250 kCalories. (http://ensure.com/products/ensure)

Here's a list of the Walgreens locations in SF. (http://www.walgreens.com/storelocator/result.jsp?oTrk=1&_req...)

mixmastamyk• 13 years ago

If you're leaving the house/office I think the value evaporates. Unless you are a door-to-door salesman perhaps.

DanBC13• 13 years ago

The article mentions, many times, the other soylent company. It's true, you can wait for them to ship. But if you're desperate to try a liquid feed there are many brands already in existence. These are produced by multinational companies in quality environments with known, tested, ingredients.

Ensure is one well known brand. Fortisip is another.

This recipe seems to be carefully worked out - they show the working and at least have some links to proper research. And they're not making extravagant claims.

colinshark• 13 years ago

I think the difference here is that the goal is more ambitious (100% diet replacement). Ensure is explicitly a dietary supplement. The marketing, cost, flavor, and nutrient profile reflect that.

It's like wanting to enter a high end auto race and you just buy a sports car off the lot. It will be expensive and slow. The fast cars are custom built because the market is small and the requirements are unique.

DanBC13• 13 years ago

Ensure can be a meal replacement. It is a complete food. It is one of the products used to force feed people who are on hunger strike (and also anorexics detained under section of the mental health act in English psychiatric hospitals).

I'm not sure what you mean by the cost, flavour, and nutrient profile. It's a complete food. If you want more calories you use Ensure plus. If you need more protein you use the high protein product. If you want savory versions you use one of the savory varieties - here's chicken (http://www.chemistdirect.co.uk/ensure-plus-savoury-chicken_1...).

The reason Ensure is sweet or highly flavoured is to encourage people to eat - these people are ill and need the nutrition.

A person eating only Ensure is not going to be any iller than someone eating either 'official Soylent' or 'open source Soylent' - and probably not as ill, because Ensure is created by people who know what they're doing, using quality assured ingredients and sealed in suitable packaging. This is important for Soylent to work on - I hope they include good packaging.

All the existing products tell you not to survive on a liquid diet without medical supervision. I take that be be a big sign that living on liquid feed is sub-optimal and needs to be done cautiously. Other people say it's a sign of an industry that can be disrupted.

My posts in this thread are trying quite hard to be constructive. I admit I find it difficult because I have strongly negative opinions about some of the Soylent product.

zachalexander17• 13 years ago

there are many brands already in existence.

Yes, and this may work for some, but I think you're missing a few points.

Soylent is largely about taking control of your nutrition. Making your own soylent gives you complete control, like some of the more hardcore versions of Linux perhaps. Buying Rob's premade mix is like installing Ubuntu – it's lazy, but at least it's open source (or will be soon). Making your own from someone else's recipe (like mine) is perhaps somewhere inbetween.

By contrast, buying Ensure is like buying literal Unix (if you can even do that anymore). I mean, it's similar to using Linux, but... who does that?

speedyrev• 13 years ago

Or you could try eating a healthy meal.

zachalexander17• 13 years ago

I've done that many times, and cooked healthy meals for a living for two years (I mean, click around the blog). There is no contradiction between the two : )

bitsweet• 13 years ago

you lost me at brown sugar.

zachalexander17• 13 years ago

Why? I'm actually pretty anti-sugar, and was opposed to Rob's formulations for a long time because he was using straight maltodextrin for all his carbs (200 g). But 25 g of sugar per meal, with tons of protein, fat, and fiber, dramatically reduces the effect on blood sugar compared to drinking Coke or eating candy.

Alex39172• 13 years ago

As omnivores, what's best for our health is eating a highly varied and changing diet. This is the exact opposite. Considering the cure for cancer is basically fresh vegetables, fruits, and fungi, it's not too hard to figure out what's going to happen in the long run.

workhere-io• 13 years ago

And as previously mentioned by many people here on HN, it's amazing that none of the people involved with Soylent seem to have an education or work experience related to diets or nutrition (see the "Team" section on https://campaign.soylent.me/soylent-free-your-body).

I'm not sure I'd want to be doing experiments with my body based on advice from IT engineers.

j_col• 13 years ago

Considering the cure for cancer is basically fresh vegetables, fruits, and fungi...

I've met vegetarians with cancer. I'm pretty certain it's not that simple.

doktrin• 13 years ago

I can't speak to the parents 'cure for cancer' claim, but it's worth noting that 'vegetarian' really only means a diet without meat.

It's quite possible to be a vegetarian without consuming any more fresh fruits and vegetables than that found in a conventional diet.

jack-r-abbit8• 13 years ago

This is the first I'm hearing that "soylent" is "an open-source food movement". I thought is was one guy that tried some stuff and now is starting to build a start-up around it. It also seems weird that what is labeled as the flagship “distro” of this so-called open-source movement is not actually open-source. So now I'm confused. Is this just a wording issue I'm confused about? Are we using "open-source" for everything now?

eclipxe2• 13 years ago

Just 20-somethings with too much time on their hands and no clue trying to be 'food hackers' in the midst of a gigantic bubble. Nothing to see here. Move along.

zachalexander17• 13 years ago

I'm actually 30 : ) And I actually have zero time on my hands because I'm in school (as stated in the post).

joshstrange• 13 years ago

I am 22 but in fact I don't have enough time on my hands which is the exact reason I am trying Soylent. Trying to work my day job and my side project leave me very little time and Soylent is offering a cheap, fast, easy method to consume the needed nutrients everyday. I'm not sure what you have against it.

tantalor2• 13 years ago

I think the author is a little confused. The Soylent Corporation (soylent.me) has not said anything about publishing or "open-sourcing" the recipe. I doubt they would.

They will be required publish the nutrition facts and ingredients, but that's not the same as a recipe.

Also, "Soylent" at this point refers to their product, so using their name for your DIY version risks serious trademark infringement.

EDIT: They do plan on publishing the "formula" (http://discourse.soylent.me/t/will-the-official-soylent-reci...)

jack-r-abbit8• 13 years ago

That is what I was thinking. I'm not sure who even owns the "Soylent" mark since it comes from a book that was also made into a movie.

zachalexander17• 13 years ago

Rob has confirmed that he sees this as a movement, and is down with people DIYing soylent, even though his company is the only big-S Soylent.

And he is going to open-source his recipe, he just hasn't done it yet, I think because he's still putting final touches on it. A preliminary list of ingredients was recently posted to blog.soylent.me if you're interested.

zhemao• 13 years ago

I really don't understand Soylent. Do people really hate eating so much? Eating is one of the greatest joys of human existence. I understand that people have other things to do, but are you really so busy you can't sit down to enjoy a good meal?

jack-r-abbit8• 13 years ago

One thing that you will hear repeated often (including in this comment) is that you can still enjoy eating a good meal. But not many people eat a good meal for every meal. There are many many things that people enjoy doing but do not want to do 3 times a day, every day. So if a glass of Soylent (or one of the other commercial products available today) in the morning helps me resist the office doughnuts, that is a positive. That is not to say that I can't end my day with a nice meal out with my family.

Slimbo• 13 years ago

Meal replacement shakes can be useful when you're trying to control your calories while still getting what you need. Particularly good when per iodising your training, so you might still need measured amounts of protein and carbs but you're trying to lose fat after building muscle. Very easy to measure out 1,500 calories worth of powder a day vs guessing calorific content of food.

Having said that, I don't get why the current geek love for Soylent when there's really no shortage of meal replacement shakes out there that seem to do the same job but cheaper. I also love actually eating food, so would only use a shake for a short term goal.

zachalexander17• 13 years ago

Because I would rather (a) make my own soylent or (b) buy some from an open-source distro like Rob's than (c) buy some from a cheesy corporation like whoever makes Ensure.

IvyMike• 13 years ago

I agree with you.

But before you get too far down this rabbit hole, consider that people's eating habits occupy the same emotional space as religion and politics.

In other words, it is possible but unlikely that you'll be able to argue someone out of their position on any of the three topics.

adregan• 13 years ago

It seems as though the time it takes to engineer Soylent could be used to cook and freeze a bunch of food.

zachalexander17• 13 years ago

Engineer? Yes. It's been a huge timesink for me personally this past few months. But I find it intrinsically interesting, so I haven't minded.

In the long-run, I think it will save me time, and more importantly, improve the quality of my time. To the extent that I'm trading time spent standing in line at a food truck on lunch break in SOMA for time spent researching nutrition, I think that's a good trade.

tankbot• 13 years ago

It's not that people hate eating, not at all, it's just inconvenient in many ways. Something like Soylent solves the problem of convenience and allows a person to take in nutrients while remaining productive.

It's not for every meal. You'll still want to go have dinner with friends or family, but during the day it would be nice to chug a glass of this and keep working; hands clean.

derekp7• 13 years ago

So this is different than Slimfast -- how? From what I understand, Slimfast is pretty close to a meal replacement. Or is this intended to be in the same category?

breadbox• 13 years ago

This is missing the point so far it's almost a non sequitur. Reading, talking with friends, playing computer games. I enjoy these all at least as much as I enjoy eating. But I still wouldn't want to be required to do any one of them every single day for the rest of my life. It's nice to have options.

zachalexander17• 13 years ago

This. (OP here.)

I love food. But I hate being forced to partake of it 3x/day.

speeder• 13 years ago

I see the guy dismissing the dangers of Soy hormones...

Well, beside making chickens get ready to be killed much faster (a farmer I talked claimed that with normal rations his chicken took 4 months to be able to be killed, with soy rations, you could sell them to be killed after 40 days), I DO tested avoiding Soy like the plague, and see if it had any effect, and it had (including I did some testosterone blood testing to check).

Also, I think eating "industrial" food is a very fast way to miss important nutrients we don't know much yet about, but are present in our daily normal food.

But I get why someone would wish to do that, sometimes I feel tempted too, specially because cooking all my food (with SO help even) on Sunday takes a long time (4, 5 hours... mostly result of having shitty kitchen), and eating food while on my PC at night is not much easy... And I hate washing dishes.

dismiss21x• 13 years ago

Organic soy? Or GMO Soy?

Please post your analysis about the effects of soy - I'm interested.

My own research on the subject shows that the research of male soy consumption being harmful is ambiguous, but mostly proven to not be harmful. Wikipedia has a discussion on the academic research on this as well, if you want a casual glance.

zachalexander17• 13 years ago

dismissing the dangers of Soy hormones...

...by citing a scientific review article. Do you have a paper of comparable quality to rebut it with?

camdykeman6• 13 years ago

This mix is completely devoid of BCAAs. Soy protein has no branch chain amino acids - meaning it completely lacks THE fundamental building blocks used in building all bodily tissue.

Look more into different kinds of protein. You might also want to do this for your carbs. Suggesting that brown sugar is a good way to "top up" our carb load is terrible advice - all cane sugars are simple sugars, meaning they jack up your glycemic index and then crash you after. Complex carbs have a completely different rate and method of metabolism.

Please don't offer this as an option to people until you've done some substantial (read minimal) research. At least Rhinehart’s project is presented as an experiment and not a hobby-kit. Theres an ethical responsibility involved in projects like this that the OP is blatently neglecting.

eclipxe2• 13 years ago

Yeah, seriously. "top up your carbs with some brown sugar!" made me cringe.

zachalexander17• 13 years ago

Why, exactly?

If your concern is GI, the impact on blood sugar is going to be very much blunted by all the protein, fat, and fiber. I don't remotely feel a sugar rush when I drink this.

hablahaha• 13 years ago

People are protein...

axb2• 13 years ago

Soy is a complete protein. It contains all three BCAAs: leucine, isoleucine, and valine.

camdykeman6• 13 years ago

Yeah, I tried to edit the "completely" out of my phrasing almost immediately but comments had already been left so I couldn't.

To clarify, soy is a complete protein. What I meant was that the levels of BCAAs in soy are relatively low - especially when only taking in ~80g of total protein / day as the recipe suggests. This is why many longterm vegetarians/vegans often still have to supplement, dispite a high-soy diet. Soy protein is composed of about 18% BCAAs and is fast to metabolise, especially when isolated and diluted in liquid. Furthermore, without solid food in your stomach, certain enzymes are never released by your body's GI so metabolism is left almost entirely to your kidneys.

DanBC13• 13 years ago

At least Rhinehart’s project is presented as an experiment

Wait, what? Have you read the crowd funding page for Rhinehart's project?

(http://www.soylent.me/)

It's terrible. It claims it's safe, and puts you in optimum health, and etc etc.

Theres an ethical responsibility involved in projects like this that the OP is blatently neglecting.

I agree. I think these are terrible ideas.

zachalexander17• 13 years ago

>Theres an ethical responsibility ... that the OP is blatently neglecting

Did you not see the "I am not a doctor" disclaimer?

I'm serious. I personally talked about this to my doctor – the same guy who told me a year ago that the best thing I could do to be healthy is eat a varied, vegetable-rich, meat-low, Pollanesque diet – and he thought it was a good idea. And I recommend people do the same thing.

run4yourlives7• 13 years ago

I really don't understand this Soylent nonsense:

1. I like food. The smell, experience and taste. Why in god's name would I eat powder to save myself the "hassle" of eating food? That's like promoting adoption as a method of avoiding the "hassle" of having sex.

2. Why the hell would you associate the brand of a product that you believe is healthy with a movie that is about feeding dead people back to us? That's the first thing I think about when I hear the word Soylent - that "Soylent Green is people!" Yum! Let me rush right out and get me some of that.

To me personally, Soylent is the very antithesis of the idea of living this short life I have. With like 40% of people too damn fat for their own good, I don't get how anyone sees a positive outcome for them.

camdykeman6• 13 years ago

Its not about whether you "like food" or not.

• Not everyone has access to proper ingredients/tools/knowledge that are required for maintaining a proper diet.

• The vast majority of food is perishable and does not transport/keep/distribute well.

• Lots of people like food too much and overindulge.

Your analogy of sex would be more appropriate if you made it analogous to sleep.

Many people out there love to sleep. But I don't think anyone would argue that sleeping is a "good" or "efficient" use of time, nor do I think anyone would be opposed to providing more or better sleep to those who currently struggle with it.

Soylet is flawed, but subjectively arguing that Soylent is stupid because you like to stuff your face makes you as ignorant as those "40% of people too damn fat for their own good" that you so readily attack, it just means you have a better control mechanism.

Stop trolling.

run4yourlives7• 13 years ago

Stop Trolling?

Not everyone has access to proper ingredients/tools/knowledge that are required for maintaining a proper diet.

Actually, everyone does have this. Whether they choose to use it is another story. I've yet to meet a person on this planet though that doesn't know that you can't survive on chocolate and potato chips. The stomach cramps are a pretty good clue.

The vast majority of food is perishable and does not transport/keep/distribute well

Thankfully, over the last 20,000 years we've learned to live of the things around us, like animals and plants. I don't understand this argument. There is no requirement for food to be distributed over vast distances and times. The fact that we choose to do this is a societal choice.

Lots of people like food too much and overindulge.

So? The already have things like Slimfast for these people.

But I don't think anyone would argue that sleeping is a "good" or "efficient" use of time

Life is about living, not being efficient. However you choose to spend your time is the best use of your time. There is no race to win.

nor do I think anyone would be opposed to providing more or better sleep to those who currently struggle with it.

Are you honestly suggesting that Soylent is better for someone than a proper meal? You better have a pretty long list of peer reviewed research to back that statement up if you are.

subjectively arguing that Soylent is stupid because you like to stuff your face

Enjoying food is not "stuffing your face". Perhaps if this is what your relationship with food is I can see the appeal. That's abnormal though.

DiegoNolan• 13 years ago

I could and would argue that sleeping is a good use of time.

DanBC13• 13 years ago

Personally, I think Soylent is stupid.

Having said that:

With like 40% of people too damn fat for their own good, I don't get how anyone sees a positive outcome for them.

So, Fat_Bob is at work. He's made the effort and had a good healthy breakfast. He knows when he goes home that him and his significant other are going to make the effort and eat a healthy dinner. But it's midday, and outside the office is a FatBurger, and opposite them is a GreasyJoes, and they both have special offers if you buy a 64ounce soda. So, Fat_Bob just slurps down a liquid nutrition drink. He knows he's got some kind of useful nutrition from it, and maybe it's enough to ease the cravings while he walks past FatBurger and GreasyJoes to get to the Carrot_Stick_Stall.

At least, I think that's what they're aiming for.

zachalexander17• 13 years ago

Exactly. "Soylent : food :: water : drinks" is the idea. Water isn't my favorite beverage, but I'm really glad I can just turn on the tap and quench my thirst, without having to buy a latte.

What I don't understand is why you would call soylent "stupid" right before explaining its utility.

satellitecat• 13 years ago

I don't really understand the whole objection to Soylent.

1. I don't care much about food. The smell, experience and taste. Why in god's name would I spend a bunch of time each day just to have the "joy" of eating food? I could be doing other things, like having sex (Seriously. "Too hungry for sex, let's make [time appropriate meal name]" happens a few times a month!)

2. The name is humourous, and was a good way to get attention. Could do with a re-brand, but I figure we nerdy types who would be interested in this would enjoy the somewhat sick humour of the name.

To me personally, eating, and the things involved in it (grocery shopping, preparation, making and packing lunch or going out, deciding what to make, poopin', flossing, etc) are the very antithesis of the idea of living this short life I have.

I just have better things to do than chew and taste stuff. If I feel like experiencing some nice food, then I can go out of my way to get it. In fact, I'd probably be more inclined to make a couple good meals per week, and would enjoy going out or ordering in more, if I wasn't having to deal with food every day.

There's always someone in these Soylent threads who says, "Just learn to cook, it doesn't have to be time consuming or expensive, and you'll enjoy it!" but I just. don't. care. about food.

jack-r-abbit8• 13 years ago

That's like promoting adoption as a method of avoiding the "hassle" of having sex.

Allow me to over share a little bit for a moment. My wife and I had trouble conceiving. So the "process" very much became a task. It was scheduled. It was monitored (not the "act" itself, pervs... LOL). It involved various shots on schedule with other things. I won't go so far to call it a "hassle" but I will tell you that even something as enjoyable as sex can be reduced to a chore if you make it one.

run4yourlives7• 13 years ago

I appreciate what you are saying, but my point was more that having sex is a lot more than making a baby, in the same way that eating is a lot more than refueling your body.

zachalexander17• 13 years ago

OP here.

I like food. The smell, experience and taste.

So do I. I cooked food for a living for two years, and am planning a dinner party this weekend.

Why in god's name would I eat powder to save myself the "hassle" of eating food? That's like promoting adoption as a method of avoiding the "hassle" of having sex.

That is a poor analogy. A better one is this:

Imagine you were forced by biology to have sex three times a day. Personally I'm a fan of sex, but anything would get old if you were forced to do it 3x/day, every day. ("Really? Now? I have to go to work, I don't have time for this.")

I love food, and soylent lets me enjoy food on my own terms.

mdip• 13 years ago

As others have pointed out, I think you've misunderstood the concept. This wouldn't be the first time an idea came to light that a lot of people didn't get (Twitter, anyone? ... crickets ... maybe not here).

1. I like food. Eating, on the whole, isn't a hassle. Actually, it's quite easy. I have candy bars stashed in my desk, and soda in my fridge. Unfortunately, I don't always know how my day is going to roll, so that candy bar and soda might end up being lunch. Last year I made up my own meal replacement (only for lunch) to combat this problem and stuck with it for a few months. If someone could produce a meal replacement that made me feel full, kept me off of a sugar crash, that I could consume quickly when I'm too busy to think about eating healthy and was moderately healthy. There's no way, with my lifestyle (and desire) that I'm going to stick with a strict Whole Food healthy diet, and almost anything moderately healthy is going to be an improvement over mine (and many others') diets. The sex analogy doesn't work very well because a lot of people go a long time without sex due to schedules. You can survive without sex for longer than you can without food (not to mention there's fewer "bad ways to have sex" by comparison).

2. I thought the name was funny. I'm not a marketing guy, so I couldn't tell you if the selection of that name would speak negatively to the rest of the world, but I'd admit that name was the reason I read the initial article about the product.

...Soylent is the very antithesis of the idea of living this short life I have. With like 40% of people too damn fat for their own good...

I think you've just pointed out why 40% of people might actually be too damn fat for their own good. Eating junk food is enjoyable and having to maintain a healthy diet is the very antithesis of the idea of living this short life to many people. For those people, Soylent isn't really relevant.

freeasinfree• 13 years ago

"I’m putting this and future recipes on GitHub, and when I get a chance I’ll add data on individual ingredients and nutrients, probably as Ruby hashes and JSON objects."

Why?

Why does everything have to be treated like code?

tantalor2• 13 years ago

Perhaps so you can tweak it to your tastes, e.g., "extra 10% carbs for me, please."

zachalexander17• 13 years ago

Who said everything had to be treated like code? I just think recipes benefit from version control, plus I plan to put other stuff in that repo eventually (like Ruby scripts to help you develop your own mixes).

jonathanjaeger2• 13 years ago

"...soon I wouldn’t be in Boston to benefit from the group’s joint purchases of 50-pound sacks of maltodextrin."

Everybody seems to be harping on the issue that they like eating food, so why replace it. I'd love to have a great on-the-go shake that's better than meal replacement alternatives, however all this emphasis on maltodextrin as the main carb source makes me reconsider ever buying these Soylent, or similar, products.

DanBC13• 13 years ago

I'd love to have a great on-the-go shake that's better than meal replacement alternatives,

What are meal replacement alternatives? (Things like Ensure or slimfast? or something else?)

What would make Soylent or OSSoylent better than meal replacement alternatives?

jonathanjaeger2• 13 years ago

Well best case scenario I would go to the trouble to get out a blender and make a shake with ingredients that I think are optimal: oats, banana, natural peanut butter, whey protein, or a number of other ingredients that cover my nutritional needs in "shake" form. If I'm in a hurry I've picked up meal replacements from the store, but most have sugar alcohols, sugar, or other processed ingredients that are fine once but you don't want all your meals like that.

zachalexander17• 13 years ago

I'm not particularly interested in maltodextrin either – haven't used it in either of the two recipes I've written. That was a sort of rhetorical stand-in for "bulk ingredients I might not otherwise have access to".

Honestly I feel like a lot of soylent people are overengineering it, using obscure, industrial carbs like maltodextrin when there are plenty of varieties of flour, starch, and sugar already available at supermarkets everywhere.

adamwong2463• 13 years ago

So I just wanted to shamelessly self promote something I've been working on.

http://soylog-staging.herokuapp.com/recipes/1

This is my RoR apps that I was developing, but which has recently lapsed into inactivity, which allows you to create, modify and fork recipes in a very similar way to github. It will also (soon) allow you to track your usage, supplies and health. But for now, the project is on standby.

adamwong2463• 13 years ago

And it's crashing. Damn, hold on.

adamwong2463• 13 years ago

it's back up now

fudged712• 13 years ago

Literally drinking the kool-aid.

Hacker School Soylent

Related Stories