After months of delay, Soylent finally ships

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/04/after-months-of-delay-soylent-finally-ships/

by avsaro • 12 years ago

67 80 12 years ago

taskstrike• 12 years ago

I ordered a bottle, can't wait to try it out.

I'm not sure replacing your entire meals with any drinks is healthy since chewing improves digestion, but this seem great for a breakfast replacement.

wlesieutre2• 12 years ago

Is it really the act of moving your jaw around that helps you digest better? I would have figured that meant "You can digest food more completely when it's been mushed into tiny pieces before you swallow it," which Soylent has covered pretty well.

pyrocat• 12 years ago

When we chew, our body sends a signal to our stomach that it's time to start digesting food.

mnem• 12 years ago

Chewing something that also causes you to salivate makes your stomach produce more acid in preparation for digesting whatever it is: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3376919

kamaal• 12 years ago

I am currently drinking Ragi Malt[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_millet#As_Beverage]

People in South of India have been drinking this as a breakfast meal for may be thousands of years.

Also its kind of like pretty common in folklore for providing immense health benefits, besides its nutritional value.

jph• 12 years ago

Congratulations to the entire Soylent team! I'm an early backer and just received the shipping notice. Soylent has done an excellent job, and all the more so by keeping us all up to date on the progress.

rdl2• 12 years ago

It's interesting reading about the difficulties Soylent has had in sourcing ingredients -- whenever I think about processed food (which I guess Soylent is taken to an extreme), I assume it's a huge industry with infinite resources -- if they're the largest customer for some of their suppliers, maybe the industry isn't that big, or they're just picking really specialty/premium ingredients.

I guess this is why most processed food is 1) made by huge, fairly vertically integrated firms like ConAgra 2) uses scary ingredients with substitution.

In general I'm happier with the delays to produce a great product than rushing to get something substandard out, at least for Soylent. Should be great for trips.

nbouscal• 12 years ago

According to their previous updates, they picked a particular rice protein that apparently has a different mesh size, thanks to an innovation by the manufacturer that has not spread throughout the industry yet. This choice was made to achieve a certain mouthfeel that they couldn't accomplish with other rice proteins. Not exactly a specialty/premium ingredient, but close enough.

batmansbelt3• 12 years ago

They should have used Barley or quinoa. They are much healthier than rice, and tastier too.

MDS1002• 12 years ago

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

daeken• 12 years ago

Bear in mind, this is from a year ago, from early in its development. I'm not positive how much of this is inaccurate, but I know that omega-3 and other ingredients were added to round it out. I'd take this article with a grain of salt.

pit• 12 years ago

I think you meant to say "0.05 ml of an aqueous solution of sodium chloride."

Craig125• 12 years ago

I definitely believe that the only reason why Soylent is being successful is because of hype. How does the product they are visioning differ from the food replacement given through a feeding tube? Working in a hospital, I have personally witnessed people with swallowing disabilities living on this stuff for more than a decade!

esrauch2• 12 years ago

Are the food replacements palatable to consume without the feeding tube? Commercially available? Vegan option?

Shorel• 12 years ago

Sadly, there's no keto friendly version. Only standard dietary carb loaded stuff.

musicaldope2• 12 years ago

Of course there isn't--that would involve completely remaking a complex product to satisfy some fad diet a few people follow.

bjt• 12 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised to see a low carb version if 1.0 gets traction. Soylent itself is a "fad diet a few people [may someday] follow."

rosser• 12 years ago

Keto isn't (just) a "fad diet". There are people whose health depends on rigorously following a keto diet.

cube_yellow• 12 years ago

The best DIY keto soylents: http://diy.soylent.me/recipes?q=keto&sort=favoritesCount

MarcusVorenus2• 12 years ago

As an alternative you could combine Soylent with intermittent fasting to get keto benefits.

mentos• 12 years ago

At times I've found eating to be a chore and wish I had a supplement like this to allow me to skip a meal. So I'll probably give this a try.

I'm curious what the long term effects are of substituting this for a majority of your meals is though.

corysama• 12 years ago

There have been a few journalists who tried living exclusively on Soylent for 2-4 weeks to make a story. They've all had consistent results AFAICT. The taste takes some getting used to. But, most liked it after a week and it's easy to add a bit of vanilla or other flavoring. Once you figure out how much you personally need, you feel energized and not hungry or craving. After a few days, your bowel movements get smaller and less frequent. Your jaw gets sore from lack of activity. Taking up chewing gum is recommended. Eventually, the only major, consistent complaint is the social complications. Eating and drinking with other people is very important. And, it's awkward being the guy at the table with no food on his plate...

logfromblammo2• 12 years ago

The likely long term effect is that the person eating it seeks out different foods to eat.

As far as I am aware, every attempted complete synthetic food replacement has failed due to psychological reasons, like texture, palatability, and variety, rather than nutritional sufficiency.

Put simply, people stop eating it, whatever it is, because it does not satisfy the mind along with the body.

theseoafs• 12 years ago

What kind of results has Soylent had so far? I haven't heard much about it for a year or two. Have the results been encouraging?

zequel2• 12 years ago

Kudos to Rob Rhinehart and the team, to see a dream, with all the difficulties they've faced, ship is an incredible effort.

I'm curious to see the effect after a couple of years.

Should make for a good story for Kickstarter as well.

jack-r-abbit2• 12 years ago

Should make for a good story for Kickstarter as well.

Actually... I think it might make for a better story for Crowdtilt... since they use them (and not Kickstarter) for their crowdfunding. :)

zequel2• 12 years ago

Ah, I stand corrected.

shas35• 12 years ago

How is this any different from mail-order diets and such? Where are the double-blind peer reviewed studies? The original post by Rob Rhinehart sounds no different from the mail-order diet ads that you see on TV. Is it legitimate because it is funded via Kickstarter? Is it legitimate because it is marketed suavely via blogs and such? How does recent research about how differently processed foods are digested differently [1] apply to Soylent?

[1] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-dieting-not-a...

smackfu• 12 years ago

AFAIK, this isn't a diet to lose weight, it's just a meal replacement. What would the double-blind be? Whether you can actually live on this stuff alone?

Guvante• 12 years ago

Because the focus is different. "I don't want to deal with food" rings a different bell than "Eat this and lose weight".

I would say a big factor is that avoiding food just to avoid food is (to my knowledge) unique, helping it gain traction.

And while I certainly wouldn't trust the long term implications of this yet, I can't blame a company for wanting to sell units before spending money on studies, especially given their size.

msandford2• 12 years ago

I think there are multiple differences but in my mind the biggest one is that his post mostly talks about the benefits that he gained himself. There are no promises about what it would do for you.

Now obviously if you're reading critically and you're naturally a bit suspicious of his motives then of course it seems heavily implied that the benefits he feels he's gotten are the ones that you'll get too once you also use Soylent.

There are two (maybe three) ways this can go:

1. He made it all up to launch a startup

2. Everything he says is true

3. He believes everything he says is true

In truth it's not as mutually exclusive as I've presented it. Many of the benefits might be true, he might believe some BS about others, and some of it might be outright fabrications.

I think another hugely contributing factor to the notion that he's not a snake-oil salesman is that the formula seems to be freely available and not patented: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_(food_substitute)

I am not sure how you would do a double blind between a supposedly all-encompassing shake-meal and one that is not. Are you going to purposely malnourish people so that you can see they're malnourished? That's ethically dubious at best.

MDS1002• 12 years ago

"3" most likely.

"Are you going to purposely malnourish people so that you can see they're malnourished? That's ethically dubious at best."

Yes, that's what Soylent is currently doing. No suprise the founder got bad news from his cardiologist with an earlier version. "Failing" with their product in this case actually means hurting the customers.

shas35• 12 years ago

This is not about motives. This is about the method of science. There should be scientific evidence to believe such claims as Solyent's, especially since it is possible to do reliable experiments to test many of his claims.

Also, more specifically: he is a single data point. And hardly an objective one.

sowhatquestion3• 12 years ago

-- Soylent is not a diet. It's not low-calorie, low-carb or anything like that. The simplest way to describe its nutritional content is that a Soylent "meal" has 33% FDA daily value of everything (including fats, carbs, protein, vitamins, minerals). Also, unlike a diet, you don't have to eat it all the time (or according to any sort of regimen) to benefit from it. It is designed to be nutritious enough to replace one's whole diet if necessary, but this decision is up to the user.

-- True, there aren't double-blind, peer-reviewed studies (give it time, though...). But the product was developed over the course of a year, with the help of ~100 volunteers who beta tested it and offered feedback [1].

-- The article you linked correctly identifies the importance of low-glycemic carbs, but it loses me when it argues that all "processed" foods are high-glycemic. Not only does "processed" strike me as a weasel word here, the person they're citing as an authority on this issue is Dr. Dean Ornish, whom many regard as a quack [2]. Soylent's carbs are designed to be low-glycemic. They use a form of maltodextrin ("low DE") that is designed to be low-glycemic, as well as whole-grain oat flour. These ingredients are indeed "processed." But (forgive me) the proof of the Soylent is in the eating: all the beta testers took regular blood tests, and these were checked for any abnormalities, including blood sugar levels. Rob Rhinehart actually had a glucose monitor implanted in his chest to test Soylent's glycemic index directly. The result: "Soylent has a pretty low GI" [3].

[1] http://blog.soylent.me/post/69009837729/last-month-five-boxe... [2] http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/03/05/dr-dean-ornish-... [3] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1qpjh4/im_rob_rhinehar...

aroch• 12 years ago

with the help of ~100 volunteers who beta tested it and offered feedback [1].

Random testing with no controls, oversight or monitoring is useless.

zenbowman2• 12 years ago

It is a food, and is designed to be part of a diet.

Given how poor our knowledge is of nutrition, and how it is still very much an area of active research, I'm very skeptical of any new "foods" that are produced chemically instead of biologically.

Our knowledge of biological systems is extremely limited, we don't have the knowledge to create food at this point, and I think any skepticism about long-term effects is well-warranted given the history of the processed food industry.

Personally, I try to avoid all "foods" that were not around at least a hundred years ago. For something to qualify as food for me, it needs to be composed of ingredients that have evidence of promoting health in the long-term, and I measure the "long-term" by centuries, not years or even decades.

DanBC• 12 years ago

I was strongly anti-Soylent during the first few announcements.

Some of the claims they made during the kickstarter were shameful exploitative quackery. The Soylent team seem to have dialed that down a bit now. So, at the moment they're selling glop made from food ingredients that they claim has all the nutrients a healthy average person would need to live, and they are letting people chose how much glop to introduce into their day food routine.

I hope they have some good press materials handy in case some idiot does something weird with the product because the backlash could be fierce.

Now that Soylent have stopped making ridiculous overblown claims I am not so worried about what people chose to put in their bodies.

MetaCosm2• 12 years ago

How would you even double-blind for this? Double blind means neither the participants nor the people running the study knows who is on what.

You give half the people Soylent and the other half -- what?

shas35• 12 years ago

Designing the experiment is also a problem they have to figure out. A part of the challenge is designing hypotheses that best represent the physical phenomena that are also testable. So instead of going for the whole enchilada, work on parts of the project and build to up to a whole. Solyent is pie in the sky the way Elon Musk's hyper-loop is: a bare minimum sketch (not literally, but in scientific terms) that requires a lot of sub-systems to work and a lot of theories to fall in place to be practical.

Answering your question directly, you could give the control-group a Solyent-type drink that is devoid of nutrients, and to the other group you can give a true Solyent drink. This can test if people report feeling better simply because they are drinking something healthy as opposed to the improvement being caused by the nutrients in the drink.

glenntzke• 12 years ago

I would love to follow a Tim Ferriss (well-versed body hacker and author of 4-Hour Body) experiment with Soylent. I've read his book and his analyses convinced me to try a diet for the first time in my life to change my body composition. Now I go through Slow-Carb diet phases a couple times a year. If he had praise for Soylent I'd be willing to give it a try, too.

subdane2• 12 years ago

Man I love food. I love the engagement with the senses, the stories about its origin ingredients, the way those ingredients get put together into a meal that can be enjoyed with more than one person. Soylent strikes me as something I would've been into before I learned all that.

gnaritas2• 12 years ago

Not everyone is or wants to be a foodie.

Karunamon• 12 years ago

Exactly. I find cooking to be a tiresome, annoying chore that cuts into time I could be using on other pursuits.

This is perfect for me.

ars• 12 years ago

You don't have to be a foodie to like the taste of food.

thatthatis• 12 years ago

Have you ever scarfed down a bagel rushing to work, or eaten lunch at your desk, or heated up mediocre leftovers?

You're forcing a false dichotomy.

Moving your "non hedonic sustantive" eating to soylent or the like doesn't mean you have to abandon "hedonic social" eating.

subdane2• 12 years ago

Great point

mrfusion2• 12 years ago

Is there a way to try soylent without spending $65 for a week's supply?

I've had trouble with potassium gluconate supplements in the past, so I'd want to make sure my stomach could handle a meal of it before purchasing a large amount.

MarcusVorenus2• 12 years ago

You could try a DIY soylent customized to your needs.

http://diy.soylent.me/

mrfusion2• 12 years ago

Some of those look good!

Maybe I haven't looked hard enough but none of those seem to have the same convenience factor. I don't want mix 5+ things every meal, and I don't want to track which ingrdienients I need to order when. (I might as well be cooking)

brakkus• 12 years ago

*After nearly a year of delay, Soylent finally ships

After months of delay, Soylent finally ships

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