The End of Food?

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/05/12/140512fa_fact_widdicombe

by beniaminmincu • 12 years ago

72 67 12 years ago

I would personally be happy if I had the option to have a convenient liquid meal replacement, but I'm also skeptical Soylent is going to be the solution to it.

There's still too much we don't know about how we get nutrients from food to be able to fully replace fresh unpackaged products with powders. I suspect we're still at least a few decades away from being able to do that safely on the long term.

Nutrition research has been terribly inconclusive for the past century and there's no indication that this is changing anytime soon. It's not the researchers' fault: the domain is incredibly complex when you take in consideration various timespans, all the various human generic permutations etc.

meowface• 12 years ago

The way I see it is that so many people get by on nutrient-low, unbalanced diets that it's impossible to know exactly what the optimal combinations of food to eat really is. Humans are pretty resilient.

I doubt Soylent will be better or worse for you than the diet of a typical HN user if taken in the long term. Time will also tell: if after 5 years no adverse health effects are reported after a sufficient number of heavy users begin drinking it, then that's probably as best a "green light" as one could ever get.

Axsuul• 12 years ago

This screams link bait title, similar to "The End of the PC". Who knows what the longterm effects of Soylent are. At best, it's a supplement, and at worst... I don't even want to know. With that said, Soylent has a potential to make a big impact. But you can't scream that this is the end of food just because there is a cheaper and more efficient way of getting your nutrients. Eating food is a staple of our culture and the way we socialize revolves around it.

BadassFractal3• 12 years ago

We barely know the long term effect of traditional food items out there.

NhanH• 12 years ago

We know for certain that it's possible to live to 100 years old with traditional food items. As of right now, we can't say the same for soylent.

I know this is a bit of an extreme comparison to make, but the "risk" between soylent and traditional food should be quite a lot.

M4v3R• 12 years ago

The article addresses your concerns. First - the author lives almost entirely on Soylent for the past year and half. The reporter wrote that he looked and behaved really healthy. Sure, there could be some side effects that will manifest much later, but to this date it seems that there are none. Second - he doesn't believe that Soylent will, or should, replace food entirely. He calls everything else "recreational food" and says that Soylent is a replacement for frozen stuff that you eat because its cheap and gives you calories, not for meals in restaurants that are meant to socialize.

insaneirish• 12 years ago

First - the author lives almost entirely on Soylent for the past year and half.

In other words, a sample size of one.

I haven't an opinion on the safety of the product, but a sample size of one only proves it's not an outright poison. It's likely not actively harmful, but still, nutrition is a complicated thing.

I just think the whole idea of it couldn't be more depressing. People who don't get enjoyment out of food freak me out a bit. There are few things I enjoy more than cooking and eating well prepared food.

increment_i• 12 years ago

Agreed. Soylent looks like a cool company with a great product (as long as it's not people) but the title of the article elicited a hearty groan from me. Why these kinds of articles get so much attention around here I'll never know.

baddox• 12 years ago

The article is dated May 12, 2014. Is that because it's going to be in the print edition that will be released that day?

beejiu• 12 years ago

One of Silicon Valley’s cultural exports in the past ten years has been the concept of “lifehacking”: devising tricks to streamline the obligations of daily life, thereby freeing yourself up for whatever you’d rather be doing

Well, to be frank, I'd rather be eating. What's the point of your life if you don't have time to even eat, let alone enjoy yourself.

hayksaakian• 12 years ago

I suppose the argument is that you derive some amount of enjoyment from eating due to hunger.

If you were never hungry, would you eat for enjoyment?

Soylent's premise is that you have time to do other fun or profitable things instead of making time for a meal.

joe_the_user• 12 years ago

I derive enjoyment from getting hungry and eating, I even derive enjoyment from getting tired and sleeping.

The texture of life is varying psycho-physiological states. What is fun without these? Well, other things are fun too but missing the experience of a great meal after a hard days work seems just sad.

ps: didn't mean to vote you to negative, I expected your post to have a positive score and to give an "I disagree" downvote.

rosser• 12 years ago

If you were never hungry, would you eat for enjoyment?

Absolutely, I would. The range of sensations available through the consumption food is second only to sex in its breadth and power and sensuality. Anyone who would forego that because it's "inconvenient" utterly baffles me.

dagw4• 12 years ago

Knowing that when I get home I get to cook something good to eat is one of the driving incentives that gets me out of the office each day.

kamaal• 12 years ago

>If you were never hungry, would you eat for enjoyment?

Eating tasty, whole some food is one of the biggest joys of life.

>Soylent's premise is that you have time to do other fun or profitable things instead of making time for a meal.

Your productivity problems will come due many other factors than breaking for a meal. If anything breaking for a meal will ensure you will come back and work with a lot more focus.

clay_to_n2• 12 years ago

I totally agree with this sentiment (love cooking), but I still see the usefulness of Soylent. Many people just aren't very into food, and would benefit from having an (occasional) simple and healthy alternative. Of college friends I've talked to, many have said they might try this for a few meals a week when "real food" is too inconvenient.

From a nutritional perspective, $3 is pretty decent for a balanced meal. Much healthier than fast-food at that price. Obviously you can cook real food on $3 a meal, but some people can't always plan for that.

vidarh2• 12 years ago

I love eating. But there's two problems: I love eating too much, and I don't really enjoy cooking.

I'd love to add something like Soylent to my "arsenal" to make it easier to skip cooking now and again and make calorie control easier. I manage to keep my weight by regularly counting calories, but it's incredibly tedious and easy to slip up with.

I'd rather focus my enjoyment on a smaller set of high quality meals a week.

dagw4• 12 years ago

Aren't there dozens of products already out there that let you do that?

rimantas• 12 years ago

  "Good morning," said the little prince.
  "Good morning," said the merchant.
  
  This was a merchant who sold pills that had been invented to
  quench thirst. You need only swallow one pill a week, and you
  would feel no need of anything to drink.
  
  "Why are you selling those?" asked the little prince.
  
  "Because they save a tremendous amount of time," said the
  merchant. "Computations have been made by experts. With these
  pills, you save fifty-three minutes in every week."
  
  "And what do I do with those fifty-three minutes?"
  
  "Anything you like . . ."
  
  "As for me," said the little prince to himself, "if I had
  fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked, I should walk at my
  leisure toward a spring of fresh water."

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

deathanatos• 12 years ago

Well, to be frank, I'd rather be eating. What's the point of your life if you don't have time to even eat, let alone enjoy yourself.

Every time Soylent comes up, I'm reminded of The Matrix, where the crew is discussing the food eaten outside of the Matrix:

Dozer: It's a single celled protein combined with synthetic aminos, vitamins, and minerals. Everything the body needs.
Mouse: It doesn't have everything the body needs.

I've bonded with countless friends over meals. I've bonded with co-workers over meals. The whole "eating" thing, while it is the point of a meal, requires people to (usually) stop, and take time out of their day to do not much but eat and talk. It's not "profitable" and the food prep takes work, but the time spent with other human beings is — to me — anything but pointless.

As a one-off, I suppose, though they're making it about as unappetizing as possible. There are frozen burritos, and they taste better. The biggest argument seems to be "they're unhealty": well, yes, but you're not supposed to eat them all the time. Most "comfort food" is not healthy, physically — it's for your mind. Honestly, I wonder if the lack of social interaction from fast meals wouldn't cause negative mental health effects. (And whether that would outweigh the gains in physical health.) I personally detest eating at my desk: it's lonely.

But, maybe the creator gets this. Buried in that article,

[The fridge] contained Miller Lite, condiments, and a pitcher of Soylent. I noticed a bag of baby carrots: food! Rhinehart, who refers to food that is not Soylent as “recreational food,” […]

Of course, > Well, to be frank, I'd rather be eating. What's the point of your life if you don't have time to even eat, let alone enjoy yourself.

Every time Soylent comes up, I'm reminded of The Matrix, where the crew is discussing the food eaten outside of the Matrix:

Dozer: It's a single celled protein combined with synthetic aminos, vitamins, and minerals. Everything the body needs.
Mouse: It doesn't have everything the body needs.

But, maybe the creator gets this. Buried in that article,

[The fridge] contained Miller Lite, condiments, and a pitcher of Soylent. I noticed a bag of baby carrots: food! Rhinehart, who refers to food that is not Soylent as “recreational food,” […]

Of course,

Brown grabbed a taco and tore open a piece of “chicken.” [(Beyond Meat, a meat substitute for vegetarians/vegans or anyone who wants it)] The white substance was remarkably meatlike: it tasted slightly fatty, and the texture resembled muscle fibre. “See how this pulls?” Brown said. “This is really what sets us apart.”

Beyond meat does match the look of chicken quite incredibly. The taste, not so much. I've found that it tends to taste good when accompanied with other stuff (such as in a taco, which has a variety of toppings), but that the taste comes from the toppings, not the "meat", which is itself pretty bland.

“There’s no afternoon crash, no post-burrito coma.”

That I might welcome.

Meals provide punctuation to our lives: we’re constantly recovering from them, anticipating them, riding the emotional ups and downs of a good or a bad sandwich. With a bottle of Soylent on your desk, time stretches before you, featureless and a little sad.

This is my concern. (The author then proceeds to visit a bagel shop, and is thankful that he isn't eating the unhealthy bagel, which may distract from the "featureless" problem, but is otherwise unanswered.)

But then, I also tend to like doing dishes, I think because it's one of the few parts of my day where things slow down and I'm not longer forced to be thinking, and I can finally — ironically — think. > Brown grabbed a taco and tore open a piece of “chicken.” [(Beyond Meat, a meat substitute for vegetarians/vegans or anyone who wants it)] The white substance was remarkably meatlike: it tasted slightly fatty, and the texture resembled muscle fibre. “See how this pulls?” Brown said. “This is really what sets us apart.”

“There’s no afternoon crash, no post-burrito coma.”

That I might welcome.

Meals provide punctuation to our lives: we’re constantly recovering from them, anticipating them, riding the emotional ups and downs of a good or a bad sandwich. With a bottle of Soylent on your desk, time stretches before you, featureless and a little sad.

applecore• 12 years ago

Does every meal have to be enjoyed? Most meals are eaten for sustenance.

In the future, we might see a wider gap between what's eaten for sustenance versus enjoyment.

maguay2• 12 years ago

Somehow that title, contrasted with the chart (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/01/business/economy/changed-l...) showing how the price of food, especially has gone up in recent years while tech prices have fallen, makes me worry about a future reality where real food is so expensive it's only for the elite, and everyone else subsists on supplements like Soylent.

joeperks• 12 years ago

This is part of the plot of "Soylent Green".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_green

maguay2• 12 years ago

Right. Disconcerting to see its namesake being a foreshadow of said plot becoming quasi-reality.

prostoalex• 12 years ago

This is already happening with fast food industry competing on price - lower-priced items at McDonalds or Pizza Hut are chemical variations optimized for longer shelf life.

edanm3• 12 years ago

NSFW

Whenever discussions of Soylent come up, I always wonder - would the same people who want to take Soylent also agree to taking a people that made their sex drive disappear? It will definitely save time and money to not have to worry about sex, after all.

NOTE: This is not a pro- or anti- Soylent sentiment, it's a mind experiment.

seth1010• 12 years ago

Food is more expensive and time consuming than sex.

I've never heard anyone say that sex is a chore, but I often feel that way cooking food that I don't want to eat, but have to because I'm hungry.

sz4kerto• 12 years ago

Sex is way more expensive. Most of your life's spending is spent indirectly on sex.

argonaut• 12 years ago

Yes, I wouldn't mind a completely safe drug that made your sex drive disappear for a day or so.

But other differences are that: lots of the food you eat when you have no time (microwaveable dinners, tacos, fast food) is really really unhealthy for you. Relieving yourself sexually in the normal way is never unhealthy for for you (and is actually quite healthy). Quenching hunger also takes hours and costs money. Sexual release can be quick, and is free.

clay_to_n2• 12 years ago

Would you consider internet porn a reasonable comparison to Soylent, as a low-effort alternative to sex for some people?

edanm3• 12 years ago

I suppose in some ways, but it's not really that close in terms of what Soylent could potentially do.

lmartel• 12 years ago

Why did you flag this as NSFW?

I really hope that reading the word "sex" in a [thoroughly unsexy] hacker news comment wouldn't get anyone fired.

edanm3• 12 years ago

I'm unsure, I figured I'd warn people that this might open a discussion on sex. My standards are not everyone else's standards, so it's up to them to choose.

frik2• 12 years ago

Previous discussions on HN:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5369778

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6175079

his blog: http://robrhinehart.com/

A short documentary style video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8NCigh54jg

dirktheman2• 12 years ago

I'm a little concerned about the long-term effects. The article states that the founder looks and feels healthy, but since he's the only person living off Soylent for an extended period, this is anecdotal evidence at best. It reminds me of the death of Seth Roberts, a couple of days ago.

zavi• 12 years ago

Many people eat nothing but unhealthy crap for years and still stay relatively healthy. Human body is really good at metabolising even a limited variety of food into many different chemicals it needs. Well-balanced diet hasn't really been a thing in human history until recently. Mix of nutrients designed to our best knowledge can't be any worse than eating pizza/fries/burgers/soda 24/7.

dirktheman2• 12 years ago

You're reasoning that eating fast food isn't all that bad for you, and for that Soylent can't be worse? Because there are countless clinical trials and scientific researches that prove a correlation between fast food and heart disease, cancer et al. All I'm saying is that for a product like Soylent the long term effects haven't been studied yet.

To be clear: I'm not biased against Soylent. If it's indeed just as healthy as regular food it can save a lot of time, and maybe it can even solve some hunger issues in the third world. I'm merely saying it should be studied more before jumping on the bandwagon. I mean, it's made by a 25 year old electrical engineer who failed a cheap cellphone tower startup. In an apartment in The Tenderloin. If you want to put your life in his hands by all means go ahead, but I'll just stick with actual food for now, at least until I see the results of some clinical trials.

On a side note: food as a business is hard. Medicin is even harder. There are so many rules, regulations, government agencies, etcetera. They're mostly there for a reason: to keep food and medicine safe. I hope these guys realize what they're getting into. If there's only a hint of claiming something is 'just as healty as regular food' you're opening a giant can of worms...

bridger• 12 years ago

I've been making a homemade version of Soylent (http://www.cookingfor20.com/2013/06/18/hacker-school-soylent...) since September. It makes up one or two of my meals each day. I've got to say, I really really like it. I think it has a good chance of catching on. I still love eating out socially, but it has replaced all my my mediocre meals. I can imagine it replacing those aisles and aisles of junk, easy food (cereal, canned soup, mediocre pasta).

That said, I quickly had to come up with a better name than Soylent. I call mine Science (for human consumption). It makes it distinct from food. "Did you get lunch?" "No, I just had Science today."

zizee4• 12 years ago

Rhinehart is not a fan of farms, which he refers to as “very inefficient factories.” He believes that farming should become more industrialized, not less. “It’s really the labor that gets me”

This seems a little ignorant to me. Farms (at least in Australia) are amazingly industrialized. I visited my cousin's dairy farm recently and one person was working at milking dozens of cows at a time.

I walked away with the image that modern farmers are technical early adopters, looking at ways technology can improve their return on investment.

phpnode• 12 years ago

This is definitely true, look at the rise of John Deere's GreenStar - GPS controlled tractors and implements which dramatically improve yields. Farmers are like hackers in many ways.

dagw4• 12 years ago

I guy I knew years ago used to work for a software company that sold software to farmers, and he said he was always surprised by how incredibly high tech farming and farmers where.

kubiiii• 12 years ago

You are right. I've been working in this domain for 15 years. Technologies such as GPS, auto guidance, remote sensing, were common in agriculture back then. Some farmers are hackers too. I saw some pretty amazing Excel (!) spreadsheets modeling crop growth or disease damage.

There is something true when he says that farms are inefficient factories. They sometimes fail to give a proper income to the famer, considering the work they put in. But for me the solution is not overspecialized industrialized farms growing one crop for the rest of the world. It would be better to have highly versatile farms dedicated to fulfill the needs of specific areas to minimize transportation impact. I've never seen any environnemental protection concern related to the soylent production. It's all about saving time while eating healthy.

I saw a documentary about chinese farmers growing tomatoes. They could not imagine eating what they were growing. Pretty sad for a farmer.

juggty_dev• 12 years ago

Food was such a large burden.

jqm• 12 years ago

I think Soylent is great idea.

It doesn't have to be either/or and certainly the end of food. I love to cook and take a lot of care about what I eat. This probably is never going to change. But on occasion I would love to be able to slurp down a meal and not have to worry about it. I wouldn't consider living on something like this though and I don't know why anyone else would either.

infoseckid2• 12 years ago

These are what I call "Get me some Press" companies from a VC / YC perspective. Will make the cover of WSJ ... get a ton of attention to the company and investors and eventually be dead in 3-4 years.

emilsedgh• 12 years ago

I love this idea not because I like to replace my meals with this, but the fact that it could improve world hunger problem in a big way. Couldn't it?

DanBC2• 12 years ago

No.

The world food programme already have a wide range of supplements that are produced in developing nations and are much cheaper than Soylent.

Note that Soylent requires clean water to mix, and a large proportion of the world don't have clean water.

infoseckid2• 12 years ago

It's like saying sex toys will eventually replace having sex because why waste time dating, courting and then having sex :) when you could just use a toy + redtube and get it over with in 10 minutes.

frik2• 12 years ago

Watch the Demolition Man "sex scene": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k80UQWWUIYs

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106697/

zizee4• 12 years ago

I find it annoying that whenever Soylent is discussed, people always take such an extreme view of it. Why do so many people frame the discussion with "you will replace all meals with it".

It's similar to stories about electric cars. Someone will always comment about how electric cars won't work for people who have to drive 500 km non stop on a daily basis, therefore they are doomed to failure.

corysama• 12 years ago

Agreed. The stated purpose of Soylent is not to replace all meals. It is to be a convenient replacement for inconvenient meals. But, that idea doesn't grab enough attention to sell ad space. Therefore, pretty much every article I've read about Soylent tries to manufacture controversy around the idea of giving up on food entirely in favor of brown paste.

That said, when my month's supply arrives, I'm looking forward to giving up food for a month entirely in favor of brown paste. I see it as a fun opportunity for an interesting cleanse --not a permanent lifestyle change.

Every report I've read from people trying out a 100% Soylent diet has been consistent: You feel fine. Your jaw gets stiff from underuse (chewing gum is recommended). You poop less and less often. The biggest problem is really social awkwardness. Eating with people is important. It's awkward being the guy at the table with a bottle of brown paste.

zizee4• 12 years ago

Your jaw gets stiff from underuse

I had not heard of this side effect. I would have thought that regular talking would have sufficed. Very interesting!

hessenwolf• 12 years ago

Do, please, keep us updated on that experiment. I did not even realise that Soylent was an actual product (presumably, not made of people) until I read your comment.

vidarh2• 12 years ago

Why do so many people frame the discussion with "you will replace all meals with it".

Because the original posts about it talked about replacing almost all meals with it, to the extent that it included a description of how replacing almost all meal with it caused Rhinehart to almost stop defecating.

And because it's easier to get media interested in a story they can title "The end of food" or "The Man Who Would Make Food Obsolete" (recent Atlantic headline) rather than "Yet another meal replacement".

And because a marketing aspect of Soylent is the idea that even if you probably won't replace every meal with it, you can.

(For my part I'm interested in it to try replacing some meals - certainly not all - but that angle would certainly make for a whole lot less PR interest)

BadassFractal3• 12 years ago

Because ideally you could replace all of your meals with it. I'd be happy with not having to have a fridge if all I need is Soylent.

dagw4• 12 years ago

Why do so many people frame the discussion with "you will replace all meals with it".

Wasn't that it's original pitch? I'm pretty sure that when the Soylent guy first started talking about his idea the Unique Selling Point, compared to all the other meal replacement products already out there, was that Soylent would be the first product engineered to completely and permanently replace the need for any other food.

ghshephard• 12 years ago

If you read the article, you'll find out that that is precisely what differentiates Soylent from all the many other Liquid Meal replacements. The entire dream of soylent is to free people from recreational food as a requirement.

DanBC2• 12 years ago

Because it was launched by a bloke replacing all his food with it, and with a bunch of people saying they wanted to replace all their food with it.

zizee4• 12 years ago

money quote from the article:

Perhaps the main difference between Soylent and drinks like Ensure and Muscle Milk lies in the marketing

It's amazing how taking an old product and repackaging it for a different purpose can be a source of business success and glory. I believe this is the story behind both Coca Cola and RedBull.

majkinetor• 12 years ago

I hope people do understand that this is short term solution only. Replacing your all food indefinitely with this is most certainly going to damage you in a ways you can't know or imagine. Just by looking at the content I can see that the mix is seriously lacking essential fats, is using very low doses of some vitamins, particularly C and probably contains substitutes to others like retinol (beta carotene).

The idea is great in specific context. People have been living on single food item in multiple occasions so far. CBB to find references for all now, its easy if you need them but there are known cases of

1. Potato only for 6 months (http://goo.gl/XqxMx)

2. Bananas only for months (i.e. extreme '30 bananas a day' diet)

3. Meat only for a year (Vilhjalmur Stefansson)

4. Water only for > year (in extreme obese case).

5. Protein powder only (i.e. Last chance diet, case to the point of what could get wrong. )

6. Synthetics only (I am sure Kurzweill probably experimented with this with his 200++ pills per day).

7. MC Donalds for a month

... and so on

Its important to note that inventors are young people. Young people are very resilient - they also have full reserves of stem cells that are used to repair damage. Soylent might speed up this process because it certainly doesn't contain 'everything body needs' (because we don't know this at the current technological level) in which case one theory is that body will use its triage system (Ames) to redirect resources to the systems that are most important and shut down or reduce output in less important systems for immediate survival (such as reproduction). More appropriate would be to say 'everything body tolerates for a period'. Its certainly far better move then eating only pasta or rice for entire day.

One may hope that whatever is the eventual damage that could be done to you by use of this food surrogate is going to be fixed by the future medicinal, yet to be discovered, techniques.

ohwp• 12 years ago

Also: he ate fastfood for some time, started with 'healthy' Soylent and noticed he felt better. So I think he got the wrong reference. But ofcourse there is also a lot of sweet marketing talk in the article.

sanatgersappa• 12 years ago

Tasty Wheat.

sreya• 12 years ago

Assuming that it doesn't taste as bad as it sounds, it's likely that this will just end being a quick meal replacement here and there. I.e. you're pulling a long night at work and you _could_ order pizza but that's unhealthy so you whip out a Soylent shake.

It's certainly not a revolution by any means

The End of Food?

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