You're comment is refreshing to read. I constantly share this message on comment sections and to see others do the same is great. We need to quit encouraging this very low level mentality. Sorry for getting off topic!
I'm not trying to be rude but how do you know that the current version is abysmal? No one knows what's in it. Judging it by the first version is fine as long as you make that clear. However, the current version is not the first version.
Maybe soylent will be the answer to feeding starving people in the 3rd world.
I marvel at your empathy, optimism, idealism and futuristic outlook while attempting a rational discussion of the Soylent issue. However, some things do not need that much of an analysis to arrive at a conclusion. Here's a 24 year old software engineer who has set out to solve the world's nutritional problems (or is it a money making scheme disguised in that ideal?). So he engineers a concoction based on err... what? And starts making unverified claims, then retreats to revise his formula .. and so the story goes on until he perfects his bid for wealth in the lemming consumer trend market. Oops! Sorry! I mean't until he perfects his "food" for the world's malnourished if they can afford it. Maybe he'll get endorsements by movie stars and become the Soylent, solvent millionaire. So in conclusion, please let us not get confused about the difference between what constitutes good nutrition and what entrepreneurship and marketing is about.
As a member of the human race, I am obligated to point out that no matter "What is in Soylent" (prototype, 1.0 or subsequent versions), as a "food" to completely replace our natural foods, is about the most idiotic proposition I have ever heard. Are you, as a member of the Soylent team, also obligated to live entirely on the diet once its "perfected?" Please announce to us, poor deprived natural food consumers, once you have lived past the first year entirely on Soylent. We will be more than encouraged to look at how wonderfully you have fared.. but I would still use my money to buy and eat natural. By the way, would one still be solvent after paying for Soylent?
At $10/day, it's vastly more expensive than other 3rd world food sources.
MWR are an idiot calling another an idiot? Note it's only a question & I am not actually calling you an idiot. If idiots don't agree with an opinion, should they call another an idiot just because they have other ideas or preferences which may be idiotic? Anyway, I am having such fun in this laughable discussion even if it verges on the idiotic.
no doubt Nestlé will soon buy the Soylent company and people will be eating it in 50 years or less and it will have actual people in it shortly thereafter
This is stupid. Preparing food is time consuming? What do you need the extra time for? To spend on Facebook, Google+, iPhone, iPad, TV, XBOX, PlayStation to kill more zombies/enemy soldiers or any other stupid gadget/game/social network designed to suck the life out of you and keep you wired 24/7? Open your eyes people. Live some life.
I wasn't disagreeing with an opinion...not sure where you got that idea. Apparently, lakawak deleted their comment regarding having to "pay for the Soylent company's food stamps when it goes out of business", which is clearly an idiotic thing to state.
I've been in and around the supplement business for 40+ years, and if we went on rants about every product that we felt claimed to do more than we think it will, all we would be doing would be ranting.
Looking around at the state of health of Americans, I'm fairly sure I'm not interested in the opinions of dietitians, nutritionists and physicians that have basically recommended the standard American diet that's gotten us to where we are today with an epidemic of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer. "Avoid saturated fat and cholesterol (and eggs are evil)," they say, based initially on no research whatsoever, and now clearly the wrong advice based plenty of research and meta-analyses.
So credentials, especially in the nutrition field, don't particularly impress me. And if a software engineer, or anyone else for that matter, comes up with an interesting approach to nutrition, I'm more than willing to take a look. And as other comments have pointed out, if everyone now eating at McDonalds and Dunkin' Donuts every day started eating Soylent instead, I can pretty much guarantee that most of them would be a hell of a lot healthier and leaner.
For the rest of their life? Maybe not, but so what? Life, and personal nutrition, is a ongoing experiment. Everyone is different, and you need different things at different times. As far as I know, it isn't claimed that Soylent is food for athletes in intensive training. But there have been some athletes I've worked with (and I've worked with world-caliber and Olympic athletes) who would be better off eating a bunch of Soylent than what they were eating.
As I said at the beginning, I've been around the nutritional supplement field for a few decades. And I've worked with athletes and non-athletes and had to come up with strategies that yielded practical results. I've been reasonably successful, through far from perfectly so. And I don't feel at all threatened by some clearly smart kids who have come up with something that looks interesting, probably not harmful, and who want to change the world for the better. I don't think that's a bad approach, nor bad motivation.
I appreciate Mike being human enough to express some emotion about what he figures is someone is trying to pass off as nutrition some money making sludge. When you decided it was "all axe grinding" did you also consider that there were actually some facts? You said he had "the right to say... " but he doesn't have the right to write in this style? Any discerning reader can separate the grain from the chaff so why complain about his "hatchet job language"? If you want a totally "objective" dissertation, maybe you should read a scientific journal. I do hope Mike doesn't take the cutting edge of sarcasm, humor or just plain disgust when he writes about stuff like Soylene and the people behind it.
Whilst I agree with large parts of this article (particularly the part where Soylent could be slightly more empirical / evidence-based in its research), it didn't need to be written to be quite so confrontational.
The fact is that there isn't enough food to go around long-term, and perhaps this initiative, whilst not yet perfect in its approach, will ultimately give us some key insights about nutrition and metabolism. It's an experiment. For science!
Do you have a better source for ref 16? Using Naturalnews.com as a source of truth makes me question the validity of the rest of your article.
Also what is that human metabolism map all about - it looks more like a subway map with a bunch of random stations on it. What do the dots mean?
But they're NOT selling it. Even the people that are getting free Soylent as a reward for their investment won't actually get anything until they have a finished product.
No, natural is not best. Natural is a buzzword.
Basically what we see in this article is not as much science as mudslinging. Why, 90% of all "healthy food movement" constitute of this: large food companies smearing the opponents. The knowledge of effects of individual substances is vast, and with selective approach you can prove whatever. Meat is poison. Vegetarians lose sex drive. GMO causes cancer. GMO is best. Cheese diet prolongs your life. Cheese diet ruins your metabolism. Whatever, really.
But Soylent is special. It's an attempt on complex and effective chemical composition. So it's criticised with equal complexity. But, does natural food get this kind of criticism? Of course not (there's way more than 12 components even in the crappiest real diet). You're not going to see that pretty human metabolism chart with natural, because "vegetables" (conveniently not specified) somehow just, you know, work! The more documented a product is, the worse it appears, due to the very nature of such critic. Therefore unspecified vegetables ("ones you feel are right for you") will seem the best choice regardless of facts.
This is just hiding from proper discussion.
I'm confused. Lots of soylent supporters suggesting that this will solve the nutrition problems for huge proportions of the world's population. SOmeone mentioned 80% of people having such a poor diet that this can only improve it. Where do these figures come from? Where is the evidence that so many people have such a poor diet it needs "fixing" with something like this? I mean hard evidence by the way, not supposition or media scaremongering. I agree that there is a lot wrong with the western diet, but this is not the way to fix it. It is most certainly not the way to fix the issue of malnutrition globally. A country where starvation is common needs farming solutions; not an expensive drink.
Products like this fill a niche only for people who simply can't be bothered attending to their own nutrition. It doesn't solve any problem that isn't created by the individual in the first place. It simply serves to bolster the quick-fix, 'pill for every ill" mentality that, increasingly, is becoming the norm. That is the thing that needs fixing. Ultimately; this is just another meal replacement product and in that context I have no issue with it. I'm not about to buy it, but that doesn't mean others' shouldn't. I think it completely ignores the crucial interplay of a vast array of trace elements that go well beyond mere macronutrients. On that basis alone, I think it's a poor long-term solution. But as an occasional product it's fine.
What I do have a problem with, is the marketing. Selling the idea of moving away from real food and living on this stuff, or anything like it, is extremely poor. We should be teaching people the value of real healthy food, we should be showing people how easy (and cheap) it is to produce good quality meals yourself at home. I agree that many people have a poor diet...but that is just another argument for educating and empowering people to change that. It is not an argument for giving them a drink so they have to put even less thought and effort in. And as for the argument that people who suffer daily malnutrition can benefit from this. No. That does not empower them. That does not solve their problem. It merely makes them dependent on a commodity that will only get more expensive. If they can't afford to farm their own food - how do they afford this? You solve that issue by education and empowerment.
Soylent is just an MRP and frankly; compared to many existing ones on the market - it's not a particularly great one. But they have their place. That place however, is not "solving nutrition problems" and to advertise it as such is misleading and damaging.
I agree with a lot of your points but surely the only real issue here is the marketing hype around the product? It is nothing more than a meal replacement formula...that's it. You know there are a ton of those already and several are as good, or better, than this one. There is nothing remotely ground breaking here. The problem, for me, is the idea that this will solve any sort of nutritional "problem". They talk about developing countries and how we can help solve their food issues...seriously? In a country that can't afford seeds and famring implements - who is going to pay for this? What water are they going to use for it if they have no potable water to hand? To lead people into believeing that this "get healthy quick" product is the answer to their nutrition problems makes as much sense as telling people they can get truly fit by exercising for just 20 minutes a week. It is misleading at best and possibly dangerous at worst. They don't want to change the world for the better - they want to make money. You do not change the world for the better by releasing a product that already exists.
Hold the commentary sludge slinging at each other guys. Rob Rhinehart is apparently laughing his way to the bank. He even has a salary now. I should invest in some Soylent stock or become Rob's PR manager. I would probably do a better job at staging "interviews". Take a look:at this bit of Rob's media performance in collaboration with Vice. (Go to the VICE website article "THE MAN WHO THINKS HE NEVER HAS TO EAT AGAIN IS PROBABLY GOING TO BE A BILLIONAIRE SOON".) Pretty good script that wouldn't miss a beat if the interviewer wasn't around at all. He was there merely to provide the "cues" for Rob's brillaintly spontaneous monologue to put detractors to shame. Mind you, don't be surprised he gets real rich.. so who cares if Soylent looks like dissolved pig brains never mind the taste? You would probably swallow that for a million bucks.
The really sad part is that this is the first real objection I've heard to soylent that was any better than the blind assertion that you can't feed yourself raw chemicals and live a healthy life. It's an understandable assumption, but I need more than cognitive dissonance to dismiss such an important possibility. You raise actual, scientifically verifiable objections, and I for one want to know if you're on to something, but it appears you're more interested in proving how much smarter you are than the rest of us than you are in helping us do something important.
The only point you make that I disagree with is: Rob never has, and still does not, claim that this can completely replace food. He tried it because he wants to know if it's possible, we all do. It would be a very important discovery if it could. Right now, I like it as a healthy alternative to a f**king big mac when I'm hungry, and nowhere near my refrigerator full of sealed power meals. But in the long run, the implication of this that really excites me is the idea of having a packet of powder that will be good for decades, and that can feed a third world nation full of starving people who don't live near a Whole Foods Market. Last I checked, they don't have a franchise in Rwanda. They're also not big on refrigerators and Tupperware there, so there goes your plan.
The reason YOU should care is: people haven't been this interested in nutrition and fitness in a long time. I would never have heard your name if it weren't for Rob Reinhardt, so maybe you can take a step off your high horse, look at the silver lining, and get your hands dirty actually helping us make some good stuff happen.
You raise good points, and I'd like to hear more, but if it's all the same to you, please drop the casually hostile superiority sh*t, It's not constructive, it's not impressive, and it's not going to help anybody. If you really are concerned about the people who are going to be putting this stuff in their face, raise those concerns, and we'll all be happy to read them and take them under advisement.
10$/day ? huh? I eat decent food for 1/3 of that. and LOL @ 400g of carbohydrates cause unless you lift heavy sht or run intensely 2-3 times per week, chances are you're going to get fat quickly (if you're past 25)
this is a meal replacement product for the desk jobs type of people who abuse cheetos and mountain dew, they weren't going to start eating a primal diet and lift weights anyway.