After reading the first Soylent post, I felt inspired to try and come up with a recipe for a "nutritionally complete" soup. I used an online tool that calculates the total nutrients for a recipe and came up with this:
3 potatoes
1 onion
500 grams of wild alaskan salmon
1/2 cup of mushrooms
3.5 tbsp of olive oil
30 grams of sunflower seeds
1 tbsp of dried parsley
2 tbsp of ground thyme
50 grams of parmesan cheese
3 cloves of garlic
20 grams of sesame seeds
1 medium oyster (from a can)
1 tbsp of ground mace
1 tsp of cod liver oil
To cook it I just added everything to boiling water in order of cooking time, starting with the potatoes and onions and ending with the salmon.
I tried making it last night and ate it for dinner and breakfast, and it was delicious! I also feel amazing. I guess I should track the effects of the recipe on quantified-mind.com. :-)
I was actually surprised by how hard it was to fit all of the daily nutrient requirements into a recipe with about 2000-2500 calories (while also avoiding nutrient overdoses). It would be great if someone would create a website for "nutritionally complete" recipes, especially recipes that are cheap and easy to make with a good blender or crockpot.
My biggest concern would be that healthy adaptive systems benefit from variety, challenge, and chaos.
Intermittent fasting is good. A little contamination from things that are normally unhealthy is good. (See, for example, the hygiene hypothesis or the idea of hormesis.) Chewing is good -- as is the somewhat random mix of very-chewed or less-chewed foods you swallow. Triggering your body's reactions (including your gut biome's reactions) to different extremes of nutrient mix will keep the systems 'practiced'...
..unless you're sure you'll spend the rest of your life like a brain-in-a-vat, and then you might as well take nutrition by IV.
For those of us who generally don’t like food, consider it an annoyance, and yearn for a way to avoid eating it, Soylent sounds immensely promising. But is it safe?
Surprisingly, the answer from nutrition experts seems to be, “Yeah, probably.” Jay Mirtallo is a professor of pharmacy at Ohio State and the immediate past president of American Society for Parental Enteral Nutrition, which focuses on the science and practice of providing food to patients through both intravenous injections and feeding tubes. His main concern with Rhinehart’s plan is that he’s making the concoction himself, rather than buying it from reputable suppliers.
“He basically made medical food,” Mirtallo says. “If he wanted to switch to a liquid diet, those are already available.”
Indeed they are. Companies like Abbott Nutrition and NestléHealthScience sell dozens of medical food products.
...
I asked Mirtallo if I could live a healthy life just drinking medical food from here on out. “You can completely,” he says. “But I don’t know why you’d want to. There are so many social aspects to food in what we do.”
One potential downside is cost. Rhinehart claims that he only spends $154.82 a month on Soylent. By contrast, a case of 24 eight-ounce cans of Jevity 1.5cal, a high caloric density product Abbott sells for feeding tube patients, costs $57 from Abbott’s Web store. As each can has 355 calories in it, you’d need six cans a day to top the 2,000 calorie a day mark used in FDA nutrition data. So a 24-pack would last you about four days. That works out to 7-8 packs a month, which could cost up to $456.
Nestle produces something called Modulen specifically for people with IBD. The idea is for people with Crohn's to switch to a liquid diet during bad flare ups to settle things down as digesting food causes inflammation.
It is rather expensive. Luckily for me, my insurance covered it (I'm from Israel, so YMMV). The hard part is that you have to pound a dozen glasses of the stuff every day. Some people can't even drink that much water and this is a heavy drink.
Soylent may be an improvement in terms of price and preparation because Modulen comes in powder form and doesn't mix well with water and goops up quickly. It is simply not easy getting it down.
To those of you suggesting this sort of thing can solve world hunger - doubtful. I'm the only one my doctors know of who actually was able to adhere to a liquid only diet for a stretch of multiple months, people simply don't have the willpower.
You miss food quite badly and are never satiated. What I think Soylent could possibly be is an ultimate supplement, like a protein shake - in fact, fitness companies like Beachbody (P90X) hawk all kinds of dubios concoctions, it is a lucrative market. One that actually works would be neat.
This guy is effectively popularising something that has existed for ages in the medical/weight loss industries: namely medical food/meal replacement drinks. The difference is that he is using them daily, without paying the premium for an off the shelf, tested, and regulated version by doing it himself.
My question for those more experienced in this area is:
What well tested, off the shelf, medically regulated products could I buy today that would allow me to eliminate the consumption of solid food altogether - and of those products, which ones are the best value for money?
I really can't be bothered doing all the leg work required to make my own meal replacement drink (reasons being: the chance of not measuring correctly + work + forgetting nutrients + risk) - I'd like to just grab a product every month or so and just go.
I've done 3-5 month stretches (multiple times) using Sustagen (the Hospital Formula[1] one from chemists, not the supermarket variety).
It was during cancer surgeries and therapies, and recommended to me by the hospital + various specialist doctors, so that's the only vote of confidence I needed that it was OK.
I had no side effects while on it, didn't lose or gain weight, and actually quite enjoyed not having to worry about shopping, cooking, washing up, etc. I also slept better, and all-round "felt" better.
I've considered trying it longer term voluntarily, maybe try 6 months or so, and get the full gamut of medical tests done before and after, to see what they say.
> Some people tell me going "ketogenic", or reducing carbs is healthy. I am now skeptical of this claim as lowering carbs makes me feel hungry and tired, and the drink taste less sweet. Perhaps it would be possible after an unpleasant transition period, but I don’t see the ultimate gain...
Their advice seems to fall in line with the paleo/primal philosophies—in a nutshell: man only started eating a significant amount of carbohydrates after the agriculturalization of cereals (grains) about 10,000 years ago. They argue that wasn't enough time for us to evolve enough to adapt.
But to your point about feeling hungry and tired—I think it's because you're addicted to carbs and sugar (like almost all of us are), but you don't NEED carbs, at all. I tried primal for a month, and yes, the adjustment took a few days (maybe a week). However, after I got over the sugar/carb cravings, my energy levels where much more even throughout the day, sans-grains.
The whole thing is hilarious. Sorry, but nutrition is not like math or C++, where you can teach it to yourself by googling things and reading textbooks. Has he even read the massive body of research on food replacement in the form of parenteral and enteral nutrition? For those people it's a matter of life or death, since many patients are incapable of eating. They have to do a lot better than he does.
How is that implausible? He's an engineer by trade, mathematics is close enough to computer science that most half-way decent programmers should be able to read that level math casually given a good 'brain day'. I spent most of my twenties neglecting math, decided one day to learn calculus, found it pretty easy.
Did he actually say he read textbooks? I was under the impression that he was referring to something that would be more suited to the average or even just uninitiated reader. I know a bit about the concepts of quantum mechanics, just from reading various books of varying difficulties on the subject, but I wouldn't claim that it was equivalent to actually taking a course on them or going through a textbook, even when I did take notes.
I realize it's right next to when he says "[I] can read my textbooks twice as long without mental fatigue", but that seems coincidental juxtaposition, rather than him referring to the same books.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it doesn't really seem that implausible, if that's the case.
This is just a marketing ploy - otherwise, the ingredients and instructions as to how to make it would have been provided for free on the blog. And no, I don't buy the excuses that have been made as to why the list of actual ingredients can not be provided.
I think the author has definetly started to see real business potential, especially after all the exposure (both here on HN, and in general). That being said, he's probably not a legal expert, and is probably treading carefully (gathering data slowly, not immediately selling the mixture, etc).
Personally, I wish him and his future (potenial) business well. Its definetly a product Id buy. Eating healthy (especially when your choices are very restricted, eg school), can be a pain in the ass. Quick, very healthy, potential food replacement (Though, id probably only totally replace meals with it occasionally) sounds really, really great.
I have a great deal of respect for self-experimenters, no matter how crazy they seem.
That said, I'd like to see him compare two months of Soylent to two months of eating solid meals with a similar nutritional profile. Most of the benefits he has experienced are probably just a result of extremely well-balanced diet, not anything specifically related to Soylent.
His main issues with solid food are the time and energy devoted to acquiring, preparing, and eating it. This cuts down on all of that, as well as cost.
Nutritionally, being equivalent to a well-balanced diet meets his goals.
"I didn't give up food, I just got rid of the bad food."
After reading the 1st HN abut this I was skeptical, but this sentence fully convinced me that Rinehart is on to something. Imagine a world with a quick, healthy, affordable lunch substitute that negated the 'need' to eat fast food when you feel pressed for time at work... Thankfully this only happens to me 2 or 3 times a month , but I'm guessing that for most of America that's more like 2 or 3 times a week.
How exactly does Soylent solve world hunger? I've heard we produce more than enough food to solve hunger already, and much is wasted. Is the food too expensive?
The components of Soylent (as listed in an earlier blog post) are chemically stable at room temperature. (caveat the probiotics). (this from looking them up in the 'rubber bible' [1]) I would expect you could spoil them if they got too hot (oxidizing) but other than that doesn't look too bad.
Assuming the $150/month calculated, that's still pretty pricey for someone who makes $1-$2 a day in wages. Its not clear to me how to calculate how that cost compares to sending sacks of wheat or rice.
No, actually, it's less so. But apparently it can be made out of "very common [mostly vegetable] ingredients growable in every place on Earth", unlike most other "complete" diets.
The movie glossed over some details. In the book, Soylent was a variety of different things, with a soya and lentil base (hence the name), and only Soylent Green specifically was the problematic one, it being the newest release. (I haven't read it myself, just summarizing what was discussed in the last thread.)
I can't find the link where I read this now, but apparently Soylent was largely composed of soya and lentils in the book version. See also the published list of ingredients to assuage your fears.
You could, but what fun would that be? :) In seriousness though, much of OP's intent was to make Soylent as affordable as possible. To that end, a quick cost comparison:
You can buy 24 8-oz Ensure drinks on sale from Amazon for $42.50. Each drink contains 350 calories, so: (24 * 350) / $42.50 = 198 kcal/dollar.
Rob claims to get 2629 calories a day from Soylent, and his monthly costs were $154.82, so: (30 * 2629) / $154.82 = 509 kcal/dollar. Soylent is 2.5x cheaper than Ensure (based on calories alone).
But, it seems strange that this is coming from one guy rather than big companies. If it is possible to sell food/food replacement for cheaper this way, why hasn't anyone jumped on the chance to outsell others by selling for less?
I wonder if this guy realizes his teeth are going to fall off. Since he has very little chewing action, the gums and underlying bone are going to go soft and eventually the teeth are going to begin falling off.
But who cares, right? He doesn't really need his teeth.
He should be prepared to accept a new and maybe uncommon physical shape.
>I wonder if this guy realizes his teeth are going to fall off.
I wonder if people who say ridiculous stuff like this realize that there are already lots of people living on liquid diets, feeding tubes, or IV nutrition because of health problems. And their jaws don't magically turn to mush and their teeth don't fall out.
All this talk of chemical drinks and medical foods and intermittent fasting reminds me of the saying about another diet regimen: "Do vegetarians live longer, or does it just feel that way?"
I think the biggest thing I want to remark here is that he needs to go to the doctor frequently while he's running these experiments. Once every couple of weeks or once every month. He could be doing serious harm to himself and he won't know until it's too late. Blood work might also give some interesting insights, such as "his bad cholesterol levels are lower than I've ever seen, this is amazing!" which would be useful in helping to push his encouragement of it.
In his previous blog posts, he discusses doctor visits. His cholesterol levels were unhealthy before he started the diet, now he is in the normal range. In order to sign up to be a tester, you must provide blood test results.
[+] [-] markerdmann|13 years ago|reply
3 potatoes 1 onion 500 grams of wild alaskan salmon 1/2 cup of mushrooms 3.5 tbsp of olive oil 30 grams of sunflower seeds 1 tbsp of dried parsley 2 tbsp of ground thyme 50 grams of parmesan cheese 3 cloves of garlic 20 grams of sesame seeds 1 medium oyster (from a can) 1 tbsp of ground mace 1 tsp of cod liver oil
To cook it I just added everything to boiling water in order of cooking time, starting with the potatoes and onions and ending with the salmon.
I tried making it last night and ate it for dinner and breakfast, and it was delicious! I also feel amazing. I guess I should track the effects of the recipe on quantified-mind.com. :-)
I was actually surprised by how hard it was to fit all of the daily nutrient requirements into a recipe with about 2000-2500 calories (while also avoiding nutrient overdoses). It would be great if someone would create a website for "nutritionally complete" recipes, especially recipes that are cheap and easy to make with a good blender or crockpot.
[+] [-] gojomo|13 years ago|reply
My biggest concern would be that healthy adaptive systems benefit from variety, challenge, and chaos.
Intermittent fasting is good. A little contamination from things that are normally unhealthy is good. (See, for example, the hygiene hypothesis or the idea of hormesis.) Chewing is good -- as is the somewhat random mix of very-chewed or less-chewed foods you swallow. Triggering your body's reactions (including your gut biome's reactions) to different extremes of nutrient mix will keep the systems 'practiced'...
..unless you're sure you'll spend the rest of your life like a brain-in-a-vat, and then you might as well take nutrition by IV.
[+] [-] Steko|13 years ago|reply
For those of us who generally don’t like food, consider it an annoyance, and yearn for a way to avoid eating it, Soylent sounds immensely promising. But is it safe?
Surprisingly, the answer from nutrition experts seems to be, “Yeah, probably.” Jay Mirtallo is a professor of pharmacy at Ohio State and the immediate past president of American Society for Parental Enteral Nutrition, which focuses on the science and practice of providing food to patients through both intravenous injections and feeding tubes. His main concern with Rhinehart’s plan is that he’s making the concoction himself, rather than buying it from reputable suppliers.
“He basically made medical food,” Mirtallo says. “If he wanted to switch to a liquid diet, those are already available.”
Indeed they are. Companies like Abbott Nutrition and NestléHealthScience sell dozens of medical food products.
...
I asked Mirtallo if I could live a healthy life just drinking medical food from here on out. “You can completely,” he says. “But I don’t know why you’d want to. There are so many social aspects to food in what we do.”
One potential downside is cost. Rhinehart claims that he only spends $154.82 a month on Soylent. By contrast, a case of 24 eight-ounce cans of Jevity 1.5cal, a high caloric density product Abbott sells for feeding tube patients, costs $57 from Abbott’s Web store. As each can has 355 calories in it, you’d need six cans a day to top the 2,000 calorie a day mark used in FDA nutrition data. So a 24-pack would last you about four days. That works out to 7-8 packs a month, which could cost up to $456.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/14/r...
[+] [-] recuter|13 years ago|reply
Nestle produces something called Modulen specifically for people with IBD. The idea is for people with Crohn's to switch to a liquid diet during bad flare ups to settle things down as digesting food causes inflammation.
It is rather expensive. Luckily for me, my insurance covered it (I'm from Israel, so YMMV). The hard part is that you have to pound a dozen glasses of the stuff every day. Some people can't even drink that much water and this is a heavy drink.
Soylent may be an improvement in terms of price and preparation because Modulen comes in powder form and doesn't mix well with water and goops up quickly. It is simply not easy getting it down.
To those of you suggesting this sort of thing can solve world hunger - doubtful. I'm the only one my doctors know of who actually was able to adhere to a liquid only diet for a stretch of multiple months, people simply don't have the willpower.
You miss food quite badly and are never satiated. What I think Soylent could possibly be is an ultimate supplement, like a protein shake - in fact, fitness companies like Beachbody (P90X) hawk all kinds of dubios concoctions, it is a lucrative market. One that actually works would be neat.
[+] [-] allforJesse|13 years ago|reply
Could Soylent be scalably produced to feed 10% or more of the world's population? Would the material prices skyrocket in response to demand?
Let's set aside the physiological consequences for a moment, what are the potential economic and environmental ramifications of Soylent?
[+] [-] philwelch|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] confluence|13 years ago|reply
My question for those more experienced in this area is:
What well tested, off the shelf, medically regulated products could I buy today that would allow me to eliminate the consumption of solid food altogether - and of those products, which ones are the best value for money?
I really can't be bothered doing all the leg work required to make my own meal replacement drink (reasons being: the chance of not measuring correctly + work + forgetting nutrients + risk) - I'd like to just grab a product every month or so and just go.
[+] [-] Andrenid|13 years ago|reply
It was during cancer surgeries and therapies, and recommended to me by the hospital + various specialist doctors, so that's the only vote of confidence I needed that it was OK.
I had no side effects while on it, didn't lose or gain weight, and actually quite enjoyed not having to worry about shopping, cooking, washing up, etc. I also slept better, and all-round "felt" better.
I've considered trying it longer term voluntarily, maybe try 6 months or so, and get the full gamut of medical tests done before and after, to see what they say.
[1] http://www.sustagen.com.au/products/sustagen-hospital-formul...
[+] [-] pbreit|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanBC|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bsmith|13 years ago|reply
Their advice seems to fall in line with the paleo/primal philosophies—in a nutshell: man only started eating a significant amount of carbohydrates after the agriculturalization of cereals (grains) about 10,000 years ago. They argue that wasn't enough time for us to evolve enough to adapt.
But to your point about feeling hungry and tired—I think it's because you're addicted to carbs and sugar (like almost all of us are), but you don't NEED carbs, at all. I tried primal for a month, and yes, the adjustment took a few days (maybe a week). However, after I got over the sugar/carb cravings, my energy levels where much more even throughout the day, sans-grains.
[+] [-] geoka9|13 years ago|reply
"I read a book on Number Theory in one sitting, a Differential Geometry book in a weekend, filling up a notebook in the process."
[+] [-] mamoswined|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vinceguidry|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nathan_f77|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] benaiah|13 years ago|reply
I realize it's right next to when he says "[I] can read my textbooks twice as long without mental fatigue", but that seems coincidental juxtaposition, rather than him referring to the same books.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it doesn't really seem that implausible, if that's the case.
[+] [-] aroberge|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kkwok|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unix-dude|13 years ago|reply
I think the author has definetly started to see real business potential, especially after all the exposure (both here on HN, and in general). That being said, he's probably not a legal expert, and is probably treading carefully (gathering data slowly, not immediately selling the mixture, etc).
Personally, I wish him and his future (potenial) business well. Its definetly a product Id buy. Eating healthy (especially when your choices are very restricted, eg school), can be a pain in the ass. Quick, very healthy, potential food replacement (Though, id probably only totally replace meals with it occasionally) sounds really, really great.
[+] [-] bravura|13 years ago|reply
Related: I'm sure most of us don't care upon the soylent formulation per se as long as we could easily make our own meal-in-a-shake-form.
Does anyone have any suggestions/ideas about how to produce something similar?
[+] [-] m_d|13 years ago|reply
That said, I'd like to see him compare two months of Soylent to two months of eating solid meals with a similar nutritional profile. Most of the benefits he has experienced are probably just a result of extremely well-balanced diet, not anything specifically related to Soylent.
[+] [-] gnaritas|13 years ago|reply
That's rather the point of Soylent, to deliver a well balanced diet.
> not anything specifically related to Soylent.
This statement makes little sense, he merely claimed Soylent was a way to achieve good nutrition, not that it was magic.
[+] [-] uptown|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] resu_nimda|13 years ago|reply
Nutritionally, being equivalent to a well-balanced diet meets his goals.
[+] [-] paxtonab|13 years ago|reply
After reading the 1st HN abut this I was skeptical, but this sentence fully convinced me that Rinehart is on to something. Imagine a world with a quick, healthy, affordable lunch substitute that negated the 'need' to eat fast food when you feel pressed for time at work... Thankfully this only happens to me 2 or 3 times a month , but I'm guessing that for most of America that's more like 2 or 3 times a week.
[+] [-] eru|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tantalor|13 years ago|reply
Is Soylent much more shelf stable?
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|13 years ago|reply
Assuming the $150/month calculated, that's still pretty pricey for someone who makes $1-$2 a day in wages. Its not clear to me how to calculate how that cost compares to sending sacks of wheat or rice.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRC_Handbook_of_Chemistry_and_P...
[+] [-] derefr|13 years ago|reply
No, actually, it's less so. But apparently it can be made out of "very common [mostly vegetable] ingredients growable in every place on Earth", unlike most other "complete" diets.
[+] [-] bstar77|13 years ago|reply
If Soylent powder preserves well, then distribution should be substantially easier.
[+] [-] jheimark|13 years ago|reply
If not, isn't soylent just about the worst possible name for a real food product (with unknown/nonspecific ingredients), because of the movie?
[+] [-] nbouscal|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cyranix|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nsxwolf|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lnanek2|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dandelany|13 years ago|reply
You can buy 24 8-oz Ensure drinks on sale from Amazon for $42.50. Each drink contains 350 calories, so: (24 * 350) / $42.50 = 198 kcal/dollar.
Rob claims to get 2629 calories a day from Soylent, and his monthly costs were $154.82, so: (30 * 2629) / $154.82 = 509 kcal/dollar. Soylent is 2.5x cheaper than Ensure (based on calories alone).
[+] [-] shurcooL|13 years ago|reply
But, it seems strange that this is coming from one guy rather than big companies. If it is possible to sell food/food replacement for cheaper this way, why hasn't anyone jumped on the chance to outsell others by selling for less?
[+] [-] rodly|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dustinupdyke|13 years ago|reply
Source?
[+] [-] juskrey|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jaggederest|13 years ago|reply
So you're saying he fails to anticipate a future negative consequence of present behavior? I guess we'll find out!
[+] [-] paduc|13 years ago|reply
But who cares, right? He doesn't really need his teeth.
He should be prepared to accept a new and maybe uncommon physical shape.
[+] [-] zen_boy|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] claudius|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] papsosouid|13 years ago|reply
I wonder if people who say ridiculous stuff like this realize that there are already lots of people living on liquid diets, feeding tubes, or IV nutrition because of health problems. And their jaws don't magically turn to mush and their teeth don't fall out.
[+] [-] auctiontheory|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sukuriant|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] caublestone|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 5partan|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duck|13 years ago|reply