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Boom times in Silicon Valley call for hard work, and hard work — at least in technology land — means that coders, engineers and venture capitalists are turning to liquid meals with names like Schmoylent, Soylent, Schmilk and People Chow. The protein-packed products that come in powder form are inexpensive and quick and easy to make — just shake with water, or in the case of Schmilk, milk. While athletes and dieters have been drinking their dinner for years, Silicon Valley's workers are now increasingly chugging their meals, too, so they can more quickly get back to their computer work.
Demand for some of the powdered drinks, which typically mix nutrients like magnesium, zinc and vitamins, is so high that some engineers report being put on waiting lists of one to six months to receive their first orders. And the drinks are taking off across techie social circles. Venture capitalists have also poured money into the companies that offer the meal replacements, and investors including Alexis Ohanian, a founder of Reddit, count themselves as fans of the drinks.
[Editor's Comment: Original Submission]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by looorg on Wednesday May 27 2015, @01:05PM
"The time wasted by eating is ..." I don't think I would, could or even want to trade real cooking and food for a protein shake. Liquid meals are for people without teeth and/or taste buds. I think I spend, on average, about an hour a day making and eating my food. It's totally worth it for me at least. I have a really hard to time see how you could be so busy as to not eat proper food. Sure you could skip like a day and eat something minor but to live for weeks on this sludge? To read that Elon Musk apparently thinks it would be an awesome idea to cut out real food is just plain silly. He is so god damn rich he could have someone make all his food for him. He is to busy to take like 20 minutes to eat a meal? I'm sure he could get an assistant to chew his food for him and just spit it into his mouth. That should save him a few precious minutes of chewing each day. I seriously doubt those extra 20 minutes would make or break his company. It's like the people in traffic that think getting to work is a F1-race.
“I am getting sick of the taste,” Dan Sparks, an engineer for Clever, recently told Mr. Mittal. “I am thinking I’ll have to start flavoring it.”
I guess that just says it all. Doesn't these protein shakes, just like their diet shake siblings, usually come in exciting flavors such as strawberry and chocolate. Utterly disgusting.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday May 27 2015, @01:20PM
If people want to emancipate themselves from food and taste, what's wrong with that?
You aren't sold on any convenience or taste arguments, but what about health? Soylent is the ultimate measured approach to calorie and nutrient control. It's perfect for the quantified self and wearable IoT.
Dan Sparks doesn't like the "taste", but I've read quotes about proponents that want even less taste. They want it to taste neutral like water, not the vaguely doughy taste of some versions.
It's no surprise that Elon Musk is thinking about Soylent. A nutrient sludge would be optimal for space travel and the man is America's top Martian.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday May 27 2015, @01:35PM
Emancipate themselves from food and taste? Eating is now like slavery? Sure. If you don't want to eat or taste them that is a personal preference I guess. I just doubt that the time saved here would be massive. That seems to be what the article really is saying, even tho I do believe there is more to the story then time saving. There might also be the case that people just don't know how to cook anymore, or can't be bothered to learn. It's not like when you cook that is all you do. There is time to think about other things. It's not like you are a kitchen-zombie standing there looking into the oven or staring at the pot waiting for something to boil. Cooking in some regard is about time-management.
I also do believe that time spent away from your desk can be productive. It's not like you don't or can't think of "work-stuff" when you are not chained to your desk. As I recall now certain high-tech places such as Google as their own kitchen staff and cooks. Sure there might be a security thing involved as in they don't want their people off their property talking to strangers over meals -- secrets might slip out. But there is also a social aspect to eating. Something that is probably lost when your meal is sipped at the kitchen sink before you go back to your desk.
But a real meal is as far as I know quite healthy, sure it depends on what you make and how you cook it but beyond those factors. If it wasn't I'm sure my doctor would have indicated that something was horribly wrong with my diet. It has not happened so far. The thing for the people mentioned in the article is the time-factor. They want to save time. So they don't want to eat take-out food or reheated leftover or whatnot. Which is deemed "unhealthy" then I guess. If that is the case or not I'm not sure. Having a pizza, a burger or taco or whatnot every now and then is dietary fine I would think. To live on it every day probably not as much.
Having the shakes taste like water would probably be an improvement.
I'm not surprised Musk is thinking about nutrient sludge, Mars and space stuff either. I'm surprised he wants to eat it here, on earth, as a replacement for a real meal cause he is to busy and he thinks it will save him so much time.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JeanCroix on Wednesday May 27 2015, @01:25PM
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday May 27 2015, @01:29PM
You don't need to be a Silicon Valley revolutionary to choose Soylent. You just share a goal of transcending human limits.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Funny) by JeanCroix on Wednesday May 27 2015, @01:36PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2015, @06:50PM
JeanCroix.... JC.... we are on you Mr. Denton!
(Score: 1) by rondon on Wednesday May 27 2015, @02:01PM
Real question - is this performance art or shilling? Or something else entirely?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday May 27 2015, @02:08PM
It's performance shilling you can believe in.
I'm sympathetic to the Soylent cause, but I don't practice it. I just think "why would you want to give up food" is a stale, tasteless response.
Now replacing livestock with lab-grown meat, there's a worthy cause.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2015, @04:05PM
"It's performance shilling you can believe in."
Golden. You, sir, win the internets for today,
(Score: 1) by acp_sn on Wednesday May 27 2015, @02:11PM
Enjoying sensual pleasures in moderation isn't detrimental to "transcending human limits".
Suffering isn't caused by physical discomfort, it is caused by lack of individual sovereignty.
If another person makes you to eat food you don't like by threat or force then the bad taste is suffering.
The choice between eating immediately available food that you like slightly less or waiting and being slightly hungry for a short time until more palatable food is available is the very definition of a trivial problem. If your goal is to transcend human limits then wasting energy worrying about other people's food isn't advancing that agenda.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2015, @02:28PM
> Suffering isn't caused by physical discomfort, it is caused by lack of individual sovereignty.
Spoken by someone who has never experienced significant physical discomfort.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday May 27 2015, @03:32PM
Well...you can't just wait out the threat of malnutrition... ;)
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Thursday May 28 2015, @06:17AM
We should also remove free will. It leads to capriciousness suffering, the indulgence of vices, and would be quite optimal. Arguably, it would pave the way for enlightenment too. Why not?
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Thursday May 28 2015, @06:20AM
Err, capriciousness COMMA suffering. See? If I lacked free will, i could have been implemented with a routine that forced me to click preview first!
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Archon V2.0 on Wednesday May 27 2015, @02:21PM
> Liquid meals are for people without teeth and/or taste buds.
Or maybe they have too many taste buds. Maybe they have, say, two or three foods they genuinely enjoy eating but realize that just eating those few things is unhealthy. They've tried other foods and have rarely found things they like because everything, despite everyone else's insistence, is too bitter or too salty. And rather than waste an hour of their life cooking food that they merely tolerate, they'd rather spend a few minutes pouring something they can tolerate and drinking that.
(Score: 2) by romlok on Wednesday May 27 2015, @02:36PM
If cooking and eating is the most interesting, exciting thing you could do in that hour, then good for you. However, some of us would occasionally like to be able to just stop being hungry and carry on with whatever we were doing.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday May 27 2015, @02:56PM
If cooking and eating is the most interesting, exciting thing you could do in that hour, then good for you. However, some of us would occasionally like to be able to just stop being hungry and carry on with whatever we were doing.
It's not the most interesting thing I could do with my time. But I still consider it time well spent. It gives me a break from what I was doing and it helps me to be productive for the rest of my waking hours.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday May 27 2015, @05:08PM
I don't know... a few quick shakes and an extra 45 minutes of sex sounds like a pretty appealing alternative...
In all seriousness though: I enjoy cooking, especially with a partner, but find myself often eating a less-than-ideal diet out of convenience, distraction, etc. If they could develop a soylent that could be substituted for real food on a as-wanted basis, rather than requiring weeks of intestinal adaptation to avoid flatulence, I would likely keep a stockpile. I suspect I'd even increase the number of good meals I cooked if I didn't have the negative association of "just get some fuel in the tank as quickly as possible" cooking clouding the issue. Real food when I'm interested in food, soylent when my body just needs fuel.
Plus, with soylent trying to be a scientifically optimal food source, it's probably far more nutritionally complete than anything I cook for myself. After all, there's a world of difference between the adequate nutrition that keeps my body from degenerating, and a truly optimal solution. After all our bodies evolved to eat wild plants and game, not the flavorless meat-pudding and spongy franken-vegetables we've bred in the last few thousand years in the name of ever-increasing yields.
(Score: 2) by Tramii on Wednesday May 27 2015, @07:49PM
I don't know... a few quick shakes and an extra 45 minutes of sex sounds like a pretty appealing alternative...
So, we are supposed to believe there is someone out who has to choose between eating meals and sex? Like they have enough time for one but not the other? Like they totally could have sex, but they just don't have the time and if only they could free up some time they would totally have loads of sex.
Right. Sure. Uh huh.
(Score: 1) by KGIII on Wednesday May 27 2015, @11:03PM
I dunno? Maybe that dude that was over 1000 pounds? The scary thing is he has a wife and she was the one who kept feeding him. Aside: He has since had a stomach bypass and lost half his bodyweight.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 4, Interesting) by urza9814 on Wednesday May 27 2015, @03:05PM
I used Soylent for a while. Stopped solely because I couldn't get any without paying twice the price due to supply shortages (tried several of the DIY ones; they didn't work out.) Although I think it's back in stock now so I'm probably ordering more soon. I loved the stuff. Had nothing to do with time; I just *HATE* food. It's stressful, it's difficult, it's time-consuming, and the result brings me very little, and only very brief, pleasure.
If I do want to eat for the taste, I'll chop and fry some potatoes. That's about the only food I consider worth the effort, and it's not exactly nutritious. If I just need to eat for the calories and nutrients, Soylent seems a far better option. Although ideally I'd really prefer my food in pill form ;)