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The food replacement Soylent is now hitting 2.0. The new version will come premixed in bottled liquid form instead of powder, though the powdered version will still exist. It will cost $12 per day, as opposed to $9 per day for the powder. The liquid and powder versions will have slightly different compositions.
In other Soylent news (pun intended), Soylent products will now be shipping in two to three days instead of the multi-month waits previously due to overwhelming demand relative to supply.
takyon: Soylent blog post and The Register.
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Soylent 2.0 is Coming: Food Replacement Premixed in Bottles
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O, it is excellent
To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.
-- Shakespeare, "Measure for Measure", II, 2
(Score: 2) by GoonDu on Tuesday August 04 2015, @01:06AM
I've heard of wonderful things about this 'soylent', most 'wonderful' thing about this is apparently people think clearer and has better focus so I wonder what is people's takes on this. Food science maybe relatively well-known but it's how nutrient contributes to human development is still an active science so I am really skeptical about Soylent's effect on health.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tynin on Tuesday August 04 2015, @01:17AM
I did feel more aware when I was using Soylent... more aware of how much more flatulence and stomach cramps I had. For the think clearer / focus, I seem to get the same effects from fish oil (omega3).
(Score: 4, Funny) by davester666 on Tuesday August 04 2015, @03:25AM
It's mainly improving health in the US by eliminating the homeless.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by urza9814 on Tuesday August 04 2015, @03:11PM
Yeah, I've been drinking it for about a month now (used it before then too, but stopped due to the shipping delays and the DIY variants mostly sucking.) Personally, I love the stuff, and they've been shipping it out within two or three days for over a month now so TFS's update on the shipping isn't really tied to the new versions.
Part of it is just because I'm just not particularly into food. I've been wishing for the stereotypical sci-fi "food pills" my entire life, and this is pretty close. Takes only a couple seconds to make, and tastes...not *amazing*, but definitely not bad either.
The extra energy, better focus, and lower stress is just a great bonus as far as I'm concerned. Not sure how much of that is Soylent and how much that's just my horrific diet without it though. It does contain...something that I can't remember right now, but the release notes basically describe it as a slow-release sugar. So I suspect that's part of it. But it also wasn't entirely uncommon for me to do stuff like eating nothing but potatoes for a day so not doing that anymore probably helps too :)
Does take some time to get used to it though. They suggest ramping up over 3-5 days -- but I'd say it really took a week or two for my body to mostly adjust. Also helps reduce gas and such if you drink it slowly, although beyond the first week that hasn't been an issue for me. I also do still eat other foods for at least one meal -- I eat Soylent when I'm sitting alone at home; I'm not going to use it instead of eating if I'm going out with my girlfriend, and I don't bring it to work since we've got a pretty good cafeteria. So I drink 4-5 days worth in an average week right now. I find it helps to keep some potatoes in there -- I think I need the soluble fiber. Which makes sense given that those tend to be a large part of my diet anyway; must have gotten used to it...
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @01:23AM
Another FPOS Dice Holdings-inspired, Flash-addled, JavaScript and CSS disaster being shoved down our collective
Oh, wait.
Never mind.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @08:46AM
damn that was good
i was thinking similar, but i couldn't have said it better
kudos!
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @01:31AM
Is Soylent packaged in penis shaped bars so every woman can gleefully imagine herself chewing off the dicks of her male oppressors?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday August 04 2015, @01:37AM
No, but Soylent has been known to resemble, among other things, semen. [alternet.org]
(Score: 3, Touché) by Kell on Tuesday August 04 2015, @01:47AM
Soylent will be known as a seminal invention in the history of gustation.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Tuesday August 04 2015, @02:28AM
I guess the target market for this are all the people that do not mind having no textures in their food. Or don't have enough "stuff" to keep things in the tubes moving along. Isn't that a little bit of a problem considering that gut bacteria is kind of important to our health?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gut_flora#Functions [wikipedia.org]
and those are just scratching the surface.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday August 04 2015, @03:39AM
Is really well blended (in a food processor) soup not a food?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by dyingtolive on Tuesday August 04 2015, @04:58AM
I honestly don't think I've ever had a soup that didn't have identifiable objects floating in it.
I suppose bisque maybe, but that's not really something you just eat as a meal by itself.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Tuesday August 04 2015, @12:04PM
Stereotypical midwestern old wives tale, canned broth to treat digestive malfunctions.
The end result is you grow up associating the taste of beef broth or chicken broth with explosive vomiting and diarrhea, so it gets associated in your mind and mostly inedible. Much like "every" college student eventually has an unfortunate run-in with vodka and kool-aide leading to an inability to drink either in the future.
Its a pity, as a low carb energy drink you probably can't do much better than a broth of some kind.
For the non-americans broth is the seasoned liquid in soups. So if you had classic chicken noodle and took out the chunks of chicken, the noodles, and the veg then you'd end up with flavored liquid chicken broth.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday August 04 2015, @11:54AM
the target market for this
Kids without close contact to ancestors. Maybe stereotypical yuppie hipster types who moved across the country away from family to join the new urbanism or WTF.
There's a popular and strong liquid food replacement industry mostly focused on the elderly and sick. After my grandma had surgery for something or other she didn't weigh enough (admittedly this is incredibly unusual for a modern American) so her doc ordered her to drink this canned "Ensure" meal replacement stuff you've probably walked by crates of it 1000s of times at the drug store or supermarket. There are a zillion competitor brands, of course.
After she gained weight up to normal, healed from surgery, etc, all is well, she pawned off some leftover cans on us grandkids for the fun filled experience, well you know dumb college kids, they'll drink tequila, so lets do the elderly thing and F with the kids and see if we can talk them into slamming a shot of Ensure ha ha ha. From memory it kind of tasted like that premade chocolate milk from the supermarket, except maybe a little gritty?, and maybe a little sweeter (this was a long time ago, before absolute corn syrup saturation in all processed foods; to modern palates it would probably taste like "normal" modern food). Oh and it kind of tasted like whipping cream rather than regular 2% milk, probably added fats, and I suppose fat soluble vitamins.
Much like my extensive experience with MREs, they're not bad, not bad at all for the first meal, but I can totally see how after nine months of continuous MRE breakfast omelet (a love it or hate it entree if I've ever seen one) you could get pretty sick of the sameness.
So if you want to live as an adult out of a bottle with a professional nutritionist designed mixture of "health" then that's commercially available forever at every drug store and food store across the country IF you look a bit. You may be the only person under 70 to drink it, or the only person willfully drinking it not under Dr orders because its super gross, but its just sitting there at the store waiting for you to pick it up and start chugging.
Its a market segmentation game. Like taking a $1 pack of crayons, marking half as "boy brand crayons" and half as "girl brand crayons" and marking the price up to $2 and suckering the public. And not a little conspicuous consumption, I'm always amazed how cheap real, fresh, home cooking is compared to the cost of processed crap, so some hipster gets to show off his $15/day soylent habit whereas a poor bastard like myself is stuck with grilled tenderloin steak and large fresh salad class of lifestyle for only $10/day, so that makes me a looser...
Isn't that a little bit of a problem
For about a quarter million years your same species ancestors never really got three meals of grain per day, I suspect many tribes basically didn't eat in the late winter to early spring. Your body is built for that kind of stuff. If it wasn't, your ancestors would have died, leaving slightly better adapted not-you today. I suppose there's problems beyond mere not-dying, but your body mostly won't mind.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Tuesday August 04 2015, @02:32AM
I suggest looking at https://diy.soylent.com/. [soylent.com] There are some recipes that allow you to try a mix without buying a week's worth.
You also can edit the recipe, which seems important for something you can live off of (everyone is different). I only replace one meal a day so I'm not as picky about hitting my daily numbers in every category.
Here is my current recipe: https://diy.soylent.com/recipes/richsoylent. [soylent.com] I make no guarantees on the taste.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday August 04 2015, @03:41AM
corrected link:
Ricetopia [soylent.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by captain normal on Tuesday August 04 2015, @04:52AM
For $12 US a day I can eat real food (not counting the occasional meal out).
The Musk/Trump interview appears to have been hacked, but not a DDOS hack...more like A Distributed Denial of Reality.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Tuesday August 04 2015, @04:14PM
A very valid point. The powder is actually 9 a day, and if you roll your own you can be down to less than 3.
But that point aside, I'm a person who does not enjoy cooking. I would much rather spend my time doing something else (like writing this post). So with that mindset, I'm eating garbage frozen meals or eating fast food to keep costs down, and yet I'm still spending more time "preparing" the food than with a liquid meal.
Some people benefit from Soylent because of dietary restrictions. Allergies like corn, or sensitivity to glucose, or moral restrictions like vegans can have a fast meal on the go without finding a specialty restaurant/store. My friend has a mild sensitivity to beef and oats, so if you are on a road trip you want to be sure that those items are not consumed unless you want to stop frequently. You can avoid them most of the time, but this is an easy alternative to fast food.
(Score: 4, Informative) by gman003 on Tuesday August 04 2015, @04:20AM
The founder of Soylent (the food) wrote blog post and it is the most pretentious, self-serving thing I've ever read [arstechnica.com]. I'm linking to Ars instead of his personal blog because some of the comments there are pretty good, and also I'd hate to give him more page hits.
Notable highlights:
Electric cars like Teslas still use fossil fuels at the power plant, so he uses Uber instead because they're mainly Priuses
Speaking of Tesla, he doesn't see the point in a 7kWh Powerwall when a car battery is all you need
He doesn't cook for himself. He eats Soylent (literal dogfooding, which I guess is good) or goes to restaurants, exclusively
Grocery stores are a torture he can't ethically even pay someone else to do for him. He buys all his food online "like a civilized person"
It's "presumptuous" for an architect to just assume people want a kitchen in their home
His only computer is a NUC, when he "needs" more computing power he uses an EC2 instance
He orders custom-made clothes from China, wears them until dirty, then donates them because it's more energy-efficient than washing them
He doesn't just not own a TV, he also does not own a refrigerator, dishwasher, oven, microwave, or basically anything else. His technological possessions seem to be a computer, two monitors, a nanoprojector, and a butane stove for coffee and tea
His power consumption is down to "well below" 420 Wh per day, or so he claims
There's just so much blatantly wrong stuff in there that it's surprising when he says something I can agree with, like nuke-powered container ships. I know it's irrational to judge a product by the behavior of its creator, but this seriously killed any interest I may have had in Soylent the Food.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by GoonDu on Tuesday August 04 2015, @05:28AM
Most of the things he do seem to off-load his power consumption to other people instead. Technically, he s reducing his power consumption but in turns, he is pushing that responsibility to other people instead. Not sure if that really counts. That said, while it is commendable, the tone of it makes him sound like a entitled privileged person who sees himself above mere plebeians like us.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @08:50AM
so... a black chick who votes for obama not cos she's racist but because he's black
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday August 04 2015, @06:04PM
I'm sure the power running that Chinese factory is so much cleaner than the power that would operate his washing machine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @07:13PM
Using uber (instead of cycling, public transport), buying clothes from china and donating them when they are dirty, burning gas to heat his coffee. And then trying to spin it as if he's environmentally friendly. Plenty of WTF there.
Maybe his sales of Soylent are low so this is a publicity stunt/troll and he hopes that he'll get plenty of stupid customers to buy his product. $2.4 per 400kcal = $12 a day for 2000 calories.
(Score: 3, Touché) by darkfeline on Tuesday August 04 2015, @11:16PM
>I know it's irrational to judge a product by the behavior of its creator, but this seriously killed any interest I may have had in Soylent the Food.
It's a clear-cut example of the ad hominem fallacy. Even "I prefer REAL food" is a better argument.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 1) by jdavidb on Tuesday August 04 2015, @05:01AM
Over on a certain other site, this story was reported on without even bothering to explain what Soylent is. I was left wondering if it was made out of people, or something.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday August 04 2015, @07:57AM
Over on a certain other site
Slashdot Slashdot Slashdot Slashdot Slashdot
Huh, nothing happened.
Voldemort!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @08:39AM
Show some respect for the dead.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @09:32AM
systemd!!
(Score: 2) by Daiv on Tuesday August 04 2015, @05:27PM
For your next try, you should say Candle Jac
(Score: 2) by MrNemesis on Tuesday August 04 2015, @08:39AM
Is preparing and eating regular food, as opposed to a nutritious gloop, really so burdensome? As another poster pointed out, $12 a day is plenty for simple staples and fresh veg, at least where I shop anyway, and have the benefit of taste and texture.
Are there really people so on-the-go they can't spend 5 minutes chopping a handful of veg and simmering them with some passata for 20 minutes whilst the pasta cooks? Then again from the Ars blogatorial someone else posted the guy behind this seems to be offended by the idea of kitchens (except when they're attached to one of the restaurants he frequents I guess) and I don't think I'm mentally equipped to deal with such "not in Kansas anymore" viewpoints.
Anyway that Reg article and all this talk of non-food has left me hungry. There should be a new SN poll recommending me some interesting dishes...
"To paraphrase Nietzsche, I have looked into the abyss and been sick in it."
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday August 04 2015, @09:42AM
A blue-rare 2 pounds 18 days dry aged rump steak, forget the chips and salad - flavour and texture, good exercise for the masseters as well.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by miljo on Tuesday August 04 2015, @01:36PM
+1
The earth is full of delicious plants and animals, and we can be chemists and artists in our kitchens and combine delicious plants and animals into culinary delights. Why would you want to forgo that for snot in a bottle?
One should strive to achieve, not sit in bitter regret.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @09:24PM
I live with someone with OCD.
She will one day burn the house down, or die of a heart attack, worrying about if the stove is off.
She cannot cut vegetables without counting endlessly. She can use the same knife to cut into a pot roast or something without issue.
To all the people that don't get why food preparation is such a bother, consider that you are mentally healthy and at peace with the concept.
As for me? Just to reduce the amount of problems, I typically order out and get things like... cereal in a box. lunch meat. pasta in a box. Anything that is dump-and-run, as otherwise she will be unable to eat it, and instead will eat from bags of chips and ice cream so that she feels full.
Something like soylent is a great for her, but it's not the only liquid meal we've tried... soylent is among the least expensive, though.
Remember, your 5 minutes doing something is her two hours and still not having eaten, her arms are sore from the same actions, the fact that she cant even cut the vegetables any more and its just a repeated action at that point... and that she's become incredibly frustrated and irritable because wow she hasn't eaten yet. And she's fat, because of the eating habits I described.
Tell me how to make it better (yes, she sees a doctor) and you win a free internet from me. The least you can do is let her drink the "snot" in peace.
(Score: 2) by Nollij on Friday August 07 2015, @12:27AM
I'm betting you either have less than average obligations/responsibilities, or do not prepare your own food 3x/day, every single day. The time certainly adds up - as does the time/energy spent trying to keep things interesting. I'm not saying that this is the answer, but there is certainly something attractive about being able to simply grab something on the go. The amount of junk/fast food sold suggests that A LOT of people just want something fast and cheap. I actually looked into Soylent a while back, as a substitute for the breakfast bars I was eating. Now that it's more available, I'll have to check again. This would be healthier and cheaper than the alternatives. But the one thing that it cannot be, and has never claimed to be, is a replacement for the taste. If you are eating for flavor, this is not for you. If you are simply eating to put nutrients in your body, then it might be for you.
(Score: 2) by MrNemesis on Friday August 07 2015, @12:12PM
My partner and I eat out maybe twice a week (usually at least once at the pub on a weekday evening and maybe at a restaurant at the weekend), the rest of the time I prepare my own food, yes. Fruit in the morning (zero time) or maybe a bowl of cereal when I get into work, sandwiches for lunch (about 10mins to make) or perhaps leftovers from yesterday, proper meal in the evening - prep time for which depends entirely on the meal but in most cases means about half an hour of work when one isn't available to do anything else. More complicated meals like a roast dinner might mean an hour of prep. Weekends we can go to town a bit more if we've got time and do more complicated stuff. Full english breakfast always a particular highlight.
Not really sure what less than average obligations are, we're both full-time workers spending 10-12 hours out of the house a day but I don't have kids so I guess that makes things easier. But even so a single cook can scale up a meal to three or four times the size whilst expending maybe only 1.5x the time. Perhaps it's a generational/upbringing thing? I was brought up cooking my own stuff from a very early age yet even then there were plenty of people in my home ec classes at school that had clearly never cooked anything in their lives.
I can understand people wanting something fast and cheap... I'm just perplexed as why people would want to pick a mostly tasteless nutritious gloop. As you say it's clearly not designed for me, but then for me life with only nutrients and no flavour would be a depressing one indeed.
"To paraphrase Nietzsche, I have looked into the abyss and been sick in it."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @09:30AM
... don't overdose on the news!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by darkfeline on Tuesday August 04 2015, @11:28PM
A lot of people have extremely polarized initial reactions to Soylent and similar products. The number one misunderstanding I see is that you do not have to eat Soylent exclusively. You can occasionally eat Soylent for a single meal or a snack and indulge in all the caviar, hamburgers, and ice cream you want the rest of the time. Crazy, right?
If you don't have time to prepare breakfast in the morning, a bottle of Soylent is miles better than going without or grabbing a bag of chips or a microwave meal. If you're in the middle of a focused programming or gaming session, a glass of Soylent is better than stopping to prep and eat a meal (arguably) or going without. If you're going on a hiking trip, powdered Soylent is a lot more efficient weight-wise and nutrition-wise than many other hiking foods. It's easy to "eat" since it's in liquid form.
Do you judge, for example, your favorite ice cream by whether or not you want to exclusively eat that ice cream for the rest of your life? No? Then why do you do it for Soylent? "Because that's how it's marketed!" No, it's not, actually. They even make a point of including an FAQ question:
How do I use Soylent? However you like!
Soylent is designed as a simple staple food, and people incorporate it into their lives to varying degrees. Some people use it almost exclusively, while others use it 2-3 times per week.
There is no right or wrong amount of Soylent to eat - the whole idea is to find a balance that works for you.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!