It's a shame that they (and many of their prospective customers) appear to be unaware of the existing liquid feed products.
Eventually they claim they'll tailor the product for each individual. That'll be interesting. Maybe combine it with life planning for exercise and healthier eating? People could wean their selves off junk foods (subbing Soylent for those) and tapering in better food.
> Why does everyone seem to think that Soylent is "for every meal, everyday"?
Because they're selling it as that. Perhaps Soylent could consider reading these threads and improving their website information?
>Also, it doesn't have a single ingredient list. It's been stated several times that the measurements would be modified according to each individual that would use Soylent.
This version of the product comes, I think, in just two forms, Male and Female. Ingredients are crucial. (Perhaps a legal requirement? I don't know about the US market.) Certainly a list of ingredients for the base product is possible.
It'll be interesting to see how Soylent do the tailoring to each individual. It'll be interesting to see what information they use to do that modification.
Give me a break. People have gone on crazier diets for a lot longer than this guy has and not died. Steve Jobs famously went on an all fruit diet for years and did not die as a result. There are people out there who literally eat nothing but McDonalds for breakfast lunch and dinner and it takes decades for them to die. We are more resilient than you're giving us credit for.
Is it really so ridiculous to question the claims being made here, though? Also "there are crazier things than this" is an incredibly bad argument when defending a product that has, in early stages, claimed it "automatically puts you at an optimal weight, makes you feel full, and improves your focus and cognition"[1] prior to any published tests. Admittedly they have dialed back the rhetoric, but is that enough to dismiss someone asking for some demonstration of proof?
So you don't know? Yet you're happy for them to sell it as safe for everyone, as providing optimal nutrition, as bring people to perfect health, as being tested, when we don't know if any of that is true? (And we know the tested part is a lie).
This is ridiculous reasoning. Do you think every new food product that hits the market is tested for years beforehand to make sure it doesn't kill anybody? Soylent is just food, not some new medicine.
Soylent is being sold as a complete food. We've seen a couple of mistakes during the testing process. The ingredients list is not easy to find, and the sources of those ingredients are not available, so we cannot check if it is a complete food or not.
Soylent is being sold as something that you can eat for every meal. You can argue that most people aren't going to do that, but that's how Soylent are selling it.
Soylent claim, unambiguously, that it is safe for everyone. People with Crohn's disease sometimes need to eat a liquid feed. Is Soylent safe for them? Because Soylent claim that it is safe for them, and that it'll provide them with optimum nutrition and bring them to good health.
> Soylent is being sold as something that you can eat for every meal. You can argue that most people aren't going to do that, but that's how Soylent are selling it.
I agree with you that they should not be selling it in that way.
I apologise if I've been too harsh on Soylent. I have, previously, been strongly against Soylent. I'm against some of the techniques they're using to sell it now.
But I'm trying to be more a "critical friend" rather than just "negative". I realise that I don't yet have the right balance.
Isn't Jobs fruitarianism considered to be a potential cause/contributor to his pancreas problems, which ultimately killed him?
The first two sentences made me think of Atkins, who I've heard (yes hearsay again) was hastened to his death by the high fat content of his low-/no-carb regime?
FWIW I'm not saying Soylent is worse than any other diet, I don't know. Just that your opposition to the parents scepticism seems a little too strong.
> assuming it's not missing any major dietary component
It has some fibre, but it's missing solids. Who knows if that's important or not?
They claim it has a long shelf life. I'm not sure what they're doing to maintain shelf life. Vitamin C, for example, has a short shelf life. Soylent aren't saying how long the shelf life is, or which nutrients might degrade sooner.
That's the kind of thing they'll need help with. Sealed containers, maybe with weekly supplies per container, dark light-proof containers will help.
(While I'm strongly anti-Soylent, I'm trying to be more constructive.)
These are big companies. They have dieticians and nutritionists working for them. They have established manufacturing channels sorted out. They supply a known, quality product to a variety of sources. They have existing contracts with big customers. They have expertise in selling to healthcare markets.
Note also the caution they use when describing their products - they don't claim that these are suitable for anyone. They certainly don't suggest that you stay on a liquid diet if you don't need it. They strongly suggest doctor's supervision.
It's your body, and what you do with it is up to you. But Soylent are being irresponsible by selling this product as "safe", for everyone, as "tested", when it hasn't had any testing, and we don't know that it is safe, and we do know that it is not safe for everyone.
To disrupt the industry Soylent need to know what that industry is.
So far I haven't seen any sign that they have any idea about what going on in that domain.
There's a bunch of stuff about "Hey! What if food was a simple easy liquid?" - well, fine, except that's been in existence for many years. There's some stuff about "optimal health" - which is a bit scary when you have a bunch of people with (as far as we can see) zero medical knowledge, zero dietary knowledge, and zero nutritional knowledge. Apart from what they've got from Wikipedia. And then there's the "Soylent will feed the world" - except we've been trying to feed the world with similar products for years and there's still a problem.
For the world hunger stuff: Who are they selling to? Charities and NGOs? The WFP and UNICEF? Will they just sell the raw product, or will they sell distribution too? What makes them better than whoever the WFP / UNICFEC are buying from?
This is why it doesn't feel disruptive. Most disruptive companies see what other people are doing, and target the inefficiencies or target what people want done differently.
Soylent claims to be different, but is the same as existing products (but with much bolder claims and much less quality control).
Everything I've seen with Soylent so far feels very rushed, and not thought-through. MVPs are fine for most things, but I'm pretty cautious about what I live on.
Most YC startups are not going to cause you direct physical harm. Soylent might. And I'd be fine with that if they had stuck to the original self-experimental approach. But they're not. They saying, clearly, unambiguously, that the product is tested and is safe and is safe for everyone.
The founders of Uber were not experts in the public transportation space when they started their company. The founders of AirBnB were not experts in the hospitality industry wen they started their company. The founders of Hipmonk were not experts in travel planning when they started their company. The founders of Warby-Parker were not eyewear or vision experts when they started their company. The founder of Oculus Rift wasn't an expert in VR and head-mounted displays when he started his company. And so on..
Where is the disruption? My supermarket has half an aisle full of meal replacement powders, drinks, and bars. HN (and soylent) seem to be unaware of such a thing. Does Soylent bring anything new to the table other than guerrilla marketing and willful ignorance of FDA regulations ("These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.")
The disruption I think is in the marketing and could be in the product itself. The other 'meal replacements' aren't pitched as actually replacing a meal, or at least I don't think we view them that way. They're viewed as 'good enough if you can't get a meal', or 'helps me get to the next meal'. A true meal replacement is a completely different marketing approach, and the product 'could' be significantly different. I don't know, but I'll do what I can to support them so WE can all find out.
Makes me wonder how long they hold on to the sales pitch:
"Soylent is a simple and affordable nutritional drink that has everything the healthy body needs"
"Everything the healthy body needs"?
If I use it exclusively for a decade, will Soylent be liable for health issues arising from any potential nutritional issues?
I find the experiment interesting and don't wish to rain on the parade as I'd love to see some solution to nutrition in general (understand and communicating, figuring out a plan given height, age, sex, activity levels, dietary preferences, etc).
But I really hope the experiment stays out of the third/developing world until it's proven... if you're going to risk someone's health then at least let that be someone who has access to health care, clean water, other food, etc.
The worst thing they could do is to use the potential third world market as a sales pitch, experiment there, and then screw it up and leave people with a whole new set of problems and no recourse. Though, I guess that other industries do exactly that and treat it as an externalisation of the cost (oil industry practices, etc).
Because in this case there is a public service angle to making sure people make an informed decision?
If you make a new A/B testing tool or a spiffy way to choose colours for a website nobody is going to wonder what the long term health consequences might be.
I'm not in the target demographic for products like Soylent. But someone in my social circle sells AdvoCare and others within that circle eat it up. Soylent is entering a market at least as accepted and established as the technologies mentioned in your comment.
Your logic can be applied in regard to the consequences of a whole host of technology ideas which involve personalizing user experience, providing relevant advertizing content or analyzing user behavior.
As a parent, I certainly wonder about the long-term consequences of online behavior, and expect they are of a far more irreversible nature.
Most people have lived very healthily on diets consisting 90%+ of various cereal or potato gruels. I just don't see how a high-tech powder really simplify things. You can almost live on mashed potatoes. That's barely more effort than buying and mixing this powder.
Well, no. Now we know what we don't know, rather than assuming we do know something. And when we specify one font over another we can say honestly "Because I like it" rather than dishonestly "Because science tells us it's best".
(http://sciencedemonstrations.fas.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyw...)