> One of Silicon Valley’s cultural exports in the past ten years has been the concept of “lifehacking”: devising tricks to streamline the obligations of daily life, thereby freeing yourself up for whatever you’d rather be doing<p>Well, to be frank, I'd rather be eating. What's the point of your life if you don't have time to even eat, let alone enjoy yourself.
Somehow that title, contrasted with the chart (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/01/business/economy/changed-life-of-the-poor-squeak-by-and-buy-a-lot.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/01/business/economy/changed-l...</a>) showing how the price of food, especially has gone up in recent years while tech prices have fallen, makes me worry about a future reality where real food is so expensive it's only for the elite, and everyone else subsists on supplements like Soylent.
I find it annoying that whenever Soylent is discussed, people always take such an extreme view of it. Why do so many people frame the discussion with "you will replace all meals with it".<p>It's similar to stories about electric cars. Someone will always comment about how electric cars won't work for people who have to drive 500 km non stop on a daily basis, therefore they are doomed to failure.
I would personally be happy if I had the option to have a convenient liquid meal replacement, but I'm also skeptical Soylent is going to be the solution to it.<p>There's still too much we don't know about how we get nutrients from food to be able to fully replace fresh unpackaged products with powders. I suspect we're still at least a few decades away from being able to do that safely on the long term.<p>Nutrition research has been terribly inconclusive for the past century and there's no indication that this is changing anytime soon. It's not the researchers' fault: the domain is incredibly complex when you take in consideration various timespans, all the various human generic permutations etc.
<i>Rhinehart is not a fan of farms, which he refers to as “very inefficient factories.” He believes that farming should become more industrialized, not less. “It’s really the labor that gets me”</i><p>This seems a little ignorant to me. Farms (at least in Australia) are amazingly industrialized. I visited my cousin's dairy farm recently and one person was working at milking dozens of cows at a time.<p>I walked away with the image that modern farmers are technical early adopters, looking at ways technology can improve their return on investment.
I've been making a homemade version of Soylent (<a href="http://www.cookingfor20.com/2013/06/18/hacker-school-soylent-recipe/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cookingfor20.com/2013/06/18/hacker-school-soylent...</a>) since September. It makes up one or two of my meals each day. I've got to say, I really really like it. I think it has a good chance of catching on. I still love eating out socially, but it has replaced all my my mediocre meals. I can imagine it replacing those aisles and aisles of junk, easy food (cereal, canned soup, mediocre pasta).<p>That said, I quickly had to come up with a better name than Soylent. I call mine Science (for human consumption). It makes it distinct from food. "Did you get lunch?" "No, I just had Science today."
I hope people do understand that this is short term solution only. Replacing your all food indefinitely with this is most certainly going to damage you in a ways you can't know or imagine. Just by looking at the content I can see that the mix is seriously lacking essential fats, is using very low doses of some vitamins, particularly C and probably contains substitutes to others like retinol (beta carotene).<p>The idea is great in specific context. People have been living on single food item in multiple occasions so far. CBB to find references for all now, its easy if you need them but there are known cases of<p>1. Potato only for 6 months (<a href="http://goo.gl/XqxMx" rel="nofollow">http://goo.gl/XqxMx</a>)<p>2. Bananas only for months (i.e. extreme '30 bananas a day' diet)<p>3. Meat only for a year (Vilhjalmur Stefansson)<p>4. Water only for > year (in extreme obese case).<p>5. Protein powder only (i.e. Last chance diet, case to the point of what could get wrong. )<p>6. Synthetics only (I am sure Kurzweill probably experimented with this with his 200++ pills per day).<p>7. MC Donalds for a month<p>... and so on<p>Its important to note that inventors are young people. Young people are very resilient - they also have full reserves of stem cells that are used to repair damage. Soylent might speed up this process because it certainly doesn't contain 'everything body needs' (because we don't know this at the current technological level) in which case one theory is that body will use its triage system (Ames) to redirect resources to the systems that are most important and shut down or reduce output in less important systems for immediate survival (such as reproduction). More appropriate would be to say 'everything body tolerates for a period'. Its certainly far better move then eating only pasta or rice for entire day.<p>One may hope that whatever is the eventual damage that could be done to you by use of this food surrogate is going to be fixed by the future medicinal, yet to be discovered, techniques.
It's like saying sex toys will eventually replace having sex because why waste time dating, courting and then having sex :) when you could just use a toy + redtube and get it over with in 10 minutes.
This screams link bait title, similar to "The End of the PC". Who knows what the longterm effects of Soylent are. At best, it's a supplement, and at worst... I don't even want to know. With that said, Soylent has a potential to make a big impact. But you can't scream that this is the end of food just because there is a cheaper and more efficient way of getting your nutrients. Eating food is a staple of our culture and the way we socialize revolves around it.
I think Soylent is great idea.<p>It doesn't have to be either/or and certainly the end of food. I love to cook and take a lot of care about what I eat. This probably is never going to change. But on occasion I would love to be able to slurp down a meal and not have to worry about it. I wouldn't consider living on something like this though and I don't know why anyone else would either.
<i>NSFW</i><p>Whenever discussions of Soylent come up, I always wonder - would the same people who want to take Soylent also agree to taking a people that made their sex drive disappear? It will definitely save time and money to not have to worry about sex, after all.<p>NOTE: This is not a pro- or anti- Soylent sentiment, it's a mind experiment.
Assuming that it doesn't taste as bad as it sounds, it's likely that this will just end being a quick meal replacement here and there. I.e. you're pulling a long night at work and you _could_ order pizza but that's unhealthy so you whip out a Soylent shake.<p>It's certainly not a revolution by any means
I'm a little concerned about the long-term effects. The article states that the founder looks and feels healthy, but since he's the only person living off Soylent for an extended period, this is anecdotal evidence at best. It reminds me of the death of Seth Roberts, a couple of days ago.
I love this idea not because I like to replace my meals with this, but the fact that it could improve world hunger problem in a big way. Couldn't it?
money quote from the article:<p><i>Perhaps the main difference between Soylent and drinks like Ensure and Muscle Milk lies in the marketing</i><p>It's amazing how taking an old product and repackaging it for a different purpose can be a source of business success and glory. I believe this is the story behind both Coca Cola and RedBull.
These are what I call "Get me some Press" companies from a VC / YC perspective. Will make the cover of WSJ ... get a ton of attention to the company and investors and eventually be dead in 3-4 years.