How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

EDIT: Unbelievable. Both the title and the link to the article I commented on have been swapped from the PandoDaily article (<a href="http://pandodaily.com/2013/11/12/vice-investigates-soylent-finds-rats-and-mold/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;pandodaily.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;11&#x2F;12&#x2F;vice-investigates-soylent-f...</a>) to the Vice article which PandoDaily referred to, but that tries to give it a positive spin.<p>This goes well beyond whatever policy pg was trying to defend recently. This is deeply manipulative.<p>---<p>It looks a scam, it sounds like a scam, it&#x27;s marketed like a scam and now it apparently is being produced like any other scam.<p>So how long until we finally draw the obvious conclusion?<p>Just because some notable VC&#x27;s gambled on it doesn&#x27;t make it any more credible. In fact, there is pretty much zero evidence in the credible column.

Soylent might, technically, work. It might be safe and healthy, it definitely looks simple and allows you to forget anything related to grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning up afterwards.<p>But thinking about the prospect of the future makes me sick to my stomach. Soylent paints a disgustingly frightening dystopia where humans are fed 100% &quot;correct&quot; food to allow them to continue being cogs in the business machine, not stop for lunch during the day in the office, and be able to pull those extra longs evenings and nights to get more work done. Not to mention the vanishing social and human aspects of eating, together with friends and family.<p>Rob Reinhardt&#x27;s assertions that organic cultivation of vegetables, fruits and legumes does not scale are downright FALSE, and only serve the Soylent marketing machine.<p>Soylent is doing nothing more than accommodating to the needs of humanoids who continue the endless pursuit of some vague promise of capitalist fulfillment (work hard, be rich, be happy), ignoring the fact that the direct opposite of such a lifestyle leads to a much more healthier, happier life which remains in touch with our basic, primal human existence.

I suppose you could spin it &quot;Look how healthy our rats are and there is nothing in this warehouse but Soylent! Testing on rats, check!&quot;<p>But this made me a bit sad.<p>I think Soylent is great, it is disruptive, it is more palatable than nutraloaf it could be a great alternative for folks who just need food to live, and it could provide a fascinating &#x27;control&#x27; group for various Microbiome projects. But clearly these folks aren&#x27;t exactly &quot;experienced&quot; as Jimi Hendrix might say.<p>Here is the challenge, there is a crap ton of knowledge about how to do things that isn&#x27;t taught in school or on the web or in books. You learn that by &#x27;apprenticing&#x27; at a company or organization which is already doing something like what you want to do, and getting the history of all the things they had to overcome and avoid &quot;in the old days.&quot; It isn&#x27;t nostalgia, it is education through experience. <i>That</i> is what experience is. And the only way to get it, is to <i>experience</i> it. It was sad for me when I realized this, I could be smarter than my manager at the time and yet he could be a better manager because he had experienced more issues and overcome them (or at least seen the solution to them) to have a much better sense of what would be an important problem and what would be a minor problem. I could put any situation I wanted in front of him and he had an answer to the &quot;big problem&quot; &#x2F; &quot;small problem&quot; classification, but <i>he could not express that as an algorithm I could learn from</i>.<p>So when people come out of college and start companies the next day I tend to cringe a bit as there is a lot of stuff they are going to learn the hard way. That is doubly true when you&#x27;re doing multiple disciplines (food prep + nutrition + distribution + marketing + regulation + Etc.) and having run a business of type A won&#x27;t prime you to run one of type B, other than to help you recognize where you need subject matter experts.<p>One wonders why the first hire at Soylent wasn&#x27;t someone who had 5 years or more setting up and running a food production line. I don&#x27;t know but I have heard folks in similar situations say &quot;How hard could it be?&quot;

There are some fairly stringent regulations that ensure food products are made in a GMP environment.[1] Flaunting those rules is extremely dangerous, both from a health perspective and from a legal one. There are numerous instances where those in charge of food operations have gone to prison for failing to maintain hygienic standards.[2]<p>Soylent better get their shit together. Food safety is nothing to play around with, literally life-and-death decisions being made.<p>1. <a href="http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/CGMP/ucm110877.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fda.gov&#x2F;Food&#x2F;GuidanceRegulation&#x2F;CGMP&#x2F;ucm110877.ht...</a><p>2. Listeria killed 33 people, owners of company to prison: <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24292036" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;world-us-canada-24292036</a>

It really seems like the authors are trying to excuse the unsanitary conditions when really it&#x27;s not excusable to have them at any stage. Both the journalism and the topic at hand were disappointing. They have more than enough capital to keep the place clean, and you&#x27;d think it&#x27;d be at the top of their list given the huge (vocal) concern over personal health regarding their product.

As someone who drinks Soylent regularly, the most pertinent part of this article was the blood tests after the author went on a 30 day Soylent-only diet. &quot;Doctors tested Merchant’s blood at the end of it, and the only nutrient he was deficient in was Vitamin D -- i.e. sunlight&quot;, which he says made sense because having Soylent handy meant he &quot;wouldn’t have to leave the office&quot;. That&#x27;s certainly good news.<p>If the mold was the result of shoddy shipping causing the bag to be punctured, it&#x27;s hard not to take that with a grain of salt.<p>And as for the rat (singular -- not &quot;rats&quot; plural as the title says), certainly that has the &quot;eww&quot; factor, but so long as the mix itself was not exposed to any animals, I certainly don&#x27;t care.<p>[edit: the article this post was linking to has changed, so my comment is a little dated]

As a long time beta user I have a bunch of problems with this piece:<p>- the Oakland space was a temporary location while they were iterating on the beta. Soylent is not manufactured there.<p>- all the journalists writing about Soylent seem to attribute to Rob stuff that he doesn&#x27;t actually say: namely that you should <i>only</i> consume Soylent all the time. The point of Soylent is that it replaces transactional eating and makes me healthier. It&#x27;s not about replacing the eating I do for fun.<p>- Soylent <i>is</i> a technology company. It&#x27;s not just positioning. They are iterating towards finding an exponentially better way to do transactional eating using technology. That&#x27;s the definition of a tech company.

How about linking to the original and not this blogspam? <a href="http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/soylent-no-food-for-30-days" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;motherboard.vice.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;soylent-no-food-for-30-days</a><p>I&#x27;m no fan of Soylent (mainly because it&#x27;s all marketing hype, meal replacements have been around for decades) but this title is BS. He had a moldy shipment caused by damaged packaging and saw rats at a bar. BFD.

The preparation area shown in the video is hilariously disgusting. Fucking horrific.<p>I still expect them to come out as a huge troll. If so, 10&#x2F;10, did rage, would rage again.

&gt; “You’re not going to feed a booming population with organic farms,” Rob says.<p>This is a popular misconception. While organic farming requires far more labour than conventional farming and the yields are lower for the same land, it&#x27;s not actually <i>that much</i> lower. We&#x27;re talking about a 5-30% drop in yield. Not great, but not &quot;OMG mass worldwide starvation&quot; change. And that&#x27;s while being vastly more efficient with fresh water.<p>Think about your average 3rd-world country and ask yourself what&#x27;s in short supply - land, manpower, or fresh water?

Honestly, I just don&#x27;t <i>get</i> Soylent. What is the purpose?<p>As a health measure? The market for weight-loss shakes and other dietary solutions is saturated, and most of it appears to be complete shit. Dietary shakes are easy to come by, and are almost universally reviled because they don&#x27;t work as advertised and taste disgusting.<p>Is Soylent a supposed to be a remedy for malnutrition? Why is drinking a bunch of vitamins a better option than taking a dietary supplement? How does Soylent account for the fact that nutrient absorption is less efficient in artificial supplements? Why not just eat quality, healthy human food?<p>But, far and away the worst and most appalling argument is that soylent is &quot;convenient,&quot; and that it&#x27;s beneficial to people who &quot;don&#x27;t have time to eat.&quot; I&#x27;m sorry, but if you can&#x27;t find time to eat human food, the issue is your schedule, not the food. Correct me if I&#x27;m wrong, but eating is <i>pretty fucking important.</i> If you are in a position where feeding yourself actual sustenance is inconvenient, then there is a probably a severe deficiency with your schedule and a problem with your priorities.

Is there a reason that OP linked to crummy PandoDaily fluff and not to original Vice video? If anyone wants to go straight to source.<p><a href="http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/soylent-no-food-for-30-days" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;motherboard.vice.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;soylent-no-food-for-30-days</a>

This is a pretty sensationalist headline, given that they&#x27;re in a new factory, new offices, and the general findings of the experiment are so positive that the subject is considering going back on Soylent in the future.

Soylent represents everything I hate about the valley.

It&#x27;s possible to recover from quality scares. Clover Food Lab, which got its start as one of the MIT food trucks, had to deal with a salmonella outbreak over the summer. These news reports and blog posts by the founder document what happened:<p>Salmonella outbreak sickens 12 in state, triggers closure of Clover restaurants: <a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/2013/07/15/salmonella-outbreak-sickens-state-triggers-closure-clover-restaurants/ARtB7O4zcbFUGALVeIEKBO/story.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bostonglobe.com&#x2F;lifestyle&#x2F;health-wellness&#x2F;2013&#x2F;07...</a><p>Clover Food Lab delays reopening after Salmonella scare: <a href="http://www.metro.us/boston/news/local/2013/07/23/clover-to-reopen-wednesday-after-salmonella-scare-offer-free-french-fries/#sthash.xjdvKUJI.dpuf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.metro.us&#x2F;boston&#x2F;news&#x2F;local&#x2F;2013&#x2F;07&#x2F;23&#x2F;clover-to-r...</a><p>First response by the founder: <a href="http://www.cloverfoodlab.com/is-this-your-first-time/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cloverfoodlab.com&#x2F;is-this-your-first-time&#x2F;</a><p>Did we say Wednesday? We meant Thursday…: <a href="http://www.cloverfoodlab.com/did-we-say-wednesday-we-meant-thursday-2/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cloverfoodlab.com&#x2F;did-we-say-wednesday-we-meant-t...</a><p>Read the blog posts by the founder, and the comments. Transparency about what was going on was key to keeping their customers informed, as well as curious members of the public. They also worked very closely with health officials. Clover was able to survive with its reputation intact.

The angry comments in every solyent article are pretty silly imho. You are under no obligation to use it. Those that do are still permitted to dine with family. :&#x2F; Any bugs will get worked out over time.<p>These days I usually make a smoothie for a quick breakfast... perhaps some unsweetened almond milk, protein&#x2F;vitamin powder, ground flax seed, a bit of fruit&#x2F;veggies, sometimes even a healthy oil. The concept is not terribly different than soylent.<p>I do like to keep my blood sugar in a moderate range, however. I might be interested in trying soylent if they had a low-carb version, one not significantly made of oats and maltodextrin.

What happens when the <i>Move Fast and Break Things</i> philosophy is applied outside software. :)

People dont realize what little regulations supplements face compared to &quot;food&quot;.<p>Most products you buy at nutrition&#x2F;health stores (like GNC&#x2F;Vitamin Shoppe&#x2F;etc.) are not really tested. You can pretty much be getting chalk and no one will know. Or you get an overdose of Ephedra and die.

Seems like Soylent is taking advantage if the entire industry loophole called supplements. If the loophole didn&#x27;t exist, this type of entrepreneurship wouldn&#x27;t.<p>Food companies are also doing real experiments. I don&#x27;t see tasteless goop shakes disrupting the market any more than sport shakes.<p>EDIT: I stand corrected on the first paragraph. I still believe the 2nd to be true.

I love how nonchalant the CEO was when he called the VICE reporter to tell him not to eat any of the spoiled batch of Soylent.

It&#x27;s unfortunate for Soylent to end up in such a situation given how easily it could have been prevented.<p>For me however it does not discount the product in the least, and I would expect a rethinking of the production process to be posted soon in response.

This is, IMO, the stupidest thing ever. Why just WHY give up on food? Cooking and enjoying food is one of our essential pleasures in life; I just can&#x27;t see myself replacing it to some hipster matrix-like shake of nutrients. Just no thank you.<p>Anyway the title feels a lot misleading for someone that is used to do water fast. That is truly &#x27;eating no food&#x27;, and some do it for lengths of 30 days (yes it&#x27;s safe for most people).<p>Cooking your own food, experimenting around and occasionally doing some fasting is, again IMO, the true way to eat happy and healthy. That&#x27;s what I do.

The three NYC food critics (11:20 in the video) really bugged me. Their immediate smug dismissal of the product and idea was predetermined. Maybe I&#x27;m reading too much into what was shown, but I got the impression that there was no possible world in which they give Soylent a chance.<p>I&#x27;m not necessarily a believer, but I&#x27;m noticing this behavior more and more often as I get older and it&#x27;s increasingly bothering me.

From a different perspective, has anyone ever taken the time to read local health department restaurant inspection reports (if available)?<p>I assume most people here eat at restaurants without too much concern, but if you ever read the reports, you&#x27;ll find experienced industry professionals cited for far worse infractions than these.

What makes Solyent special vs other meal replacements? I take a meal replacement called Raw Meal (only one meal a day) that&#x27;s make mostly from sprouts. I feel great when I make myself do it every day. Is the difference that Solyent isn&#x27;t made from any plant material but rather is raw chemicals?

Best part of this for me was the information that the Optifast product exists. I hope soylent is successful, but I like knowing there are existing total-meal-replacement competitors I can order now on amazon (which I just did).

Gross, why are human beings packing Soylent?

I feel like you can get 90% of the way to soylent&#x27;s promises with whey protein milkshakes, multi-vitamins and fish oil. Toss some fiber in that diet and you get the rest of the way. Athlete? add some creatine to your morning shake and eat something with more carbs post workout (carbohydrate supplement powder works great and is cheap). Having a minimalist diet isn&#x27;t rocket science, but I guess it is reassuring to have that stamp on the bottle that says a doctor approved of the macro-nutrient ratios.

&quot;Lacking background in chemistry or nutrition, Rhinehart developed the formula through research and self-experimentation.&quot; (from the Wikipage article)<p>OMG, yes, that sounds like a totally reliable product to, you know, like, trust one&#x27;s own existence to.<p>Not to mention the incredibly sad, and dehumanizing experience of losing all the marvellous things of a great meal that are not related to nutrition: textures, flavor, a time to disconnect and relax, a time to chat with friends, family, etc, just to mention a few obvious ones.

For those who feel like they are missing out on the social aspect of eating out. Perhaps restaurants can start offering Soylent-based meals in their menu but with a twist. Instead of a plain shake in a cup, they could mold and dye the Soylent powder to look like a natural food like an apple, strawberry, or even a steak and serve it on a plate.<p>No stigma from having to turn down a restaurant invitation or a get together with friends.

I&#x27;ve been following this story since the beginning, and here&#x27;s the part that I&#x27;m baffled that people always forget:<p><i>They&#x27;re open-sourcing the recipe.</i><p>That should remove all the accusations of it being a scam. If it&#x27;s a scam, it will be easily proved such.<p>If there are nutritional problems, they can be fixed, either in the official branch, or in one of the many forks which already exist.

I found this very troubling:<p>&quot;I wasn’t drinking enough water. At the factory, Rob told me that was a common mistake; since Soylent is a shake, people figure they don’t have to drink extra water—an easy way to get dehydrated.&quot;<p>Failing so thoroughly to communicate how to use your product that users become dehydrated within two days is a serious mistake, though thankfully not a common one.

I&#x27;m really tempted to set up a kickstarter for a documentary of me living for 6 months on the various existing liquid feeds.<p>It&#x27;ll be tricky getting a doctor to fit a feeding tube up my nose, but I&#x27;m sure someone would do it. (Bit scary using non-medical people because of the risk of the tube going into a lung.)

I wouldn&#x27;t mind eating this once and a while when I&#x27;m low on time and don&#x27;t want to drive somewhere or whip something up.<p>I wouldn&#x27;t see myself eating this ONLY, cause the video did bring up a good point, eating is also a social thing. Hey babe you want to go back to my place and eat some soylent?

Meh. Sensationalist piece. I know Vice and the shenanigans they use to get headlines. I trust none of it.

I&#x27;d kill (well, pay up to $600&#x2F;mo) for a low-carb version of Soylent. Even if he made it in a (clean) residential kitchen, although I&#x27;d prefer if RFI did it under contract.<p>Even better if you could get monthly blood analysis and then have your Soylent customized for you.<p>SoylentPro, perhaps.

Disruptive!

&gt; Eating will become like boozing—something we do recreationally with friends, or as a hobby<p>or, part of the grimdark future where the trend of hobby eating sends the prices of food out of reach of the lower 7&#x2F;8 of society

IS the stuff on vice.com real? I read about a guy who claimed to only eat raw meat, and it seemed a bit far fetched.<p>Ok, this Solyent is believable, but why??? Eating is one of life pleasures.

I would compare this to a tech startup becoming the victim of an exploit. i.e. an injurious but not life-threatening data hack. There are many examples of hacks on tech startups due to technical malfeasance that sometimes show neglect in the handling of data or poor planning in the current operation of the system.[0]<p>I think Soylent has plenty of potential and while this will darken views toward the brand for a time, it will most likely recover. The idea is too good.<p>[0] <a href="https://blog.twitter.com/2009/monday-morning-madness" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.twitter.com&#x2F;2009&#x2F;monday-morning-madness</a>

doesn&#x27;t your digestive system have to re learn some tricks if it&#x27;s not used for a long time ?

I Quit watching the video at the part were he says &quot;i was eating leafs, it so strange&quot;.

Zuckerburg will drink Soylent only if he can kill it first.

These top comments are really the worst of HN. Thoughtless, emotional vitriol.<p>Until Soylent is proved unsafe, there is no basis for calling it unsafe.