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Soylent is going to have a very, very hard time with new customer acquisition. Right now it's riding a wave of novelty, but as it solves a problem very few peo

by codex 13y ago

Soylent is going to have a very, very hard time with new customer acquisition. Right now it's riding a wave of novelty, but as it solves a problem very few people have, and solves it in a way that leaves people craving the innate satisfaction of eating, it's not going to go far. But there are founders with more ambition than sense. In fact I suspect that's most of them.

epenn 13y ago
That wave of novelty could just as easily gain them a critical mass of customers as well. Ultimately it will depend on their satisfaction/dissatisfaction with the product.
- manicbovine 13y ago
  What lunatic would bet their money on whether people will stop eating? It is a fundamental biological need and evolutionary drive. That's a tough sell for Soylent, and it has nothing to do with "critical mass". And of course it will depend on the satisfaction - that's entirely vapid. Soylent is not even disguised as food, like most of our industrial food-like products. It tastes like oats according to that blog. Nobody is going to replace all of their food with fortified liquid oatmeal.
  - dack 13y ago
    Even _they_ don't claim that you'd replace every single meal with Soylent. It's supposed to act as the "default", when you're either too lazy, low on time, or just would rather not deal with preparing or going out to buy a meal. It's a basic meal that can't replace the satisfaction of normal food, but sometimes you just don't care about that. You could consume it as often or as little as you want, and know that you're getting something balanced and healthy at the same time.
arbitrarilyHigh 13y ago
It's riding a wave of novelty, but it's hard to argue that it's actually solving the problem that it claims to (busy/lazy, want healthy food-substitute). The post doesn't actually tell you much about the nutrition without evidence about levels of actual nutrient absorption, but a quick google scholar search finds that calcium inhibits iron and copper absorption, especially in the presence of phytates [0,1] (which Soylent contains from the oat flour) and that zinc, manganese, and iron have similar uptake pathways and limit each others absorption by competing for use of those pathways [1,2]. No idea if there's any other interactions, but it doesn't seem like a good idea to rely on this stuff much for nutrition. Aside from that, he vetted the formula by an uncontrolled, unblinded study with a sample size of n=1 (i.e. trying it himself for a few months), and he says on his blog that he "started having joint pain and found [he] fit the symptoms of a sulfur deficiency. This makes perfect sense as [he] consume[s] almost none, and sulfur is a component of every living cell. Sulfur is hard to miss in a typical diet so the FDA would have little reason to recommend it. A typical male physique has 140g of sulfur, making it the sixth most abundant element in the human body. Ten grams of sulfur from Methylsulfonylmethane cured me right away, and I now consume 2g/day." [3] In that same post, he says that "After three months I should be finding deficiencies, and I did", and makes major revisions to his formula, apparently assuming that he's figured it all out this time. He puts a significant amount of fiber in the formula for the first time, going from 1.2 grams to 40 grams, in line with the 38 grams recommended for men under 50 [4], which was probably a good idea considering how much low fiber intake increases the risk of heart attack [5]. A month later, he responds to criticism by saying that "there have been no deficiency symptoms, and if this becomes a problem the amounts can be changed to compensate" [6]. His dismissal of concern ignores the fact that many known nutrient deficiencies can take much longer to manifest, and have severe irreversible harm (like B12 deficiency leading to nerve damage, or developing heart disease after years of insufficient fiber intake, or calcium deficiencies and osteoporosis). He also says that "The initial sample size was small and the timeframe short, but the results are easily reproducible, as shown by the community site discourse.soylent.me", as if having a greater amount of data overcomes the fact that the sample was extremely biased, still short-running, and with nothing even resembling a credible study design or consistent data collection. Maybe it's not a bad thing that Soylent's probably not going to take off? [0] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1600930 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1600930 [1] http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=%2FBJN%2FBJN85_S2%2FS000711450100109Xa.pdf&code=4b47255651139890417e3dfa463249ff http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=%2FBJN%2FBJN... [2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2058577 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2058577 [3] http://robrhinehart.com/?p=570 http://robrhinehart.com/?p=570 [4] http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/fiber/NU00033 http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/fiber/NU00033 [5] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8941095 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8941095 [6] http://robrhinehart.com/?p=507 http://robrhinehart.com/?p=507
- rlwolfcastle 13y ago
  There is also no evidence that the quantities and ratios of nutrients in the formula are anywhere near complete or optimal. The easiest way to illustrate how this can be a problem is to compare the difference between growing cells in minimal media versus complex media, where they grow much faster. Soylent is basically a crude minimal media for humans. The proper comparison for soylent will be against someone who is eating a complete diet, not someone who is skipping meals or eating poorly.
rlwolfcastle 13y ago
Why are you assuming that humans have a craving for the "innate satisfaction of eating?" If you remove that artificial restriction then something like soylent makes a lot more sense.

by codex 13y ago

epenn 13y ago

That wave of novelty could just as easily gain them a critical mass of customers as well. Ultimately it will depend on their satisfaction/dissatisfaction with the product.

manicbovine 13y ago
What lunatic would bet their money on whether people will stop eating? It is a fundamental biological need and evolutionary drive. That's a tough sell for Soylent, and it has nothing to do with "critical mass". And of course it will depend on the satisfaction - that's entirely vapid. Soylent is not even disguised as food, like most of our industrial food-like products. It tastes like oats according to that blog. Nobody is going to replace all of their food with fortified liquid oatmeal.
- dack 13y ago
  Even _they_ don't claim that you'd replace every single meal with Soylent. It's supposed to act as the "default", when you're either too lazy, low on time, or just would rather not deal with preparing or going out to buy a meal. It's a basic meal that can't replace the satisfaction of normal food, but sometimes you just don't care about that. You could consume it as often or as little as you want, and know that you're getting something balanced and healthy at the same time.

arbitrarilyHigh 13y ago

It's riding a wave of novelty, but it's hard to argue that it's actually solving the problem that it claims to (busy/lazy, want healthy food-substitute). The post doesn't actually tell you much about the nutrition without evidence about levels of actual nutrient absorption, but a quick google scholar search finds that calcium inhibits iron and copper absorption, especially in the presence of phytates [0,1] (which Soylent contains from the oat flour) and that zinc, manganese, and iron have similar uptake pathways and limit each others absorption by competing for use of those pathways [1,2]. No idea if there's any other interactions, but it doesn't seem like a good idea to rely on this stuff much for nutrition. Aside from that, he vetted the formula by an uncontrolled, unblinded study with a sample size of n=1 (i.e. trying it himself for a few months), and he says on his blog that he "started having joint pain and found [he] fit the symptoms of a sulfur deficiency. This makes perfect sense as [he] consume[s] almost none, and sulfur is a component of every living cell. Sulfur is hard to miss in a typical diet so the FDA would have little reason to recommend it. A typical male physique has 140g of sulfur, making it the sixth most abundant element in the human body. Ten grams of sulfur from Methylsulfonylmethane cured me right away, and I now consume 2g/day." [3] In that same post, he says that "After three months I should be finding deficiencies, and I did", and makes major revisions to his formula, apparently assuming that he's figured it all out this time. He puts a significant amount of fiber in the formula for the first time, going from 1.2 grams to 40 grams, in line with the 38 grams recommended for men under 50 [4], which was probably a good idea considering how much low fiber intake increases the risk of heart attack [5]. A month later, he responds to criticism by saying that "there have been no deficiency symptoms, and if this becomes a problem the amounts can be changed to compensate" [6]. His dismissal of concern ignores the fact that many known nutrient deficiencies can take much longer to manifest, and have severe irreversible harm (like B12 deficiency leading to nerve damage, or developing heart disease after years of insufficient fiber intake, or calcium deficiencies and osteoporosis). He also says that "The initial sample size was small and the timeframe short, but the results are easily reproducible, as shown by the community site discourse.soylent.me", as if having a greater amount of data overcomes the fact that the sample was extremely biased, still short-running, and with nothing even resembling a credible study design or consistent data collection. Maybe it's not a bad thing that Soylent's probably not going to take off? [0] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1600930 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1600930 [1] http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=%2FBJN%2FBJN85_S2%2FS000711450100109Xa.pdf&code=4b47255651139890417e3dfa463249ff http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=%2FBJN%2FBJN... [2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2058577 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2058577 [3] http://robrhinehart.com/?p=570 http://robrhinehart.com/?p=570 [4] http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/fiber/NU00033 http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/fiber/NU00033 [5] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8941095 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8941095 [6] http://robrhinehart.com/?p=507 http://robrhinehart.com/?p=507

rlwolfcastle 13y ago
There is also no evidence that the quantities and ratios of nutrients in the formula are anywhere near complete or optimal. The easiest way to illustrate how this can be a problem is to compare the difference between growing cells in minimal media versus complex media, where they grow much faster. Soylent is basically a crude minimal media for humans. The proper comparison for soylent will be against someone who is eating a complete diet, not someone who is skipping meals or eating poorly.

rlwolfcastle 13y ago

Why are you assuming that humans have a craving for the "innate satisfaction of eating?" If you remove that artificial restriction then something like soylent makes a lot more sense.