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Results of the 2015 Soylent Eaters Survey

32 points by ketosoy 12y ago

PinnBrain 12y ago
Does the headline writer not notice the irony at all? How about? `Nobody really said Soylent was the end of food, despite what click-bait headlines claim`
- SyncTheory13 12y ago
  What? https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS565US566&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#safe=active&q=soylent+end+of+food&spell=1 https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C1...
  - Shish2k 12y ago
    Most of those headlines end in question marks, and therefor are implicitly saying "it isn't" :P
    - ketosoy 12y ago
      The headlines I see on page one, in order: * The End of Food - The New Yorker * Soylent Isn't People; But Is It The End Of Food? * New Yorker: Soylent to end food? (secondary article) * 11 Craziest Parts of The New Yorker's Soylent Article (secondary article) * Following the rise of soylent and the end of food | The Verge * Soylent Could Make Food Preparation A Thing Of The Past * Let's embrace the end of food | Al Jazeera America 2 of the 7 articles have question marks, and one of those is a secondary article. 1 of 5 of the primary articles pose it as a question.
      - PinnBrain 12y ago
        Thank you for the detail!
- sctb 12y ago
  We updated the title from "Soylent is not the end of food, despite what click-bait headlines may claim".
  - PinnBrain 12y ago
    Thanks!
sowhatquestion 12y ago
"Click-bait headlines" may have claimed it, but Rob Rhinehart himself was always clear: Soylent isn't the end of food, it's the end of having no alternative to food. I eat Soylent about 50% of the time, so I'm not surprised the data show others doing the same.
- sowhatquestion 12y ago
  P.S. Weirdly enough, I crave it most in the morning. There's no better breakfast than a simple Soylent and coffee (roughly one part Soylent, two parts coffee). Somehow, Soylent ended up being the best non-dairy coffee creamer of all time.
  - arh68 12y ago
    You're saying you mix it? Do you drink it cold, or hot? I've never considered that. I agree on mornings. It fills that infinite vacuum of hunger I get some mornings pretty well.
    - sowhatquestion 12y ago
      It's kinda lukewarm, but I don't mind. I tried it with iced coffee once, and that worked better, but I'm too lazy to brew iced coffee all the time.
  - seanflyon 12y ago
    Assuming you mix it hot, how does that effect the Soylent? Does anything break down and lose nutritional value?
    - devindotcom 12y ago
      Priorities, man! How does it affect the coffee!! Does it lose its delicious coffee value?
    - sowhatquestion 12y ago
      Yes, sadly, Soylent is made from the world's most fragile ingredients. If you modify it in any way that you would normal food, it becomes useless, nutritionally inert goo that even Oliver Twist would reject.
stcredzero 12y ago
I tried Soylent. It made me fart. A lot. Really a lot. It was pretty unprecedented in my life, and I'm generally pretty gassy and have even had the bout of the vegetarianism thing where I pressure cooked and ate lots of beans. Right now, I'm "changing my relationship with food" but by cooking everything myself. I almost exclusively roast and steam things. So long as you can plan things ahead a little bit, on about a 45 minute horizon, this is actually very convenient. As it so happens, it's also very low carb. I've lost 12 pounds since this summer. (Of course, people vary a lot, so your results may vary.) Roasting results in complex flavors. You don't have to fuss with lots of ingredients. or undertake a lot of cooking steps. Instead, it just happens for you in an emergent process. We're programmers -- we should be excited by emergent processes. Likewise with steaming fresh vegetables. So long as you use fresh vegetables and do not overcook them, you wind up with lots of subtle and fantastic flavors. (Add butter to be decadent.) So basically: 1) Learn how to roast and steam everything properly 2) Go buy fresh produce once every 3 or 4 days 3) Be as efficiency minded in the kitchen as you are in hot code I call this my "hyper lazy cuisine for programmers." If you do this right, you'll be able to cook 2-4 meals at a time with just several minutes of prep, a 20-50 minute wait, then several more minutes of cleaning up. (With roasting, foil wrap everything possible. Aluminum recycling is very sustainable, with industry groups planning to achieve carbon neutrality in the near future. And for you smarmy smarty-pants out there, gasification of the carbon electrodes in smelters can become carbon neutral through the production of electrodes from carbonized farm waste instead of coal.) (If you like bacon, and would like to do that "hyper-lazy," I'm planning on doing a blog post about, "Why you should make folding bacon a chore.")
- dominotw 12y ago
  Me too. I tried to get my body used to it for couple of day but couldn't deal with constant nausea and flatulence.
- mcs 12y ago
  At least someone said it. Yes it does, and multiplied if consumed with carbonated drinks. Possibly related to a gender gap of continued use?
- wpietri 12y ago
AlyssaRowan 12y ago
I wonder, why the gender gap? Could it be associated in some way with these products' resemblance to existing products with a strong marketing differential between genders? Men might think of protein shakes: you know, whey protein GMC-type stuff, that kind of thing. Women, on the other hand, might think of diet shakes: Slim-Fast and the like. These might both have a broadly "body improvement" type outlook, but one of these associations is perhaps more positive-thinking than the other. Or maybe not. Just a thought.
- seiji 12y ago
  GNC used to have (still has?) two entirely different wrappers on their store-brand protein shakes. One bottle proclaimed "lose weight! get lean!" (light colors, blue/white) and the other boasted "build muscle! grow bigger!" (dark colors, red/black). The contents of both bottles was exactly the same. They were exactly the same price. One was just marketed to women and the other to men.
  - jakobbuis 12y ago
    And the claims are identical, it's only the wording that differs. Compare it to pink and blue toothbrushes.
- MollyR 12y ago
  Maybe a larger percentage of men are more competitive than women and are constantly trying to get a cutting edge, and are willing to even avoid eating to get a competitive advantage. I know I'm not. I like eating food, and taking a lunch break.
  - freehunter 12y ago
    Back in college I was a weight lifter, and protein-sparing modified fasts weren't uncommon in the group I was in. Basically drink 1400 calories of protein and eat nothing else. Not low-carb, zero carb. You would do that until you cut your fat down enough to bulk again. It worked, and you lost weight quick. Let's not talk about the potential damage to your kidneys though... I did know some women in the group who would do that as well, so I can't say it's exclusively men, but women were definitely a minority when it came to power lifting. Not sure if that's what's going on here or not. Maybe it's that mostly people who follow tech news know about the product, and the tech industry does tend to lean more towards men. Who knows?
Animats 12y ago
With Soylent, employees will only need 5 minutes for lunch. Once somebody starts bottling this stuff premixed, it's going to be huge with startups.
- quadrature 12y ago
  I really hope that's not what we've come to.
  - Karunamon 12y ago
    I wouldn't be too worried - but the stuff is a godsend if you are running your tail off every now and then and need something cheap and easy to keep your energy up. I think that's Soylent's niche. Imagine those days when you're too (busy/lazy/unskilled/low on cash) to cook or get takeout, so now you've got this alternative that's probably better for you than the stuff you would have gotten anyways.
    - Animats 12y ago
      Japan already has this. There's CalorieMate Block, a "nutritionally balanced source of the energy needed for daily activities".[1] Humanoid chow, basically. It's popular with salarymen who eat lunch at their desks. CalorieMate is manufactured by Otsuka Pharmaceutical Company. No hype, no cool branding. The very plain box just has a list of ingredients. Available in convenience stores and vending machines. It's kind of blah, but it's not bad. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Calorie-Mate-Balanced-Chocolate-Ounce/dp/B000W9CNOK http://www.amazon.com/Calorie-Mate-Balanced-Chocolate-Ounce/...
      - quadrature 12y ago
        sounds a bit like http://www.amazon.com/Ensure-Complete-Balanced-Nutrition-Strawberry/dp/B00032FQFO/ref=sr_1_1?s=grocery&ie=UTF8&qid=1424983866&sr=1-1&keywords=ensure http://www.amazon.com/Ensure-Complete-Balanced-Nutrition-Str...
rdmcfee 12y ago
Great marketing for a competing product. Has anyone tried ketosoy? I suppose the obvious first question is: How does it taste?
xkcd-sucks 12y ago
How did Soylent manage to secure VC funding for a product with absolutely no intellectual property protection?
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  Didn't Tesla give all of their patents away? And are at ~$200/share? Knowledge is cheap. Execution is where value is delivered.
- pbreit 12y ago
  Just like pretty much every other company. Very few have protectable IP.
malkia 12y ago
So this is the "Video killed the radio star" food
cafebeen 12y ago
They claim to study the "how and why" of soylent usage, but I don't see any data or discussion of the "why". Am I missing something?
bobdvb 12y ago
I was an original sponsor of Soylent and I really thought it would be interesting. However, as a European customer I was totally neglected and eventually I cancelled my order (after corresponding with the founder about my disappointment). I'd like to give something like this a go but the way they treated me I am in no hurry.

32 points by ketosoy 12y ago

Does the headline writer not notice the irony at all? How about? `Nobody really said Soylent was the end of food, despite what click-bait headlines claim`

SyncTheory13 12y ago
What? https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS565US566&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#safe=active&q=soylent+end+of+food&spell=1 https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C1...
- Shish2k 12y ago
  Most of those headlines end in question marks, and therefor are implicitly saying "it isn't" :P
  - ketosoy 12y ago
    The headlines I see on page one, in order: * The End of Food - The New Yorker * Soylent Isn't People; But Is It The End Of Food? * New Yorker: Soylent to end food? (secondary article) * 11 Craziest Parts of The New Yorker's Soylent Article (secondary article) * Following the rise of soylent and the end of food | The Verge * Soylent Could Make Food Preparation A Thing Of The Past * Let's embrace the end of food | Al Jazeera America 2 of the 7 articles have question marks, and one of those is a secondary article. 1 of 5 of the primary articles pose it as a question.
    - PinnBrain 12y ago
      Thank you for the detail!
sctb 12y ago
We updated the title from "Soylent is not the end of food, despite what click-bait headlines may claim".
- PinnBrain 12y ago
  Thanks!

sowhatquestion 12y ago

"Click-bait headlines" may have claimed it, but Rob Rhinehart himself was always clear: Soylent isn't the end of food, it's the end of having no alternative to food. I eat Soylent about 50% of the time, so I'm not surprised the data show others doing the same.

sowhatquestion 12y ago
P.S. Weirdly enough, I crave it most in the morning. There's no better breakfast than a simple Soylent and coffee (roughly one part Soylent, two parts coffee). Somehow, Soylent ended up being the best non-dairy coffee creamer of all time.
- arh68 12y ago
  You're saying you mix it? Do you drink it cold, or hot? I've never considered that. I agree on mornings. It fills that infinite vacuum of hunger I get some mornings pretty well.
  - sowhatquestion 12y ago
    It's kinda lukewarm, but I don't mind. I tried it with iced coffee once, and that worked better, but I'm too lazy to brew iced coffee all the time.
- seanflyon 12y ago
  Assuming you mix it hot, how does that effect the Soylent? Does anything break down and lose nutritional value?
  - devindotcom 12y ago
    Priorities, man! How does it affect the coffee!! Does it lose its delicious coffee value?
  - sowhatquestion 12y ago
    Yes, sadly, Soylent is made from the world's most fragile ingredients. If you modify it in any way that you would normal food, it becomes useless, nutritionally inert goo that even Oliver Twist would reject.

stcredzero 12y ago

I tried Soylent. It made me fart. A lot. Really a lot. It was pretty unprecedented in my life, and I'm generally pretty gassy and have even had the bout of the vegetarianism thing where I pressure cooked and ate lots of beans. Right now, I'm "changing my relationship with food" but by cooking everything myself. I almost exclusively roast and steam things. So long as you can plan things ahead a little bit, on about a 45 minute horizon, this is actually very convenient. As it so happens, it's also very low carb. I've lost 12 pounds since this summer. (Of course, people vary a lot, so your results may vary.) Roasting results in complex flavors. You don't have to fuss with lots of ingredients. or undertake a lot of cooking steps. Instead, it just happens for you in an emergent process. We're programmers -- we should be excited by emergent processes. Likewise with steaming fresh vegetables. So long as you use fresh vegetables and do not overcook them, you wind up with lots of subtle and fantastic flavors. (Add butter to be decadent.) So basically: 1) Learn how to roast and steam everything properly 2) Go buy fresh produce once every 3 or 4 days 3) Be as efficiency minded in the kitchen as you are in hot code I call this my "hyper lazy cuisine for programmers." If you do this right, you'll be able to cook 2-4 meals at a time with just several minutes of prep, a 20-50 minute wait, then several more minutes of cleaning up. (With roasting, foil wrap everything possible. Aluminum recycling is very sustainable, with industry groups planning to achieve carbon neutrality in the near future. And for you smarmy smarty-pants out there, gasification of the carbon electrodes in smelters can become carbon neutral through the production of electrodes from carbonized farm waste instead of coal.) (If you like bacon, and would like to do that "hyper-lazy," I'm planning on doing a blog post about, "Why you should make folding bacon a chore.")

dominotw 12y ago
Me too. I tried to get my body used to it for couple of day but couldn't deal with constant nausea and flatulence.
mcs 12y ago
At least someone said it. Yes it does, and multiplied if consumed with carbonated drinks. Possibly related to a gender gap of continued use?
wpietri 12y ago

AlyssaRowan 12y ago

I wonder, why the gender gap? Could it be associated in some way with these products' resemblance to existing products with a strong marketing differential between genders? Men might think of protein shakes: you know, whey protein GMC-type stuff, that kind of thing. Women, on the other hand, might think of diet shakes: Slim-Fast and the like. These might both have a broadly "body improvement" type outlook, but one of these associations is perhaps more positive-thinking than the other. Or maybe not. Just a thought.

seiji 12y ago
GNC used to have (still has?) two entirely different wrappers on their store-brand protein shakes. One bottle proclaimed "lose weight! get lean!" (light colors, blue/white) and the other boasted "build muscle! grow bigger!" (dark colors, red/black). The contents of both bottles was exactly the same. They were exactly the same price. One was just marketed to women and the other to men.
- jakobbuis 12y ago
  And the claims are identical, it's only the wording that differs. Compare it to pink and blue toothbrushes.
MollyR 12y ago
Maybe a larger percentage of men are more competitive than women and are constantly trying to get a cutting edge, and are willing to even avoid eating to get a competitive advantage. I know I'm not. I like eating food, and taking a lunch break.
- freehunter 12y ago
  Back in college I was a weight lifter, and protein-sparing modified fasts weren't uncommon in the group I was in. Basically drink 1400 calories of protein and eat nothing else. Not low-carb, zero carb. You would do that until you cut your fat down enough to bulk again. It worked, and you lost weight quick. Let's not talk about the potential damage to your kidneys though... I did know some women in the group who would do that as well, so I can't say it's exclusively men, but women were definitely a minority when it came to power lifting. Not sure if that's what's going on here or not. Maybe it's that mostly people who follow tech news know about the product, and the tech industry does tend to lean more towards men. Who knows?

Animats 12y ago

With Soylent, employees will only need 5 minutes for lunch. Once somebody starts bottling this stuff premixed, it's going to be huge with startups.

quadrature 12y ago
I really hope that's not what we've come to.
- Karunamon 12y ago
  I wouldn't be too worried - but the stuff is a godsend if you are running your tail off every now and then and need something cheap and easy to keep your energy up. I think that's Soylent's niche. Imagine those days when you're too (busy/lazy/unskilled/low on cash) to cook or get takeout, so now you've got this alternative that's probably better for you than the stuff you would have gotten anyways.
  - Animats 12y ago
    Japan already has this. There's CalorieMate Block, a "nutritionally balanced source of the energy needed for daily activities".[1] Humanoid chow, basically. It's popular with salarymen who eat lunch at their desks. CalorieMate is manufactured by Otsuka Pharmaceutical Company. No hype, no cool branding. The very plain box just has a list of ingredients. Available in convenience stores and vending machines. It's kind of blah, but it's not bad. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Calorie-Mate-Balanced-Chocolate-Ounce/dp/B000W9CNOK http://www.amazon.com/Calorie-Mate-Balanced-Chocolate-Ounce/...
    - quadrature 12y ago
      sounds a bit like http://www.amazon.com/Ensure-Complete-Balanced-Nutrition-Strawberry/dp/B00032FQFO/ref=sr_1_1?s=grocery&ie=UTF8&qid=1424983866&sr=1-1&keywords=ensure http://www.amazon.com/Ensure-Complete-Balanced-Nutrition-Str...

rdmcfee 12y ago

Great marketing for a competing product. Has anyone tried ketosoy? I suppose the obvious first question is: How does it taste?

xkcd-sucks 12y ago

How did Soylent manage to secure VC funding for a product with absolutely no intellectual property protection?

toomuchtodo 12y ago
Didn't Tesla give all of their patents away? And are at ~$200/share? Knowledge is cheap. Execution is where value is delivered.
pbreit 12y ago
Just like pretty much every other company. Very few have protectable IP.

malkia 12y ago

So this is the "Video killed the radio star" food

cafebeen 12y ago

They claim to study the "how and why" of soylent usage, but I don't see any data or discussion of the "why". Am I missing something?

bobdvb 12y ago

I was an original sponsor of Soylent and I really thought it would be interesting. However, as a European customer I was totally neglected and eventually I cancelled my order (after corresponding with the founder about my disappointment). I'd like to give something like this a go but the way they treated me I am in no hurry.