Now Shipping Soylent 2.0 (opens in new tab)

Here is a 30 minute plan to feeding yourself for a long time without any real effort:

0. Have transportation (or a nearby store), the ability to boil water, and a large vessel to put water and food into. You may also want a sheltered place to cook/consume the food, though this is not required.

1. Go to the nearest food store. Anything larger than a kiosk will do.

2. Buy bags of rice. Any kind will do.

3. Buy bags of beans. Any kind will do.

3a. Buy lentils or chicken if you want more variety. Any kinds will do.

3b. Buy salt or spices if you like the flavor of salt or spices. Any kind will do.

4. Go home, making sure to take the items you have purchased with you.

4a. Rice and beans are stable at room temperature for a very long time. Do not let them be consumed by pests, however.

5. Throw a few days of consumption worth of those items you purchased into a pot of boiling water. Don't try to boil the bags themselves unless you are really desperate.

6. Boil for a while. 25 minutes will probably do. You can do other stuff during this 25 minutes. You can remove the water afterward if you desire.

6a. This meal is stable at room temperature (23C) for a couple of days time. You will need to find a way of cooling the food to 4C if you wish to keep it longer-- up to 7 days maximum.

7. Now you have a flavorless though quite filling and nutritious meal. It's probably cheaper, more nutritious, and more flavorful than Soylent. You can survive on this for a long, long time.

7a. Don't forget to actually eat the food you have prepared. A utensil such as a fork or spoon may be useful, though not required. Additionally, a smaller secondary vessel such as a bowl may be useful, though not required.

8. Repeat as hungry; return to step 0 if supplies run out.

Bam, now nobody has a single excuse to eat Soylent.

Go to store. Buy Food. Go Home. Cook food. eat.

I frequently fail to do this, to my detriment, but I don't pretend it's so hard and complex. I'm tired and lazy at the end of the day, so I eat easier (usually worse for me) things. That simple. Is soylent the answer, maybe.

Very interesting indeed. I guess 2 factors are:

* some people don't like change in general, some are afraid of it. This also brings the same question: why? I have no idea, but there are plenty of guesses, e.g: https://hbr.org/2012/09/ten-reasons-people-resist-chang.html

* some kind of a "bad experience" with Soylent. It can be just an article about "busy people drinking Soylent" which creates negative internal representation of a Soylent as a drink for the crazy, out of this world busy people

Back when I was a vegetarian I got a lot of the same thing. People would get upset about what I would or wouldn't put into my own body.

While you're right that convincing people that they're being stupid is generally a waste of time, it's no more or less a waste of time than posting a comment on the internet wondering why other people post comments on the internet.

For me, it's hostility toward the race to the bottom and accompanying dehumanization that Soylent is nodding to.

I really don't understand people who think positively about Soylent. It's bland nutrient paste, similar to the kind fed to coma patients. How exciting and DISRUPTIVE!!!

The median (and correct) response is to read or play music for thirty less minutes to prepare real nutritious food. Come on. Nobody's time at home is factored down to the minute.

"I had a way more balanced diet than I would normally have done"

That's kinda sad

I'm not surprised that there are people that would rather use prepared or quick-mix products than cook on their own.

I'm somewhat surprised that, given the vast array of viable prepared and quick-mix meal products, both shakes and otherwise, that have been on the market much longer than Soylent, that so many of those people think Soylent is something revolutionary. Its clearly a triumph of marketing.

My vehemence about soylent stems from the blatent lies they told during fundraising. They dangerously and irresponsibly made claims that they shouldn't have, and got away with it.

It's late capitalism, man. Lots of office conversations are covert attempts to avoid being laid off or similar.

And it works! I am amazed at the hype this product gets on here.

Are you serious? The products are substantially different.

If you look at the nutritional info for Ensure[1] and Soylent[2] you'll see that Soylent has more calories, more fat, no cholesterol, more sodium, more potassium, less sugar, more protein.

Most important, Soylent has a more even distribution of the daily % of vitamins and minerals. If you drink 3 bottles of Ensure you're up to 180% daily value of Vitamin C, 240% of Vitamin D, 180% Manganese. The even distribution makes it easier for it to act as a complete meal replacement not just a diet or sports supplement.

My feeling is also that Soylent measures more and tweaks their formula more. Their goal is to be a good cheap meal for everyone:

Soylent is a food product (classified as a food, not a supplement, by the FDA) designed for use as a staple meal by all adults. Each serving of Soylent provides maximum nutrition with minimum effort.

In a paycheck or two I'll buy a bunch of these and they'll be my lunch and breakfast replacement. Things like Ensure don't cut it as a staple meal.

[1] https://ensure.com/nutrition-products/ensure-plus#vanilla [2] http://files.soylent.com/pdf/soylent-nutrition-facts-2-0-en....

When Ensure markets itself to the general public the makers responsibly say it's a supplement. But if you're a medical professional you get the other marketing - which is clear that ensure etc can be used as a sole source of nutrition under medical supervision. They have a variety of products to cover a variet of needs. They have ensure plus which has more calories than ensure; they have products for NG tubes; they have low protien versions; there are version for children; etc.

http://abbottnutrition.com/brands/abbott-brands

The fact that they limit this marketing to registered healthcare professionals and have a bunch of caveats about "under medical supervision", and Soylent doesn't, is something you can draw your own conclusions about.

Some people will see this as disruptive and an example of a small nimble supplier filling a niche; other people will see it as SV pathologically avoiding reasonable regulation.

Yes, ensure is designed to be a sole-source nutrition. When someone is in the hospital and can't eat, they are given Ensure as a sole food source.

The others are designed to do that, but the jury is still out on if any specific product and completely replace food with one shake/formula. Be it Ensure, or Soylent.

Yes it is. This information is easy to find in a simple web search.

http://abbottnutrition.com/brands/abbott-brands

http://abbottnutrition.com/brands/ensure

> The Ensure family of products provides active adults with a source of nutrition that can help them focus on specific nutritional goals. Such goals include helping to rebuild muscle and strength naturally lost over time, supporting digestive tract health and the immune system, and helping build strong bones. Ensure is available in a variety of uniquely formulated, ready-to-drink, shakes in popular flavors, as well as in pudding and powder forms. Intended for oral consumption, Ensure is ideal for supplemental use with or between meals and for interim sole-source feeding in convenient, ready-to-drink, bottles.

Ensure markets itself as a meal replacement, and plenty of people use it that way. In what way is it improper?

I do think they are wasteful, but it doesn't bother me as much because the consumption pattern is different. I'll have maybe 3 bottled drinks per month.

On the other hand, Soylent 2.0 means I'd consume about 6 bottles per day (2400 calories). That's 2,190 bottles per year.

I fear that people aren't going to get the reference here...

Being realistic, nobody is going to use these for water bottles either. And even if they did how many water bottles do you really need?

K-Cups are wasteful, but at least they ship three months (90 K-Cups) at a time and there is very little wasted space during shipping (it is just packed coffee). Is it a waste of plastic/foil? Absolutely. But in terms of shipping waste, K-Cups aren't near the worst.

These on the other hand are shipping around tap water. That uses up fuel, it uses up space, and it arguably wastes even more plastic. There's no reason this couldn't be shipped as a powder and sell you months and months of the stuff.

The saddest part is that they USED to sell the product like that. They're moving to this method to increase the price (and let's not pretend: It is a marked increase).

After seeing a dead albatross with a bunch of plastic in its stomach; I look at all this, non essential, for convince sake--plastic garbage in a worse light than before.

I am guilty of using those plastic tooth picks, actually know the spoiled brat who made millions from his dad's invention, and seed money 30 years ago. I now see them disguarded everywhere. They must make it into the oceans?

Anyways, I hope consumers stop buying products that aren't reusable?

http://ocean.si.edu/slideshow/laysan-albatrosses’-plastic-pr...

Almost none? Produce can be purchased in reusable bags, and the water comes from your faucet so it doesn't need to be shipped cross-country.

I'm not sure that's the appropriate comparison. Why not compare directly with powdered soylent?

Because a bunch of engineers is going to know best about that sort of thing. (It wasn't invented by gastroenteroligists was it?)

In the past he has says he eats normal food only during social occasions.

Orgain is brown rice based, soy free, dairy free. They carry them at whole foods usually. Often ≤$3 per bottle.

http://orgain.com/products/organic-vegan-nutritional-shakes/

Nutritional Info: http://orgain.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/NFP-Vegan-Choco...

Ingredients: http://orgain.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/LOI-Vegan-Choco...

I had the same problem with 1.4, I found adding 2 tbsp of cocoa powder, and 2 tbsp of sugar, per pouch made it taste more like a chocolate protein shake, and way more bearable.

I had the same reaction. I started buying http://www.mealsquares.com/ instead. They are very dry if not warmed up but they taste like chocolatey oatmeal instead of rotten milk.

I add torani syrup, they are easy to mix in (don't require a blender or anything) and have a wide variety of flavors (including a good selection of sugar free).

It's easy enough for you to Google up the details. The "issue" wasn't with the content but with their labeling -- they only included the California Prop 65 warning on their website, not on the product packaging (which they claimed was sufficient since the website was the only legitimate source of the product).

If I were to try to give a complete answer, I'd probably spend fifteen minutes googling "Ensure vs Soylent" - there are some good matches there through discussion boards that analyze the ingredient breakdowns, also some replies from the soylent people too. Ensure is definitely more expensive in those analyses, and that's from before soylent's recent price drop. Beyond that, it appears to be a rather different ingredient list - looks like Ensure doesn't have much in the way of fiber, has more sugar, etc.

You should try intermittent fasting. The first two or three weeks are hard, but after that its easy, and really seems to sort out insulin sensitivity (or thats my guess from reading the science and "gut" feeling - pun intended). No feeling tired after lunch.

They needed this video to overcome the beta testing video of people scooping powders out of various cardboard and plastic buckets from the floor.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/soylent-how-i-stopped-eatin...

Then you should reevaluate your eating options.

There is more than cooked or take-away or Soylent.

How about this:

- Whole-wheat bread

- Avocado

- Smoked fish

- a piece of feta

- an apple

- a banana

Just one of many cold-dish very healthy meals. A good mix of everything - carbon hydrates, proteins, fats, ruffage, vitamins, minerals - enjoy.