Conceptually, the advantages of a product such as Soylent includes long shelf-life, reducing the frequency and time needed to shop food, offering healthy fast-food meals, having a lower carbon footprint and being more sustainable than regular food, reducing the time spent preparing food, being cheaper than other sources of ready-made food (with basis in my own budget). These are not trivial advantages if fully realized, and it seems reductive to reduce the advantages of Soylent to just being a product for people poorly educated about food.

> I would prefer to see more people with an understanding of healthy eating and cooking.

I believe most people who eat healthy basically just follow hand-wavy norms and guidelines about what is considered healthy, e.g. include fish and vegetables in your diet (simplified). Once someone actually tries to engineer a complete diet such as Soylent it becomes apparent how hard it is to guarantee rich completeness. However, in the long run I believe the engineering approach, based on scientific input, is more likely to result in a proper diet. Especially when in the long run a "Soylent version X" can be based on a closed loop with personal body telemetry and customized food mixes based on these sensor readings.