Other than that, could be awesome. You could just have a cup with you all day and drink some whenever you feel hungry.
Question then remains, why isn't it green?
There are existing alternatives if you want to try liquid feeds but want rigorously tested QAd product from existing reputable manufacturers.
Or Soylent, but be aware that it's fun self-experimentation.
Here's one of my (grumpy) posts listing alternatives (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5876219)
Browsing through the pages: Complan - explicitly states you should have normal meals in addition to the product ("Avoid missing meals completely − you may not feel hungry but your body still needs nourishment") Medifast - want you to eat at least 1 cooked meal daily Optifast - not available for retail (or at least the webpage claims so)
I'm looking for a replacement for the main meal, not breakfasty/lunchy things, which none of these seem to provide. Though perhaps I misunderstand their ads?
Because it's not made of people.
It might be the name, it might be that the subject matter generates strong opinions in people, but in terms of generating buzz and getting attention it has been quite a success.
Soylent's creator makes it very clear he still enjoys making and eating awesome food - he just doesn't want to deal with doing so 1,095 times every year. If anything, he appreciates good food even more.
I mostly eat protein power drinks with almond milk, basic grains, vegetables, very lean meats, etc. etc.
I used to be a professional cook. I now cannot eat anything remotely fun or tasty. But soylent seems like one thing I could actually add to my regimen.
A nootropicist friend I have suggested that C vitamin only works in combination with Magnesium supplements ... etc. It gets pretty complicated. I'd rather just eat a stupid piece of fruit. It's tasty, efficient, and awesome. Why complicate things with dystopian future pills?
If it's getting absorbed but excreted, it sounds like you're taking more than enough. Usually absorption is limited by cofactors. Allusions to fruit being better than isolated Vitamin C should be backed up by evidence.
Regardless, the man behind this admits it's not about completely removing the traditional meal but rather removing the time spent in trying to find a nutritional meal. So meals become more about enjoying food, the textures, the smell and the company rather than worrying whether that $30 lunch is going to be enough to satiate your hunger and nutritional requirements.
In my experience, good food is everything that joy intends: gardening, growing food from nothing, spending time outdoors, connectedness with the land, creativity, quality process, science, creation, enjoyment, collaboration with others, socialization (especially when combined with good booze of many varieties), nutrition, survival, health, and certainly joy.
In fact you could say that eating and everything that goes into it makes up the a good chunk of life, and a good life at that. Certainly a hundred years ago, if you could do everything required simply to eat and eat well, then you had a life better than most. And in fact, you could certainly say the same today. Eating is a luxury, and the choice of what to eat an even greater luxury. You are lucky for it, and you should be damn joyful.
Edt: As my wife just put it, "It sounds like guys are too insecure to drink Slim-Fast, so the idea is being re-branded to be more manly. Like the Axe of diet shakes."
http://ensure.com/products/ensure-complete-shakes
or
http://www.amazon.com/Nutrament-Energy-Fitness-Drink-Banana/...
If it was a serious attempt the soylent team would be composed of scientists with expertise in nutrition. Instead their website lists a lot of people with absolutely irrelevant skills. I can't think of anything associated with y-combinator which is quite as embarrassing as this.
Sadly one part of hopes this takes off, so that in 10 years time we have an idea of the long term results of a diet of this kind of nonsense. It will have been tested on the kind of people who have the arrogance to believe that because they understand business / computing the can 'solve' the worlds nutrition problem.
Wait wait wait.
Is there a chance, however fleeting, that a chunk of the Register's staff could come down with food poisoning, or be hospitalized for malnutrition?
Maybe 2013 isn't so bad after all.
What's the shelf life of the beta product? And what's the expected shelf life of the released final product, in the correct packaging?
Are they going to sell it as a monthly subscription, delivering each week as individually bagged days? Or do they deliver a huge box of the stuff?
The World Food Program has a Specialized Nutritious Foods Factsheet, and that lists shelf life as 12 or 24 months. (One product, Wawa Mum, is listed at 6 months.)
(http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/co...)
I'm still strongly against the way it's being sold at the moment. Other people on HN have said that they enjoyed the idea of Soylent when it was self-experimentation.
As Kurtz79 say, they've done a remarkable job of generating media buzz about something that is not new or disruptive or innovative. I'd be interested to see what they could do with a real product.
That said I would be really interested to use the product on expeditions IF it provides a significant advantage. So - how is this superior to a load of sugar(s), whey protein and a micronutrients supplement?
