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[GiglameshDespair]

Well, let us know how it goes. What's it taste like? Nothing-y?

[Mr Space Cat]

What's it taste like? Nothing-y?

I've heard it tastes yeasty on its own. Like chugging bread, supposedly. You can always add flavoring to it. Cinnamon, chocolate syrup, honey, something like that.

[Frumple]

That... doesn't sound too bad? Bread is delicious. Not that flavoring is a bad thing, per se.

... plus, if it tastes like bread, you can probably throw in peanut butter and jelly or something. Make tasty sandwich nutrient milkshake.

[Moghjubar]

Obvious solution: find a way to make bread with the mix.

[Bauglir]

By my understanding, that should be fairly trivial. Just substitute an appropriate quantity of soylent for flour. Mind you, it will be awful, awful bread, but it should still be functional. If you want it done properly you're probably looking at a blend of flours to get gluten levels and suchlike right. Look for recipes involving oat flour, since that's what soylent's starches come from IIRC.

[Jimmy]

You could most probably add water and then bake it for a simple flatbread. Might make an interesting diversion from drinking it instead.

Still can't believe people go for this stuff when low calorie shakes and liquid meal replacements have been around for years, but more power to his marketing I suppose.

[frostshotgg]

The idea isn't to diet on it. And liquid meal replacements aren't made to be your only food.

[Jimmy]

Ensure
Fortisip
Fresubin
Jevity
TwoCal

And the list goes on. All offer nutritionally complete meal replacements, with varying levels of palatability. Mostly for medical use via nasogastric tube feeding, because who in their right mind wants to choke down liquid sludge every meal?

[GlyphGryph]

And now you've uncovered the problem - all the existing products tell healthy people it's not for them, so why act surprised when people believe them? Especially since a good number of those you listed say they "Should only be used under medical supervision" or can't even be bought. The ones that seem trustworthy don't seem to be easily available, the ones that look halfway decent seem to be expensive, and the rest have entire marketing campaigns that scream "I'm a scam! I'm a scam!" which is kind of off-putting.

Soylent is targeting the audience that has considered purchasing it in this thread (point 1, which absolutely zero of the items you listed above did), soylent is completely open and transparent about what's in it (which helps move it away from the scammy items), soylent is affordable and available (unlike the good looking medical ones).

So basically, yeah, it's nothing new, really. It's the Ipod or Iphone of the liquid meal replacement world.

[Pnx]

because who in their right mind wants to choke down liquid sludge every meal?

*points at thread* All of these people?

*points at thousands of kickstarter backers* All of those people?

[SalmonGod]

because who in their right mind wants to choke down liquid sludge every meal?

*points at thread* All of these people?

*points at thousands of kickstarter backers* All of those people?

Seriously.  To re-iterate and expand on what GlyphGryph was saying:

I hate dealing with food.  It's a pain in the ass.  I don't like deciding on something to eat, especially if it involves exhaustive debate with whoever else I'm eating with.  I don't like retrieving or preparing it.  I don't like cleaning up the mess afterwards.  I don't like worrying about the balance between health vs cost and convenience.  I have food preferences, but even eating food that I like brings near-zero meaningful satisfaction to my life.  Everything about it is a chore to me.

So yeah, I've wanted something like this for a very long time.  And there have been other food replacements out there, but none like this one.  I like how open Rob has been through the course of developing the product, even offering support to DIY immitators.  I like that he's considering the environment, and that widespread acceptance of the stuff could be very beneficial.  I like that he's not including your typical corporate food additives like high fructose corn syrup, which many similar products do.  I like that he's designed it from the very beginning for people like me who just want a cheap, convenient, healthy staple food that can support a normal, active lifestyle. 

All of the other meal replacement options are lacking severely in some area or another when compared to what Rob is doing.  Most of them are designed as some kind of dietary/athletic booster thing, loaded with questionable/unnecessary corporate food junk and marketed like snake oil, or they're for long-term coma patients.  Soylent is really very different from everything else.

[Moghjubar]

While all that is great and good reasons to use it, I mostly want to just investigate the health / dieting claims myself (with thorough amounts of data to compare to, which I will release later).  Which means... going full Soylent, more or less, for quite awhile.

I've at least a feeling that it will be healthier than the random assortment of stuff that I've eaten to maintain my current (over)weight, just will need to see if its maintainable and if there's other complications that crop up.

[Skyrunner]

If it's cheap enough and it works well with no side-effects, I might consider trying it when I go to the US next year

[SalmonGod]

Soylent has a new website.

Rob mentioned before that he wanted to do a subscription-based service, and it looks like they're moving forward with that now.  They have it divided up into 1 week, 2 week, and 4 week supplies, and you can do a single order or set it up for monthly. 

Single order is slightly more expensive.  Looks like the price point for living exclusively off of Soylent is $255/month.  That's a monthly subscription for a month's supply, covering 3 meals a day every day for $2.83/meal.

I think lots of people who tried the stuff have said that they eat significantly less than the full projected meal amount, and few people will consume Soylent exclusively.  So most people will probably get more than the intended mileage out of their orders.

[Frumple]

The website makes me cry tears of blood ;_;

Still probably going to recommend some folks that were curious to look at it, but would it kill them to have a low-weight website (at least something kicks in if javascript's disabled, damnit) instead of that loading screen maxed-out CPU fiddly fancy bullshit monstrosity?

I can't even really navigate it. Ruddy thing lags, skips around, parts of it don't load, and the whole time it's doing its damnedest to wreck my CPU. Sometimes*modern website design sensibilities go too far.

*more like goddamn always, but that's more than a little (even further) off topic.