Soylent - the end of food

as I am back on steroids and don't recognize my body anymore, i'd be fine w/ food as pure fuel, mostly, and in the minimal servings for good health

was it established that this definitely isn't a viral marketing campaign for the soylent green reboot? I remembered reading something about the trademarks over the word "soylent" still being suspiciously held by whatever production company.

― Philip Nunez, Sunday, 11 May 2014 18:56 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Would be amazing if this was true and they raised $300k in kickstarter cash for a fake product.

I need to couple this with modafinil so I can give up eating and sleeping.

I would not be surprised at all, merely because "Soylent" is about the last fucking name on earth a company serious about taking this product to market would choose.

it seems like Soylent is still at the startup stage where the people who originally came up with the idea (Rhinehart et al) are still in charge of the marketing. Rhinehart strikes me as a guy who may not be in touch with human emotions as much as the average person. there's a part in the new yorker article where they mention that every one they've ever met with has been like "change the name, wow that's a terrible name, you have to change the name immediately", and Rhinehart just ignores them because he's a robot man. i would guess that at some point in the near future he'll have to cede the marketing to someone else, and then the name would change

i'm not sure he lacks empathy as much as he's just kind of impish.

...or an actor!

I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, I tend to feel like 95% of food is either disgusting, morally reprehensible, or ridiculously expensive (nb I have no money), and often find myself resenting this chore that I have to go through in order to stay alive. If I didn't think all these ppl are going to develop serious health conditions after many years with little or no phytonutrients and stuff like that, I'd hop on board and be glad to be done with it.

On the other, obviously that attitude is a result of a broken food system/overall culture, and this shit is not going to push it in the right direction.

okwaitaminute Sanpaku you are losing major "I know science" cred with this:

Lecithin an emulsifier (a detergent like molecule, like those in your cell walls)

also I am srsly stunned that VC got behind this stuff. I mean a kickstarter campaign is one thing, but I am flummoxed by actual investors thinking this is going to make them money.

sorry to be the guy that just quotes from the new yorker article, but here i go again:

During the next two months, Soylent plans to ship its product to all of its twenty-five thousand initial backers. The company has ten thousand dollars in new orders coming in every day, and has started to become profitable. U.S. military and space programs have asked to run trials on Soylent.

i dunno, seems like a viable business to me

It's like the old scifi thing of "all your meals will be a pill!" which apparently is attractive enough to some people that they'll come-a-running with checkbooks out and ready to go

this stuff is appealing insofar as lots of peoples' circumstances lead them to eating rubbish several times a week

ding ding ding, anybody familiar with world hunger!?

Yah I hear ya but I mean the NYer pointed this out, and I will point it out again: meal replacement has been around for forever, for sick folks who for whatever critical illness situation can't eat "real" food in the "usual" way. This isn't new science. It's new marketing, I guess is the thing.

I am going to be sharing office space with hospital nutritionists and am totally looking forward to getting their opinions on Soylent!

now that should be interesting. good food (argh) for thought

Also (and maybe this should be posted in the NYer thread instead): when reading about these SF dudes living on Costco processed foods and/or resenting the fact that they have to take time away from coding to, y'know, eat, I could not but help but superimpose these dudes with this SF IT-startup-house-junk-food-coding-VC-blahblah thing:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/10/14/131014fa_fact_heller?currentPage=all

Open letter to the New Yorker: stop with the articles about SF IT-startup-house-junk-food-coding-VC-blahblah culture thing.

I guess soon enough we'll be able to cheaply make sushi and caviar using 3D printers and various chemical components.

in our homes, i mean

ding ding ding, anybody familiar with world hunger!?

― brimstead, Monday, 12 May 2014 18:40 (20 minutes ago) Permalink

$4/meal is hardly a solve-world-hunger price point

yeah lets just feed all the poors thick tan nutritional slurry, perfect solution

During the next two months, Soylent plans to ship its product to all of its twenty-five thousand initial backers. The company has ten thousand dollars in new orders coming in every day, and has started to become profitable. U.S. military and space programs have asked to run trials on Soylent.

i dunno, seems like a viable business to me

― famous instagram Dog (Karl Malone), Monday, May 12, 2014 2:26 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's a little early to say that. $10K a day in sales is meaningless at this point -- it could be initial hype that's going to die down, or it could be the beginning of something much bigger, but it's not enough to sustain a business like that at current levels ($3.5 million in gross revenues a year), so whether it's "viable" is speculation.

ding ding ding, anybody familiar with world hunger!?

― brimstead, Monday, 12 May 2014 18:40 (20 minutes ago) Permalink

$4/meal is hardly a solve-world-hunger price point

― Doritos Loco Parentis (Hurting 2), Monday, May 12, 2014 12:03 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah lets just feed all the poors thick tan nutritional slurry, perfect solution

― call all destroyer, Monday, May 12, 2014 12:05 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh stop being silly. It's the idea. Obviously $4 per meal is not feasible!
And yes if they can't afford food otherwise and can afford megacheap nutritional slurry i don't see what the problem is? That they won't experience the pleasures of bacon or something?

It's not like I'm advocating taking "food" away from poor people and forcing them to drink slurry, yeesh

McSlurry is a seasonal item

What difference does the "idea" make if no one has actually come up with a nutritional slurry that is cheaper and more nutritious than rice and beans?

in terms of bang for buck, I think the mcdouble is supposed to be champion, which I suppose you could blend into slurry form.

Can't wait for the new Dairy Queen SlurryFlurrie(tm), coming this summer!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumpy%27nut

@ Quincie:
Soy and egg lecithin are both mixtures of phosphatidylcholines (PC), the same class of detergent-like chemicals that comprise 50% of the phospholipids in our cell walls. Like detergents, they have a polar, water soluble head (with charged choline and glycerophosphoric acid) and a long, non-polar, hydrophobic tail (in this case a couple of mostly C18 fatty acids). In a soap bubble or a cell wall, hydrophobic tails prefer to interact with each other and form membranes. Compare a PC to detergent SDS:
http://lipidlibrary.aocs.org/Lipids/pc/Figure1.pnghttp://0.tqn.com/d/chemistry/1/0/i/5/1/SDSsodiumlaurylsulfate.jpg
SDS isn't just used in shampoos (where its called sodium laurel sulphate). Its also used to disrupt cell membranes in the lab, so clearly the PCs in cell membranes do differ from commercial detergents in being having more moderately polar heads, and longer, more stabilizing tails. Both work fine, however for emulsifying fats, lecithins forming microscopic globules that don't separate in foods, and detergent's water-soluable grease droplets when cleaning up.

Dude only plants have cell walls. Non-plant cells have cell membranes. This is MoBo 101, sorry!

Detergents *disrupt* cell membranes. This is why soap (detergent) is an effective anti-bacterial and anti-enveloped viral.

Sorry to be pendantic, but it matters.

What difference does the "idea" make if no one has actually come up with a nutritional slurry that is cheaper and more nutritious than rice and beans?

― Doritos Loco Parentis (Hurting 2), Monday, May 12, 2014 12:17 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so the "idea" is worthless because it's not cheaper right now? i feel like a total moron right now but what if you could buy slurry or a pill or w/e that fulfilled your nutritional needs for *significantly* less cost than "food", is this such a crazy idea?

just because it's been thought of before doesn't necc. mean it's not worth trotting out again, look at the Dorito Locos taco (sp?)

the idea is likely not worthless but i'm highly skeptical of the position that we might just give poor ppl this rather than fix the underlying issues that deny them the dignity of access to actual food.

like, it's a depressing place that i'm not ready to go to.

rather than fix the underlying issues that deny them the dignity of access to actual food.

yeah, you're otm here. i guess i think the feverish backlash is a little ridiculous, re: not talking about *replacing* food but just having more options or w/e

yeesh @ techgeek social engineering

like, it's a depressing place that i'm not ready to go to.

sucks for you but the earth is dying, get used to it

guy was on colbert last night

http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/2kgoki/rob-rhinehart

seemed a bit humourless but didn't get riled by the poking and made a few good points.

It's up on youtube if anyone is interested:
htts://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYMCicWaFkc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYMCicWaFkc

i will go ahead and put myself in the shitty company of weirdos in the tech industry and freaks of nature (like myself) that aren't obsessed with food:

the backlash (to the extent that anyone cares) about soylent (not in this thread, just generally) is hilarious and weird and sad. to read comment threads on it you'd think that there was a govt coup and the new evil overlords are forcing everyone to drink soylent. i suppose it's not that they feel threatened (i'll give the benefit of the doubt to people that they understand that there is zero possibility that soylent would ever become a dominant replacement for food), but there seems to be a complete lack of empathy and imagination in considering the idea that there are people out there who don't love to eat food and would rather do something else with their time. it turns out that there are people who have different preferences about how they'd like to live that are different than the masses! and the creator of the drink has social problems with communicating! holy shit! i crapped my pants!

i'm typically blowing everything out of proportion, but jfc humanity just let people drink this stuff if they want to without lording your love of food over them. if it's not actually improving their lives they can quietly go back to the usual crap that they eat. yes, it's not a sympathetic crew because drinking soylent is associated with tech assholes, but just let it go. fuck

bacon

vegetarians have been getting similar flack since the dawn of tofu time.

It's hard sometimes, but don't lose your tempeh!

i can't help it, i worship seitan

the whole idea behind this is very silly cause theres literally no one whos gonna replace all their food with this stuff to the extent that they need it to have all the nutrients in the world, i suspect even people who find eating to be a burden will not find this gloop monotonous after not too long cause hey its just not very good food!

like if u want to skip a meal just drink a protein shake or something it doesnt need to be a weird unpalatable dystopian startup food, banana/yogurt/unsweetened whey powder is pretty tasty

the thing that people are reacting so negatively to is the idea that this is a solution to the problem of food which is just getting in the way of accomplishing our important tasks like building a weird meal replacement start up, its such a dire materialistic mechanistic approach to life, caring for oneself is just another burden obstructing our ambitions, our bodies are such haters lol

its still food, bad food

I can see that some people regard food not as bad or repellent, but simply as uninteresting. I've met a few. They eat because if they don't eat there are annoying consequences. They spend only the minimum amount of time engaged with food necessary for the basic transaction of nourishment. They don't seem like bad people to me. At least not for that reason. But this is still food and must be eaten, so they might find it not especially interesting for that reason alone.

i bet this stuff will help people to appreesh real food after not too long, be curious to hear zachs experience if he goes through with it

if there was a pill-sized equivalent to soylent (apparently providing nutrients you need to live), i think all the soylent fans would switch to it, without exception. i wonder how the backlash to food substitutes would evolve at that point.