If you're into it, there are many user-submitted DIY Soylent recipes at completefoods.co [1].
There are recipes for Keto Chow (costs $7.15/day) [2], a super low-cost Soylent (costs $1.51/day) [3], AgroVittles solid bars (costs $14.15/day) [4], and Eldar Bread, also solid (costs $1.79/day) [5].
I'm not really interested in replacing all my meals with a drink (and I doubt many people really do that long term), but I think some of these options are a good way to get things I probably lack.
It doesn't need to be perfectly healthy to serve its purpose to me. It helps me avoid time-and-money-wasting bad meals.
If you are out somewhere busy, sometimes you just want to keep going but you are hungry. But all the food options might be overpriced junk food that you have to wait for. Drink a soylent and skip that meal. When you get home eat real food that you actually want to eat.
Soylent kills food cravings and keeps your mood even for hours.
It has protein and it's not greasy/salty. Like a protein bar except easier to consume and doesn't require a separate drink (bars are usually super dry for me).
A soylent is a couple dollars, whereas bad restaurant food at a crowded event is easily $15 plus 20 minutes of waiting.
I guess I don't see a big problem here? What's an alternative that's better?
Because taking a drink from a bottle is perhaps a bit more crowd-friendly than opening a can of sardines when you're at a grocery store, hospital, gym, etc.
An apple is 50 calories and mostly sugar. Almonds are pretty good. Most people don't find eating sardines plain to be convenient or tasty.
Soylent is fairly well balanced, plenty of people seem to think it tastes good enough (I think it's a bit chalky, but, ymmv) and it's reasonably enough priced and convenient.
If you aren't cooking most of your meals, and if you struggle with tracking macros and your needs are statistically average, then Soylent is probably not a bad solution. I got a case for my sister when she was having trouble keeping weight on her and it helped her back on track nutritionally - anecdotal obviously.
Fasting can be a valuable practice, but I think it should be applied intentionally, based on your goals for your health and body, not haphazardly when you find yourself in a context where good food is inconvenient.
It can also be a good idea to not look at screens sometimes, but it's disruptive if that time away from screens is at a time not of your choosing but forced on you by external conditions.
While I admittedly would benefit from skipping a few meals, I get very surly when hungry; not a good thing either at the workplace or at home. Dunno how people overcome that.
By that logic, we don't know that any dietary plan is doing things right so nothing should be called healthy. That's what makes it FUD.
Haven't tried the stuff in near a decade personally but IMO Soylent is reasonably well researched and a good faith effort to try to create a healthy food, whether it ultimately is or not. "We don't know" doesn't cut it as a counterargument.
I know that when I eat a portion of leafy green vegetables. I am eating something "healthy."
Maybe we're going too far into a discussion on epistemology here, but I don't think it is FUD to call out that we cannot clearly say the same thing about Soylent that we say about a serving of cruciferous vegetables. One is healthy and the other is unknown and ambiguous.
However, if we still want to call this FUD, I'd argue that maybe FUD is necessary when thinking about what we put into our bodies. I'd also practice FUD when thinking through whether I should approach a mountain lion, and I'd encourage everyone else to do the same.
> I know that when I eat a portion of leafy green vegetables. I am eating something "healthy."
There's a difference between _knowing_ and _believing_. You _believe_ this, it's not an absolute truth.
It's the same as most people believe they must drink 2L of water a day, where in reality there's zero scientific basis for the assertion.
It could be that there is scientific basis that ground up plant material of which Soylent is comprised is not nutritionally similar to "leafy green vegetables", but you don't _know_ that. You merely _believe_ it. I'm not even a soylent fan (although I did try it), but I am a fan of critical thinking.
The human body is incredibly complicated and we really don't know what we don't know. It's really not necessarily true that drinking a nutrient rich slurry like Soylent is a good substitute for a conventional healthy diet. It literally is an unknown. There's good prior reason to believe it is not significantly better. It probably isn't a whole lot worse either, certainly better than many people's diets.
Thus, unknown benefit or harm which probably isn't huge either way. It's like taking an untested drug that probably isn't dangerous but probably doesn't have a huge effect either. The precautionary principle is the usual rule with such things.
To really know, we'd need multi-decade longitudinal studies of large numbers of people. Soylent obviously doesn't have that kind of evidence.
I don't use soylent, but use a similar product in the same space.
I hope very few people are using these to replace _all_ of their diet. But as a tool, I find meal replacement mixes to be useful in multiple contexts:
- when traveling somewhere and I expect the options which meet my dietary requirements to be limited
- when trying to fit extra calories to gain weight
- when the other low-effort option would be snacks I won't feel good about (this used to mean the office)
Especially if you have a dietary restriction and a metabolism that requires a lot of calories to avoid unintended weight loss, arranging to always have nutritious _real_ food can require a lot of effort and planning, and I can't always be bothered. If the other options are eating too few calories, eating crappy snacks, or picking something at a geographically convenient restaurant, a meal replacement shake can quickly become best easy option.
I've experimented with Soylent for almost 1.5 years, and here are my main takeaways:
1. It's far from perfect, but can serve as a substitute for junk food. After six months of switching to Soylent, the cholesterol in my blood had dropped significantly, as verified by blood tests.
2. It's much easier to moderate food intake with Soylent. If you eat out, especially in the US, the portions tend to be huge, and there's often a post-meal slump. Soylent makes it possible to continuously consume little amounts of food.
3. Your body loses the ability to process solid food if you have too much Soylent. It's possible to get addicted to Soylent, and develop an aversion for regular food, and this is unhealthy, to say the least.
4. Cooking and eating home-cooked meals is an essential part of overall well-being. For snacking on-the-go, smoothies are a good substitute. With yoghurt, seeds, and protein powder blended it, it's arguably healthier than Soylent.
Conclusion: Soylent is like one of those fruit juices you might pick up at the supermarket, when you fancy it. Getting cartons of it shipped home every month is harmful to overall well-being.
As others have commented, this article is a little bit FUD-ish and doesn't back up all it's claims that much better than Soylent. But personally what I was attracted to in Soylent, I found in better in Huel. Real nutritionists, who share great content about their choices, etc. Very interesting to follow, and I'm a big fan of their powder for breakfast and their "Hot & Savory" for lunches.
My diet is now almost entirely plant-based, there are noticeable health improvements, and it's as cheap and efficient as Soylent.
The stool is better, ONCE YOUR BODY IS USED TO IT! One of the main reasons I'm able to be so disciplined about keeping it in my diet heavily is I don't want to subject my wife to the first few weeks back on a mostly-Huel diet :) The poor dear...
I would second huel. its made my shift to veganism much, much more pleasant and practical and has allowed me to hit my macros for hypertrophy in a more manageable way
I've read a lot of comments about unsourced claims and the like. I expected that after reading the article, the tone is more matter of fact than it has a right to be based on it's citations.
Or at least it didn't present a credible argument for a crowd like HN. Despite that, from my perspective, having long followed the research in fields that relate to health, almost all of the points are the most likely explanation based on what we know (which isn't enough). Backing that up is of course a big ask, big enough that you'd have to decide between spending a few hours on a post or spending weeks compiling sources, then writing a brief history of health policy and practice.
I can understand going with option one.
All of that aside, I think this point is important:
>The default for evaluating some food that isn’t found in nature shouldn’t be that it’s “healthy until proven bad,” rather, bad until proven healthy.
We've co-evolved with our environment for 25 million years (if you count from the earliest evidence of hominoids). It's hard to argue that it doesn't make sense to approach anything that falls outside of that evolutionary relationship with healthy skepticism.
This whole article has a much too assured tone about itself than is actually warranted. The one thing I can agree with when it comes to nutrition science are:
1. There are a huge amount of unknowns in nutrition science.
2. We have multiple examples where highly processed foods (e.g. trans fats, refined sugars, low fiber) have been proven bad for you, so eating whole foods is generally a safer bet, but regardless it tastes better, too.
Readit News
There are recipes for Keto Chow (costs $7.15/day) [2], a super low-cost Soylent (costs $1.51/day) [3], AgroVittles solid bars (costs $14.15/day) [4], and Eldar Bread, also solid (costs $1.79/day) [5].
I'm not really interested in replacing all my meals with a drink (and I doubt many people really do that long term), but I think some of these options are a good way to get things I probably lack.
[1]: https://www.completefoods.co/diy/recipes
[2]: https://www.completefoods.co/diy/recipes/keto-chow-150-maste...
[3]: https://www.completefoods.co/diy/recipes/brets-soylent-corn-...
[4]: https://www.completefoods.co/diy/recipes/agrovittles-electri...
[5]: https://www.completefoods.co/diy/recipes/eldar-flour
If you are out somewhere busy, sometimes you just want to keep going but you are hungry. But all the food options might be overpriced junk food that you have to wait for. Drink a soylent and skip that meal. When you get home eat real food that you actually want to eat.
Soylent kills food cravings and keeps your mood even for hours.
Isn't the point of the article that Soylent is overpriced junk food?
A soylent is a couple dollars, whereas bad restaurant food at a crowded event is easily $15 plus 20 minutes of waiting.
I guess I don't see a big problem here? What's an alternative that's better?
Why not eat an apple, a handful of almonds or a can of sardines? There are a multiple of convenient, healthy foods.
Soylent is fairly well balanced, plenty of people seem to think it tastes good enough (I think it's a bit chalky, but, ymmv) and it's reasonably enough priced and convenient.
If you aren't cooking most of your meals, and if you struggle with tracking macros and your needs are statistically average, then Soylent is probably not a bad solution. I got a case for my sister when she was having trouble keeping weight on her and it helped her back on track nutritionally - anecdotal obviously.
It can also be a good idea to not look at screens sometimes, but it's disruptive if that time away from screens is at a time not of your choosing but forced on you by external conditions.
Heading of the conclusion: "The Core Problem: We Don’t Know What We Don’t Know"
Most sections could be summarized as "We don't know that Soylent is doing things right therefore it might be unhealthy." It's just a FUD piece.
Haven't tried the stuff in near a decade personally but IMO Soylent is reasonably well researched and a good faith effort to try to create a healthy food, whether it ultimately is or not. "We don't know" doesn't cut it as a counterargument.
Maybe we're going too far into a discussion on epistemology here, but I don't think it is FUD to call out that we cannot clearly say the same thing about Soylent that we say about a serving of cruciferous vegetables. One is healthy and the other is unknown and ambiguous.
However, if we still want to call this FUD, I'd argue that maybe FUD is necessary when thinking about what we put into our bodies. I'd also practice FUD when thinking through whether I should approach a mountain lion, and I'd encourage everyone else to do the same.
There's a difference between _knowing_ and _believing_. You _believe_ this, it's not an absolute truth.
It's the same as most people believe they must drink 2L of water a day, where in reality there's zero scientific basis for the assertion.
It could be that there is scientific basis that ground up plant material of which Soylent is comprised is not nutritionally similar to "leafy green vegetables", but you don't _know_ that. You merely _believe_ it. I'm not even a soylent fan (although I did try it), but I am a fan of critical thinking.
Thus, unknown benefit or harm which probably isn't huge either way. It's like taking an untested drug that probably isn't dangerous but probably doesn't have a huge effect either. The precautionary principle is the usual rule with such things.
To really know, we'd need multi-decade longitudinal studies of large numbers of people. Soylent obviously doesn't have that kind of evidence.
- when traveling somewhere and I expect the options which meet my dietary requirements to be limited
- when trying to fit extra calories to gain weight
- when the other low-effort option would be snacks I won't feel good about (this used to mean the office)
Especially if you have a dietary restriction and a metabolism that requires a lot of calories to avoid unintended weight loss, arranging to always have nutritious _real_ food can require a lot of effort and planning, and I can't always be bothered. If the other options are eating too few calories, eating crappy snacks, or picking something at a geographically convenient restaurant, a meal replacement shake can quickly become best easy option.
1. It's far from perfect, but can serve as a substitute for junk food. After six months of switching to Soylent, the cholesterol in my blood had dropped significantly, as verified by blood tests.
2. It's much easier to moderate food intake with Soylent. If you eat out, especially in the US, the portions tend to be huge, and there's often a post-meal slump. Soylent makes it possible to continuously consume little amounts of food.
3. Your body loses the ability to process solid food if you have too much Soylent. It's possible to get addicted to Soylent, and develop an aversion for regular food, and this is unhealthy, to say the least.
4. Cooking and eating home-cooked meals is an essential part of overall well-being. For snacking on-the-go, smoothies are a good substitute. With yoghurt, seeds, and protein powder blended it, it's arguably healthier than Soylent.
Conclusion: Soylent is like one of those fruit juices you might pick up at the supermarket, when you fancy it. Getting cartons of it shipped home every month is harmful to overall well-being.
Coffiest Frozen Bananas Ice Frozen Cauliflower & Avocado Chia Seeds Hemp Hearts Cocoa Cacao Assorted nuts (Cashews, Pistachios, Walnuts, Almonds)
My diet is now almost entirely plant-based, there are noticeable health improvements, and it's as cheap and efficient as Soylent.
It's been amazing, we both feel more energized and the stool have been better (probably due to the large amount of fibers in huel).
Or at least it didn't present a credible argument for a crowd like HN. Despite that, from my perspective, having long followed the research in fields that relate to health, almost all of the points are the most likely explanation based on what we know (which isn't enough). Backing that up is of course a big ask, big enough that you'd have to decide between spending a few hours on a post or spending weeks compiling sources, then writing a brief history of health policy and practice.
I can understand going with option one.
All of that aside, I think this point is important:
>The default for evaluating some food that isn’t found in nature shouldn’t be that it’s “healthy until proven bad,” rather, bad until proven healthy.
We've co-evolved with our environment for 25 million years (if you count from the earliest evidence of hominoids). It's hard to argue that it doesn't make sense to approach anything that falls outside of that evolutionary relationship with healthy skepticism.
1. There are a huge amount of unknowns in nutrition science.
2. We have multiple examples where highly processed foods (e.g. trans fats, refined sugars, low fiber) have been proven bad for you, so eating whole foods is generally a safer bet, but regardless it tastes better, too.