DanBC2

I apologise if I've been too harsh on Soylent. I have, previously, been strongly against Soylent. I'm against some of the techniques they're using to sell it now.

But I'm trying to be more a "critical friend" rather than just "negative". I realise that I don't yet have the right balance.

Soylent is being sold as a complete food. We've seen a couple of mistakes during the testing process. The ingredients list is not easy to find, and the sources of those ingredients are not available, so we cannot check if it is a complete food or not.

Soylent is being sold as something that you can eat for every meal. You can argue that most people aren't going to do that, but that's how Soylent are selling it.

Soylent claim, unambiguously, that it is safe for everyone. People with Crohn's disease sometimes need to eat a liquid feed. Is Soylent safe for them? Because Soylent claim that it is safe for them, and that it'll provide them with optimum nutrition and bring them to good health.

I get all that. It's great.

It's a shame that they (and many of their prospective customers) appear to be unaware of the existing liquid feed products.

Eventually they claim they'll tailor the product for each individual. That'll be interesting. Maybe combine it with life planning for exercise and healthier eating? People could wean their selves off junk foods (subbing Soylent for those) and tapering in better food.

Yes, it has some grams of fibre. I'm not sure what form the fibre is in, or how much. It's on their website somewhere.

So you don't know? Yet you're happy for them to sell it as safe for everyone, as providing optimal nutrition, as bring people to perfect health, as being tested, when we don't know if any of that is true? (And we know the tested part is a lie).

> Why does everyone seem to think that Soylent is "for every meal, everyday"?

Because they're selling it as that. Perhaps Soylent could consider reading these threads and improving their website information?

>Also, it doesn't have a single ingredient list. It's been stated several times that the measurements would be modified according to each individual that would use Soylent.

This version of the product comes, I think, in just two forms, Male and Female. Ingredients are crucial. (Perhaps a legal requirement? I don't know about the US market.) Certainly a list of ingredients for the base product is possible.

It'll be interesting to see how Soylent do the tailoring to each individual. It'll be interesting to see what information they use to do that modification.

> It's not going to kill you, or mess up your health

How do you know?

To disrupt the industry Soylent need to know what that industry is.

So far I haven't seen any sign that they have any idea about what going on in that domain.

There's a bunch of stuff about "Hey! What if food was a simple easy liquid?" - well, fine, except that's been in existence for many years. There's some stuff about "optimal health" - which is a bit scary when you have a bunch of people with (as far as we can see) zero medical knowledge, zero dietary knowledge, and zero nutritional knowledge. Apart from what they've got from Wikipedia. And then there's the "Soylent will feed the world" - except we've been trying to feed the world with similar products for years and there's still a problem.

For the world hunger stuff: Who are they selling to? Charities and NGOs? The WFP and UNICEF? Will they just sell the raw product, or will they sell distribution too? What makes them better than whoever the WFP / UNICFEC are buying from?

This is why it doesn't feel disruptive. Most disruptive companies see what other people are doing, and target the inefficiencies or target what people want done differently.

Soylent claims to be different, but is the same as existing products (but with much bolder claims and much less quality control).

Everything I've seen with Soylent so far feels very rushed, and not thought-through. MVPs are fine for most things, but I'm pretty cautious about what I live on.

Most YC startups are not going to cause you direct physical harm. Soylent might. And I'd be fine with that if they had stuck to the original self-experimental approach. But they're not. They saying, clearly, unambiguously, that the product is tested and is safe and is safe for everyone.

> assuming it's not missing any major dietary component

It has some fibre, but it's missing solids. Who knows if that's important or not?

They claim it has a long shelf life. I'm not sure what they're doing to maintain shelf life. Vitamin C, for example, has a short shelf life. Soylent aren't saying how long the shelf life is, or which nutrients might degrade sooner.

That's the kind of thing they'll need help with. Sealed containers, maybe with weekly supplies per container, dark light-proof containers will help.

(While I'm strongly anti-Soylent, I'm trying to be more constructive.)

The drug has been used to treat the condition for nearly 60 years.

> prescribed medication for this truly bullshit condition concocted by the modern age.

Ritalin is nearly 60 years old.

Well, no. Now we know what we don't know, rather than assuming we do know something. And when we specify one font over another we can say honestly "Because I like it" rather than dishonestly "Because science tells us it's best".