One thing I don't understand about soylent is how it can be so expensive and yet still so flawed.

First, as a male I am concerned about isoflavones. I've read sources that go either way on how much it actually affects hormone levels, but since I suspect there is a lot more pressure from the agriculture / vegetarian community to make it seem safer than it is than from any other community to not, I lean towards it not being that good for you.

Second, the consistency is absolutely terrible. They don't need to make it too seedy, but leaving some of the nuts and seeds at least somewhat coarse would improve its texture beyond "slime that makes your teeth feel terrible and gross".

As is, it doesn't even make economic sense, because I can feed myself much tastier food than soylent for like $3-6 a day. Like, why would you choose soylent over food such as eggs, chicken, spinach, broccoli, oatmeal, etc?

What I really wish someone would do, is make a milk-based soylent with stuff that is actually good for you like sunflower seeds. That would actually taste good and probably be much better for you.

Soylent is so awful for you. They really capitalized on the ignorance of millenials with regard to proper nutrition.

edit: Shouldn't have trigger responded, but one of my biggest gripes with Soylent is their use of maltodextrin. It's not something you want to be consuming in mass every day. It is good for post-workout nutrition but as a meal you may as well be consuming sugar.

I guess that would integrate nicely with MyMuesli (https://uk.mymuesli.com/).

For those who don't know MyMuesli: It's a company which lets you mix your own muesli (from ~350 ingredients) and ship it to you. It's one of Germanys most successful non-VC-funded startups. They started in 2007 with just a website and nowadawys got shops in most major german cities where you can pick up your ordered muesli (useful for customers who avoid the delivery costs) or buy pre-mixed packs. Even though their muesli is anything but cheap they're hugely successful.

I have no idea what this is, and the README isn't helping. Why is it a program?

Ugh -- Soylent and now this seems to represent a branch of scientism at its worse.

Our bodies are complicated. Therefore, nutrition science is complicated, and very much a work in progress. Because people eat various things all their lives in an uncontrolled way, and because what you eat can have impacts on you 10, 20, or 50 years down the line, getting reliable nutritional data is extremely expensive and difficult.

There are many interactions that we still don't understand, unknown unknowns where we don't even know what the questions yet. For example, we know now that our gut microbiome has important influence on our metabolism, immune systems, and overall health. And yet little of this research existed 20 years ago because there was no cheap DNA sequencing, and we still don't know today how what we eat influences our internal ecology. We certainly don't know what eating a bunch of Soylent for a couple decades would do to a person's microbiome, because nobody has ever tried it.

A dose of humility and common sense would suggest that radically transforming your diet based on our current reductive knowledge of nutrition is an extremely risky bet.

The much safer bet is eating traditionally: eat foods in combinations and proportions that our ancestors and cultures have actually tried and tweaked over thousands of years of empirical experimentation and co-evolution.

I appreciate the coincidental irony that I am eating a bowl of muesli while reading this article this morning (AM in Aus., that is).

* Whole rolled oats

* Pumpkin seeds

* LSA (powdered)

* Sunflower seeds

* Chopped green apple

* Coconut water and Orange Juice 50/50 mix (NOT Milk, Ugh!)

* Mango flavoured thick greek yoghurt

Mmm...

The whole purpose of soylent is to allow me to spend 13 hours per day coding on adderall without leaving my room. Healthy or not, I think OP missed the point of ready made, no cleanup food.

Cool!

See the sample here https://dump.bitcheese.net/files/cacobil/muesli-example.html

I've been eating Soylent twice a day for more than a year as my primary food source. I'm always interested in new variants (especially ones that cut down on cost) - this one seems interesting. Any chance that there's an Amazon shopping cart that someone can add to get all this stuff easily?

Also, I noticed that the Readme links to Rob Rhinehart's page (http://robrhinehart.com). Unfortunately, it looks like it's all been taken down. Anybody know why?

Is there a recipe for this? Or even an ingredient list? This seems like a very weird way to present an idea for food

I personally view Soylant in the same way I do infant formula. It has changed drastically since it was first introduced as we learn more and more about what is in actual breastmilk and why it matters for development. Similarly there are probably many other components in whole foods that are important that we may not even quantify yet. Not to mention the importance of actualy chewing food so that the enzymes from saliva accompany the meal and assist in breaking down various components.

Imagine what Soylant would have looked like 50 years ago and how much it would have been missing. Now imagine how in 50 years we will learn just as much if not more and look back at our crude attempts in the same vain.

I enjoy MealSquares: http://mealsquares.com . A bit expensive, but fulfills many of the same objectives.

Seems to be missing people from the ingredients.