Didn't know if I should put this in the Community Discussion section or the Food and Cooking section but oh well.
Just curious if anyone has tried Soylent, I saw some older threads from 2013 and the whole operation has changed quite a bit since then so I figured I'd bring up the topic again.
I'm wondering if anyone has tried it for any period of time. (Considering it for my lunch hour) What was that experience like? Were there any issues with it?
Their marketing department either picked the greatest name ever, or the absolute worst.
I think he got the name from the book version, can't recall the title at the moment tho. But totally agreed, turns out the people in Soylent Greens were just consuming other people...so I wonder how that meeting went.
I've gone through a couple boxes of the powder and am waiting on the Soylent 2.0 stuff in the mail.
I use it specifically as a replacement for breakfast and lunch during the work week. It tastes very bland with a pancake batter texture. The bland taste is intentional so that you can flavor it as you'd like. I've experimented with a few different fruit flavors with pretty good success. I even went as far as trying bullion (mistake). However, after playing around with flavors, I often just drink it straight.
I don't have any real issues with it. The powder definitely makes you gassy as hell at first. It somewhat subsides as you get used to it, but it's still fairly gassy. Rosa Labs says it's because of the rice protein they use or something like that and they're working on fixing it. According to the CEO the drink, Soylent 2.0, does not have this issue.
It's been very helpful in keeping me away from fast food and microwaved burritos, which in turn keeps my monthly food costs down. The cost for me was about $4.50 a day for 1000 calories of the powder. Rosa Labs has actually dropped the price of the powder since then by quite a bit; like 20%. The drink is a bit pricey at $6.25 a day for 1000 calories, but I don't doubt that the price of Soylent 2.0 will come down sometime in the future. Their ultimate goal is to provide the stuff as cheaply as possible while still remaining profitable.
Foodies will look at you with disgust but if they're your friends, they'll get over it over time. If you drink it a lot, you will yearn for tasty foods. To balance this, I just bring snacks with me as well.
The website referenced the movie when you clicked on the [Ingredients] section. Doesn't look like it's there anymore, though.
I will say that the CEO, Rob Rhinehart, is an insane person according to his blog.
I read The Verge's article on it last year. Interesting idea, but I wouldn't want to live off it. Got to have some variation.
I've gone through a couple boxes of the powder and am waiting on the Soylent 2.0 stuff in the mail.
I use it specifically as a replacement for breakfast and lunch during the work week. It tastes very bland with a pancake batter texture. The bland taste is intentional so that you can flavor it as you'd like. I've experimented with a few different fruit flavors with pretty good success. I even went as far as trying bullion (mistake). However, after playing around with flavors, I often just drink it straight.
I don't have any real issues with it. The powder definitely makes you gassy as hell at first. It somewhat subsides as you get used to it, but it's still fairly gassy. Rosa Labs says it's because of the rice protein they use or something like that and they're working on fixing it. According to the CEO the drink, Soylent 2.0, does not have this issue.
It's been very helpful in keeping me away from fast food and microwaved burritos, which in turn keeps my monthly food costs down. The cost for me was about $4.50 a day for 1000 calories of the powder. Rosa Labs has actually dropped the price of the powder since then by quite a bit; like 20%. The drink is a bit pricey at $6.25 a day for 1000 calories, but I don't doubt that the price of Soylent 2.0 will come down sometime in the future. Their ultimate goal is to provide the stuff as cheaply as possible while still remaining profitable.
Foodies will look at you with disgust but if they're your friends, they'll get over it over time. If you drink it a lot, you will yearn for tasty foods. To balance this, I just bring snacks with me as well.
The website referenced the movie when you clicked on the [Ingredients] section. Doesn't look like it's there anymore, though.
I will say that the CEO, Rob Rhinehart, is an insane person according to his blog.
This is the gold I was looking for! I too want to try it out for pretty much the same reasons that you listed above and it's comforting to know someone is doing it. I try to curb my appetite with some of the granola bars that H-E-B sells (a local semi organic grocer) and eating out cost way too much and has had a genuine effect on my weight since I started this job months ago.
My cost for food is roughly $8-$12 a day. Most weeks I work 6 days, multiply that by a month and I'm overspending big time on food. Not good for my bank and not good for my well being. Hopefully I'll avoid the disgusted look you may have received at work since I only have 2 other co-workers, one who will just look at me in wonder....and presume to call me by my nick name "Eccentric".
Just out of curiosity, did you lose weight or notice anything relating to your health if you don't mind my asking? I'm hoping that perhaps it'll help shed a pound or two as a result of not eating as many calories during these times of day.
Once again your information is as good as gold to me right now.
Same thoughts here, just looking for something really for my mornings spend in traffic and as well as my lunch hour.
I spend the entire second half of my day reading up on Soylent including this article.
I'm 6' and 170. No weight loss so far, but I hope it stays that way. :P I assume that it's easier to manage weight using Soylent since you can measure out your calorie intake very quickly and accurately, but that's an assumption on my part.
The cost I stated there was for half a day's servings of 1000 calories. If you decide to replace breakfast, lunch, and dinner with the full 2000 calorie shebang it'll be about $9 a day (a little less than that with the recent price cut on the powder). As far as health goes, I did feel healthier and my lady friend said I seemed healthier, but that could be due to Placebo Effect. I think it's definitely healthier than what I used to eat, though.
If you decide to go for it, I would recommend getting the smallest box of whichever version you like: the powder, Soylent 1.5, or the pre-mixed drink, Soylent 2.0. With 1.5, they'll ship a 2 liter container to mix it in and pour from (2 liters = 2000 calories). I mix it in that using a immersible blender. When I go to work, I pour a liter of it into a 1 liter Nalgene bottle. About the time it takes to make a sandwich every 2 days. The stuff is only good for approx. 2 days once mixed and refrigerated, so there's no mixing it for the week. The drink, Soylent 2.0, is supposed to have a shelf life of a year.
The 2.0 stuff is going to be here tomorrow, so I'll update you when I try it out.
funny enough i was going to switch to soylent for breakfast lunch and dinner, going to be going with the powder just because of cost, also going to keep my 6 day a week gym schedule up while doing it, good to see other people on the forum asking about it, ill update with how everything is going :)
I have been making my own for quite a while. I have used it exclusively for a week at a time before and use it as a meal replacement now pretty regularly. It is easy to take with me to class and keep myself full all day. If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask. I just don't plan to read through the whole thread to see if there is anything that needs answering, so just ask me whatever if you want.
Recipe? And don't say humans, lol.
That's a good one lol
https://diy.soylent.com/recipes/people-chow-302-tortilla-perfection-with-olive-oil
Works well enough. I usually don't both with the olive oil since my body doesn't like much fat in my diet and I don't eat it exclusively, so I get enough fat elsewhere. Overall grainy in texture, but I don't mind the taste all that much. Eating a whole day's worth instead of just a meal or two results in me having to basically drink it all day.
I'm going to try the 1.5 but only for lunch and perhaps breakfast since i don't really have much of an appetite in the mornings.
For the weight part in theory i should see some thing since ill be reducing my caloric intake. looking for ward to it
p.s lets keep this discussion alive seems more people are curious than i expected. Cheeers everyone
Alright, so I just looked a the official soylent shit again. I haven't been over there on that site for months. Back when I first starting doing this, the official stuff wasn't as attractive as it is now. And shipping was expected to take several months. Anyway, now, it appears as though it is just as cheap to get the official stuff as it is to make it yourself. It is also easier (obviously). I am interested in using their stuff. I might get that after I run out of my ingredients.
Wanted to give a quick update now that I've tried Soylent 2.0.
It sticks to trying to stay bland, but I think I prefer 2.0's taste. It's like a tasteless, slightly watered-down SlimFast. Probably the biggest thing I like about it though is that it doesn't require refrigeration. It can be drunk (drank? drinked? drunken? dranked? wtf?) warm, which I think helps the taste a bit.
The biggest downside would be the price compared to the powder. But, you're paying for convenience, so it's reasonable.
I won't ever eat it because all it is is just old bulk ground up emergency storage kit food that has been bought, resold, and re-marketed as a product to the public.
If you take a product that is about to expire, and reconstitute it as another product entirely you can bypass a lot of legislation and literally start the life of the product over again...which, if you compare the ingredients of both emergency storage kit food and "Soylent", you will realize it's nearly identical...
It's just ground up old dried up food bought at an extreme discount and hipster'd up with a new price tag.
Eat real food...don't eat stuff loaded with sodium that is meant for an emergency shelter.
Source? Be interested in seeing that if it's true. Wouldn't doubt it though, would cut cost dramatically.
The fact that the ingredients are nearly identical? Look at the packaging ingredients and the nutrition facts and compare.
It's such a solid business plan as well if you think about it. Take someone else's garbage, but it for nothing, then resell it with a new name. I would even suspect there is probably underhanded contracts between the two companies.
Can't find much on emergency storage food kits, I see a lot of canned items, but nothing that's all in one powder like Soylent. Do you have some products that you found to juxtapose them?