Is it a good idea to use Soylent once/twice a day?

It is probably way more nutritious than the meal it's replacing. Typical diets probably are lacking in certain nutrients, and Soylent will probably help to "fill in these gaps". Again, another huge benefit that I'm surprised doesn't get talked about as much (although this doesn't apply for people who have multivitamins).

There's little evidence that consuming multivitamins is healthy for the average person.

Previous discussions on LW:

• [LINK] Soylent crowdfunding
• Ketogenic Soylent
• Soylent Orange - Whole food open source soylent

Here's my review of Soylent and a taskification of how I use it.

Pros:

• Much easier than cooking or even fast food, when transportation costs are taken into account
• Much more nutritionally complete than fast food or processed sugar-foods
• Relatively cheap
• Tastes neutral or slightly sweet

Cons:

• Sometimes sticks to the back of my throat
• Can give foul smelling gas
• Can cause headaches
• Can cause nausea
• Texture of high pulp orange juice
• Doesn't have the daily allowance of sodium

Preparation Process:

• Place Takeya pitcher on counter with top off
• Rip off top of Soylent bag
• Squeeze top of Soylent bag down to a circular shape that fits in the pitcher
• Place top of bag in pitcher and tilt
• Squeeze and press on bag until all powder is in pitcher
• Add 1/4 tsp to 1 tsp of salt, depending on taste and sodium cravings. I use Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt.
• Add warm water to pitcher to the edge of the container
• Put top on and shake vigorously
• Open top, careful not to drip remnants
• Add oil from oil jar and more warm water to edge of the container
• Put on top and shake vigorously
• Place pitcher in refrigerator

Consumption process:

• Pour Soylent into 8oz glass - I use Bermioli Rocco glasses recommended by TheWirecutter
• Alternatively, pour Soylent into 16oz Thermos, such as the Thermos Nissan
• If still warm, put in 1 ice cube
• Sip or chug as needed
• Consume lots of additional water
• Immediately upon finishing a glass, add a dash of water, swirl it around, drink remnants, and then rinse glass

Notes:

• Do not put water in pitcher before Soylent powder, as it's easy to put in too much water, and the Soylent won't fit.
• Warm water mixes more easily with the Soylent
• Soylent tastes better when chilled
• Soylent dries out into a very hard, crusty residue which is difficult to clean, so stray droplets are a nuisance

I DIY soylent. It's cheaper (<$5/day (1), ordering everything online in America), and I'm not at all enthused about some of the choices for the commercial product. Here's my spreadsheet. Nb. this was made just for personal use (a) for sourcing (which is boring, tedious, and time-consuming) and (b) to estimate the price per day. I haven't included things you'll need like scales, something to crush the tablets, a blender and, most importantly, choline, since I already had enough of lying around. I also add creatine, although it's not essential. Check the original ingredient list and update if you're planning on using it. Partake at your own risk, and definitely don't do it if you don't have enough of a background in chemistry to go from "I need x grams of sodium" to "I should include y grams of NaCl".

Process

1. Make a bag with the proper micronutrient blend (I go back and forth about including (and taking) nootropics, but this is when I'd add them. Except bacopa. Bacopa's super non-yummy and would ruin my food for the entire day). I usually make 12 or 16 days worth and add psyllium to make it 3 or 4 cups, which corresponds to putting in a quarter cup a day. Liquid micronutrients go in at make-time.

2. Put olive oil into blender.

3. Add micronutrients.

4. Turn on blender and add water (the blender isn't going to be a huge fan of blending so little)

5. Add maltodextrin and whey. Don't lollygag, because otherwise something... weird happens between the olive oil, water, and fiber and it turns into an inedible gelatinous mass. You don't need to rush, but be snappy.

6. Store in refrigerator. Drink when hungry (I prefer it cold.)

Pros

• Fast (it takes a bit of time to make the micro bag, but whipping up a batch takes around 2 minutes)

• Cheap

• More nutritionally complete than your diet (or anyone else's) probably is.

• Taste is satisfying

• Mental clarity (I've tried various approaches to eating over the years, some of them good, and soylent is by far the best in this regard)

• You don't have to choose what to eat

• No skill (or, more accurately, you need (rudimentary) chemistry instead of cooking. I suspect the average user here is much more likely to know the former)

• All your foodstuffs are delivered to your front door. This was especially important as a college student constrained by bus schedules = going to store costs takes 1.5 hours.

Cons

• Boring (which I personally consider a pro, but most people don't)

• It ferments after a while. About a day room temperature, several if you refrigerate (which you absolutely should).

• If you add too much water, it'll be unpleasantly runny. If you add too little, it'll be unpleasantly thick.

• High startup costs (~$1000)

• You don't get to choose what to eat

• If you mess up, you can either wind up with a complete deficiency or overdosing by a few orders of magnitude. The spreadsheet I've linked to is meant for sourcing, not making it. Check elsewhere for how much you should put in/completeness.

• Pain in the ass to clean the pitcher. Soap + soaking in water for a few hours works pretty well.

• There is a completely reasonable chance something goes disastrously wrong, I contract the jumping cold robbies or somesuch and die horribly. Obviously, I think there's a very low probability of that happening, but very smart people I trust (ie. other LWers) disagree.

Miscellaneous stuff

• The amount of water you should add varies by person. Some people prefer thick, bordering on pudding. Others prefer it thin like gruel. You'll probably have a few unpleasant batches before you figure out what's right for you.

• Most things are best bought online, but in my area, the olive oil is notably less expensive in grocery stores.

• I mentioned I don't have choline on the list. By all means, use my spreadsheet to source things, but for the love of Cthulu, check sources not me to make sure you're getting the right amounts of everything. I take no responsibility if you derp it up and wind up deficient or overdosing by two orders of magnitude (which is surprisingly easy).

• As soon as I can afford to (ie. when I graduate/get a job), I'm planning on switching to mealsquares. They do the same thing but better (nutrients from whole foods, have the flavonoids/anthocyanins things, easier, and reportedly taste better). However, according to back of the envelope, they cost 2.5-3x as much (2)

• Many of my ingredients come from Amazon. Use amazon smile (I support CFAR) and, apparently, if you go to amazon following one of Scott Alexander's affiliate links (of Slate Star Codex) and buy stuff within the next hour, 4-8% (or more) will go to him. (I'm unsure about my affiliate assertion, but it's the best I can come up with and I'm at least 50% sure it's correct).

• With one exception, literally everyone I've told about soylent immediately responds with some variation of "I couldn't ever give up real food" and completely dismisses it as a thing they might possibly do. This would explain why it's not more popular

• My current model: macronutrient composition doesn't really matter. Yes, there's some essential fats and it's quite bad to not have enough protein and there's better and worse fats (omega-3 vs trans) and better and worse carbs (based on glycemic index). But, beyond that, the focus on "low-carb" vs "low-fat" is beside the point. 1, 2

• I'd be willing to answer any questions that come up. I've been doing soylent for a little over a year now, and am a pretty big fan of it.

(1) I weigh about 75 kilos, mostly lean, am active, and am trying to add muscle. This all has implications in terms of how much protein I include; changing any of these factors changes how much protein you'll need changes how much it costs, likely in the downward direction. Notice that protein, by far, makes up the majority of the cost (~40%)

(2) If you assume $5/day soylent and 2000 calorie diet, then mealsquares, at $75/6 = $12.5 / day. However, soylent is (slightly) less than $5/day. More importantly, I eat significantly more than 2000 calories a day, and with DIY soylent, you can increase the number of calories with maltodextrin which is ludicrously cheap.

I have two problems with Soylent and equivalents.

First, we do not understand human biochemistry and nutrition nearly well enough to start making complete food replacements.

Second, I like (real) food. I like the taste and the texture and the smells and everything that makes yumminess. Why in the world would I give it up?

A cursory glance through Google reveals that, with Soylent specifically, there's a lot of skepticism and concern over long-term health effects in the nutrition community. A search as trite as "Soylent, good for you" started off with a full page of "why this does not work" articles and Wikipedia. Of course, Google is not a scholarly platform and page one of Google is not a bibliography of scholars. Search result number one is from a "nutritionista" who studies "holistic nutrition." Still, this is a new product, developed by people who are not nutritional researchers, made popular by spreading through counterculture channels, so real scholarship is scarce. Take that as you will.

For my part, Soylent is something I would like to work. I have Crohn's Disease, so any leg up on digestive health is one I'm willing to explore. But it's that same quality that makes me hold off on trying something like Soylent or MealSquares. I assume that any long term detrimental effects such things may be revealed to have on healthy people will be amplified dangerously for me. And if my only consolation is "You can save time and energy not cooking," then it isn't worth it. I can already control my diet well enough by cooking my own meals and knowing what goes in them. Not everyone has that luxury, though.

As I'm not a health specialist, my only way of judging food stuffs is by the ingredients list. What's in it? I've seen different lists for Soylent, none of which impressed me enough to change my beliefs, but that doesn't mean they won't change/I'm not mistaken. If you want to improve its standing or help find the flaws holding its acceptance back, try it, tell us about how it's working for you, spread the word of your experience. This thing began as a scientific means of developing a meal alternative and has developed into a scientific, engineered meal supplement. In other words, it's still an experiment. If you want to help by replicating, I'll certainly be paying attention.

Colour me surprised! Soylent is so "known" in my little bubble of a universe that I thought this post sounded like someone trying to promote sales. Consider mealsquares too (a similar product).

Seems fine. Really depends why you need it - what are you trying to achieve by using it.

I view Soylent the way I view Bitcoin: I'd like for others to use it exhaustively for several years to see what happens, then I'd consider whether I would want to use it myself based on the results. In other words, in some areas I want others to make mistakes as my proxies.

For example, synthetic organic chemicals can come with different stereoisomers in the mix, and I'd like to know how the Soylent recipes account for that, because your body's enzymes won't work with the wrong three-dimensional orientations of biologically important molecules.

BTW, Soylent's inventor, Rob Rhinehart, strikes me as an interesting guy, a libertarian who disvalues materialism. The article about him in The New Yorker magazine awhile back mentions that he has studied Buckminster Fuller's writings and tries to live according to Fuller's idea of "ephemeralization," which overlaps with the idea of "dematerialization" in economics. To escape the Malthusian trap and make 100 percent of humanity an economic success in a world with finite resources, you have to redesign humanity's physical life support to squeeze ever higher performance out of each unit of a given resource. In the limit this process turns the material stuff we need into something ghostlike. Rhinehart apparently views Soylent as a way to ephemeralize food production so that we can cut back on dirt farming and go easier on the environment.

Another BTW: A Marxist takes a dim view of Rhinehart, and of lifehacking in general, in this essay:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/05/19/solyent-neoliberalism-and-the-politics-of-life-hacking/

Bulletproof coffee = coffee+MCT oil+butter from grass fed cows, which I have instead of breakfast and lunch, is relatively cheap and very easy to make and probably a lot healthier than traditional breakfasts and lunches.

I would advise taking twice or thrice a day if you plan to use it exclusively. Less often and you risk blood sugar spikes and poor absorption.

The biggest drawback I've experienced with Soylent so far is that their shipping and manufacturing infrastructure is terrible. It's been 11 weeks since I ordered, and will probably be another six or eight weeks before they deliver.

Adding to the list of downsides, two foods can have identical micronutrient and macronutrient profiles and still be processed by the body differently. It is possible that a perfectly healthy human diet, containing the correct ratio of nutrients, when liquified is more unhealthy. I don't know if it is, but getting the right nutrient balance may not be sufficient.

It is a bad idea. Have a delicious meal instead (it really is not hard), preferably in the company of interesting people. Unless of course you do not derive pleasure from delicious meals, or you do not consider pleasure to be of intrinsic value.

Replacing food with Soylent is weird. Perhaps in your social circle it's a plausible thing to do, but I'm pretty certain that most people would think it's a bizarre thing to do regardless of what certain geek social circles might think.

In fact, that's my impression of lots of LW-style ideas, such as cryonics and SI-style AI research.

Rationality always works when it is done perfectly. But it's incredibly easy to miss something and come to a weird conclusion by pure rationality. And being partly rational can be pretty bad when irrationality has evolved checks and balances and your rationality bypasses them but is not good enough to replace them. So I'm automatically very skeptical towards anything which is perfectly sensible--here--which people outside this circle of atypical minds would find ludicrous.

Not to mention the name. Yes, I know that in the book it was not made of people, but giving it a name that has negative connotations in the outside world suggests that the idea is insufficiently vetted by the outside world.