This product is a sad example of the lengths to which some people will go in order to avoid spending time on tasks which are generally necessary and often quite enjoyable and rewarding. Cooking certainly fits this description: it's an enjoyable process, a rewarding skill, and something that others will love you for if you do it well.
The constant focus on saving time and increasing personal productivity is a recipe for mental illness, in my opinion. Most people would do well to slow down, tune out, and make themselves a decent meal. I suspect that some and perhaps many of the people obsessed with personal productivity and life hacking will at some point suffer from a stress or anxiety disorder and will realize that life is short and there's no point in trying to hurry through it.
This trend towards saving time by sacrificing basic requirements like eating and sleeping is increasingly absurd. In a year or two, I'll open Hacker News and there'll be an article in the top ten that describes how you, too, can Avoid Wasting Time Due To Lengthy Bowel Movements. Don't believe the hype. Have a good night's rest, followed by a leisurely shit and a tasty, gruel-free breakfast you made yourself, and you'll be a better person for it.
I love to cook, but it can be extremely time consuming, especially when paired with the time to cleanup. A lot of dishes also require an amount of inactive time that is simply impossible for a weekday meal that you need to squeeze between coming home from work and going to sleep.
In a perfect world, I have time to shop for and prepare elaborate meals. I'd be able to sit down and enjoy these meals with loved ones. Reality is a bit different for many of us. I'm fortunate enough to have the financial means to eat or take out every day if I wanted, but that's not a terribly healthy solution.
The fact is, most of my meals are "utility" meals where I am eating to live. That said, it does not preclude me from living to eat. Food would never cease to be one of life's joys, for me at least. I am pro-Soylent, but I won't participate any time soon. I want to see how it plays out, because putting my body on the line is not in the cards. I hope it works out, because getting back an hour or two every day sounds fantastic.
You're creating a false dichotomy between Perfect Cooking and No Cooking.
Many tasty meals can be prepared quickly. Many can be prepared without supervision. You can also prepare meals in bulk and reheat them when you need them.
Are some meals elaborate and time-consuming? Yes. Just don't make those ones.
It's true that many tasty meals can be rather quick. I used phrases like "it can be" and "a lot of dishes" specifically to avoid creating a false dichotomy.
Sometimes I get bored of pan-seared salmon filet with sauce-of-the-week and microwave-steamed fresh broccoli. After the umpteenth time, I'm not deriving pleasure from the cooking process.
The cook in bulk recommendation is front-loading a time commitment for the kind of freedom something like Soylent would permit without sacrificing part of your weekend. I cook in bulk every so often, but blow half my weekend every week? Not a chance.
> After the umpteenth time, I'm not deriving pleasure from the cooking process.
Learn a new dish.
"After watching Batman Begins every night for 4 months straight, I got a bit bored with it".
Watch a new movie.
> blow half my weekend every week?
Yet another false dichotomy. As I said above, many dishes can be cooked without supervision. Cook one or two of those. On nights when you feel like cooking fresh, cook fresh. Otherwise pull the stew, curry, chilli, ragu etc etc etc out of the freezer and heat it up.
It's just not that hard. And cost:reward vs drinking sour white water seems pretty good to me.
You're right. I could just watch the static instead. It contains about as much intellectual content, is quite soothing and has a much lower environmental footprint.
I don't understand this metaphor at all. I want do go do something else. Shoot, maybe I want to go cook an elaborate and delicious meal! Why are you forcing me to watch anything?
But you understand that you don't have to sit there staring at the shake for as long as it would take you to cook a meal, right? You just drink it?
Look, however fast and easy it is to make your fast and easy meals, not having to do that is faster and easier. You've already granted the premise that it makes sense, sometimes, to sacrifice complexity of meals for reduced preparation time. Why shouldn't there be very simple options below "some preparation required", if someone wants them?
And why are you clinging to this metaphor that asserts that such an option is physically impossible?
I've actually been drinking a meal replacement shake (flavoured casein, oats, psyllium, freeze dried fruit/vegetable powder) for lunch most days for the past year and a half. So yes, I understand the mechanics of making them. I would still prefer to cook and eat real food or -- this might surprise you -- pay someone else a small premium to cook for me.
This sub-sub-thread started over a repetitive meal. Replacing it with a bland soup is hardly going to be an improvement.
> And why are you clinging to this metaphor that asserts that such an option is physically impossible?
>"After watching Batman Begins every night for 4 months straight, I got a bit bored with it".
> Watch a new movie.
But my problem isn't with Batman Begins. My problem is I don't want to watch a movie every night. I don't want to. Do you get that part? I understand you really like movies, and you enjoy setting up this whole system so you can watch a movie every night and not have it take up your whole day, but I don't like movies as much as you do. Most movies I find pretty dumb. It's boring to sit through the same movie over and over again, and picking out a new movie takes time I'd rather spend doing something I enjoy. I like a good film on the weekend if it's something that really engages me, or if I've got friends over, but otherwise it just seems like a needless time sink.
Why do I need to watch a movie? Why is my only other option to watch static? Why do I need to watch anything?
To dereference, if it is not necessary for my survival[0], why do I need to cook? I know that I can if I want to. And I do, sometimes. Why on earth should I when I don't want to?
[0] Disclaimed because I'm bearish on Soylent-- I don't have that much faith in the USDA. But I think something like it should exist, and I'd jump on it in a heartbeat if it worked.
I know what you're saying. But my metaphor was a response to being sick of cooking the same meal each night. Hence also the metaphor with static (let's say it's 5 seconds of static vs Batman every night, to forestall the next re-re-rehash).
> But my metaphor was a response to being sick of cooking the same meal each night.
If you're willing to grant that "chug a Soylent" is as effective a solution as "learn a new dish", and is vastly preferable if learning to prepare and repeatedly preparing a new dish doesn't intrinsically interest me, I have no problem with that.
If that's about the nutritional content of Soylent specifically, I misunderstood and agree with you, pending further evidence, because I want something I can be sure is healthy. Since that's precisely the same thing the G^nP you originally responded to said, I hope you can understand why I thought your critique was intended to engage with the concept of meal replacement in general.
But if that is the case, the reason I'm having trouble with your metaphor is I don't see how it doesn't make it abundantly clear to you that what we're arguing about is just a difference of taste between us.
> Why shouldn't there be very simple options below "some preparation required", if someone wants them?
That's not my problem with Soylent. My problem is that many people talking about this don't appear to have heard about other liquid feeds, and Soylent claim this is safe for everyone, with plenty of evidence of safety. There is no evidence of safety.
If you're talking about filling up a slow cooker to the brim and letting it roll, sure, you can do that. I personally rather drink Soylent if that's the meal we're shooting for.
For example: If you want to do a stew or chili right, you need to brown the meat. You need to do it in batches to avoid crowding the pan. Batches take time.
I can just about understand that some people don't have any decent food options at the workplace. They work somewhere small, and there are no local food providers, and any food available is terrible junk.
You have the options of remember to buy nice food that you can take into work, or taking a liquid food. The liquid food might not be tasty, but ensures you're not eating trash and are getting some nutrients.
And, from there, I get that there's a link between Soylent and YC, and so people are really keen to see them do well.
But I can't understand why people seem to ignore the very many brands of liquid feed already being made, which have undergone serious testing.
The OP created a false dichotomy. No one is requiring soylent 21 times per week. Save up your enthusiasm and make 4 or 5 excellent meals per week. You'll even enjoy them more than you would have.
That was the main selling point, though, as I understand -- that you can eat Soylent 100% or hell, 95% of the time, and you'd be healthy and not die. And most people were actually complaining about that, that everything's been so rushed.
Soylent in its current form is nothing new. I am no authority, but it probably isn't the best either, with only a few mere months' worth of research. I'm sure this product isn't going to be an impending health disaster -- I doubt anyone would be dumb enough to eat Soylent till they die. But there are alternatives out there (the OP mentions a few) that are likely better-tested. Soylent's one claim to fame may as well be its better marketing (pretty much everyone in that company's a marketer).
The point of Soylent isn't to never think about food again. It's just a default so when you're not thinking about food, you don't start eating badly. The creator says he goes to get really good sushi a few times a week because he does enjoy it. But if you're preoccupied or pressed for time for some or most of your meals, you can just have Soylent instead of defaulting to fast food or whatever crap is laying around your apartment.
Paraphrasing from their pitch video: "If you can eat out with friends, you should. I love food. But I don't eat twenty-one good meals a week."
I've seen before this idea that people would lose the ability to enjoy cooking or eating if it weren't literally required to survive. It's utterly nonsensical to me. Where does that idea come from?
There are some people who just don't seem to enjoy food, and who go for repetitive and bland meals. It's sort of like people who don't enjoy music, or books, or films, or ... you get the idea. Generally they're perceived as a little odd.
Even here in Norway, where food is advertised as "mild" (euphemism for "bland" if there ever was one) people have some concepts of tasty food. You probably know some people who don't enjoy spicy food? Now imagine someone who thought plain bell peppers were too hot (there's no capsaicin in bell peppers).
As for the origin of this culinary anhedonia, Idunno. Maybe poor people who were able to live off gruel without grumbling had better reproductive fitness in the past?
In many places, people of a minimum level of affluence hire maids, cooks, and butlers to handle the day-to-day tasks involved in running a household. Finding alternative means to offload tasks you're not interested in doing is not a bad thing if it allows you to employ your time and resources more productively.
Mental illness? Give me a break! Just because YOU don't like it doesn't mean that everyone else must meet your arbitrary standards.
> This trend towards saving time by sacrificing basic requirements like eating and sleeping is increasingly absurd. In a year or two, I'll open Hacker News and there'll be an article in the top ten that describes how you, too, can Avoid Wasting Time Due To Lengthy Bowel Movements. Don't believe the hype. Have a good night's rest, followed by a leisurely shit and a tasty, gruel-free breakfast you made yourself, and you'll be a better person for it.
As it happens, it's much healthier for your colon to squat and have a nice quick shit rather than sitting on the toilet and taking your time. Unfortunately, no one does this in some places because they don't really have squatting toilets.
It's a long time back (1023 days, actually), and I can't find a reference to the article itself, but I do believe we had an article about how to take a poo by none other than Zed Shaw. At least I felt moved to comment thusly:
You could say this about anything and everything. Walking 8 miles to work instead of driving, washing clothes by hand instead of using the washer, buying meat from the store instead of hunting etc.
Youre bias is substantially more harmful and ignorant than anything in soylent. This may be snake oil with protein, but the idea that someone is challenging a very deeply ingrained accepted truth (humans need food) creates a process that leads scientific progress and promotes at least an opportunity for innovation.
Not to be harsh, but your diatribe is exactly the opposite of what HackerNews stands for. Your armchair quarterback position offers nothing
That said I am passing on this until there is way more information.
The idea is not to "sacrifice" food as you put it. Soylent is food and is probably fairly healthy. Eating traditional healthy food can be very expensive as fresh fruit and vegetables are usually expensive and also go bad quickly. If you dont feel like cooking dinner I believe soylent would be a much healthier and cheaper alternative to a take away pizza or frozen lasagna or somesuch.
I disagree pretty emphatically. Not having to cook every meal is just one benefit of the product. Other benefits include cost, weight level, mental acuity, stamina, skin. You could eat soylent 14 times a week and still make a nice meal every day. And in fact, the creator suggested that he enjoyed regular food meals even more after being on soylent.
The constant focus on saving time and increasing personal productivity is a recipe for mental illness, in my opinion. Most people would do well to slow down, tune out, and make themselves a decent meal. I suspect that some and perhaps many of the people obsessed with personal productivity and life hacking will at some point suffer from a stress or anxiety disorder and will realize that life is short and there's no point in trying to hurry through it.
This trend towards saving time by sacrificing basic requirements like eating and sleeping is increasingly absurd. In a year or two, I'll open Hacker News and there'll be an article in the top ten that describes how you, too, can Avoid Wasting Time Due To Lengthy Bowel Movements. Don't believe the hype. Have a good night's rest, followed by a leisurely shit and a tasty, gruel-free breakfast you made yourself, and you'll be a better person for it.