[kscaldef]

Setting aside the question of whether the subject is actually feeding his body everything he needs (a question that he appears to readily acknowledge as "good skepticism"), I have to wonder about the consistency of statements like these:

    we'll have to give up many traditional foodstuffs like fresh fruits
    and veggies, which are incompatible with food processing and scale.

    Soylent can largely be produced from the products of local agriculture

If local agriculture suffices to produce Soylent, why not just eat food? What concerns me is that it's somewhat unclear what's actually involved in producing the constituent ingredients, whether there are limitations on how much of them you can easily produce, and what the byproducts of the production process are.

[planckscnst]

The "fresh" part comes into play here. We can be more efficient if we can immediately process the agriculture to render the ingredients of Soylent, then store those ingredients for a longer time or in more forgiving conditions.

[checker]

Freeze-drying does this, and the end result better resembles the original food.

[rplacd]

I think the second point's moot, anyway, considering the fact that the the leader photo implies that as it is the only way you're going to whip some up is with non-ubiquitous-and-therefore-processed ingredients.