[logn]

Their recipe relies heavily on added vitamins and minerals. As I commented on the other thread today, it's possible to get all daily nutrition from just 5 cups broccoli, 1.5 cups peanuts, and 3 cups milk.

Couldn't you just take any smoothie recipe, blend in a multi-vitamin, and claim it's a food replacement? Don't products such as Boost already do this? I don't understand Soylent's edge here, except marketing.

Soylent Recipe: http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0421/5993/t/12/assets/files...

[n72]

The problem is that we're still very much in the dark regarding nutrition:

"This formula contains what we know we need but not what we might need and don't know how to measure or quantify yet," said Ayoob, at Albert Einstein. "There are hundreds of antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds, for example, that we're still learning about." (1)

The danger with Soylent is that they don't acknowledge these limits of our knowledge. Rather, "You can live on Soylent alone, Mr. Rhinehart claims" (2). Given the nutirition field believes differently and he really has no expertise in the field, a statement like this is mindbogglingly irresponsible. This is my basis for the accusation of hubris. (This also doesn't touch on the obvious monetary incentive he has for believing this/making this claim.)

(1) http://www.medpagetoday.com/PrimaryCare/DietNutrition/46983

(2) http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/29/technology/personaltech/th...

[aianus]

The only affordable (in time and money) alternative to Soylent is crappy fast-food and microwave meals. Surely Soylent is better than a diet comprised of those alternatives?

[TheCapn]

Really?

1) Buy slowcooker 2) Buy a bunch of cans of beans, veges, ground meat, couple spices 3) Drop that slop in slowcooker 4) Turn on and go to sleep for 8 hours 5) Turn off, put in separate containers

Boom, chili meals for a week.

People who believe cooking needs to be expensive and time consuming really haven't put much effort into looking out for alternatives until some marketing scheme makes them believe they've solved a problem that didn't really exist.

I can literally put water in a pot and steam days worth of veges in mere minutes while I pick my nose. Or I take a roast and drop it in a slowcooker, or butter chicken, or any other myriad of choices that involve a highly nutritious set of ingredients. Bulk cooking can be extremely cheap and quick. If your priorities are time/money then put some effort into solving the issue.

[dasboth]

"As I commented on the other thread today, it's possible to get all daily nutrition from just 5 cups broccoli, 1.5 cups peanuts, and 3 cups milk."

That's pretty random. Provided you're not just being facetious, where are you getting that information from? I'm genuinely curious.

[logn]

The USDA.

Food database: http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/

Daily recommended intakes: http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/DRI/DRI_Tables/recommended_inta...

Someone built this webapp that uses all that above data: https://cronometer.com/

I don't eat this exclusively but when I would otherwise be too busy to eat or shop properly, this is an easy solution.

Beware: I'm not a doctor or expert

[paulojreis]

> it's possible to get all daily nutrition from just (...)

How do you know you're not missing a few micronutrients? We don't know yet all the micronutrients our body needs, so how can you really say that?