Soylent? It's not people!

[Jen, Lachlan, and Declan]

A few of us joked in another discussion yesterday about eating Orijen as a diet plan. As someone who has struggled with weight my entire life, I've often thought it would be great to be able to have a truly nutritionally complete, calorie-controlled, food substitute that would convince my stomach that a meal had been had (unlike every shake and bar I've tried) and make dieting a complete no-brainer. Of course, that would probably work best if I also had someone come by twice a day and dish up my ration, huh? <grin>

Enter Soylent.

Soylent began in the mind of a software engineer (we're kinda wacky that way) to create a drink mix that one could actually use long-term as the sole source for nutrition. After much research and experimentation he posted the project to a crowd-funding site, hoping to make $100,000 to fund further development. That mark was passed in three hours, and before it was over the project had raised $1.5 million plus another $1.5 million in venture capital investments.

I've been watching this project for several months, from the kick-off of the crowd-funding campaign to version 1.01, now with an official nutrition label, and ready to ship in late February/early March. I'll admit to having a healthy level of skepticism about it, although I'll probably try it anyway.

So far as being nutritionally complete, I don't know. A doctor has been involved in the final refinement of the product, but we know at Doodlekisses that that doesn't necessarily mean much, and there is still much we do not know about the human body and its requirements - we're a very complex machine. Having said that, heck, it's probably much more nutritious than my usual day-to-day dietary habits!

I find myself wondering if I could get used to eating (drinking) exactly the same thing for every meal of every day. Or will it just make me more sympathetic to the dogs?

Official Site

Two-Week Road Test

Nutrition Facts

[Adina P]

That sounds horrible. 
Part of healthy eating is pleasure, enjoyment, chewing, texture and both flavor and nutritional variety.  The human body needs variety -- both for physical and mental health.  Doctor schmocter.  Health and eating is about far more than nutritional formulas.  That's my very strong personal and professional opinion.

[Nancy, Ned, Clancy, and Charlie]

I don't offer my dogs much in the way of variety, so I should be okay with it for me, but I am NOT.  I want food, real food with variety to meet my 'taster' for the day.

[F, Calla & Luca]

I agree. That would get old quickly for me. And social get together a would be a nightmare. But you probably could concoct something that might be nutritional lot sound.

[Jen, Lachlan, and Declan]

In an ideal world I'd agree with all three of you, absolutely - and the creator of this stuff says emphatically that if you get a chance to sit down to a nice meal than please do so. I'm thinking more along the lines of a situation where this would actually improve someone's nutritional intake significantly.

I'll use myself as an example (because obviously I'm thinking about my own diet here) - as someone who has a, let's say, less than healthy "relationship" with food, coupled with a slightly insane schedule. I've been heavy, and dieting, my entire life (yep, I was a fat baby too), and right now I'm working hard on understanding the root causes behind my food psychology. One thing I've learned about myself is that I love variety too much - the more boring my day-to-day food is, the fewer calories I'm inclined to eat - and that's a good thing.

My day starts at 4:30am - take the boyz out, give them their breakfast, clean Pixel's bathroom, wash and refill water dishes, slam a mug of coffee, shower, and out the door at 5:30. Swing through McD's drive-through for an egg mcmuffin and either a cup of coffee or a diet coke and in my office at 6am. On a good day I get to break for lunch - otherwise it's raid the vending machine and keep going. I could make better lunch choices than I do, certainly, but my reality is I'm going for whatever is easiest to fuel me for the afternoon - typically fast food. I drink coffee, diet soda, and/or water all day.

I get home around 4:30pm, typically - take the dogs out, play with them, either work with them a bit or toss one into the van to go to a class. By 6pm they've had their supper and I'm winding down to be asleep no later than 8pm - my supper is whatever I happen to have in the fridge or freezer that I don't have to spend time cooking.

Weekends are for working with the boyz, at least one Saturday class, getting the critical housework done, catching my breath from the week, and often going in to work for a few hours to get something done I wasn't able to get to during the week. I try to cook something on Sundays that will last several suppers, but the last six weeks have been spent healing from a crunched knee (agility class with Declan - oops!) so standing in the kitchen for any length of time - yeah, not going to happen. Supper has been a sandwich (typically bologna and cheese on whole grain) with a handful of salad pretty much every night for the last six weeks. I have beans going into the crock pot tomorrow for suppers next week because I'm getting thoroughly bored with sandwiches.

Toss onto my pile of challenges too many bitter receptors; there are very few cooked vegetables I can choke down. I'm better with raw, but still a bit limited. I've learned to avoid anything with sugar, especially early in the day - that means most "meal replacement" shakes, all fruits, non-plain yogurt, etc. Anything eaten for breakfast that contains a significant amount of sugar triggers an actually painful hunger pretty quickly and is a guarantee of vending-machine-raiding two hours later.

So yeah, I have issues. Obviously. <grin> I've spent the last 18 months or so working out where they come from and how to manage them, with some success, but I'm certainly not and probably never will be a nutritional role model. I'm eyeballing this Soylent as a possible way to improve that overall. Not to replace every meal for the rest of my life, but to perhaps help minimize the number of meals I shouldn't be eating and at the same time reduce the anxiety that comes as a side-dish with those meals. We software engineers are typically lazy people - if we have something at hand that meets our needs we're less likely to go foraging for something else.

Sorry this is so long, and my apologies if it's TMI - I'm just trying to find a way to explain why, for some of us, this might not be a bad product.

[F, Calla & Luca]

Whew, what a schedule. I do think there may be nutritional shakes without sugar that have been around for a while you could try for those times when a meal isn't happening and perhaps better choices even in fast food places. Where's Adina when we need her : ) I don't like the idea of being an early adopter of anything. Maybe you could replace two out of three meals and still have a good dinner?  Sorry to hear about the knee.  Good luck.

[Jen, Lachlan, and Declan]

Thanks, F! Yeah, I'm thinking a combination of Adina and a good psychiatrist might just do the trick. <grin> I'm slowly making progress here with my navel-gazing (but I didn't really expect it to be a short process). I had to start right at the beginning with "wait, what's different about normal people" and "a hunger switch? How do I get one of those?" The good news is that I have one now, albeit a still slightly dysfunctional one. It's been a fascinating process, really!

I'm looking at this stuff as a possible option for getting me through the really bad moments without triggering a chain of even worse moments. I'm still hesitant and will certainly wait until others have been drinking it for a while and we have more data. (I'm not an early adopter of anything either - or, like I tell my boss, there's a fine line between the cutting edge and the lunatic fringe.)

[F, Calla & Luca]

Well, since I'm one of the latter, and everyone is somewhat dysfunctional, kudos to you. I like your saying about the lunatic fringe : )

[Adina P]

Your schedule is not enviable.  I know I couldn't handle it.  I find that the less SOLID my meals are in the first half of the day the more I feel insatiable by supper.  Like I just CAN'T make up for what I've missed.  Certainly there is a place for meal replacements, I'm just not clear on how THIS is so much more useful than what else is out there except for it's not marketed as a weight loss product.  Tube feeding products have long been 'nutritionally complete' if inedible by mouth. 

Working through the food relationship is not really something that lends itself to online public forums. But all I can tell you is that like any other relationship that is damaged, it takes time to repair it and there are probably many areas to work on.  Lack of variety seems 'right' because it decreases your calories, but as long as you look at 'eating fewer calories' as the goal, it will hinder you.  Healthy eaters naturally seek variety.  It's easy to not overeat if all you get is the same stew day in and day out.  But nobody wants to eat the same stew forever so eating the same stew does not solve anything, it just postpones overeating a wee bit and hampers the growth of your eating competence. 

I see that you are putting a lot of time into your dogs (a good thing) but might some of that be at your expense?  I know me, and I almost always take care of my food needs before that of my dogs.  Partly because I have kids and I eat with them so I can't miss meals.  But partly because I am capable of going from zero to starving very quickly and I'm no fun to be around when I'm starving.  I forgot you lived on the East side and kept thinking you were up near Seattle where I was going to refer you to an amazing dietitian.  I don't know if she is available long distance...more and more are adding distance counseling via Skype, etc.  Anyway, if you want, no pressure, send me a PM and I'll send you some resources. 

[Joanne ~ Spud*]

How did this ever pan out?  I missed this post, but did hear a NPR interview with the inventor.

I remember he stated he also had bad eating habits. He was too busy and he was very BORED with food. He liked to work out but his workouts were suffering because of his disinterest in cooking or the alternative-always eating out. His  nutritional needs were not being met because he lived alone, with a hectic schedule, etc    His situation is common. Living alone, not wanting to cook, against the fast food alternative..

He did encourage meals but said, for him, this was the next best thing

Truly, this reminds me of the product Ensure.   Ensure is used for patients who wont or cant eat.  Same thing, really. A complete diet in a can. 

[F, Calla & Luca]

Good question.