A lot of the criticism I've seen is not people dismissing Soylent as a toy, but instead being worried that it may actually have unknown negative effects on health, since it lacks any long-term clinical trials.
1) I think they already exist. They just aren't marketed to trendy 20-somethings. (This is what Soylent does well and why, I assume, they're getting investment. The actual product can be completely reformulated until it comes reasonably close to being a good meal replacement: It's the brand that's become valuable.)
2) The Soylent team sounded like such snake-oil salesmen out of the gate that they simply don't have much credibility, as far as I'm concerned. With all of the made-up benefits they touted at the start, now they have to dig themselves out a deep pit of bullshit to actually demonstrate the value of their product.
It's important that we don't treat this kind of food product like a toy. Which is why it's important to be critical of unsupported claims. (And critical of supported claims, as well.) Especially those made by young people with no particular background in the field they're purporting to be experts in. Food is not a toy. It's not Tumblr. It's not Zynga. It's something we require to survive.
Do you ask for the same level of rigorousness when McDonalds release a new item on their menu? I'd hazard a guess that more people consume that new item than anyone will ever consume in Soylent.
Remember supersize me, that guy started having liver problems from eating McDonalds... Yet nothing changes and McDonalds keeps selling crap.
Food is a toy, and Soylent are very far down the scale of "bad food products I can buy"
> "Do you ask for the same level of rigorousness when McDonalds release a new item on their menu?"
If this new menu item is intended to be eaten full-time to the exclusion of everything else: yes.
If Soylent's angle was "running late? don't have time? give Soylent a go!" I don't think anyone would have a problem with it. The claim that bothers people is that it obviates the need for any other food.
If McDonald actually advocated the diet the Supersize Me guy had, then I suspect far more people would be concerned. I don't think the food substance is what has people concerned here; rather the hype and claims surrounding it are concerning.
People are concerned about the hype? Not the product?
So does it concern you that in McDonalds ads there are always attractive slim people, when in fact at most stores you see average looking obese people?
Are we arguing truth in advertising? Or Danger in food products?
> People are concerned about the hype? Not the product?
Where 'the hype' includes claims of total meal replacement over long periods of time.. yes.
I don't think many, if any, people are concerned that this stuff is literally toxic. The concern is what will happen if you use it as advertised: constantly, exclusively, for extended periods of time.
People eating McDonalds for every meal every day of the week is troubling, I don't think anybody actually suggests you do that. McDonalds certainly doesn't suggest that you do that, though I sometimes feel that many people wish they did suggest you do that so that McDonalds would be easier to flay alive. Being appalled by McDonalds is an international sport after all...
There really isn't that much of a problem with eating a greasy deep-fried cheeseburger once in a while, and there isn't a problem with skipping a meal or two and having a shake instead. That isn't what concerns me, that isn't what seems to concern DanBC ("I think that's the worrying thing about Soylent. I really wish they'd kept it experimental, or pushed it as suitable for daily use but not all meals, or some such."), and that isn't what I see concerning other people in this thread. The literal product, the substance Solyent, is almost certainly perfectly fine to consume. So are cheeseburgers.
> McDonalds certainly doesn't suggest that you do that
I thought part of the problem was that McDonalds /did/ suggest you /could/ do that, without any ill-effects - that their meals were healthy and you could eat breakfast, lunch and dinner there without a problem.
McDonalds never claimed that their food could be consumed to the exclusion of every other possible food. They offer breakfast options, but none of their marketing made the claim that eating at McDonalds every day was recommended.
On the other hand, soylent is making the claim that it's healthy to use soylent as a complete replacement for food. Thus, the standards are much higher in terms of truth in marketing.
I appreciate that there's a difference in marketing, and McDs isn't actively suggesting you should eat there everyday (unlike Soylent), but take a look at this page:
There's no mention of food from other places, and the final paragraph ("Variety keeps things interesting") certainly implies you could eat there daily without problem, to the exclusion of other food sources.
To me the problem is the combination. Soylent market themselves as a full meal replacement solution, no extra nutrtition required. This means they need to prove that a) it does provide everything the body needs, and b) that continuous consumption has no bad side effects.
Mcdonalds on the other hand never market their food as a complete meal replacement solution. In fact, here in the uk, they're very careful to point out you still need a healthy balanced diet (admittedly due to regulations, but still... They do it, Soylent don't)
> Do you ask for the same level of rigorousness when McDonalds release a new item on their menu?
No, because I've already dismissed McDonald's menu as not having any relevance to anything I care about.
EDIT: OTOH, were people promoting McDonald's new menu items as the solution to real problems (both personal and global), I'd react with the same kind of skepticism as I do to Soylent's claims.
McDonalds or any fast food company isn't making bread or meat in their labs from some chemicals in the factory. All they are doing modifying naturally occurring foods and optimizing them for taste. As unhealthy as they might be, they are still don't fall on under the category of something that has potential to harm your body fatally in an irreversible way.
And prolonged exposure to anything. I mean anything will cause harm to your body. Its not just McDonalds.
Soylent is a bit like a drug company releasing a new drug.
Do you think it's possible people are taking food too seriously?
Empirically, Soylent has been on the market without causing any problems for a few months. What if it doesn't cause problems for a few years?
I'm interested to understand why people choose food to get so passionate about. When a new source control system comes out, people don't get so heated. Why for a food company?
- Food is a major component of identity. It conveys things about your values and belief systems. Thus, like other identity factors (race, religion, political position, sexual orientation, socio-economic class), when this is challenged, some people are particularly sensitive and respond very defensively.
- As food choices are widely accepted to be a major factor in overall health (and thus, susceptibility to serious illness, life-expectancy, etc), it's natural for there to be a significant amount of fear behind people's positions in the discussion. I.e., when someone says "this diet will give you a greater chance of positive health outcomes than the one you currently follow", that can be frightening to people who harbour fears - conscious or subconscious - about their health and their expected lifespan.
I have vigorously criticised Soylent in the past. I've tried hard to turn that down.
The reason I hate Soylent is, as several other people mention in this thread, the over-blown claims made in their crowd-funding drive.
Before any work with nutritionists or dietitians the Soylent team were claiming:
> "You can finally join the easy, healthy, and affordable future of nutrition."
> "What if you never had to worry about food again?"
> "For anyone that struggles with allergies, heartburn, acid reflux or digestion, has trouble controlling weight or cholesterol, or simply doesn't have the means to eat well, soylent is for you."
> "Soylent frees you from the time and money spent shopping, cooking and cleaning, puts you in excellent health,"
> "By taking years to spoil"
> "there is much evidence that it is considerably healthier than a typical diet."
Some of these are just enthusiastic US marketing. I'm in the UK where we have stricter rules for advertising, so there's some cultural clash there.
But some of them are sleazy and not truthy.
That bad-feeling is retained by many people, even though the Soylent team are now working with real food scientists and being more careful with the claims.
You have some choice quotes, but here's the smoking gun:
>Soylent is perfectly balanced and optimized for your body and lifestyle, meaning it automatically puts you at an optimal weight, makes you feel full, and improves your focus and cognition.
Not just easy and healthy. No. Perfectly optimized... Automatically puts you at an optimal weight They've toned down the language since saying this, but I think anyone has good reason to be upset over such claims.
Tim Ferriss gave a platform to Soylent on his blog recently, which is one of the best things you can have happen for your product: http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelellsberg/2012/01/11/the-t... Rhinehart wasn't very grateful, simply because Ferriss showed some healthy skepticism. Here's the whole event:
One of the last things Ferriss says? I don't want you to fail and explicitly stated otherwise in my piece... That mimics the same attitude a lot of us here have.
Being skeptical of bogus claims isn't the same thing as dismissing something. Or calling it a toy. That accusation is a dismissal of reasonable skepticism.
I hadn't seen that. What a horrible response from Rhinehart. His whole tone is of "I know better than you, and am more rational than you"... It made me wonder if he didn't know who Tim Ferriss was nor what experience he's had.
I'm neither For/Against Soylent, but after reading that I have a fairly negative view on Rhinehart.
As an extra: His response to 1-size-fits-all is laughable, is he forgetting about the 1000s of eating issues people have (gluten, lactose, allergies, diabetes)... Sorry ranting now.
>As an extra: His response to 1-size-fits-all is laughable, is he forgetting about the 1000s of eating issues people have (gluten, lactose, allergies, diabetes)... Sorry ranting now.
As the word is used on The Colbert Report, "truthy" is somewhat sleazy. It means something that sounds like it's true, but which isn't necessarily based on facts.
The Soylent folks brought it on themselves by making completely unverified claims on their Kickstarter (and other) pages. Had they presented themselves and what they were doing in a more honest fashion, there wouldn't be near as much criticism. As it is they have presented themselves as having far more research behind them than they do.
Frankly, if they were doing something other than food, it probably wouldn't be an issue either. They are playing with people's health and wellbeing.
A toy food would be something that tastes excellent or fun to consume but no real health benefit, e.g., you could run a toy car in your basement but not use for commuting.
The worry with soylent or other food replacement is that it could outright harm you. Pfizer was developing Torcetrapib as a successor to multi-billion dollar Lipitor and it was on in Phase III that it was found to have adverse effect. It took 16 years of development, and close to $1B expense before the side-effects were discovered.
The soylent effort is great but if there are any health issues, they may come to the surface much later.
Perhaps, but my fear is that Soylent's cavalier attitude is how you cause the next asbestos or thalidomide: things that seemed great, were rolled out extensively, and ended up being huge health disasters.
Thoughtful critics should probably have the same things (or worse) to say about McDonalds & Friends as Soylent.
The science will come around in time. But the idea that this could eventually make nutrition available to people who wouldn't otherwise eat is amazing.
No one sells Big Macs as the only meal you'll ever need though, or even claim it's good for your health.
The idea is sound, even though it's nothing new, and I make use of something similar (Ensure) daily. The critics of Soylent mainly criticize the outrageous claims made based on an inconclusive experiment of N=1, which is an amateur way of proposing solutions to health related issues to being with.
Considering how they raised their money now, I won't touch it even if they get an FDA seal of approval.
I agree, although that's a strawman since the comments are attached to threads about Soylent. I'm sure there would be worse (different) things said on threads about fast food. I do very much hope that the science does come around because I completely agree that the potential for nutrition to reach people in need is exciting.
And this is why progress in medicine is so absolutely glacial and expensive. When it costs $4 billion dollars on average to get a new drug past the FDA, is it any wonder why they cost so much?
Now, the FDA process may be inefficient or unnecessarily expensive, but long term clinical trials are not something that we should be eager to dispose of.
