f13.net

So, I am doing this.

www.soylent.me

The short version is a guy sick of the cost and time to prepare food created a powder with everything a good body needs to live and got it crowdfunded.

I consider myself the perfect candidate because I pretty much dislike all healthy food, and while I am not significantly overweight at 6'3" 210lbs, I understand that my diet of pizza, Stouffer's, Chef Boy R Dee, Wendy's, Chipoltle, etc. is not a long term menu for health.

So I bought the starter kit and just re-ordered 21 meals worth. I have replaced my breakfast of one bowl of cereal and my lunch of various fast food options with 12oz of soylent.  I still have my dinners but they have always been somewhat hurried since I get home after the wife and kids have eaten. I am not being completely strict about it.  If I have a business lunch (happens a few times a month) then I go with the flow and have a real meal.

I have not lost any weight yet (after two weeks) but I did not expect to so soon.  I am not having cravings for real food, which I find surprising. The "shakes" actually quell hunger well and for longer than what I was used to eating.  That bowl of cereal every morning left me hungry before 11:30am.  The fast food for lunch left me fighting grogginess in the afternoon which I usually fought with snacking.  I still snack on pretzels here or there but it is much less.

What about the taste? I do not have a refined palate as one might surmise from my diet, but I am also considered a very picky eater.  I have to say that the taste is neutral.  The texture is similar in chalkiness to a protein powder shake - not pleasant but not unpleasant either.

What about prep time? The directions say that it is best served cold. This is VERY true. The directions also say that the water should be room temperature for mixing. This means one has to plan ahead a bit.  I make my breakfast shake before I go to bed (3 minutes of measure, pour and shake) and my lunch shake when I get into the office.  I have a dedicated water bottle for each meal.

So, any questions?

Read about this like 2 months ago and it did have me curious; not about anything in particular but a real life 'diary' of how well the body has received it would be welcomed.

The only thing I read about after effects is this can have a habit of creating a lot of gas. Any truth to that? And are you eventually going to go the full-on route with this?

I was gassy to before and have actually experienced a reduction in farts per day.

I have no intention of replacing all meals.  If I don't experience positive health results from giving up fast food for lunch, then I will go back to eating fast food for lunch.

You looking for something beside weight loss?

From everything I've seen about this it's probably not going to do you any damage as a meal replacement for a random fast food meal per day. They've got the basic macro-nutrient thing worked out and a few micro-nutrients in there. It's not giving you a lot of stuff like fibre that would probably be pretty good to have if you want to keep living, etc. but if it's one meal a day and it's replacing something pretty crappy then it's almost definitely not making things worse. I'd just like to point out in this thread that replacing regular meals with this stuff is a pretty terrible idea. Stuff like protein powder (or stuff similiar to this) can work as a supplement if you've taken care of basic metabolic needs with real foods but highly processed foods really can't take the place of stuff that has largely been cultivated over a few tens of thousands of years to best satisfy our metabolic needs. At least currently.

Basically if you've got some dietary shortfalls and are lazy then this kind of thing can help. The avowed goal of this project (to provide something that can replace actual food for people) is total bullshit based on the actual product being produced. The avowed goal is also a special kind of unappealing laziness. Do people really hate food so much that preparing a basic meal is worth gulping down something called Soylent as a diet replacement?

Just shh! and let natural selection take care of things.

I need to be clear that I never eat vegetables or fruit. Ever.  I haven't for pretty much all 46 years I have been alive. Not surprisingly, I had very high chloresterol in my early 20s even though I was 165lbs and strong from rowing at college.  I have been taking 10mg of Lipitor a day for 20 years and even with that my triglycerides are high, although not really high. I have supplemented my horrible diet with a daily multivitamin for most of my adult life.

So I do expect at some level to experience improved health at some level beyond simple weight loss. If this stuff can shrink my middle-aged, desk job paunch, then I will be happy.  

IT'S PEOPLE!!!! SOLYENT IS PEOPLE!!!!!!

Sorry, had to be done. Saw this on Colbert and thought it was a somewhat interesting idea but not sure I could ever do it. Especially not for the prices charged.

Yeah, for the prices they charge, it seems like it would be more practical to just buy a really nice blender and make your own food paste.

The best part is apparently the creators of this didn't even realise that only Soylent Green was people. Naming themselves after Soylent wasn't some clever nod to nerds, they genuinely thought they were just naming themselves after some basement bottom priced cannibal product form a movie.

That said tazle I really think you'd find a way, way, way, way better improvement in your diet by replacing that shake with a load of microwaved frozen veggies with some grilled/fried chicken breast. That is pretty much one of the lowest effort meals you can make (especially if you precook the chicken and just heat it later or have it cold) and I guarantee will be healthier. It may also be cheaper in terms of $ per calorie/nutrient.

I mean based on what you've said it might genuinely be an improvement, so I don't want to totally discourage you from changing your diet/lifestyle but it seems like there are way more efficient ways to do it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oEnJfZ9joY

 :why_so_serious:

My advice as someone that teaches nutritional biochemistry: While this will meet your nutritional needs, you should also consider that the bacteria in your digestive tract also have needs.  Food diversity aids in health and should not be overlooked when considering a diet plan.  Eating a wide variety of foods that are high in nutrients and low in fat/processed carbs in the ideal way to go.  While this kind of a plan will certainly sustain life, I don't think it will provide the quality that you're after. 

Please don't do this. The creator is a blithering retard and you're better off just eating proper food or if you're trying to lose weight exercise and maybe use like a single meal replacement a day or something.

I am effectively only replacing about 1 1/2 meals a day.  I do not intend to go 100% soylent.

Seriously though there are options that are not much more effort that are way healthier if that's your concern. Soylent is genuinely a terrible product if you have more than 30 minutes a week to do food prep, and that's just because you can make not terribly nice but nutritionally beneficial food in that time while Soylent is literally a 'we've got what basic nutritional science says you bottom line need' package. And probably costs more.

Actually curious about your opinion regarding the new high fat diets that are everywhere.

Diet fads.  Nothing new. 

Ahem.  Eat Food.  Not too much.  Mostly Plants.

I'm not sure whether to envy or pity people who have so little regard for the taste of good food (or even average food) that this sort of thing is appealing.  Especially if it's not saving you any money.

I'd also like to pre-emptively request that we not turn this thread into yet another "here's how you cook red beans and rice and freeze a month's worth of leftovers" survivalist cooking thread.

(http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/campingsurvival/mrepouch.jpg)

Those aren't bad (though they get old fast), but are a bit pricey.

not gonna lie I'm really intrigued by this, especially since I've moved farther and farther away from 'tasty' breakfasts to 'effective' breakfasts as I've become more health-conscious

I enjoyed the ArsTechnica "week of eating only soylent" feature story.

I can't say that I am interested in buying the stuff though.

Soylent is indicative of many of the things wrong with the world. Reactionary, lazy, ignorant, exploitive and (ultimately) harmful.

Whatever happened to teaching people how to fish?

How will I have time to fish when I'll be billing 2300 hours/year and living in one of the most densely populated places in the country?

I think Soylent Green is supposed to be the solution in that case.

I had actually ordered this and the wait to get it was like 3 months.  I eventually forgot I had ordered it and got an email that said there was going to be a further delay so I just canceled.  Due to this I made the decision to get into juicing, got a decent juicer and now 2-3 times a week I make a decent juice with carrots, spinach, Kale, oranges, apples, etc.  Even with cleaning the juicer it takes all of 10 minutes.  This is far more nutrients in my system then I've ever had as an adult since i don't eat salads or have time to cook nice meals regularly.  Also, it allows me to get the health benefits of foods I don't like because I can bury the taste with fruit. 

There are lots of good points about how I am just a lazy ass who doesn't want to prepare food properly. This is exactly right.  I have no interest whatsoever in preparing food. I find the quick, pre-made stuff more tasty and easier to get.  I would rather buy a sausage egg and cheese on a croissant from Dunkin' than buy the parts and make one myself.  I get no enjoyment from preparation, hate cleaning up and prefer the taste of stuff prepared for me.  I also don't care what food costs.  

I just want to see if cutting out fast food at lunch will make me look and feel better. Eating a plain chicken breast every day has no appeal whatsoever. Trying a new fangled powdered food at least brings some novelty to the endeavor.

As far as the cost of soylent goes, $75 for 21 "meals" seems like a good deal to me, even though I don't really care about it being a good deal. My weekly Five Guys was $12. My weekly Chipolte was $9. My weekly Wendy's was $8 and my weekly pizza was $7.50.  

Watch what you eat. Avoid really fatty foods. Try to avoid too much fried food. Eat your goddamn vegetables. Try not to go back for seconds, or at least wait 20 minutes and see if you're still hungry.

Try not to snack, and if you do, find something healthy.

You won't get thin on that advice, but you won't get worse and you'll feel better.

Fads are fads. In the end, you don't want too much of anything -- don't want to much carbs, don't want too much fat, don't want too much sugar. How much is 'too much' depends on your actual life. I'd be like 500 pounds on Michael Phelp's diet, because I don't have a body that needs like 5000 calories a day for muscle maintenance alone, before you get into energy from his actual exercise.

I have heard that a good quick and dirty "lost 20 pounds, or at least look like it" plan is just to add some pushups and situps to your life. Build a little more muscle, which takes a little more energy to maintain. Not actually tried it (my exercise plan is for cardiovascular health. I get on an effin treadmill and do 2.5 miles or so. Half at a jog, half at a fast walk).

There is no such thing as a good anything with Kale in it.

Fucking awful vegetable.

The best way to lose weight is to eat less. But don't take this advice too seriously or you may develop a different kind of eating disorder.

You wont get healthier and happier from crap like this.

Want to get rich quick? Figure out a way to convince the human body to destroy empty fat cells. As I understand it, you make a fat cell. Then you diet or exercise a lot and suck all the fat out. But the cell STAYS there, all empty. Ready to be filled up -- your body's eager to fill it back up, and will shuffle any extra calorie to it that it can.

The whole gain/loss cycle is because it's so much easier to put weight back ON than it was to gain it in the first place. Figure out a biochemical pathway that tells the body "Yep, let's recycle that empty sucker" would make a mint.

Gotta do lipo to get rid of them now. Surgically remove the empty dang things. Evolutionary speaking, it's a great adaptation. Fat's awesome. Carry anywhere super-dense energy source. You want empty cells to stick around, easy to refill with any spare calorie.

In a world of abundant food, it's a PITA and killing us.

You have to compare it to the diet people have, not the diet they should have. There's not an overweight man, woman, or child alive in the developed world who doesn't know that they'd lose weight if they'd put down the bag of chips and eat a fucking salad every once in a while. We don't care. We're a people intent on shoveling processed sludge into our mouths one way or another so it might as well be the sludge that has some modicum of nutritional content, and not the sludge filled with ammonia, growth hormones, and artificial coloring, fried in grease, and served on a bleached, sugary bun.

As I believe the saying goes, perfect is the enemy of not-entirely-godawful.

Eh, not sure I agree in general. The human body does work in certain ways, yes, but I know a lot of people who don't have issues with weight  and lots that do, and it has little to do with food abundance or genetics, and a lot to do with culture, lifestyle, and etc.

I also know people who've lost weight without it being a problem of not being able to stop putting it back on. I know a couple who have lost far too much and have issues being healthy because they don't eat enough. I know people who are always talking about losing weight and not able to find or recognise the right advice that will help them to do that.

'Dieting' (as opposed to permanently changing ones diet) and fads like this don't help anyone. They feed from and in to the issues that get people caught and stop them escaping from situations in the first place.

The relationships people have with food, and the habits, attitudes, and upbringing are far more significant in my view than access to food.


Yes, but if that sludge tastes crap and doesn't actually do enough to make you feel better and be healthier then what is the point of it? It's just another unsustainably useless fad that feeds in to the idea that feeding yourself is this thing you fuck about with and can find an easy fix for, rather than something you respect and care about.

I love Kale.  My mother made bitter greens a lot.  Mustard greens, collards, dandelion... all that stuff.  I have bitter greens at least two or three times a week.  Kale is one of the least bitter, actually.  My sister makes a yummy kale, leek and potato soup.  My sister, however, also does something very nasty with Kale.  She juices it.  I can't look at her while she drinks it.  Bleh.

Kale is great.

Soylent is 'food' for people who hate themselves.

It's not about the actual texture of kale, or the bitterness (habañero kale chips are great!). It's about the fucking taste of it - in juice you can't mask it and in food if you don't fry it the foul weed fucks up everything.


So is Kale. Have you met a gluten free or vegan asshole in the 21st century?

No, no, see liking or disliking kale is just about taste, and we all have different tastes. Nobody likes shit like Soylent, it's not intended to be liked. It's just for people to punish themselves with to atone for the perceived sin of eating unhealthy food.

Or for people who don't take pleasure in eating. Or San Francisco programmers who have forgotten how food works.

Kale, on the other hand, is an awful, overpriced hipster weed that shouldnt even be in grocery stores and wasnt 7 years ago. It took packs of farm to table assholes to turn the reputation of kale into a food people would want to shove into their maw.

Wait, overpriced? It's one of the cheapest vegetables there is here. It's like, £1 for a bag the size of a small child. You guys need to start murdering hipsters.

Kale at Walmart is now like $2.38 a pound. It's the absurd marketing of something that shouldn't exist on a table.

My favorite is folks who juice it then bitch about how much it takes to produce any juice.

It's mostly fiber, folks. It's not a goddamn watermelon.

Why juice things anyway? Adjuncts are important.

Sorry, veering back to Nebuish nutrition elitism. Go ahead and drink those calories, spaceman.

Yes. Absolutely and utterly, yes. It doesn't matter what else the fuck you do, cutting out fast food at lunch will absolutely make you look and feel better. The stuff is pure fucking garbage on every level and it is engineered to make you want it and not just want it but want MORE of it. It's a fucking abomination of a food crime. And it is SO SO DELICIOUS. It's also idiotically expensive in the macro sense.

I'm not about to say you should entirely remove it from your diet because it is something that is enjoyable. The less you eat it, though, the less you'll like it when you do eat it. Another way to make yourself feel better? Cut out the goddamn sodas. Those things are even worse.

However, I don't think Solyent is the good replacement. Sure it may be easier, but as has been said about its creator, he's a bit of a fucktard. He's like the epitome of ivory tower geek thinking. It's like the Jetsons' food pellets only with shakes. There are better, more healthy options out there. Fuck's sake, you could probably go buy ready made salads at Whole Foods for about the same price and they will have chicken on top and fiber that your body needs.

Last year, I changed my breakfast routine. It had been mostly frozen waffles during the week and cereal on the weekends. When Whole Foods opened here, I grabbed a bag of quick oats and started making that my normal morning meal (probably 4-5 of the 7 days of the week). Takes about 5 minutes to prepare, pretty filling, plenty of fiber, I control the sugar that goes in it (though I probably put too much in it). I just had my yearly wellness exam and over the past 4-5 years, every time I'd gone to the doctor, my weight had been steadily going up. I gained probably 20 pounds in the last decade (and I'm a guy who weighed almost the same as I did in college for over a decade). This past visit, I'd lost 4 pounds, mostly just on that one change. I haven't gotten my test results back yet, but my cholesterol is likely down as well.

Fad diets are fad and cooking is hard.

4 guys in my Dept. bought juice machines earlier this year, only one lasted more than a day.  He lost over 60#, but apparently didn't realize that was calorie reduction and sticking to healthy foods vs. gorging on the beer, pizza, chili dogs and soda which were his usual diet.

Oatmeal is my breakfast pretty much every day.  I usually throw in some walnuts and cranberries or raisins.  For some reason in the winter I crave oatmeal with a little bit of brown sugar.  

My sister juices every few weeks or so.  It makes her feel good.  She's been doing this for decades.  She is also addicted to bitters so the greens taste nice for her.  I can't bring myself to even look at it let alone taste it.  

My wife bought one of those green juices at Whole Foods when the place first opened. It had kale and some other shit in it. She hated it so I tried it (wow this is awful! Try it!). Fuck me, I wanted to shave my tongue with a cheese grater. Kale as a juice is like licking the devil's taint.

I used to hate kale.  Place near my house recently started serving this warm kale salad that converted me.  I don't know the chemistry involved but warming it slightly (maybe they do something else to it, like steam it for just a bit) makes it not at all feel like eating sandpaper.

I never understood the point of juicing and then removing the pulp versus just making a smoothie of it instead.  I guess it's the same principle but I rather like my morning smoothie during the work week.  Easy to make, I get more veggies and fruit in my diet, I can drink it on the way to work, and I don't mind the pulpy bits.  Anything else either has me eating before I leave for work (so before 6:30 am) or after I get to work (so after 8 am) and eating while in the car is a PITA unless it's fast food.

As Haemish said above though, the less you eat fast food, the less you like it when you have it again.  I still have some items I adore but for the most part, I've cut out fast food like McD, Wendy's, Arby's... and I don't miss it.  Unfortunately, it's not made a speck of difference in the weight, but eh.  I still feel better not eating that stuff regularly. 

So he was tired of how expensive it was to make real food, (aid he paid like 150/mo) so he made soylent (which costs a lil over 255 /mo).  Right.  I remember when he first made the news how cheap it was to make.  Guess that changed fast.

Or he just realized he can market it and sell it for more.

Baby Spinach is the vastly superior green for smoothies/juicing. You get more bang for your buck, and it's a lot easier to mask the taste with say a banana or an apple.

Kale requires deep-frying and chiles to mask the awful taste.

Kale is "less" a food than Soylent.

Kale does lend that excellent dirt taste to any smoothie.  It's like mixing your fruit with mud.

I agree.  Spinach is mild and it isn't bitter.  It's probably my favourite leafy green.  Other greens, like kale and collards are lovely sauteed.  If you're making beef, like a roast or something, mix in a bit of the juice or gravy and it's wonderful.  I'm not crazy about kale chips because they just taste like the seasoning you put on it.  I'd rather have one of those little boxes of crispy seaweed snacks.  Yum.

Yeah, because if there's one thing you want chips to taste like, it's dead fish.

That's the whole point of kale chips. The seasoning. It makes vegans think they're eating real food.

They probably massage it :awesome_for_real:

There are heaps of green vegetables that are good for you. If you gouged on one because of fad diets eat another.

And pre made food will always taste worse than if you can make it yourself or it is made fresh for you.

And juices take out most of the value of fruits and vegetables in them.

Its not just what you eat but how you eat it. Overly processed, perserved, and specific diets are crap for you.

There are lots of unhealthy and ignorant skinny vegans. Youre not always wrong when you think what they might suggest is unappetising and unsatisfying.

But looking only at extremes misses the whole point.

This is what I never understood about juicing.  The guy who stuck with it was ALWAYS hungry. I wanted to smack him and say, "Duh, because you've removed all the fiber when you juiced it! You know what fiber is, right? That stuff that fills you up."

Calories don't fill you, if they did then candy bars would make you full and we'd all be glorifying the chocolate god.

On Spinach: I'm saddened that I didn't incorporate it into my diet until very recently. Stuff is delicious!  I blame my mother who only bought the canned garbage when I was a kid. (Hey it's what was there, you all remember that)  Today I realize that's what real spinach tuns into when you keep it around for more than a few days.

Swiss Chard is also pretty good stuff. The menu site we're doing uses it a lot. I was suspicious at first but it wilts nicely and tastes really good, so long as you clean it fully. (Like Spinach...)

I love raw spinach but don't really like it cooked.  A texture thing, I guess.  Actually, I'm like that with most vegetables unless they're literally inedible raw.

Ditto.  Lightly steamed is okay for some things, but essentially they still need to be crisp.

Very much a texture thing for me.  I have an unpleasant involuntary reaction to most mushy foods.

Yeah, I'm finding more and more that I don't care for veggies that are too soft, it's just not pleasant to eat them like that because it doesn't give you anything to actually chew.

I used to only ever eat spinach raw in salads and such and only recently put some in a pasta dish I was making... that was good!

One of the local specialties is 'greens'. An Italian style, not southern. Most places cook the shit out of them, but I've developed a nice recipe with spinach, bacon, parm, garlic and cherry pepper that's awesome. I find the key is to keep the veg bright green, almost a blanch kind of treatment in olive oil (or bacon fat). I'm kind of picky about veg texture, broccoli in particular.

Anyway, in honor of our jewish curmudgeon, I had a nice plate of kale salad yesterday. Maybe it's because my palate has been trained for years on escarole (both raw and cooked, as it's the traditional green in utica greens), which being a chicory family member can be pretty bitter at times. But it balances nicely with the acid and fats of the dressing (usually a vinaigrette). And I had it with beet chips.

If you like kale you can grow it really easily.  All you need is a decent sized planter or pot.  If you have a balcony or porch great otherwise it's fine in a room that gets some sun. It can be fairly decrative so you can plant it in flower beds.

One of my favorite breakfasts is a smoked salmon, spinach, and jalapeño scramble. I hot smoke my own salmon and grow my own peppers and spinach.

I hated brussel sprouts up until about a year ago.  My mom just steamed them and they were tasteless and bland.

Granted, I make it using grease stored from previous cooked bacon, and add honey, but it's quite delicious.

My wife started roasting vegetables a few years ago. It's amazing how brussel sprouts suddenly became good. (Brussel sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus and a few others -- generally if we're feeling snackish, since it beats the hell out of eating chips).

I hated spinach until about ten years ago, when it suddenly became delicious. And I found that sauerkraut is also delicious, if it's freshly prepared and not that overly vinegar canned crap.

Kale is fucking gross...

I've been doing soylent for breakfast and lunch about 3 or 4 days a week.  Keeps me full and more importantly it keeps me from running out for lunch for pizza or a burger or something since I don't care enough to sit down and prep my meals before hand.  If you have the time / desire to do that yourself then go for it, if not this is a decent way to eat healthy.

No it isnt.

I am not sure you know what Sauerkraut is. Sauerkraut is pickled cabbage. So it cannot be "prepared fresh" and all of it is that "overly vinegar canned crap". Though the method does not actually use vinegar the brine from a pickle or kraut jar and vinegar are pretty similar.

What I'm sure he means is that you can buy Sauerkraut in raw form which you can stew yourself. Already fermented but otherwise unprepared.

Yes. Canned form is disgusting. However they prepare it for canning is too..vinegary? I dunno. Prepared properly it's delicious, out of a can? I've yet to see anyone salvage that.

Sauerkraut isn't cooked in its preperation. The brine you find in the jars is the result of the fermentation process. (or added if your cabbage wasn't juicy enough to cover itself)

What you're describing is literally not possible, because if its not in the brine its either

A) Not sauerkraut

B) in the process of going bad (the brine protects it from doing so)

C) You just took it out of the brine and hopefully are serving it soon.

Sauerkraut that is "raw so you can stew yourself" is motherfucking cabbage. Just like "raw pickles that you can stew yourself" would be a fucking cucumber(though pickling cuces are not tasty) and not a pickle.

It comes in jars because its motherfucking made in jars*!

*Well usually made in crocks, which are not transparent, but same difference. If you're doing it at home, you're probably going to use a jar. Also sometimes it comes in bags (http://boarshead.com/products/condiments/731-sauerkraut), but that bag is still filled with brine. And sometimes it comes in plastic containers, if you go down to the Pike Place Market to buy it out of the barrel  (http://www.brittsliveculturefoods.com/products/) but again, that plastic container is going to be filled with brine.

What you're trying to say is "i don't like bad sauerkraut" which is well, totally ok to say, because i don't like bad bourbon. But I sure as shit aren't going to tell you that only fresh bourbon is good and once they put it in barrels for 3 years then it starts to suck.

 :dead_horse: :popcorn:

f13: We'll argue about anything.

(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png)

Well I, for one, am fascinated by the sauerkraut discussion.

 :why_so_serious:

Real Edit: Speaking of which, this place could use a cooking thread...

We had one for a long time with Voodoolilly's Snacktastic Thread (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=3887.0) but after Voodoo's literary career picked up it fell by the wayside.   :sad:

This discussion explains much, though. For example why your Sauerkraut seems to taste like ass, because you make in in jars instead of wood barrels. :awesome_for_real:

Also, yes you take the already fermented Sauerkraut and you put it in a pot and you stew it and do stuff in it to ennoble the taste. Or does your Sauerkraut come pre-packaged with cloves (for example) already and you just put it in the microwave?

Adding cloves, caraway, apples, etc, isn't something people often do in the US, sadly, and apart from a very few examples it doesn't come prepackaged with that either.  As for canned sauerkraut, I agree.  I make my own at home because it's ridiculously easy and it tastes better as well.

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/868747/Head%20explode%20universe.gif)

If you wanted a different flavor with your kraut you would ferment it with those flavors, the same way you do with pickles. Though i don't think fruit would work well with that method.

After my first order of 7 bags, replacing two meals a day as originally outlined, I can say that my stomach has certainly shrunk. Over the Thanksgiving long weekend I did not have any soylent, but I also was satisfied with small portions.  This weekend I only ate two meals a day, a late breakfast at 10am (egg sandwich) and a late lunch at 3pm (leftovers).  There was some side snacking as well with all the extra pie around, but my appetite was noticeably less the last few days compared to my pre-soylent period.

My wife claims that my paunch is a bit less, but my weight is stable. The extra paunch had to go somewhere so maybe she is just imagining it. My brother scoffed at the idea of a smaller paunch but the same weight and I cannot dispute his logic. I am not exercising any more frequently or differently.

I run out as of lunch today, but my new order should be here this week.

Good luck, Shiznitz!  Let us know how as it continues.  Are there any side effects using this stuff at all?

The exact same thing will happen if you clean up your diet.  Getting rid of simple carbs, drinking more water, and getting 30 mins of exercise 3x a week will give you fast results for minimal expense. 

Is the effort worth the savings though? Some people just do not enjoy food (buying, storing, preparing, and/or eating). Don't know what to tell you if you can't fathom that. If there is an easier shortcut that you can justify throwing money at... then I say have at it - it's your coin, throw it at whatever you want. Some people don't think of a car as anything more than a mode of transport to and from home, others pour 10s of thousands of dollars into it without a hesitation.

My concern is that these prepackaged fad diets don't take everything into consideration.  Food is very complex chemically and our body needs more than calories from protein, fat, and carbs.  Fiber delivery, good bacteria for our digestive tract, complex and simple carbs, etc.  If I thought drinking a shake twice a day would give me what my body needs, I'd probably do it too. 

The saving grace of this stuff is that it's partial meal replacement.  You're still having at least one normal meal a day... which is good.

I have not experienced any side effects at all.

I do not disagree with you at all, but I am unwilling to make the effort to clean up my diet since that would involve eating food I find distasteful.  Soylent is me cleaning up my diet in a way that is much more tolerable to me.

Which I commented on in my very next post.  I wish you all the best and am happy to answer any questions you have along the way.

Completely agree. However, most people's diet, I'd only wager a guess, is hardly including everything into consideration as well - given the fast food staple and vending machine habits I see everywhere. I am not one for fad diets either, but the one thing they try and do is make people aware of what they are eating and what they are lacking... only the fad diets cover up the new lacking parts. But at least it gets people thinking about what they are eating.

I still can't get my head around the fact that there could be anything more distasteful than this shit. There are so many delicious and easy options out there to clean up your diet with.

About 3 and a half hours ago I had a soylent lunch after 4 and a half days without.  I am not feeling particularly well right now.  I would report my nausea as a 3 or 4 on a 10 point scale, with 10 being an intense feeling of imminent puking.

Post some then. It'd be better than seeing you endlessly bitching in this thread.

Did the same thing happen when you first started using (that somehow seems like a better verb than "eating") soylent?  Is there some sort of acclimation phase you're supposed to go through before your body produces the enzymes needed to process the stuff?

Is this soylent stuff high in iron?  That can often cause some gastric distress.

Iron listed at 40% per serving, same as calcium.  While that might cause gastric distress in some people, my pre-soylent diet was heavy on red meat (easily 4-6 meals a week) so it should not have been a shock to my system.

BTW, I have been waiting for 3 weeks for my refill order to come. In the meantime, I have reverted to my old, poor eating habits albeit with smaller portions.  My weight didn't drop while on soylent but since I went off, I have dropped a few pounds. I don't have a good explanation for this.

Yes you do.

Surely weight loss can't be THAT simple.   :why_so_serious:

Just cut off limbs you're not using and you'll lose weight fast.  I've considered it in the past. 

I'm not using a whole lot of people's limbs, but I don't see how cutting them off would make me lighter.

It's the exercise.

I'd rather buy a really sharp, preferably automatic, cutting implement than "work" for it.

A human leg weighs anywhere between 20 and 30 pounds.  You know, depending on if your a man or a woman and how fat the leg is.  I reckon if you're a man who has fat legs and you're 30 - 40 pounds overweight... problem sorted.  And you don't do this yourself, you find a dodgy surgeon to do it for you.

What fascinates me the most is that where I live I couldn't eat fast food every day even if I wanted to. In stupid Italy out of the more touristy areas chains in general are not popular at all yet, the closest McDonald's or equivalent is many kilometers away, vending machines are non-existent outside of train stations, and the local equivalent of fast and shitty food ranges from "some ingredients are processed" to "completely fresh".

Looks like over there chains and fast foods forced smaller and more local business to close, manipulating whoever has a lunch break like Shiznitz to pick between one or another chain of equally processed-to-death food. Me, I am lazy as fuck and I hate preparing my own food, and yet during my short lunch break I couldn't get processed crap even if I wanted as every small cafe or pizza place makes its own stuff out of fresh produce, bread, etc., not because it's cheaper for them or for the customers but simply because it would be unthinkable otherwise. And still, I pay between 6 to 9 euros, coffee and water included.

Nothing new here, but it's crazy how business and capitalism have been methodically killing the diets and health of the people living in the US, while tradition and laziness are still relatively preserving it here so far (SO FAR). I will really miss this once I move to there.


Please bear in mind that I don't like borders, I do not support nationalisms of any kind and I burn flags whenever I have a chance, so I am not in any way slandering one country and their people or claiming the greatness of another.

Someone asked on Reddit the other day "Why isn't there a human equivalent of the tins of 'all your dog needs' dog food?". There is, it's Soylent. Enjoy your human-food.  :why_so_serious:

Solyent needs to be available in capsule form.  :why_so_serious:

A capsule that big? I hope you like suppositories.

Why not? The maker is talking out of his ass anyway.  :why_so_serious:

That would be awesome, even if one had to swallow a dozen to get enough nutrients.