One Month on Soylent, the Liquid Food Substitute. What is it Good For?
I haven't been living off this stuff entirely. I wouldn't recommend that for a couple of reasons, in particular if you're male, due to the high soy content. But I have been drinking one per day, and can report that I've felt improvements to my energy level, mood and joints.
Now, keep in mind we're also coming out of winter here. So those improvements might just be due to the slowly warming weather. Carl Sagan said "take care not to fool yourself, because you are the easiest one for you to fool". With that in mind, on paper at least, it does offer some sound benefits.
Namely, when you eat according to what looks good to you, what your body gets in terms of nutrients, minerals and proteins is essentially random. You can wind up with huge deficiencies of some mineral or vitamin this way and never realize it until you become persistently sick.
Soylent is like a nutritional lubricant which fills in those gaps. It's nutritionally balanced to provide exactly what the human body needs in the exact right ratios. However each bottle supplies only one fifth of the calories you need in a day.
This makes it a good supplement if you're not keen on the idea of becoming some sort of bland robotic unit which subsists entirely off a synthetic liquid. I mean, that sounds rad as fuck to me, but for everybody else I'll have to pitch the concept differently I think.
So, what is it good for? That's a question I asked before I bought my smartwatch or wireless phone charger. They both seemed like solutions in search of a problem. Only after I had them and used them for a while did I realize their true utility.
The same goes for Soylent. I thought, when am I going to prefer drinking this to eating out, or making a quick simple meal from things in the fridge? When I've woken up at 4 in the morning with a grumbling stomach, it turns out.
When that happens, you no longer have to get out of bed and make yourself a late night snack, fully waking yourself in the process and making it difficult to get back to sleep. If you keep some bottles of soylent by the bed, you can just chug one, and it makes your hunger disappear.
It's very much like a cheat code to make hunger go away, in that respect. There's no preparation. It will keep for 1 year with no refrigeration. There are no dishes to clean afterwards. The more I drank it during rare situations like waking up hungry, the more it grew on me, and I began to rely on it at other times as well.
For example when you're in the middle of writing an article, your stomach growls, but your fridge is mostly bare and you don't want to take a break because you're 'in the zone'. Chug a soylent. Bam, hunger gone. It skips entirely around the whole tedious ordeal that obtaining or preparing food usually entails.
It's fair to ask, isn't that ordeal one of the major pleasures of life? If we cheat our way past the experience of making and eating food, why live? This is why I say that you shouldn't subsist entirely on Soylent. Maybe someday, hardcore gaming cafe junkies will, so they don't have to stop playing.
Probably VR addicts will also go down that road. I'm borderline myself. But for everybody else, Soylent isn't a total food replacement and doesn't have to be. It's very much like Ensure, or other dietary supplement drinks for the elderly, but marketed to a younger demographic.
And why not? It's vegan, but you don't have to put all that work into assembling a vegan diet that's nutritionally complete. That work has already been done for you before it was even bottled. It's (very) good for you, however difficult that is to believe when you look at a beige synthetic liquid in a plastic container.
Really, once you get over how strange it is, Soylent fills a valid niche and serves a useful purpose. It's the ultimate evolution of fast food, but for the health conscious. We don't have many healthy fast food options in the US, which accounts for our obesity epidemic.
When you're in a hurry and need to eat, don't go to the drive thru for a burger. Chug a soylent. Your body will thank you, because you're giving it all sorts of good stuff it normally doesn't get enough of, and you'll feel better as a result.
Now, about the flavors. Having tried every flavor, I would rank them accordingly: Cacao, plain, coffiest, cafe vanilla, chai. Of the lot, only cacao tastes properly sweet. The vanilla is surprisingly bitter. They didn't load these with sugar because that would defeat the point.
Chai is nasty and tastes like satan's sweaty asshole. Not that I speak from experience or anything. Coffiest does taste like coffee and is acceptable if you like coffee flavored things. Plain is just...meh. It's designed to be meh. It tastes almost like nothing at all. It is to food what water is to drinks.
Cacao tastes more or less like chocolate milk. How do you like that? When you were a kid, you weren't allowed to drink chocolate milk for every meal because it was bad for you. Now it's the future, and you can subsist entirely on chocolate milk if you want, and it'll actually improve your health. That's what I call progress.
The price is still a bit of a sticking point. At $4 per bottle it's kind of a hard sell, given how much fast food that buys you. But you have to remember that it keeps for a long time without refrigeration, it's a health food, it's vegan yet nutritionally balanced ahead of time, and all the other compelling benefits.
It will be an easier sell when the price comes down. But even where it is right now, it's a justifiable expense compared to fast food because of how they compare in a nutritional sense. Try swapping out one of your meals for a Soylent for a month, and see if you don't feel better. More alert, more energetic.
Never mind that the fact that it contains every chemical element our bodies need to self-repair and grow necessarily means it's basically the same composition as a liquefied human, if broken down to their constituent chemical substances. Just don't think about that. Probably it wasn't somebody you know.
Stay Cozy!
See I think or as per my own research soylent is complex protein and dont get absorbed into the body so quickly.
I would prefer go organic than this synthetic one unless it is of utmost necessity while travelling or in some kind of remote possibility.
Thank you and Have a great day.
I think it depends on individual body's reaction and suitability. Some people says they do not like soya where as some are quite okay. Some says tea is not for them but some are okay with them.
But I would say something organic and home made not just packaged when it comes to me.
Steem on and stay blissful....
I've got to say, that is a pretty interesting product. Does it contain any gluten or allergens of any kind besides soy? Because this looks like a product that could be good for my fiancee who has severe intestinal issues which two doctors have claimed is probably IBS. Even if she just had one in the morning before work as a substitute for breakfast.
This page says no. However, this page says yes. I don't know which one is right.
Haha, well that's not confusing at all. I might shoot them an email and ask someone to clarify it for me, or maybe I'll see if they have a twitter and tweet something at them to find out. I genuinely think when we can afford to pick up a decent amount of them that they'd be good for my fiancee so long as they don't have gluten. It sounds like it would probably ease her pain/nausea at least somewhat, and she used to be vegan so I'm sure she'd be down to try it without me coaxing her too much.
I think I need to get the coca one . I have problems ever since I started the gym I get really hungry at night and I always wanna have a cheat meal or get tempted to eat and food .
Since it's basically just a protein shake but with more different kinds of nutrients, it would indeed be great for post-workout.
I’ve heard of them but I always thought the taste would be bad. I’ll pick some up tomorrow for sure and let you know how it is
Make sure to get 'cacao', the brown one. That's the chocolate flavor and is the best of the lot.
I want to try it if my nutritionist won't find anything bad in its composition))
I am green with envy about your soylenficent eating habits. Hannibal Lecter is a cuisine elitist.
Ouch...
Haha… 1. This was very entertaining to read and 2. I am intrigued. Thank you for steering me away from the satans asshole flavor because I probably would have grabbed it. I’m a bartender who also adheres to a plant based diet and after 5-6hrs of a shift can become quite hangry and an all around gremlin so will check these soylents out. As always, your posts light up my face. Thanks for sharing @alexbeyman
Are you sure it's safe to drink that? I'm very curious about such stuff because sometimes it's really hard to get a fast snack. So you can just drink it!
The only thing I would be concerned about is potential toxic preservatives. Not saying that there is but potentially there could be. If it doesn't need refrigeration what is keeping it shelf stable?
I'm normally not all that concerned with common preservatives but if you are consuming at least one Soylent a day every day it could be a problem.