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Originally Posted by dead_battery

better? no. cheaper - yes, but in a few years when the market is flooded with soylent clones then the prices will go down.

i can put in more nutrients across the whole spectrum, with much better taste, for way way waaaay less than $3 per individual meal. i can do it for about 1/3 of that.

it's called "basic life skills."

Originally Posted by dead_battery

you cant eat better because any "natural" food you chose will have levels of nutrients that are all over the place and it won't match up to the daily rda.

the daily rda is well and good as a rule of thumb but it's a coarse statistical mean that is not in tune with my individual body/activity/DNA/immune system/etc.

i get it as an emergency and/or convenience meal replacement though. there's definitely a place for that in life. like military rations. but seems expensive for everyday meals.

Originally Posted by dead_battery

cue a chorus of people going on about how nothing tastes better than "real" food and soylent is bland corporate sludge blah blah blah.

i don't think it's "corporate" (yet, anyway), and i haven't tasted it, but it DOES sound bland by the description. i mean, nobody here is arguing for its gourmet qualities, are they?

and yes while the thing covers basic nutritional needs i think it ignores the deep psychological and social dimensions of food gathering, preparation and consumption, which run deep in humans.

Originally Posted by dead_battery

soylent like products will be a godsend to the poor and anyone else who wants the maximum quality of nutrition.

i think that's a bit of an idealized technofetish. take rice, extract the protein, mix other things, add a lot of packaging-- seems like a lot of processing which is money. but it looks like a healthier alternative to taco bell for sure.

some of the criticisms mentioned in the article are worth noting. this one is really a big one for me:

some, like author Ruth Reichl, have gone so far as to say that Soylent could potentially undermine and erode the food traditions of developing cultures, displacing heritage recipes and methods of food preparation with convenience, and ultimately pushing the world in a direction where poorer peoples and countries subsist on Soylent while the developing world eats whatever they’d like.

i think "the poor" might be better off developing a measure of food self-sufficiency than becoming dependent on an industrial commodity they must purchase. i get that this is already the case in urban areas anyway, but even urban areas can accommodate small gardens (roof, balconies, buckets), and even small livestock operations (look up urban chickens). though i get this might not be an option for overworked isolated individuals, for example. but for most people the solution can be found in basic social cooperation as an alternative to capitalist distribution of labor ($ for commodities).

Originally Posted by dead_battery

your body doesn't have a computer in it that tells you that its low on potassium, but science is way ahead of our primitive introspective sense apparatus.

errr…. yes it does. it's called "the brain." just because it doesn't always operate at a conscious level it doesn't mean it's not there. i can verbalize things like "i really really feel like eating some cooked greens right now" or "fuck, i'm craving oranges". cravings are a way for your brain to communicate the bodily need for an ingredient to its own executive functions.

you feed that "computer" data by eating a variety of things, by exposing yourself to new foods (part of our genetic heritage as nomadic hunter-gatherers), then your body learns what's what, and how & where to get it.

if you have never eaten a fresh vegetable though, your "computer" might not realize it needs one. if you've made your body addicted to toxins, it might need time to reprogram. GIGO.