I get lost in my work/play quite a bit and often forget about meals. I'd definitely be interested in trying soylent simply as a meal replacement, especially if ingestion/preparation of it is quick enough not to break my workflow.
You are looking for a product called Ensure. You can find it in every mini-mart in the country. It has actually been scientifically developed and tested as a meal replacement and is based on real research by people who know what they are talking about rather than one guy who is making a lot of guesses...
I would order Soylent right now if I could. So I'm pretty excited to find out about these. I had no idea they existed. FWIW, my diet now is like 95% red meat, with some cheese occasionally added in.
What are the downsides of these compared to Soylent? I mean, what's the motivation for Soylent if these already exist?
I guess the difference is that this guy is making the recipe available so you can tweak it to your requirements.
Ensure or other prepackaged products are a predefined set ratio, which may not be optimal for all consumers.
For example, highly active people will probably require a higher ratio of carbohydrates than less active people. Similarly, some people will be genetically predisposed to have higher/lower uptake of some nutrients/vitamins.
Ultimately, for any one person to succeed with a Soylent style approach, they will need to monitor their blood levels of a range of elements and compounds.
To my mind, developing a rapid, cheap, broad spectrum blood analysis to allow people to monitor their diet (soylent or not) is what should be focused on.
Looking at Ensure, it's $42.50 for 24 bottles with 350 calories each. At ~2000/calories per day (6 bottles), it looks to be something that would cost ~$320/month to replace most meals with.
I'd imagine that Soylent's sales success will lie with its price point reaching around ~120-150/month price point. Going much higher than that, and the financial incentive would be lost.
$42.50 for 24 is just sloppy shopping. I get about half of my intake from Ensure (and its competitors), not by choice but because of a medical condition that often precludes normal eating, and $28-32 ($7-8 for a six pack) is an easy target to maintain consistently. The cases of 24 are aimed at institutions, are priced accordingly, and never go on special.
The main problem with SlimFast, as opposed to soylent, is that almost all of its carbs are sugars. On the other hand, it probably has a slightly better Omega-3:Omega-6 ratio.
The main problem with sugars is that they have a high glycemic index, which means that they break down quickly and rapidly release glucose into your bloodstream. That's bad for several reasons. One is that it causes a strong insulin response, which can increase insulin resistance over time, leading to diabetes. Another is that it will give you a burst of energy initially, which will then fall off, leaving you feeling tired. Carbs with a lower GI will keep your blood sugar at a steady level.
But actually, looking again at the soylent recipe, he seems to be preferring maltodextrin as his carb source. He was probably mislead by the fact that it's a "complex carbohydrate", but in fact, the GI of maltodextrin is higher than cane sugar. In fact, it has basically the same glycemic index as pure glucose.
So I retract my previous statement. Unless you replace carb source in soylent, SlimFast is basically just a better option.
