tadrinth comments on [LINK] Soylent crowdfunding - Less Wrong

7 Post author: Qiaochu_Yuan 21 May 2013 07:09PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (169)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: RomeoStevens 22 May 2013 03:28:56AM *  18 points [-]

Might I reiterate the suggestion of my whole food version for people who don't wish to trust powders mixed by a stranger with a spotty track record of not-poisoning-himself?

I seriously don't think I can go back to not using this almost daily. Worrying about only 1 meal a day has been a huge stress gone from my life.

Edit: I've been googling round, looking at existing liquid meal replacements and I found this. This seems to basically be a multivitamin/multimineral + some whey and gelatin. it notably does not include things that are required but not generally listed as essential nutrients due to their ubiquity and some trace minerals are missing (sulfur for instance, Soylent ran into this issue as well). This is notably not a dietary replacement as it is only 110 calories. It is nonetheless interesting as an ingredient for attempts at homemade Soylent as it is quite cheap($1/serving). Whether the ingredients are bioavailable is of course a different matter, but Soylent has this issue as well.

Comment author: tadrinth 22 May 2013 05:38:56AM 1 point [-]

Any chance you can refactor your recipe to replace bananas with something that keeps better? Otherwise, I was pretty pleased with it.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 22 May 2013 12:50:41PM 2 points [-]

There are also a substantial number of people (read: anyone with a natural latex allergy) who could have an allergic reaction to bananas...

Comment author: RomeoStevens 22 May 2013 07:01:50AM *  1 point [-]

the main point of the banana is that for whatever reason it suspends the oat and seed particulates in the solution so they don't all sink. You might get the same effect if you use sunflower butter instead of seeds. Oh and it's also really hard to add marmite without something to smear it on. You can replace the potassium from the banana with more KCl but at some point it starts to affect taste.

Edit: you can also try prunes for the potassium content, but I have no idea how well that will work. They keep very very well, to the extent that powdered prunes are sprinkled on other foods to make them last longer.