The psychology of Soylent and the prison of first-world food choices
10 replies, posted
[url]http://arstechnica.com/?p=468319[/url]
Periodic Soylent user here.
This was an interesting little read. There were several questions I too had going in to trying Soylent, but my reasons were primarily the same as the creator's - didn't like cooking all the time, wanted something that in theory gives me mostly everything my body needs per day, and low pricing.
It's been several years now. I started on the [B]Powder [/B](I think 1.2 up to 1.8) when it came out and was pretty much substituting every meal. However, some of the problems I faced were:
[quote]- Creating a new pitcher every day was tedious by hand, until buying a blender
- Waiting for the mixture to cool (warm Soylent didn't quite do it for me)
- No variety in flavors (unlike the drink form now), so had to keep buying strawberries and bananas to vary the taste between days
- Taste would change each version, and sometimes I preferred the texture of a previous version
- [B]Eating out/other food would mess up the rhythm of things[/B]; I would often have 1/3 to 1/2 left of the day's mixture left over and have to throw it away within a day or two[/quote]
I kept occasionally getting back into the powder on and off over a few years, but I would eventually just slip back into eating out or making sandwiches instead.
Sometime around last year or so, the drink form came out ([B]Soylent 2.0[/B]) and other than the higher price tag, it looked like it would address my problem of the Soylent powder mixture going bad after only a few days, and having too much of it.
I decided to give the drinks a chance, and they were significantly easier.
[quote]- No hassle of making the mixture yourself
- 1 year expiration date, so you can just leave them in your fridge for a long time
- Grab whenever convenient; taking a trip, driving to work, lunchtime, a quick snack[/quote]
I had tried to go 100% on the drinks, but one of the hardest things is missing the texture and flavors of food (even just healthy foods like vegetables, or things like sandwiches). You can try to mix in these things to your food selection, but it does become hard to stick to it. I've got several cases of the drink still unopened because I've slowed down on the drinks and have been picking up veggies/fruits/proteins, recording what I eat, and exercising daily. Fortunately, if I need to fill in some missing calories, I can drink one of the Soylents and get 400 calories quickly plus the additional nutrients I may be missing.
Overall, I definitely think they are worth a try if you have the budget, but starting with maybe a case or two and mixing in a drink a day at the start helps the transition.
[B]More than anything, it's just about finding a balance that works for you. If you can't stick to it, no worries.[/B]​
soylent will never not seem dystopian as fuck
[QUOTE=Ninja Gnome;52644951]soylent will never not seem dystopian as fuck[/QUOTE]
Wasn't there a dystopian novel where Soylent was a thing made out of people or am I mixing things up?
Either way every time I read about it is super scary with all the random people that get disturbing side effects
I generally just order the Soylent 'cafe' stuff and use it to replace my breakfast. I can't eat this stuff for every meal - I get sick of it real fast.
i've found most soylent to be absolutely disgusting as well as the people who regularly drink it
but nectar soylent is actually really delicious
[QUOTE=Jorori;52645006]Wasn't there a dystopian novel where Soylent was a thing made out of people or am I mixing things up?
Either way every time I read about it is super scary with all the random people that get disturbing side effects[/QUOTE]
It's Soylent Green. There's also Soylent Cola from Futurama.
[QUOTE=elitehakor;52645091]i've found most soylent to be absolutely disgusting as well as the people who regularly drink it
but nectar soylent is actually really delicious[/QUOTE]
Yuck, I found the nectar flavor to be the most putrid thing. I guess some people must like it if they market it though.
I used it for about a year. I built up too much surplus and decided to discontinue it to empty out the boxes I had clogging up my closet.
Overall, it was a great decision, and I enjoyed trying it out. Not sure if it saved me much money, but I think it helped me gain a healthy amount of weight and gave me a consistant diet.
Only issue I had was some queasiness due to the purely liquid diet. I would supplement it with snacks like crackers or nuts to give my stomach something to grab onto.
idk what you're on about m8, nectar soylent is great. it's like blended milk and fruity pebbles and it's wonderful
honorable mention to cacao soylent, it's pretty ok. all the others taste horrible to me, esp regular soylent
Having always wanted to try Soylent but living in Europe (I.E. it is impossible to get Soylent) I had to settle for one of the European substitutes. I looked around a lot and finally settled on the MANA drink. I bought both a case of powder as well as a 12-bottle case of the drink. I was really excited to try it, so I tried out the powder first because I wanted the bottles cool. It was [I]utterly[/I] disgusting. I couldn't even finish the powdered drink completely. Just the artificial sweet taste and the gritty texture made it hard for me to swallow and I actually consider my palette of enjoyable food extremely wide. I reluctantly drank as much as possible but had to give up within the last couple of mouthfuls.
The drink is slightly better but it's still really hard for me. I have to force it down which just makes me end up not wanting to drink it, so now I just have it standing around and reluctantly use it if I forgot to buy food or something. It's almost like a punishment to me mentally, now.
I'm not sure if the Soylent drinks are better, but I'm not really sure I want to try them anymore. It's really a shame, because I honestly love the idea of it. I count calories and it's so much easier to know I can drink exactly 5 bottles a day and not have to worry about much else, instead of carefully dissecting everything I need to guesstimate what it contains.
Where can I get this shit in Australia
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