I DIY soylent. It’s cheaper (<$5/day (1), ordering everything online in America), and I’m not at all enthused about some of the choices for the commercial product. Here’s my spreadsheet. Nb. this was made just for personal use (a) for sourcing (which is boring, tedious, and time-consuming) and (b) to estimate the price per day. I haven’t included things you’ll need like scales, something to crush the tablets, a blender and, most importantly, choline, since I already had enough of lying around. I also add creatine, although it’s not essential. Check the original ingredient list and update if you’re planning on using it. Partake at your own risk, and definitely don’t do it if you don’t have enough of a background in chemistry to go from “I need x grams of sodium” to “I should include y grams of NaCl”.
Process
Make a bag with the proper micronutrient blend (I go back and forth about including (and taking) nootropics, but this is when I’d add them. Except bacopa. Bacopa’s super non-yummy and would ruin my food for the entire day). I usually make 12 or 16 days worth and add psyllium to make it 3 or 4 cups, which corresponds to putting in a quarter cup a day. Liquid micronutrients go in at make-time.
Put olive oil into blender.
Add micronutrients.
Turn on blender and add water (the blender isn’t going to be a huge fan of blending so little)
Add maltodextrin and whey. Don’t lollygag, because otherwise something… weird happens between the olive oil, water, and fiber and it turns into an inedible gelatinous mass. You don’t need to rush, but be snappy.
Store in refrigerator. Drink when hungry (I prefer it cold.)
Pros
Fast (it takes a bit of time to make the micro bag, but whipping up a batch takes around 2 minutes)
Cheap
More nutritionally complete than your diet (or anyone else’s) probably is.
Taste is satisfying
Mental clarity (I’ve tried various approaches to eating over the years, some of them good, and soylent is by far the best in this regard)
You don’t have to choose what to eat
No skill (or, more accurately, you need (rudimentary) chemistry instead of cooking. I suspect the average user here is much more likely to know the former)
All your foodstuffs are delivered to your front door. This was especially important as a college student constrained by bus schedules = going to store costs takes 1.5 hours.
Cons
Boring (which I personally consider a pro, but most people don’t)
It ferments after a while. About a day room temperature, several if you refrigerate (which you absolutely should).
If you add too much water, it’ll be unpleasantly runny. If you add too little, it’ll be unpleasantly thick.
High startup costs (~$1000)
You don’t get to choose what to eat
If you mess up, you can either wind up with a complete deficiency or overdosing by a few orders of magnitude. The spreadsheet I’ve linked to is meant for sourcing, not making it. Check elsewhere for how much you should put in/completeness.
Pain in the ass to clean the pitcher. Soap + soaking in water for a few hours works pretty well.
There is a completely reasonable chance something goes disastrously wrong, I contract the jumping cold robbies or somesuch and die horribly. Obviously, I think there’s a very low probability of that happening, but very smart people I trust (ie. other LWers) disagree.
Miscellaneous stuff
The amount of water you should add varies by person. Some people prefer thick, bordering on pudding. Others prefer it thin like gruel. You’ll probably have a few unpleasant batches before you figure out what’s right for you.
Most things are best bought online, but in my area, the olive oil is notably less expensive in grocery stores.
I mentioned I don’t have choline on the list. By all means, use my spreadsheet to source things, but for the love of Cthulu, check sources not me to make sure you’re getting the right amounts of everything. I take no responsibility if you derp it up and wind up deficient or overdosing by two orders of magnitude (which is surprisingly easy).
As soon as I can afford to (ie. when I graduate/get a job), I’m planning on switching to mealsquares. They do the same thing but better (nutrients from whole foods, have the flavonoids/anthocyanins things, easier, and reportedly taste better). However, according to back of the envelope, they cost 2.5-3x as much (2)
Many of my ingredients come from Amazon. Use amazon smile (I support CFAR) and, apparently, if you go to amazon following one of Scott Alexander’s affiliate links (of Slate Star Codex) and buy stuff within the next hour, 4-8% (or more) will go to him. (I’m unsure about my affiliate assertion, but it’s the best I can come up with and I’m at least 50% sure it’s correct).
With one exception, literally everyone I’ve told about soylent immediately responds with some variation of “I couldn’t ever give up real food” and completely dismisses it as a thing they might possibly do. This would explain why it’s not more popular
My current model: macronutrient composition doesn’t really matter. Yes, there’s some essential fats and it’s quite bad to not have enough protein and there’s better and worse fats (omega-3 vs trans) and better and worse carbs (based on glycemic index). But, beyond that, the focus on “low-carb” vs “low-fat” is beside the point. 1, 2
I’d be willing to answer any questions that come up. I’ve been doing soylent for a little over a year now, and am a pretty big fan of it.
(1) I weigh about 75 kilos, mostly lean, am active, and am trying to add muscle. This all has implications in terms of how much protein I include; changing any of these factors changes how much protein you’ll need changes how much it costs, likely in the downward direction. Notice that protein, by far, makes up the majority of the cost (~40%)
(2) If you assume $5/day soylent and 2000 calorie diet, then mealsquares, at $75/6 = $12.5 / day. However, soylent is (slightly) less than $5/day. More importantly, I eat significantly more than 2000 calories a day, and with DIY soylent, you can increase the number of calories with maltodextrin which is ludicrously cheap.
I saw Soylent Orange after having invested in Soylent “Green” (1). I didn’t look into it too hard because I’d already invested heavily into traditional soylent and (a) didn’t want to incur sunk costs, (b) had already spent significant time doing “Green” well and didn’t want to look at another approach and (c) I had already put myself at enough of a deficit with “Green” that I couldn’t afford to switch again. So, a sunk cost, a trivial inconvenience, and a suboptimal investment; none of these are reasons OP shouldn’t go orange instead of green. I’ll also note that the cost per calorie is on par.
There are, however, values that make “Green” a good choice. I value mental clarity, and I’ve gotten that much more with “Green” than on any other diet (2).
If you’re into quantified self, putting in each component by itself makes it extremely simple to test the effect of one micro or macronutrient on your body.
(1) No, it doesn’t contain humans. But that’s what you’d expect me to say even if it did. But it doesn’t. Really!
(2) Obviously, having not tested Orange, there’s no reason it couldn’t yield better mental clarity than Green. Part of my intuition for Green goes something like “it doesn’t contain anything that could potentially gum up the works, which is why your thinking feels so clean when you’re strictly on Green.” By main influence here is Staffan Lindeberg’s Food and Western Disease, which spends about equal time talking about how things in food can improve health (like multivitamins) or diminish it (various defensive chemicals from plants, environmental toxins, etc.).
That said, I’d be extremely interested to find if going for a period exclusively on Orange resulted in improved mental clarity, and especially interested in a head to head test.
I will say that if you already own a blender, Soylent Orange has very low startup cost. Other than the marmite, everything involved can be purchased on the scale of a week or less, if you have Whole Foods-type places nearby.
I know I benefited tremendously, but there was a huge effect from just eating enough food, which was not my norm previously, and that probably dwarfed any noticeable effects from the diet specifically.
o_0? I can’t tell if this was sarcasm (which isn’t enormously warranted, I’m not really evangelizing) or sincere. If it was sincere, then: You’re welcome! How is it better?
I only picked it because it is cheaper than buying Soylent Green, and easier than DIY Green. It’s certainly less quantified-selfy, but it’s good enough for my purposes.
Ah, not sarcasm. Courtesy of Julia Galef via Richard Dawkins:
This is the Golgi apparatus, which is a structure in the cell that distributes macro-molecules around the cell. And when Dawkins was at Oxford, there was an elderly professor in the department who was famous for his claim that the Golgi apparatus was illusory, that it was an artifact of observation, that it didn’t actually exist.
So one day a visiting professor from the States came to give a talk at Oxford in which he presented new and compelling evidence that the Golgi apparatus was, in fact, real. So, as you can imagine, throughout the whole talk everyone is glancing over at the elderly professor like, “How’s he taking this? What’s he going to say?” And at the end of the talk, the elderly professor marches up to the front of the lecture hall and he extends his hand and he says, “My dear fellow, I wish to thank you. I have been wrong these 15 years.”
I’m most compelled by the whole foods/bioavalibility argument (point 3 here.) and the likely comparative glycemic indices. Like, my marginal cost per meal is still lower on Green (since I’ve bought half the ingredients for the next months/years/decades), and it’s worked for me, but if I were to make a suggestion to past-me, it probably would’ve been for Orange.
Except… now I think about it, I’m again compelled by my previous “cleanliness” arguments (Green doesn’t contain any extras, some of which you don’t want). Also, never grocery shopping is really, really nice.
Revised opinion: I know no one to whom I’d recommend Orange over Green. I will try Orange for comparative mental effects. If they’re comparable or superior to Green, I’ll switch, but I’m personally okay rolling dice wrt long-term health for a performance buff now (choosing Green over Orange reduces my expected life-years, but I’m okay with that if it increases what I get done during them/it gets done sooner so multiplicative effects can start multiplying earlier.).
And, in all seriousness, I’ve just updated a lot, and appreciate your role in sparking that (even if you didn’t mean to).
Also, DIY Green is seriously easy to make. It’s something like 2 minutes to put together a batch, which is an absolute godsend when you’re pressed for time (like during semester). You need to set up some infrastructure to make that work, but you can do that when you’re not under a time constraint.
...Food is complicated. Attempts to make it simple have… apparently made it more complicated. We may have just done this to ourselves (or mealsquares gets going and becomes price-competitive with soylent. Then food will be solved Once And For All and it’ll be simple.)
I can see the benefits (Orange has somewhere from 5-12 minutes prep time, and is probably slightly more expensive), but I think I’ll stick with the more risk-averse option, especially since I would worry incessantly about whether I’d left out one of the ingredients I knew about, let alone the possible missing nutrients.
But all good thoughts. I am intrigued by your ideas, and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
I DIY soylent. It’s cheaper (<$5/day (1), ordering everything online in America), and I’m not at all enthused about some of the choices for the commercial product. Here’s my spreadsheet. Nb. this was made just for personal use (a) for sourcing (which is boring, tedious, and time-consuming) and (b) to estimate the price per day. I haven’t included things you’ll need like scales, something to crush the tablets, a blender and, most importantly, choline, since I already had enough of lying around. I also add creatine, although it’s not essential. Check the original ingredient list and update if you’re planning on using it. Partake at your own risk, and definitely don’t do it if you don’t have enough of a background in chemistry to go from “I need x grams of sodium” to “I should include y grams of NaCl”.
Process
Make a bag with the proper micronutrient blend (I go back and forth about including (and taking) nootropics, but this is when I’d add them. Except bacopa. Bacopa’s super non-yummy and would ruin my food for the entire day). I usually make 12 or 16 days worth and add psyllium to make it 3 or 4 cups, which corresponds to putting in a quarter cup a day. Liquid micronutrients go in at make-time.
Put olive oil into blender.
Add micronutrients.
Turn on blender and add water (the blender isn’t going to be a huge fan of blending so little)
Add maltodextrin and whey. Don’t lollygag, because otherwise something… weird happens between the olive oil, water, and fiber and it turns into an inedible gelatinous mass. You don’t need to rush, but be snappy.
Store in refrigerator. Drink when hungry (I prefer it cold.)
Pros
Fast (it takes a bit of time to make the micro bag, but whipping up a batch takes around 2 minutes)
Cheap
More nutritionally complete than your diet (or anyone else’s) probably is.
Taste is satisfying
Mental clarity (I’ve tried various approaches to eating over the years, some of them good, and soylent is by far the best in this regard)
You don’t have to choose what to eat
No skill (or, more accurately, you need (rudimentary) chemistry instead of cooking. I suspect the average user here is much more likely to know the former)
All your foodstuffs are delivered to your front door. This was especially important as a college student constrained by bus schedules = going to store costs takes 1.5 hours.
Cons
Boring (which I personally consider a pro, but most people don’t)
It ferments after a while. About a day room temperature, several if you refrigerate (which you absolutely should).
If you add too much water, it’ll be unpleasantly runny. If you add too little, it’ll be unpleasantly thick.
High startup costs (~$1000)
You don’t get to choose what to eat
If you mess up, you can either wind up with a complete deficiency or overdosing by a few orders of magnitude. The spreadsheet I’ve linked to is meant for sourcing, not making it. Check elsewhere for how much you should put in/completeness.
Pain in the ass to clean the pitcher. Soap + soaking in water for a few hours works pretty well.
There is a completely reasonable chance something goes disastrously wrong, I contract the jumping cold robbies or somesuch and die horribly. Obviously, I think there’s a very low probability of that happening, but very smart people I trust (ie. other LWers) disagree.
Miscellaneous stuff
The amount of water you should add varies by person. Some people prefer thick, bordering on pudding. Others prefer it thin like gruel. You’ll probably have a few unpleasant batches before you figure out what’s right for you.
Most things are best bought online, but in my area, the olive oil is notably less expensive in grocery stores.
I mentioned I don’t have choline on the list. By all means, use my spreadsheet to source things, but for the love of Cthulu, check sources not me to make sure you’re getting the right amounts of everything. I take no responsibility if you derp it up and wind up deficient or overdosing by two orders of magnitude (which is surprisingly easy).
As soon as I can afford to (ie. when I graduate/get a job), I’m planning on switching to mealsquares. They do the same thing but better (nutrients from whole foods, have the flavonoids/anthocyanins things, easier, and reportedly taste better). However, according to back of the envelope, they cost 2.5-3x as much (2)
Many of my ingredients come from Amazon. Use amazon smile (I support CFAR) and, apparently, if you go to amazon following one of Scott Alexander’s affiliate links (of Slate Star Codex) and buy stuff within the next hour, 4-8% (or more) will go to him. (I’m unsure about my affiliate assertion, but it’s the best I can come up with and I’m at least 50% sure it’s correct).
With one exception, literally everyone I’ve told about soylent immediately responds with some variation of “I couldn’t ever give up real food” and completely dismisses it as a thing they might possibly do. This would explain why it’s not more popular
My current model: macronutrient composition doesn’t really matter. Yes, there’s some essential fats and it’s quite bad to not have enough protein and there’s better and worse fats (omega-3 vs trans) and better and worse carbs (based on glycemic index). But, beyond that, the focus on “low-carb” vs “low-fat” is beside the point. 1, 2
I’d be willing to answer any questions that come up. I’ve been doing soylent for a little over a year now, and am a pretty big fan of it.
(1) I weigh about 75 kilos, mostly lean, am active, and am trying to add muscle. This all has implications in terms of how much protein I include; changing any of these factors changes how much protein you’ll need changes how much it costs, likely in the downward direction. Notice that protein, by far, makes up the majority of the cost (~40%)
(2) If you assume $5/day soylent and 2000 calorie diet, then mealsquares, at $75/6 = $12.5 / day. However, soylent is (slightly) less than $5/day. More importantly, I eat significantly more than 2000 calories a day, and with DIY soylent, you can increase the number of calories with maltodextrin which is ludicrously cheap.
Have you considered the Soylent Orange formula from the MealSquares people? Why did you go with this way rather than that?
(I have eaten about 50% Soylent Orange, 50% other simple food, for the past ~15 months.)
I saw Soylent Orange after having invested in Soylent “Green” (1). I didn’t look into it too hard because I’d already invested heavily into traditional soylent and (a) didn’t want to incur sunk costs, (b) had already spent significant time doing “Green” well and didn’t want to look at another approach and (c) I had already put myself at enough of a deficit with “Green” that I couldn’t afford to switch again. So, a sunk cost, a trivial inconvenience, and a suboptimal investment; none of these are reasons OP shouldn’t go orange instead of green. I’ll also note that the cost per calorie is on par.
There are, however, values that make “Green” a good choice. I value mental clarity, and I’ve gotten that much more with “Green” than on any other diet (2).
If you’re into quantified self, putting in each component by itself makes it extremely simple to test the effect of one micro or macronutrient on your body.
(1) No, it doesn’t contain humans. But that’s what you’d expect me to say even if it did. But it doesn’t. Really!
(2) Obviously, having not tested Orange, there’s no reason it couldn’t yield better mental clarity than Green. Part of my intuition for Green goes something like “it doesn’t contain anything that could potentially gum up the works, which is why your thinking feels so clean when you’re strictly on Green.” By main influence here is Staffan Lindeberg’s Food and Western Disease, which spends about equal time talking about how things in food can improve health (like multivitamins) or diminish it (various defensive chemicals from plants, environmental toxins, etc.).
That said, I’d be extremely interested to find if going for a period exclusively on Orange resulted in improved mental clarity, and especially interested in a head to head test.
I will say that if you already own a blender, Soylent Orange has very low startup cost. Other than the marmite, everything involved can be purchased on the scale of a week or less, if you have Whole Foods-type places nearby.
I know I benefited tremendously, but there was a huge effect from just eating enough food, which was not my norm previously, and that probably dwarfed any noticeable effects from the diet specifically.
My dear fellow, I wish to thank you. I have been eating a suboptimal food that I thought was optimal these fifteen months.
o_0? I can’t tell if this was sarcasm (which isn’t enormously warranted, I’m not really evangelizing) or sincere. If it was sincere, then: You’re welcome! How is it better?
I only picked it because it is cheaper than buying Soylent Green, and easier than DIY Green. It’s certainly less quantified-selfy, but it’s good enough for my purposes.
Ah, not sarcasm. Courtesy of Julia Galef via Richard Dawkins:
I’m most compelled by the whole foods/bioavalibility argument (point 3 here.) and the likely comparative glycemic indices. Like, my marginal cost per meal is still lower on Green (since I’ve bought half the ingredients for the next months/years/decades), and it’s worked for me, but if I were to make a suggestion to past-me, it probably would’ve been for Orange.
Except… now I think about it, I’m again compelled by my previous “cleanliness” arguments (Green doesn’t contain any extras, some of which you don’t want). Also, never grocery shopping is really, really nice.
Revised opinion: I know no one to whom I’d recommend Orange over Green. I will try Orange for comparative mental effects. If they’re comparable or superior to Green, I’ll switch, but I’m personally okay rolling dice wrt long-term health for a performance buff now (choosing Green over Orange reduces my expected life-years, but I’m okay with that if it increases what I get done during them/it gets done sooner so multiplicative effects can start multiplying earlier.).
And, in all seriousness, I’ve just updated a lot, and appreciate your role in sparking that (even if you didn’t mean to).
Also, DIY Green is seriously easy to make. It’s something like 2 minutes to put together a batch, which is an absolute godsend when you’re pressed for time (like during semester). You need to set up some infrastructure to make that work, but you can do that when you’re not under a time constraint.
...Food is complicated. Attempts to make it simple have… apparently made it more complicated. We may have just done this to ourselves (or mealsquares gets going and becomes price-competitive with soylent. Then food will be solved Once And For All and it’ll be simple.)
I ramble. tl;dr: thank you (sincerely).
I can see the benefits (Orange has somewhere from 5-12 minutes prep time, and is probably slightly more expensive), but I think I’ll stick with the more risk-averse option, especially since I would worry incessantly about whether I’d left out one of the ingredients I knew about, let alone the possible missing nutrients.
But all good thoughts. I am intrigued by your ideas, and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.