A Foodie Tries Soylent and Fails
I scoffed when Soylent came onto the scene. Soylent goes against everything I believe about food. I don't eat to live, I live to eat. Why the hell would anyone want to drink powdered shit when there are pupusas, korean BBQ, burgers, hashbrownspizzamangoswhiskey...
Still, Soylent grew, raising 20M and claiming millions in revenue per month. As a lover of food&tech, I had to understand why. I decided to try Soylent as a breakfast replacement for 4 days in a row, and then for all meals for 2 full days.
After asking my Facebook connections for a referral code, one of my friends said she had a box to get rid of. I ignored the fact that there was probably a reason she was ditching a box and was now in possession of 12 Soylent 2.0 Ready-to-Drink bottles.
Test 1: Drink Soylent daily for breakfast
Day 1
Soylent has a slightly milky taste like very watered down condensed milk. Like a melted milkshake with no flavor. Not unpleasant, but I can't imagine drinking it everyday or for a full day. Seems like a good, plain base to mix things in - kind of like greek yogurt.
By 10am, I was feeling my stomach churning a bit. Not hungry. Not sure if it was due to queasiness or Soylent actually doing a good job of keeping me full. Surprisingly, I lasted until 12:30pm before getting lunch, and I was only moderately hungry.
Day 2
It tastes a little better, but I was still dreading having it again this morning. I really can't image doing this for a whole day. It took me a while, but I finally determined what the weird grainy aftertaste was - it tastes like when you take a handful of cheerios and munch them in your mouth into a powder.
The convenience factor is not something to undervalue. I was able to drink breakfast on the way to the bus stop. There definitely seems to be a time and convenience factor.
Day 3
The night before, I looked up recipes to make Soylent taste better. There's a whole subreddit for the Soylent community, and I got some good ideas. I added Toleno's Italian Hazelnet. This definitely improved the drink, but I'm not a fan of sweet stuff for breakfast. If you have a sweet tooth, I can definitely see you drinking Soylent in the morning - almost like a morning protein shake.
Also, Soylent makes your pee smell like wheat.
Day 4
Again, I added Toleno's, and by this time I was kind of getting used to it, but as a breakfast lover, I missed eggs. Also, I started to rethink about the time and convenience. Is this really significantly saving me time and money, where a bowl of cereal or a slab of peanut butter toast takes just as long to prepare? 99/100 times I'd rather have the latter.
Time time savings most really come in when you're drinking Soylent for a full day.
Test 2: Drink Soylent for 2 full days
I was a little afraid for this test. It just wasn't appealing to drink liquid the whole day. I'm also in the middle of training for a race, so wasn't sure how just drinking Soylent would affect my ability to function.
Each Soylent bottle only has 400 kcal, so for a full day, I need to be drinking 5-6 a day. If you throw in a workout, you should probably be drinking 6-7.
After a quick 4 mile run in the morning, I went to work with my lunchbox full of Soylent.
9:00am - "Breakfast" - Mixed a bottle of soylent with a shot of espresso. This was actually kind of great - some sort of coffee milkshake in the morning.
11:00am - "Breakfast pt 2" - I got hungry and cracked open my second bottle of Soylent. This one I drank without any flavoring because I ran out of Toleno.
Then, I got caught in a bunch of back-to-back meetings where I just forgot to eat.
4:00pm - I've been hungry for the past 2 hours but couldn't get out of meetings, even to grab a Soylent. I'm hungry, but I really don't want to drink Soylent. I down it anyway just to get rid of my hunger. I gag a little.
6:00pm - Over the past couple hours, I've found it hard to focus. At this point I've only eaten 1200 calories and probably should have had another bottle earlier in the day, but things got away from me. At this point, I still had a ton to do today, and felt like I couldn't drink another. I bailed at this point and got myself a sandwich.
Fail. I didn't even make it a full day on Soylent. Look, I can see why there might be an appeal. To someone that doesn't care that much about food, Soylent is just a necessity to just keep functioning without having to think of what to eat next, but I think that's where most of the benefits stop. You need to get out of your chair once and a while and grab something to eat. It's not a magnitude easier than just ordering something to go. Maybe the benefits settle in when you've done it for a week straight and get into a routine, but drinking Soylent just makes me feel like a robot. The only other benefit is it's cost. Soylent is $34 for a pack of 12. That can stretch for a little over 2 days. That's 2ish days worth of food for the price of a typical dinner in SF.
I didn't do this test with a ton of discipline, but honestly, after having Soylent as often as I did, I didn't have a strong motivation to complete the test. After drinking Soylent for breakfast for 4 days, I had no desire to try to drink it for 2 whole days. Sorry Soylent lovers.
So...anyone want 5 bottles of Soylent?