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Ask HN: How do you improve Soylent's flavor/texture?

by houseofshards on 10/6/14, 2:54 AM with 22 comments

• by hashtag on 10/6/14, 3:25 AM

  I ordered several months ago and still waiting so I wouldn't expect to receive it in a few weeks unless you get lucky. It's actually already past the initial estimate they gave me and emailing got me a response of not being able to estimate a date of when I'll receive my order

• by striking on 10/6/14, 3:09 AM

  Lee Hutchinson of Ars Technica added vanilla extract (and purple food coloring) to his Soylent. If you're interested, here's the rest of the article: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/09/ars-does-soylent-the-...

• by frabrunelle on 10/6/14, 3:23 AM

  I've tried eating Soylent 1.0 almost exclusively for two weeks and I really enjoyed it. I wish I could have access to more Soylent, but I live in Canada and Soylent is very rare. I used a blender to mix the Soylent and I added frozen strawberries and sometimes mangos, peaches or bananas. I also sometimes added soy milk. I am also open to try adding other ingredients to Soylent, but I would need more Soylent.

  Frankly, I would easily eat it for 90%-100% of my meals. They said in a recent email that they are going to ship to Canada in March 2015...

  What I like the most about it is that it's easy to prepare and when I prepare one pouch, I have enough to drink/eat for almost two days. Also, I think it tastes really good. And I love the vision of the company.

• by JeffL on 10/6/14, 5:26 AM

  I've been adding a couple of tablespoons of dark chocolate cocoa powder. The first couple of days, I was kind of barely choking it down, but by day 4, I woke up with a strong craving for it. Now, just over a week into it, I would classify it as mostly neutral in taste and don't mind it at all. I certainly enjoy the ease of pouring a glass from the pitcher in the fridge as opposed to making a sandwich for lunch.

  By the way, it really does seem to turn out a lot better if you mix it with room temperature water as the brochure suggests, and also mixing an entire pitcher by shaking seems to come out way smoother than when I was trying to mix just a glass or when I tried to mix it in a blender.

• by scottlocklin on 10/6/14, 4:51 AM

  I find it amazing that people take this idiotic idea seriously. Newsflash: there has always been protein shakes. Stuff you can buy at GNC is almost certainly a lot better for you than this garbage.

• by nathairtras on 10/7/14, 3:33 AM

  I would try it before worrying about fixing the taste. It really isn't that bad. Nor is it that good. It just kind of... is. Been drinking it for around three days, not exclusively, and the best I can say is that it tastes deliberately inoffensive. Which in my mind is a plus.

• by shepardrtc on 10/6/14, 3:25 PM

  Buy a tub of EAS chocolate protein powder. $20 for 2 lbs.

  Just mix a scoop of that with some water (I do about 4oz), and then pour that mixture into your normal amount of Soylent. Mix the result and serve. Makes it much more palatable.

• by sytelus on 10/6/14, 5:20 AM

  Can this solve world hunger? I'm guessing making this as non-profit and using the labor and material in under developed countries, may be this can be produced with even lower price or even given away free. Any balanced meal that can be given away free on massive scale can potentially solve the world hunger. In fact it can change world for real. Once food problem is solved, people can live anywhere without worrying about jobs. That even might solve problem of slums and housing. Sure, one still needs sanitation and electricity and other needs like education and clothing - but food had been the most challenging of all needs.