Soylent Ingredient Breakdown from a Food Scientist

in food •  8 years ago 

Hi Everyone, my name is Andrew, I'm a Canadian Food Scientist and former top writer on Quora, but The future is Steemit of course!

https://www.quora.com/profile/Andrew-Roberts-7 is my Quora if anyone wants to see why Steemit is better than Quora :D

I wanted to share my thoughts on Soylent with everyone since I bet there are a few users in this community.

Read my ingredient breakdown below to find out why there are no beets in soylent, even if Soylent thinks there are.

Soylent is a new player in an old market. They are not the inventors of the meal replacement.

The idea of a meal replacement has been around for decades. Slimfast, Boost and Ensure being the household names. Meal replacements contain a blend of all of the major nutrient groups (protein, fat, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals) in simple formats like drink mixes or bars. Meal replacements are so unoriginal that their nutrient content ranges for almost every nutrient is tightly regulated in both Canada and the US. This is why the best way to compare them is by their nutrient sources (ingredients).

A review of Soylent's nutrient profile and ingredients do not set it apart from the crowd in the meal replacement world. The major difference between soylent and most others is their focus on marketing to tech community and young professionals. Traditionally meal replacements were more likely to be marketed to weight loss program participants, athletes and those with restrictive diets or digestive issues. I wonder if Soylent genuinely thought they invented the concept of Meal replacements during their crowdfunding or they just hit the perfect demographic of customers who had never heard of the concept.

An Ensure Meal Replacement ad, quite a different look.

Soylent 1.5 Powder (drink mix) Ingredient Breakdown:

Protein:

The major categories of meal replacement beverages are differentiated primarily based on their protein inputs. The most common are Dairy (like most Slimfast, Ensure, Boost products) and Vegan (Soylent, Garden of Life, Vega, others).

Rice Protein - Most vegetable protein sources have a naturally inferior amino acid profile to meat, dairy and egg proteins, but of course there are many reasons to prefer vegetable protein. Rice protein is often mixed with complimentary proteins in similar products, Rice, Pea and Hemp is a popular protein mix. Soylent 1.5 uses only rice protein which raises question about the protein quality if consumed every day as rice is low in lysine. Amino acid score is definitely something I would ask about if consuming this daily.

Carbohydrates:

Maltodextrin - A source of carbohydrates, plain and simple. This is usually sourced from Corn or Tapioca. It is basically starch that has been enzymatically broken down to smaller, sweeter, smoother molecules. Definitely not a premium carbohydrate source, but adds good mouthfeel and sweetness. It is also the carrier for many ingredient powders for foods that just don't want to try into powders on their own(oil powders, etc). This is one of the cheapest food ingredients available. Consumers don't like to see it, but it makes these drinks sweet and smooth.

There are no beets in Soylent, explained below. A pile of white sugar would be more accurate.

Isomaltulose - Isomaltulose is an further produced carbohydrate made from beet sugar. Soylent's main page has a picture of a table beet, (the red vegetable beet). Beet sugar is a white beet from which pure sugar (99.9% sucrose) is extracted. There are no 'beets' as we call them, or that pictured in Soylent. This is a mistake on their part. This type of misunderstanding of ingredient information is common when a third party formulates a food product as is likely the case here. Making a meal replacement is as easy as calling any dry blend manufacturer and asking for one, naming the ingredients you want.

A Sugar Beet:

Oat flour - Plain and simple, a source of carbohydrates and fibre. Oats are a nice touch and can be gritty when raw, so credit to them for gaining a smooth texture with oats.

Modified Food Starch - Most likely used as a thickener in this application. I'm surprised they did not disclose the type. Yes, they are allowed to not disclose. Likely Corn.

Fats:

Canola and Sunflower Oil - A source of fatty acids and calories (energy). Canola gets a bit of a bad rap these days due to often being from a GMO crop.

LifesDHA powder - A source of DHA omega 3 fatty acids. A nice touch that this is vegan sourced (from Algae)

The Rest

Rice Starch - A source of carbohydrates. Rice based protein beverages and meal replacements have sometimes flagged concerns for heavy metal (arsenic) content. I'd double check with the manufacturer that levels are controlled for if you plan on consuming soylent daily.

Soy Lecithin - An emulsifier and source of fat. Likely GMO.

Salt - Sodium is an essential nutrient. Meal replacements must contain a significant amount of every nutrient.

Cellulose Gum - A processed cellulose product, often sourced from wood/paper.

Xanthan - Micro-biologically produced thickener, added for mouthfeel.

Carrageenan - Seaweed sourced gum, added for mouthfeel.

Value

A 1 month supply, or 28 meals of Soylent is priced at $54 in Canada. This is a comparable cost to super-premium brands like Garden of Life Raw Meal, which offers pluses such as organic certification, additional powdered fruit and vegetable ingredients and a wide variety of sprouted grains.

Buy or Pass?

Soylent is a new player in an old market but that is not how they see themselves. Their management might genuinely believe they came up with the idea of meal replacements, but they definitely have not perfected them yet. Unfortunately for their consumers, their major innovation has been to the marketing of their product, the contents are very mediocre quality ingredients. I expect they will continue to serve their segment of the market well and improve products. They are missing out on a decent chunk of consumers who seek Non-GMO products.

If I were in the market for a meal replacement today, I would choose the quality and varied ingredients of a premium retail brand such as Garden of Life. That being said, everyone has a different tolerance for the often bad flavour and mouthfeel of vegetarian meal replacements so if you can find one you like, stick with it.

P.S. Eating real food is more fun!

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This is actually a very informative post. My homie @kylo.ren drinks soylent as a part of his diet and they've always been tweaking their formula almost like Github update their releases patch by patch..

@andrewfoodist I enjoyed this post and read well is extremely valuable for others

Read the last paragraph of the article then try again.

👍nice post @andrewfoodist

This is a popular drink among developers and at hackathons :)

bullshit

bullshit to who @sirloins. can you please detail your concerns what you mean by this?

Someone just skimming the article may actually think this is some kind of health food. Why a food scientist has taken any time to discuss this I don't understand. (other than he is actually promoting it) You stated this was a popular drink at hackathons. This struck me as supporting the idea that the product is a good thing. These concerns would have been better directed at the original author. If you haven't seen the movie Soylent Green then you may not share my sentiments.

I wouldn't buy this shit... it's made from people. Yuck...

(also I saw a rat in their warehouse on VICE or something)

They have an open source database and a useful interface for submitting and browsing alternative Soylent recipes, many of which are GMO Free and/or Organic, among countless other recipes that account for various dietary restrictions.

  ·  8 years ago (edited)

...They even calculate the Nutrition Facts and have recipes categorized by Nutrient Profiles.

Great article. I don't consume anything like this, but obviously others do, so I'm glad to see you breaking it down for them. I'm a real food proponent, and yes I saw your P.S. :) I make chicken stock, pickles, water kefir, cereal, yogurt, sourdough, etc. Working on a post about baby steps to eating clean, but it's taking me forever to actually finish it. (Sigh.) Anyways...welcome to Steemit!

Strikes me as odd as to why some commenters can't understand the appeal of Soylent and similar food replacements.

Then again, I don't understand how some people still want to blame vaccines for autism even after as much evidence not showing a link and how the main source of the hysteria was proven to not only be false, but fabricated by someone trying to profit from creating the hysteria.

Anyway, Soylent is a less than ideal meal replacement - cooking your own fresh meals being ideal - but it serves a useful purpose. Like anything, do it in moderation and don't get caught up in the hype. If you do, that's your fault, it's not the fault of the marketers.

p.s. Cooking real food takes time, and sometimes either we don't have time for that or don't like to do that. Soylent ain't that bad, in moderation.

things that are good for human beings are welcome @andrewfoodist !

Hello Andrew, you got one thing wrong in your analysis which led to another mistake near the end - Soylent is not a meal replacement. Unlike Slimfast and Garden of Life, Soylent is a food item. It would be like calling a salad a meal replacement for eggs on toast. The main difference between meal replacements and food is calories, and sometimes protein or other macronutrients.

The second mistake is your value comparison. $60 Garden of Life meal replacement does get you 28 of what they call meals - which is equivalent to 3500 total kcal. $54 of Soylent gets you 28 of what they call meals - or 14000 kcal. That means Soylent, analyzed as a food item, is about 4x less expensive.

RE: GMOs, the company is solidly pro-GMO and I don't see them changing any time soon.
edit: as an fyi 1.5 is not being produced any more, their current powder is 1.6. There was some major change, rice protein is now completely out.

Thanks for having a post that adds some value to the discussion. I wish people were more likely to give comments like yours a thumbs up even if it doesn't agree 100% with what either they or the OP is saying. Comments that simply pile on the love without saying anything shouldn't be upvoted so much, IMO. Let's promote valuable discussion and different viewpoints by giving useful comments more love.

very helpful!

  ·  8 years ago (edited)

Good to see content from a new domain! I just watched a documentary on Soylent the other day and was curious about an expert point of view.

- this is the documentary on Motherboard

I agree with most people here that real food is great but when you have to choose between a wholesome breakfast and getting to work on time you will eventually find a shake is the right balance between time to prepare and being filling

Soylent is my shake of choice because it has the best $ to calorie ratio

Very good information! I'm glad I have not invested in this product! I was very curious to try it.

Now this is a useful post! This is what I want to see more of on this site. Have an upvote.

I prefer fruits and vegetables more than those garbage drinks and so-called supplements. People lived before and they were very much happy in terms of health if we compare past life with today. So, I'm agree with your P.S :)

Agreed, never drink them myself

At least its "natural" all of those energy drinks are the worst, its nothing but a cocktail of dangerous chemicals and acording to some the devil.

LOL at that GIF...

Wow! I would not have guessed this and I am sure a lot of others are in the same boat. Exposing the fallacies of food products claims could be a very interesting topic for you. May I suggest posting about Pom wonderful, because it has a large advertising market and is quite expensive for what it actually gives the consumer. Also an interesting study would be on some of the different energy drinks and if there are any safe healthy ones in the long term (XS energy from amway would be a great study as well to refute or proclaim the statements surrounding the drink.)


Best of luck and will follow you as I am very interested in the health benefits of these products and similar ones on the market.

Thanks for the suggestions, ill look into it! Ill make sure to tag you when done.

Thatd be great. Everyone can learn a lot from this sort of entertaining/educational format and you clearly have the knowledge to back it up

I try to stay away processed food if I can. It's hard nowadays.

NICE POST

  ·  8 years ago (edited)

Soylent's main page has a picture of a table beet, (the red vegetable beet).Beet sugar is a white beet from which pure sugar (99.9% sucrose) is extracted. There are no 'beets' as we call them, or that pictured in Soylent. This is a mistake on their part. This type of misunderstanding of ingredient information is common when a third party formulates a food product as is likely the case here.

I can't decide you actually believe that, but I certainly don't

  ·  8 years ago (edited)

Funny how the words Soylent Green never appear in this article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green) Not everybody has seen the movie. The choice of name for this is an obvious red flag and never mind the GMO ingredients.

Then there's the company's founder Rob Rhinehart (https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/29/offhisgrid/)

So why would you devote much eloquent writing to this company when a single paragraph would have sufficed to dismiss the product altogether? unless of course you are actually promoting the product ??

Haha! That was my first thought as well. When I read the title, I really thought it was a parody article for the movie. I didn't know a real company was named Soylent. Man, what a bad choice of a name.

Every time I see Soylent, I think of that old dude on the gurney about to be made into food. That is not good consumer brand recognition on any level.

This stuff is great. It's very filling and provides a lot of energy. It's by far my favorite breakfast option. I mix it with chocolate syrup and it tastes fine.

This is a super informational post. I can relate to this post because I have done research on food science --
Thanks for clarifying protein,carbs, and fats!

Thank you, if you have any questions or ideas you'd like me to look into that may appeal to the community please let me know.

I recommend putting down some meal plans or even like just healthy delicious recipes

MAY CONTAIN TRACE AMOUNTS OF EDWARD G ROBINSON.

You mean...IT'S NOT PEOPLE????? LOL
Nice article

We have more hight technology and we have product more kind of foods,
But in my opinion its better if we are eating natural food from natural product without touch by machine, technology, farmer medicine and I am sure our food from the natural is more healthy and more using full for our body and protect us from the something bad for our body

Did you hear about http://hermicity.org? This guy was trying to create a self-sufficient community, that would have drones drop ship soy lent to feed the community, paid for by ethereum, an interesting idea to say the least!

Thanks for your article.

Here, on the eastern block, things like soylent have never arrived and even food supplements are a rare sight. Food comes from the ground, goes fresh on the stove , ends up in my belly and goes back where it came from. A neverending cycle of eating your dung. :D

Well, natural things are good for health and best in terms of vitamins and all other things. When you eat too many local crap then you might end up in sitting next to the door of toilet and your wife will ask, hey what happened? why you are spreading bad smell after every few minutes.... LOL

I don't know why anyone would choose to drink these things, aside from the fact it looks like something my cat threw up..I guess soylent and that cat poo coffee are a testament to the power of the marketing and fad addictions

Dude it's pretty awesome that you live in the neighbouring city. Anyway, how does Raw Meal taste?

what it can to diet drinks?

Though do have a question, hope you are able to answer this: Is this similar to Herbalife? What makes it different between these two?

Can i do my own Soylent?

Yes, I think you want to google for "Keto Soylent" if my memory serves correctly

Wow this was a very upscale post sir!I'm very into protein intake and quality of my food and this has so much information. Thanks for the share @andrewfoodist I look forward to much more from you!

Our food problems were all solved 7 years ago.

I'm wondering why GMOs are inherently bad in the mind of a lot of people. Not saying I'm an expert on the matter but from what i've read so far GMOs don't automatically lead to problems and are sometimes even beneficial in many ways. I'd like to hear some opinions on this

I absolutely agree on this topic, eating real food is more fun :)

Interesting as I have looked at this and many other choices especially after having Meningitis last year. My concern would be what nutrients are lacking and toxins present. Certainly better fat and protein sources. But could be good for many people to fill in their diet. Great job writing.

Interesting post! Thank you!

Hi @andrewfoodist I'm currently making a documentary about food replacements such as Soylent. I will live on these types of foods for 1 year.

I'm really curious about the potential risks I'm looking at for the coming year. More specifically I'm wondering if you could tell me anything about the nutritional aspect?

One of my American buddies swears by the stuff, and was very patient about the torrent of "made of people!" jokes this attracted. It's really cool to see it all broken down like this (and that you've resisted the obvious joke).

  ·  8 years ago Reveal Comment