hckrnws

> he will join Starco’s board and is getting shares in the new company, while himself and Soylent’s shareholders will become the largest single voting block in Starco

This is a strange SPAC onto the OTC markets? Starco's biggest products (also acquisitions) are canned whip cream with vodka in it and a deodorant endorsed by Kobe Bryant. They have a $44m market cap.

What does that suggest about the valuation soylent received through this acquisition?

Noting they raised $133m in capital.

The 8-K says an aggregate of up to 165,336,430 restricted shares of Class A common stock. The share price of Starco is currently $0.20 but was closer to $0.10 last year. There are other details in the 8-k but best guess is the deal was valued around $25m.

I've been using this for breakfast for years now. Hope the acquisition doesn't mess up a good thing. And, hell, congratulations are in order I suppose. I will credit Soylent with helping change the way I thought about food.

I liked Soylent for a little while, but something about the mixture of fiber and liquid was something that my stomach very much did not like in terms of indigestion. I eventually gave up on it, and haven't heard much about it at all over the past 2-3 years.

They drifted from their stated purpose early. It’s little more than a brand now.

Makes sense to finally finish selling out. They let down their core audience a long time ago.

It used to be a powder, exclusively.

They still sell the powder.

The problem from what I read is that the powder market is just too small and there isn’t much more space to expand.

They apparently still sell both the bottled version and the powder version.

(I stopped giving a damn when I got married. Cooking for 3 people is a different story than cooking for 1.)

They sell a powder long diverged from the older formulations.

For better or worse?

Depends who you ask.

Based upon the community that developed around recreating the earlier formulas with a recipe and product lists, I’d say for the worse.

Based upon individual accounts of those I know, largely worse.

Some might like the changes.

It is far easier to buy the liquid form than the powder, so that says plenty as well.

I remember liking the liquid drink they sold back in early 2016. Have you heard anything about the drinks getting worse too?

I have not consumed soylent in years.

Many competitors and community recipes.

I've tried Joylent and Huel. Soylent 1.5 is still my favorite. Probably a similar diy recipe I could try. Speaking of DIY Soylent, I wonder if this new company will still be into that.

Every revision of Soylent made it more unpleasant for me (but better for my wife). They seemed to optimize mouth-feel over taste, and it was undrinkable for me somewhere around 1.5

Their goal was to make it as bland as possible for a while under the premise that if it had any flavor, you'd get tired of it. Though the 1.0 was pretty fishy - in the sense it tasted of fish, not suspicious.

Fish oil additive will do that.

Those were the days.

I enjoyed both 1.2 and 1.3, not sure what it tastes like now but heard the shelf life has dropped due to the changes.

I also tried out Soylent with similar results, but I figured it was just the nature of the product. I then tried Huel, Joylent, Mana, and Super Body Fuel - none had the gastrointestinal problems of Soylent. Good branding, marketing, and distribution; terrible product.

I’ve had the opposite reaction - on days when my acid reflux bothers me and makes eating seem not fun, I have no problem ingesting a bottle of Soylent (Original flavor)

Made my heart feel like it was going to explode.

Yep, me too. The recipe I was drinking had a high amount of potassium in it. There isn’t a strict guideline on how much potassium you should consume, so there tends to be plenty of it in soylent or similar drinks/powders (I’m not sure I actually ever checked official soylent, but those available to me at the time) for some reason probably due to manufacturing convenience.

I always figured it was this high potassium content that caused heart problems for some. Gave up on the concept after realising this and the heart issue never going away.

Does anyone have recommendations for meal replacement drinks like Soylent? I've been consuming Ample exclusively Monday-Friday for quite a while but it's super expensive. I've been looking at Huel since it's much cheaper but looking for opinions, especially from people who have tried both.

I tried Soylent before but I felt hungry pretty much immediately afterward.

I've been a fan of Queal[0] for numerous years now. When these meals became popular I tried out a handful, and ended up liking Queal the most. Have stuck with it ever since.

A couple years back I tried out Huel, but I didn't quite get used to the flavoring. I find Queal's to be much less artificial-feeling and subtler. But it's probably all subjective.

- [0] https://queal.com/

Soylent has a low Glycemic Index which might be why you don't feel full after consuming, despite having enough calories intake: https://soylent.com/blogs/news/soylent-has-a-low-glycemic-in...

Does any other meal replacement product have a published Glycemic Index number?

My best experience is with Huel Black (the high-protein one) for satiety.

However it has huge cons compared to Soylent: it tastes a little bad (as opposed to Soylent, which can be described as mostly inoffensive) and has the mouthfeel and texture of watery sand. Also, it's not intended to be your only food source.

I’ve had both many times, and with Soylent I experienced the exact same problem you’ve described. I tried to go “full Soylent” in college and I could drink 3000 calories of it and still feel hungry.

A couple of years ago I tried Huel Black and loved it. It’s way more satiating, healthier, and I actually enjoyed the taste. Unlike Soylent, it actually feels like food. I look forward to having it for breakfast each day.

My favorite flavors are Coffee Carmel and Chocolate. I highly recommend Huel Black over the regular Huel. Steer clear of the Cinnamon Roll flavor.

I canceled Soylent a couple of years ago after two silently-failing billing errors within a year and a rude customer service response. Looking for replacements, I ended up going with Huel.

It's been fine; I have had a couple of bad batches (too salty / bitter), but they replaced them. Switching from Soylent's ready-made drinks to Huel's mix-with-water powder was a small adjustment, but Huel's shaker bottle makes it easy. Soylent was fine unflavored for me (I'd describe it as "cheerio milk"), but with Huel their "original" flavor wasn't doing it for me so I've been ordering the chocolate. It's 1g of sugar, which doesn't bother me.

I'm just using it for a daily breakfast shake. I've never been that hungry in the mornings so can't comment on if you'll feel sated by it, but it works for me as a way to get some easy nutrition.

With Soylent, I found that if I wait until I'm hungry, I will still be hungry after I drink a glass. If I drink it before I get hungry, I don't get hungry.

Instead of my usual mealtimes of 8am, 1pm, 6pm I drink Solent at 8am, 12pm and 4:30pm; then I don't feel hungry throughout the day.

I've used Super Body Fuel on and off, and always been happy with the product. I haven't tried many others, so I can't really compare

Ensure?

When you say you tried soylent before, was it the powder or the liquid? The two are quite different.

It was the liquid.

Jimmy Joy, Supersonic, Yfood, Mana.

Huel’s quality control is …. Creative

Meaning?

I understood the powder and the mission to be super cheap nutrition but then they pivoted to expensive bottled drinks and marketed it to yuppies.

I don't get how they are different from ensure outside of the marketing

Ensure isn't vegan

Ensure sells a vegan version now.

I had no idea. Thank you

Contains Sunflower Oil and Canola Oil. Would much rather be consuming dairy fats.

Can you explain your thoughts? I remember there being some concern about the health impacts of seed oils, but I'm not finding anything conclusive. This article seems to cover quite a few arguments:

https://www.consumerreports.org/healthy-eating/do-seed-oils-...

The extraction process turns the oil rancid but it's supposedly okay because there is a process to remove the bad odor. The main concern is that when heated polyunsaturated fats convert to transfats which are bad; the article claims it's fine to cook with as you're renewing the oil frequently but I have doubts it's safe as they admit the process is still happening. Old fryer oil smells odly nasty - do you want even a fraction of that in your home cooking?

Anecdotally, a family member gets headaches from consuming uncooked sunflower oil but olive oil and other fats are fine. I noticed this years before the anti seed oil memes.

Virgin olive oil (not the mafia fake crap) is really great, as is beef tallow.

That's pretty interesting since in my home country, Morocco, cooking with virgin olive oil is not recommended at all.

In fact, even in though my family has owned olive tree farms for centuries we still make sure to buy "modern oil" (as it is called in moroccan) for cooking even if fresh, pure olive oil is available in literal tons. I've heard that it is mostly a persistent myth, and olive oil is perfectly safe for cooking (even at high temps), but my mom would still never let me cook or fry anything with olive oil :). Interesting contrast!

In Spain everyone and their mother cooks / fries with olive oil. Nonetheless, there’s this idea that we shouldn’t be doing it as much, but mainly because of the strong flavor and low smoke point; better to cook with other oils and then add olive oil for the flavor if needed.

Ideally you would cook with a saturated fat like tallow, lard, coconut fat etc as they don't have a double bond to break. Monounasturated fat like (real) olive oil at least has fewer double bonds than polyunsaturated fats (seed oils). Cheaper olive oil is extracted with heat and solvents or even blended with seed oil.

not sure that tallow and lard are necessary, but here's an interesting article that does suggest frying with saturated fats such as coconut oil or ghee, or alternatively, unrefined mustard seed or canola oil. It also has a table with data for several kinds of fats. The disadvantage to animal-derived fats, according to this, is the long-chain saturated fatty acids.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4990724/

Interesting table - very easy to see which fats are the worst. It's a pity they don't include animal fat in there but I guess it's all from an Indian context. Coconut seems like a good option but it can still go rancid if you don't refrigerate it. Some the early citations [2 &3] are not the best quality as they are based on questionaries. In the Minnesota Coronary Experiment which involved 9400 institutional participants eating controlled meals they found that cutting saturated fat can reduce blood cholesterol but that doesn't actually make one live longer. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/records-found-in-...

Is it with virgin olive oil? And yes you might be right, the taste is much stronger with olive oil. It might be just that, but now I realized I never asked my mom why we don't do it!

Cooking with virgin olive oil is fine and may actually be more safe relative to other common oils.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092422442...

https://actascientific.com/ASNH/pdf/ASNH-02-0083.pdf

It would be a shame to have evidence-based reasoning get in the way of a wholesome campaign of demonization.

Fats have low freezing points and high freezing points. Lard (mostly saturated) has a high freezing point because it's solid at room temperature. Fish oil has a low freezing point. If fish oil (mostly unsaturated) had a high freezing point the fish couldn't move in water.

This depends on the shape. Saturated fats are long and stack on top of each other, making them solid easily. Monounsaturated/polyunsaturated just talks about the amount of double carbon-carbon bonds. So a carbon would attach twice to another carbon rather than having a hydrogen. These fats are crinkly shaped and have bends in them because of the double bonds. Trans fats change the orientation of hydrogen so that they're straight rather than crinkly and subsequently solid at room temperature rather than liquid.

I don't know the exact mechanism of why trans fats are bad, but it probably has something to do with them not normally being found in nature and them being straight, possibly making the body think it is a saturated fat. Just small structural changes have a big change in effect. Thalidomide, for example, was dangerous because its isomer inhibited blood vessel growth.

Now consider the diet of modern seed oils, where the majority of it is monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fat. The industrialization that allows for humans to collect a bunch of tiny seeds and squeeze all the oil out of them has existed for only a few hundred years at most. Crisco was made out of cottonseed oil, which (1) has a ton of trans fats from the hydrogenation process, (2) naturally has gossypol, a compound in that causes male infertility. Plants have a lot of compounds for natural defense. Nobody eats raw cassava because it has cyanide compounds. Only through methods such as fermentation (think cow + lumen), sun bleaching, heating, boiling, grinding, selective breeding etc. can many plant components be converted into nutrition. Egg white also has a lot of natural defense compounds/proteins, which is why egg yolk is less reactive than egg white for those with autoimmune issues.

Since unsaturated fats have double carbon-carbon bonds, it's easier for them to react with things at high temperatures. Since trans fats are now banned, vegetable oil is fully hydrogenated and interesterified. It's possible that fully hydrogenated vegetable oil isn't bad for people, but it's a comparatively new process and I wouldn't want to be the one testing it out. It's possible these processes also introduce unknown toxic substances.

In the past, people used lard, butter, tallow, or in tropical regions coconut/palm. I highly doubt something so historically used is as dangerous as something that's been created in the past hundred years, but the diet of pigs and cows are now also changed to a primarily grain fed diet, which may change their fat composition.

If you look at a lot of nutrition science, the original studies are bullshit. Not untrue, but just that they're wildly distorted. I don't consider a rat eating a processed diet and subsequently isolating a compound, then calling it a vitamin or an essential fatty acid, is in any way generalizable to humans. Now people tend to propagate things like "this has a lot of omegas," etc. without understanding the historical basis of it.

Note that there are nutritional deficiencies such as beri-beri, mangelwurzel, pellagra, B12 deficiency, that are true and real. I'm not denying the existence of vitamins. But they should not be a concern to anyone eating a diverse diet. People should avoid vitamin supplements and (1) eat enough, (2) eat with diversity, and these nutritional deficiency diseases should only be a second thought.

My current thoughts on good health practices are as follows:

- eat enough

- don't eat raw food or plants

- avoid seed oils

- avoid overly processed salted or smoked meats/vegetables

- exercise

- get enough sunlight

- don't eat liver (Tends to be the biggest accumulator of toxins in the body. Why would you eat something meant to filter out toxins? Risk of hypervitaminosis A over a long period too. Limit preformed vitamin A, such as skim milk in the USA. I don't think it's a good additive based on my research. I'm not particularly concerned about water soluble B vitamin additions, water, iodized salt, etc. but may do some more research into it later)

- don't take drugs whether they be statins, birth control, painkillers, anti-allergy, etc.

- cooking in safe pots/pans (not sure what yet, still doing research) (copper + acid = copper leaches out, non-stick degrades at high temperatures, aluminum I've heard is dangerous)

- avoid breathing in car exhaust (it's hard, but I've suspected the air quality in cities even in developed countries is much lower than people believe it is)

I might've forgotten a few here or there. A lot of pesticides accumulate in things such as eggs and milk (noted from Silent Spring). But they're probably fine in limited quantity.

The crux is that seed oils are not dangerous in small amounts, evidenced by people eating it just fine. Rather, they may be cumulative and its effects show up much later in life, so it's hard to pinpoint cause and effect.

I strongly believe that cancer, autoimmune diseases, metabolic syndrome, and other modern diseases have a definite cause and are not just "genetic" as some say, which is a hand-wavey way of minimizing culpability and lets people do nothing about it.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5d/Fa...

There's nothing wrong with sunflower or canola oil lol

Canola oil as far as I know is the most refined oil on the market. One of the processing steps adds trans fats, and another adds synthetic antioxidants because of the naturally low saturated fat content. You may be fine betting your health on a as of yet “not proven unhealthy” oil but why risk it when you can use something like olive oil which contain beneficial polyphenols and antioxidants and doesn’t need to be processed in 10 different ways to be deemed safe for consumption

bro did you see that one youtube video bro how could you eat canola oil after that do your own research man

(/s, but lightly paraphrasing a nasty conversation i had with seed oil disrespecters)

Apart from they don't taste very nice.

Soylent showed me their colors at the beginning. I don't remember where but I funded the original effort becuase they offered a stainless steel travel mug with Soylent stamped on it.

Needless to say it took forever and they never delivered the Stainless steel mug with Soylent on it. That was all I wanted I thought it was a good joke. They proved their shadiness immediately to me.

I don't see the point of this stuff.

Why not just eat food?

I love cooking, it's been a hobby since I was 11.

But not for myself, for myself is just a chore. I will gladly spend 1-3 hours in the kitchen with prep, cooking time, setting up plates and so on for loved ones or guests. For my day-to-day? I'd much rather just pop a portion of Jake Food (my favourite powdered food after trying a few different brands), shake it and drink it knowing that it's vegan and has been designed to contain most of the micronutrients and protein I need.

I used to cook all the time for myself, accruing the time of prep, cooking, and cleaning; on top of that forcing myself to eat something for days in a row that I didn't really feel like I wanted to but had to so it wouldn't spoil, I prefer to have a practical way to get the nutrition to survive.

Cooking nice food can be saved for when I can enjoy it properly. I love having my lunch hour free for myself to do what I feel like.

Food is typically more expensive per calorie than Soylent and competitors (should) be. Also requires time to shop for groceries, prepare food, wash dishes. If you're on the go these are perfect, in theory.

I lived for a month in Amsterdam in 2017 and didn't have the money to rent / book an apt with a kitchen so I stayed in hostels. The problem then became food cost, a meal in amsterdam was around 15-20$ so 3 meals a day would be around 70-80$ which was too much for me so I went with JimmyJoy which is a dutch competitor and that reduced my costs to around 6$ per day. Now it wasn't perfect, I had a LOT of gas which I managed to reduce by making the shake with mint tea but the freedom and cheapness of it made me very happy

You are comparing soylent to eating out. Most of us compare soylent to eating at home, and soylent is much more expensive. Not to mention it tastes like dirt compared to, you know, food.

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Defense_of_Food

I still find it unfathomable, that we as human beings, supposedly the smartest creatures on earth cannot figure out what to put in our mouths.

> I still find it unfathomable

Fathom this: some people make money, and lots of it, by confusing us about what to put in our mouths.

No doubt.

I haven't tried Soylent. Jimmy joy is currently 15 euros for a 950g bag which has 4000 calories, that's 3 euros for a 800 calorie meal so it should be cheaper than homemade food.

I can get about 8000 calories of rice for $5 retail at a grocery store. Granted it costs money to cook it, and you'd want to mix in other ingredients for taste and nutrition. But 800 calories for 3 euros should be doable.

For fast food, the Cheesy Bean and Rice burrito is still on the dollar menu at Taco Bell. 420 calories for $1, and a fairly complete lacto-vegetarian protein source. Buy one of those and a Fiesta Veggie Burrito ($2 for 570 calories) and you've got some vegetables too at almost $1000 calories. Make either of them Fresco and you replace the dairy with diced tomatoes, losing about 110 calories for the CBRB, and 145 calories for the FVB. Fresco only one and you still have greater than 800 calories. Maybe this isn't possible in Europe?

> I can get about 8000 calories of rice for $5 retail at a grocery store

Meal replacement shakes like Jimmy Joy / Huel / Soylent do have a lot more nutrition than just plain rice + some veggies / condiments

I'm no nutrition scientist but those Taco Bell items you pointed out don't seem like nutritionally complete meals you could eat all day. I did eat Jimmy Joy all day for a month or so and I did feel healthy but to each his own. Also didn't require me to drive 3 times a day to a Taco bell wasting time in the process, waiting in line etc.

A man has to take 2500 calories per day, that's 9.35€ per day, 280€ per month. That's much more than most people spend on food at least in the south of Europe

I live in Romania, I spend about that much on food since prices have gone up and I eat probably less than 2500 avg. I might buy more expensive ingredients though and if I bought shittier food I might go to around 200 euros but that's a stretch given how much inflation has risen produce prices.

The point isn't that you should replace all food with meal replacement shakes. You could use them while traveling to not eat out as much. You could use some for emergencies when you didn't have time to cook or ran out of groceries. You could use it at work if you have a hellish work env and an abusive boss that doesn't even grant you 30 minutes for a lunch break. Last one is a true story a bank teller told me. Granted you should quit a job like that but if for whatever reason you need to stay a while longer it's better to have a shake ready than not eat at all.

> You could use them while traveling to not eat out as much

This is about the only reason I put up with travelling, eating food in different places

> You could use some for emergencies when you didn't have time to cook or ran out of groceries.

You need to plan better.

> You could use it at work if you have a hellish work env and an abusive boss that doesn't even grant you 30 minutes for a lunch break.

Fuck 'em. Take a lunch break. Your health is more important than their clock. What are they going to do, get their own hands dirty doing your job?

> This is about the only reason I put up with travelling, eating food in different places

I would have never stayed for a month in Amsterdam if it cost me more than it did which was about 1000$. Some people have a tight budget

> You need to plan better.

Some people are young and don't have that ability yet. Or are like me, I don't care that much about food, I'd rather do something more interesting than spend 1h cooking something. I just don't care that much about how food tastes if it costs me time or money.

> Fuck 'em. Take a lunch break. Your health is more important than their clock. What are they going to do, get their own hands dirty doing your job?

Check your privilege lol. Some people live paycheck to paycheck, judging them for not having the strength to stand up to their boss isn't right imo.

At a time when my mental health was at its lowest and I was completely unable to eat anything at all, the ready to drink versions of mana, huel and plenny shake kept me alive, healthy and fit.

The time savings compared to normal food preparation and consumption are insane, if you compare it to ordering lunch to your homeoffice it usually ends up much cheaper and ultimately it's probably much healthier than the average persons diet.

It absolutely makes sense in many situations.

> At a time when my mental health was at its lowest

> The time savings compared to normal food preparation and consumption are insane

Read both of these together, slowly.

Has the penny dropped yet?

If I didn't had to eat food 3 times a day I wouldn't, and I am not the only one who thinks like that. Soylent type stuff is a shortcut to that.

Eating can be the highlight of your day if done right.

There is no legal requirement to eat 3 times a day.

Plenty of people eat once or twice a day. Some even give it a fancy name like intermittent fasting.

What could possibly be more important than eating? You know, the thing that keeps you alive, and all that?

It is geared toward people who want an inexpensive, convenient meal that theoretically contains all the nutrients you need. Some people use it as an alternative to breakfast or lunch, and some people are all in as a complete meal replacement because they don't really care about the experience of eating that much. The founder says he uses Soylent for most of his daily nutrition but will still eat out with friends. The people who use it for a complete meal replacement talk about how they have to chew gum. Otherwise, they get muscular dystrophy in their jaw.

I see the benefit of it as a convenient breakfast or lunch. I like food too much to replace all my meals with it.

To consume food you must:

Decide what to eat

Purchase the food

Prepare the food

eat the food

Clean up

All that combined with a habit of sleeping through every available moment before rushing off to the train in the morning meant that I was often skipping breakfast or eating something silly like a handful of crackers while trying to run. Taking all of those steps out of my morning was worth it for me. In that way, it's pretty similar to fast food, but it's much easier than actually swinging by Dunks.

I think it also helps as a way of conceptualizing food and convincing yourself viscerally that you won't starve if you control your portions.

Finally, I can be a picky eater sometimes and having it as an option means I'm never faced with having to starve or compromise on food choices.

People who use powdered food shakes etc. generally do eat other foods too.

As for reasons why they include powdered foods in their diet, it is often as a tool for losing weight (replacing other meals), or for bulking up (in addition to other meals), or as a lifestyle or economic choice (easy & cheap weekday breakfasts).

If you believe a significant proportion of powdered food fans eat only this stuff, you are unwittingly participating in someone’s marketing ploy.

Yes food for sure since bioavailability may be an issue.

Nutrients, minerals, fibre, and protein are there but how do they interact and how does your body respond to a slurry of it.

damn your reasonable logic!

Phew, I thought for a second Soylentnews had been acquired.