Day 4: Hangover Soylent...Is Better Than You Think!

This past weekend was a great combination of ribfest and welcome back parties. Which meant back to back late nights and a fair bit of drinking. I've learned two things: 1.  alcohol is poison and 2. soylent is pretty good hangover food. I don't have a strong enough background in nutrition to comment on the physiologic mechanism, but I certainly felt a lot better having my morning Soylent compared to eggs or toast or what have you.  I didn't have any issues drinking it (it was as objectionable as any other food would have been) and it didn't irritate my stomach at all. All told, I'm really happy with it so far, especially after a couple of mornings where I would have been functionally unable to cook otherwise.

I've also been experimenting with different amounts of added water to change the consistency, and so far I've tried 2,3 and 4 cups of water per People Chow recipe. Two cups is too few (texture too much like gruel), and I couldn't really tell the difference between 3 and 4 cups. I'm still waiting on my scale to arrive from Amazon, so I'll hold off on more experimenting until I can fine tune the ingredients a bit more. Here's what a day's worth of powder mix looks like:

Day 1: Morning

I made 2000 calories worth of Soylent yesterday, a process that took about 10 minutes, at least 5 of which were spent Googling the densities of various supplements. See, like most people who are not pot dealers, I do not have a small enough kitchen scale to really measure out 6g of potassium citrate or some such. I ended up approximating using the densities of the various powders and converting to tea/tablespoons, but that's not exactly a precise science. This is sort of troubling actually, and a big knock to the DIY stuff, because pure elemental supplements like potassium and choline are toxic in large amounts. I really wouldn't want to be taking 2-3x the recommended daily dose for weeks at a time or something because math, but whatever. This is the first day, I probably didn't screw up enough to cause any harm.

The recipe that I used didn't indicate how much water to use, so I added ~4 cups to the powder and blended everything on the highest setting. The final mixture ended up a bit watery, but actually takes up way less volume than I was expecting (I bought 4x1L bottles, and an entire day's worth clocks in at just under 1L). It went in the fridge overnight to chill, and that was that.

I tried the first batch this morning, and this is what it looked like;

Photo credit to my lovely girlfriend, who is patiently rolling her eyes as I try this


It tastes...like advertised. Imagine tortilla chips put in a blender and liquified, then chilled. It's not unpalatable, and doesn't have any appreciable aftertaste (one of my least favourite parts of a lot of off-the-shelf protein powders). The texture is a bit gritty, but it isn't objectionable. You certainly COULD chug a day's worth in one go, but I suspect that you'd feel sick well before you got through half the bottle. I had ~250 mL (500 cal or so) and almost immediately felt full. The wateriness didn't end up mattering in the end, but I'll try less water tomorrow.

Couple of other points:

• Need smaller Nalgenes; the 1L ones are too big. The 500/750 mL ones are probably better, especially if you do what I did and split it into a breakfast+lunch and snack+dinner bottle
• I need a better kitchen scale. Back of the envelope calculations for supplements probably will not take me very far, especially if I ever go on this full-time

Day 0: The Beginning

I don't generally have the energy to blog about things (because who has time), but a friend convinced me to order Soylent a couple of months ago, and I wanted a way to quickly offer comments on my experience. Sadly, official Soylent is suffering from a number of production delays, so I haven't gotten my hands on any yet (it's not technically legal in Canada right now either, but there are ways around that). I split an order with two other guys, so we'll be receiving ~80 meals worth of official Soylent at some point(tm). What I *do* have, is some People Chow, which in reality looks like a large Amazon branded box with bags of white powder in it. I also invested in a fancy blender, some extra large Nalgene bottles and a negotiated cease-fire with my girlfriend. Tomorrow I will try to DIY half a day's worth of meals with Soylent - I'll make an entire day of People Chow, but only eat (drink?) half. I haven't really done my due diligence on this, beyond reading some ArsTechnica and New Yorker profiles of Soylent a couple of months ago, so I'll be going into this completely blind. Yep, best way to do it.

I'm trying this for a couple of reasons. One is portion-control - it's nice to be able to get a very fine-tuned amount protein/calories - and the other is convenience. I don't feel like carrying an actual lunch to the hospital, but something that takes 5 minutes to prepare and can feed me for a day sounds right up my alley. This certainly won't replace real food for me (because I really enjoy both food and cooking), but will probably replace the meals that I eat just not not be hungry anymore. I'm looking to assess Soylent (both the DIY stuff and the official kind) mostly with regards to those criteria. I'll obviously comment on the other stuff (how it makes me feel, how it tastes) but that's not a big deal, unless it makes it impossible for me to consume it for some reason. First impressions tomorrow.