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