Soylent good meal replacement for autistics?

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I've mixed my own at different times, also, and my favorite to use is Garden of Life's Raw Meal. Just ground up fruits and vegetables. If I want to add different flavor, I'll add a bit from a Raw Reserve packet of berry powder or similar. It may be pricey, but a cheap method for producing quality, processed nutritional products hasn't yet, to my knowledge, been found.

My assessment of Soylent:

And apologies if it gets too detailed, but I've found that's where you have to go to get the real scoop on what ingredients will help and which won't. Hope you enjoyed the pun.

First let me say, I am a factory-farmed human, so no good for consumption.

I think you're good with your approach of using whole food supplements. I had to download the Soylent press kit to see what their actual vitamin forms are, and they are isolated ingredients. For example, the Vitamin A is in the form of Palmitate. Look up the definition of Palmitate at medicinenet.com which states that Palmitate is a Vitamin A compound. It is an isolated nutrient. From "All About Nutritional Healing," by Judith A DeCava, CNC, LNC: "In virtually every study on vitamin A toxicity, it is isolated, synthetic supplements that are associated with adverse effects, not foods." This article by The Health Coach covers the problems with isolated nutrients: http://thehealthcoach1.com/?p=1640. I try to avoid isolated nutrients (even though they're added to many foods) as much as possible. Strike one for me. As far as a protein powder, I've been prompted to look into Sacha Inchi seeds after reading about Aloha superfood powder. There are sites where you can buy the powder and other ingredients to fill out nutritional needs.

The company seems to be ethical, indicating that Soylent contains GMO, but anyone who believes that GMO is a non-issue just hasn't done enough research. AAEM website posts the following: "The strength of association and consistency between GM foods and disease is confirmed in several animal studies" and then cites seven studies: http://www.aaemonline.org/gmopost.html. Strike two.

And it has Canola oil in it. http://draxe.com/canola-oil-gm. Strike three for me.

Additional concerns: 1. Chinese-sourced ingredients. This may be a problem if the testing protocol isn't set up to catch problems with supplies from this company. I spoke with one nutritional company scientist who said that their testing found that one shipment of their ingredients from China was cut with shredded foam material. I think it was supposed to be a mushroom powder.

2. Enzymes. They are usually available in raw foods, but can be destroyed by heating above 116 F ( http://bodymindhealing.info/enzymes.php). Anyone know if isolated chemical nutrients can be absorbed without enzymes?

3. It contains Sucralose. The article on artificial sweeteners at http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/nutrition clarifies that Sucralose is chlorinated sucrose. Another source states: "The inventors of Splenda admit around fifteen percent (15%) of sucralose is absorbed by the body, but they cannot guarantee us (out of this fifteen percent) what amount of chlorine stays in the body and what percent flushes out" (from: http://www.splendaexposed.com/). I may be factory-farmed but draw the line at being a guinea pig.

4. Soylent contains fish oil. If it isn't being tested adequately, they won't know whether this oil has high levels of mercury or not. This testing project found measurable amounts of methylmercury in every fish oil product tested, with 3 products containing 50% or more of the allowable methylmercury content per serving: https://labdoor.com/rankings/fish-oil. I've recently found that the best sources of fish oil actually ferment the oil: http://www.greenpasture.org/public/Home/index.cfm.

5. Salicylate sensitivity? With goldfish21's insights on salicylate sensitivity, I wonder what kind of levels are in this processed product.

So with all that going for it, I'd say Soylent is directed toward factory-farmed humans like myself. I haven't been well served by the standard diet that most other factory farmed humans seem to do so well on. I was at one point able to exit this place of fatigue I experience with heavy and focused nutritional supplementation. But it was a rather expensive program, and I've been trying to find something with the same results but at lesser cost.

Is there a reason that we on WP are supposed to give a crap about this subject?


Its either non nutritious crap, or its nutrtuous bland baby food for adults.
Either way-who cares?
So at best it competes with Ensure for patients with their guts being cut out by surgeons. So what?
This is an autistic website. Not GI surgery website.

What does being autistic have to do with needing/wanting pablum?

If you don't like the thread, there are plenty of other threads that may interest you. Just don't poop on this one for the rest of us, please.

I stated in a previous response precisely why this is relevant to my own autistic experience.

I prefer to eat real food like a burger a salad or something this new Soylant product could be people!

If they could make one with all-good ingredients that tasted like a blueberry yogurt smoothie, and it was inexpensive, I'd have that for dinner a lot! This idea of making your own is interesting, too. You could work out a complete nutrition program by combining 2 or three homemade drinks, smoothies, and juices.

Until then, could try small batches with real ingredients: http://recipes.menshealth.com/Recipe/hi ... shake.aspx

Good whey source: http://www.teraswhey.com/goat-whey/
and this yogurt is amazingly good. Pricey but if you get the blueberry flavor, don't need any blueberries: http://www.redwoodhill.com/goat-yogurt/

Can usually find some kind of whey protein in bulk sections of supermarkets. Usually cow milk whey, though.

And I use vanilla flavor instead the extract. The extract seems bitter to me. So do walnuts. Hmmm, I wonder what this would be like with mango juice instead of pomegranite juice. Blueberry-mango. Not good food combining, but I imagine very tasty.

I've been drinking Soylent for ~2/3 of my daily calories for about 5 months now. I love it - it's pretty much life-changing. I have periods where I eat more or less normal food (over the holidays I barely drank any Soylent at all), but I don't think I'll ever go back to having normal food as the main part of my diet.

I knew it would be perfect for me because I had been eating the same thing for breakfast and dinner every day anyways for like 10 years, and mostly just out of convenience and laziness. The monotony doesn't bother me at all.

I'm sure Soylent is not as healthy as a perfectly designed, raw/organic/whatever real food diet, but it's certainly a lot better than what I had been eating. And it's a million times easier, too.

I think the best thing is that I don't have to think about how I'm going to get calories. I don't have to worry about going grocery shopping unless I want something specific (pretty much "extras" like fruit, veggies, snacks and OJ). If I'm going to be out all day, I just grab an apple and mix up some extra Soylent to bring in a thermos - no more wasting money on fast food or eating out at lunch (unless I want to).

The OCD or something in me also really enjoys how it comes in these neat little boxes, in neat little pouches with neat little bottles of oil. I like looking at my boxes of Soylent and thinking "that's all I need!" No need to waste time cooking or thinking about what to cook. The survivalist/prepper in me also enjoys having a big stockpile of food that will keep for a long time.


It's obviously not for everyone, but as soon as I learned about Soylent I knew it would be perfect for me.

***I think it's kind of dumb to force yourself to consume only Soylent. A lot of people seem to try going 100% and then say "I liked real food too much". So eat real food... I just use Soylent to answer the question of "what should I eat next?" If I want to eat something, I'll eat it. The thing is that usually I just don't care, and those times I default to Soylent.

I wonder if anyone has tried making Soylent with coffee instead of water. You could get your nutrients AND your caffeine at the same time!

Well, boy, I feel dumb. When I read the title I was like,

"Why would you feed aspie people people?" I didn't know it was real.

I think other people could like it (non-people soylent), but it's not for me. I like food. I like sugar, salt, coffee, etc. I do see how it would make someone's like simpler.

Aside from my sugar addiction, my diet is pretty clean when I'm no on the road. I do a lot of cooking from scratch. For example, my main dietary staple is beans with rice. I eat a lot of fruits and veggies.

Here's a question. Would anyone here buy a premix? Flavors people would like?

I'm still waiting for a lasagna flavored smoothie mix, with shrooms and ricotta cheese.

It sounds repulsive and I wouldn't want it near my mouth.

Sorry to hijack an old thread but it was the only one I found.

I spent a week on Soylent 1.4 and just ordered another month's supply. This stuff made my life so much better!

I've always had issues with hunger and eating poorly. I'm hungry ALL THE TIME and it often gets worse after eating. So I try to eat more to not be hungry. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. I tried a variety of diets that were supposed to be healthy but nothing stuck. The only thing that kind of worked was one where I basically only eat one big meal once a day but that was hard to stick to. In the end I always wind up going back to fast food and buffets. Any junk food near me gets demolished and I have a strong craving for diet sodas. I'm over 40 so it's finally starting to catch up to me, luckily it's only weight and cholesterol so far, no blood sugar issues. I was only getting mild enjoyment from food, mostly it was a pain to deal with.

Then I tried Soylent. After 2 days my hunger was gone! Even when I'm due for my next shake I didn't feel like I needed it, it was just time so I chugged it down. I had good energy, slept well, was regular, and had less gas than before. Cleaning and refilling the daily jug takes about 5 minutes. I no longer seem to need the diet soda either. I used to always have one with me while on the computer but now I just don't need it. A glass of water suits me just fine. As a test I had two normal dinners in the middle of the week. I was worried that any deviation from the shakes would cause my hunger to come back but it didn't. I just pushed my shake mixing ahead by several hours and kept going.

I was off it for 4 days before my next shipment arrived and it SUCKED! The hunger came back.

This stuff is definitely not for those who have a satisfying food life. There's really no enjoyment to it at all. The taste was mildly unpleasant at first, now it's basically neutral. I found normal food to mostly be a hassle, so the idea of getting rid of 90% of my meals was appealing to me.

For those who tried it months ago or read something bad about it in the past, 1.4 is out and is a significant change.

I had a full blood workup several weeks ago and will get another one in a month or two. I can't imagine I'll be worse off than I was before given how bad my diet was.

1.4 does not contain canola or fish oil. The oils I see listed on the ingredients are sunflower, flax seed, safflower, and algal.

It has sucralose but they say it is a "very small amount" for flavoring and is the last ingredient listed on the package.

They still use Chinese and GMO ingredients.