Do you use them when you don’t have time to cook or don’t want to? Do you use them to avoid gaining weight? What is your opinion about their potential health implications?

  • jaycifer@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    11 months ago

    There’s a few main aspects to these things I see: the enjoyment of drinking them, the nutrition value, and convenience. For context I’ve ordered a box of Soylent a few times a year for a few years, and my roommate has been using it (or products like Soylent such as Huel) since 2015~2016.

    Flavor/enjoyment: Plain Soylent tastes like liquid cheerios. Any flavors you find taste like liquid cheerios with flavor syrup added. To many that sounds gross, but if that sounds bearable to you then it’s worth a try. I like the flavored ones, mainly the creamy chocolate and mint chocolate, which tastes like melted ice cream.

    Nutrition: you probably know but each bottle has a decent amount of calories enriched with 20% of your daily value of vitamins and nutrients, which is neat. I’m not a health professional, but I’m guessing it’s probably healthier than taking vitamins but not as good as getting them from a source that naturally has the nutrients. For me who has maybe one bottle in a day it’s a way to keep a baseline of nutrients that I may not get from my normal diet and that aren’t covered by my vitamin supplements.

    Convenience: Having bottles is really nice if you commute. I like that when I’m headed out the door I can grab one to drink for work. I won’t be hungry or spend money on fast food. I will often be hungry by the time I’m home but as a person that tends to overeat I consider that a good thing.
    My roommate who does the shake blending himself works remote so he can often find the few minutes to put a bottle together. He’s built up a reserve of ~20 blender bottles but usually needs about a third of them for his daily drinking if we keep up on dishes. He’ll use 2-4 a day for breakfast and lunch before a solid food dinner. We also keep space for 2-3 gallons of milk for how much he makes.

    That’s all anecdotal, but I hope it gives you an idea of what daily life with the stuff may look like.