Soylent: Introduction

While most readers probably got here through a Google search, and thus already know what soylent (not green) is, I still feel that I should introduce this project.  I also would like to mention a few things here regarding nutrition and safety.

Soylent (not green) is a food replacement drink.  The original viable soylent was invented by Rob Rhinehart, a computer programmer who was tired of spending so much time preparing extremely unhealthy food (it was all he could afford).  The idea with soylent is that it fulfils all nutritional needs, without causing any nutrition toxicity, in the form of an easy to mix drink.  According to Rob, his soylent is "delicious," but not everyone who has tasted it agrees.  Rob's soylent is made primarily from very basic ingredients, including vitamin and mineral powders, and pure carbs, proteins, and oils.  The problem with this is that the people in the U.S. who need the benefits of soylent the most cannot afford the ingredients.

Rob found that his soylent costs approximately $1.50 per meal.  Even food stamp recipients can typically afford this, except for one problem: You cannot buy vitamin and mineral supplements on  food stamps.  In addition, while maltodextrin (the primary carb in Rob's recipe) is food stamp eligible (it is a food after all), stores that accept food stamps do not sell it.  As such, Rob's recipe is not food stamp friendly.  Likewise, many other good recipes I have found also include several ingredients (vitamin pills and such) that are not food stamp eligible.

As mentioned above, the people that need it the most cannot afford the ingredients.  This is because the people that need it the most are food stamp recipients, who do get enough benefits to afford it, but cannot buy the ingredients on their food stamps.  Most food stamp recipients in the U.S. also have jobs, so they do not get the full benefits.  The result is that their jobs pay only enough for rent and a few non-food necessities, and they are forced to buy all of their food on food stamps.  Since they do not get the full benefits, they cannot afford healthy food and end up eating high carb, low protein foods that have very low nutritional value (typically corn or refined grain based foods).  The result is that this "supplemental nutrition assistance program" (SNAP) does not actually do anything for nutrition.  Instead it provides only energy with very little nutritional value.  At $1.50 a meal, soylent would be an excellent way of stretching food stamp money a little further, while also dramatically improving nutrition.

Now, let me introduce my project: I am developing recipes for food stamp friendly soylent.  Instead of pure vitamin and mineral powders, I am using an enriched soy protein product and a number of common food products that are high in various nutrients.  All of the ingredients can be bought on food stamps (my family is currently on food stamps; I have tested this by actually buying the ingredients on food stamps).  Furthermore, I am putting a good deal of effort into making sure that my ingredients will be available in any part of the U.S. (most come from Walmart and Sam's Club; those that do not are either commonly available anywhere, or are Bob's Red Mill products that are carried by many stores).  My goal is to give food stamp recipients an option for a healthier lifestyle, without having to spend money that is needed for other necessities.


Now that the introduction is over, I would like to discuss safety.  I am not a nutritionist or any kind of food scientist.  Like Rob, I am a computer programmer.  I happen to be very good at doing research, so I do know a great deal about nutrition (mostly from doing this project).  I have tried to keep track of most of my data sources, and I intend on posting links to them all (or at least directions to find them) in a future post.

Nutrition is not a well understood topic.  The Institute of Medicine (IOM) has set some guidelines for good nutrition based on what we know.  This is where the FDA gets their nutrition recommendations.  The IOM has also set some guidelines for tolerable upper intake limits for nutrients that can become toxic in large amounts.  Note however, that all of this information is incomplete and based only on what we currently know.  Experimentally, it has been found to be accurate, however some nutrients do not have known upper limits and for others, solid recommended values have not been determined (for these, "adequate intake" is used).  My soylent recipes are based on this information.  So, based on what we currently know, my soylent recipes should be suitable as long term food replacements.  That said, because there is so much we do not know, I cannot recommend actually trying to replace food entirely with my recipes.  What I can recommend is eating real food meals at least two full days a week.  While my recipes are actually made primarily from real food ingredients (mostly in powdered form), there may be micronutrients that we are not aware of, that are necessary to the human body, which my recipes do not provide.  For normal food, these nutrients would be provided by a varied diet.  So even when replacing most food with a food replacement, variety is important.  This can be satisfied by including some real foods in your diet.

Another concern here is vitamin and mineral toxicity.  A number of vitamins and minerals are known to be toxic in large amounts.  Due to balance issues, some of my recipes approach the IOM tolerable upper intake limits.  If you only eat soylent, with nothing else, this should not be a problem.  However, if you are eating three meals of soylent, and then decide to eat a chocolate bar that same day, you will probably exceed the upper limit for calcium and manganese, if you used a recipe that is very high in calcium and manganese.  If you drink primarily Gatorade, you may go over on sodium if, on an especially hot day, you drink more than three 20fl oz bottles.  Now, if you know you are going to have some snack during the day, you can either find a soylent recipe that will balance properly with that snack, or you can adjust the recipe for that day, such that you will not exceed any limits.  For instance, if you plan on drinking a lot of Gatorade, you can reduce or eliminate the salt from the recipe for that day.  Note, however, that this should be handled very carefully, as the typical label does not list many of the potentially toxic nutrients (I emailed various companies and asked for more complete nutritional information).  When I start posting recipes, I will do my best to point out where each recipe gets close to the upper limits.  The things you should be most aware of are manganese, calcium, iron, and sodium.  I have found it difficult to get enough potassium without going over on calcium or manganese (note, however, that I have started using a small amount of potassium chloride salt substitute to make up the difference; I'll discuss this in a moment).  As such, most of my recipes are a bit close on those.  In addition, the iron in most recipes is a little high.  Note that due to an affect of calcium that can reduce iron uptake, this is not a high risk, but it is still important to avoid putting it over.  Lastly, most Americans already get far too much sodium.  My recipes put sodium right at the minimum.  Unfortunately, sodium has a fairly small range between the lower and upper limits, so it does not take much to push it over.  This can be easily mitigated, by leaving out the salt in the recipe (many of the ingredients provide small amounts of sodium, so leaving out the salt is unlikely to make you sick, unless you subsist entirely on soylent).

The moral of this story is, be careful.  I have no certifications, degrees, or anything else qualifying me to make any claims on my recipes, and I take no responsibilities for any harm that is caused by use or misuse of these recipes.  Your health is entirely your responsibility.  There are some ingredients in my recipes that may be unsuitable for certain people.  I have tried to introduce sufficient variety that there will be something for everyone, but no promises.  Some of my recipes include common allergens, for instance, freeze dried strawberries are included in some recipes.  In addition, other ingredients may be unsuitable for people with certain health conditions.  For instance, potassium chloride salt substitute is potentially toxic to people with kidney problems (as well as a range of other health conditions).  It is your responsibility to make sure that you avoid ingredients you are allergic to and that you avoid ingredients that will interfere with health problems.  (Incidentally, if you are already on a potassium supplement, make sure that it is not going to put you over.  If the supplement will put you over, you should probably discuss the use of soylent with a doctor.)

I will be posting calories and a breakdown of nutritional information for each recipe (each recipe will have its own post, which will include any concern or other things to keep in mind).  Keep in mind that some of the ingredients do not have full nutritional information available.  I have done my best to get missing information from other sources (which I will disclose), but where information is missing, care should be taken.  Most of my recipes are between 2,200 calories and 2,400 calories, so far.  If you need more calories, use corn starch and white sugar for carbs (we want to avoid putting any nutrients over their upper limit), soy protein (not one with additional nutrient supplements) for protein, and olive or canola oil for fat.  Later I will post the nutritional information for each of my ingredients.  I'll give a little more information in increasing calories correctly there.

Note also, that my recipes are based on the nutritional recommendations for men between 31 and 50 years old.  Since women in this age range have lower needs for most nutrients, the recipes should be suitable for women in this age range as well. The default recipes will cover most adults, but I plan to also create some recipes for children, since children have dramatically different requirements.  I'll check the upper limits for different adult age ranges before posting any recipes, and I will mention when they are exceeded for any age range or gender (or, I will alter the recipes to remove any problems).


Now I want to go over some "administrative" stuff.  First, the current price range, locally, for my recipes $2.84 a meal, to $1.81 a meal, when ingredients are bought in normal retail size packages.  When some ingredients (mostly spices and herbs) are bought in bulk, the prices range from $2.48 a meal, to $1.38 a meal.  In bulk, that puts the low end cheaper than Rob's $1.50 a meal.  If other ingredients are also bought in bulk, the prices should be even cheaper.  Keep in mind though, cost will vary with region, so it may be more or less expensive depending on where you live.

Next, technically, my recipes are vegetarian, but not vegan.  The only non-plant product used is powdered milk.  Note that if you want to replace the milk with a non-animal substitute, you will probably need to adjust the recipe, since the nutrient profile will be different (I actually did consider a non-animal milk substitute, however it was not high enough in potassium and some other nutrients).  I do not plan on developing a vegan recipe, because my goal is to help food stamp recipients, not vegans.

Unlike Rob, I will be specifying brands for the products.  This is, unfortunately, essential, because processing methods can impact nutrition profile.  So oat flour from one company will probably have slightly different nutrition than oat flour from another.  The only ingredients I won't specify brands for will be cocoa powder and the spices and herbs.  If you want to use a different brand, I would suggest requesting complete nutritional information for that brand, and then doing the math to make sure you are within the limits for nutrition.

Lastly, all of my measurements are in grams.  I know it would be easier with volume measurement, but this is not a good idea.  First, most of my recipes call for 1 gram of salt.  This is less than an eighth of a teaspoon and thus would be extremely difficult to accurately measure volumetrically.  Second, volume measure is inherently imprecise.  This poses a problem both for nutrients close to the lower and upper limits.  For instance, with volume measure, if your basil gets too packed, you will end up with too much manganese, while if it is too loose, you will not have enough vitamin K.  The milk powder is also especially easy to get too packed (a calcium problem) or too loose (a potassium problem).  Measuring by weight is just plain necessary to avoid a large number of problems.  Grams are used because most products are measured in grams, and grams are much more precise than ounces.  Since food scales are cheap (a quick Google search for "food scale" turned up many results for less than $10), and nearly all food scales include gram measurements, I don't think this is a problem, even for people on food stamps.  If you get a digital scale, try to get one that has at least one decimal place for the grams scale, and then measure ingredients as close to exact as possible (especially for ingredients with very small amounts; 0.1g of salt is a pretty big difference for sodium).


That should be enough information for introducing my topic.  I will publish a documents post in the near future, with all of the known nutritional information (and sources) for all of my ingredients (this will be a living document; if I add ingredients for new recipes, I will add their information).  I will also have a section with links to research that I used for certain assumptions.

Now, I have a question:  Yesterday, I realized that some people might like a recipe book for this.  Now, this project is entirely open source.  I intend to fully disclose all information that I have access to, including recipes and nutritional information for them.  Everything will be posted to my blog for free public use (besides that, food recipes cannot be protected by copyright or patent, so once they are public knowledge, they are freely usable).  That said, if there is interest in a recipe book, I am willing to design and publish one.  If this happens, I will probably self publish through lulu.com.  I will do my best to keep the price as low as possible, but if I do the work to design the book, I will want to have at least a small profit margin.  My goal is to have the price be $10.00 or less, but since I have not looked at lulu's cost breakdown recently, I won't make any promises.

So, if you are interested in a physical cookbook for my soylent recipes, please leave a comment saying so.  Note that I review comments before approving them, and if the comment is just a cookbook request, I will not approve it (to avoid clutter), but I will count it.  If I get enough interest to justify the work, I will make the cookbook and post a link to where you can buy it, when it is finished.  (If I have a lot of comments with other questions, I may also not approve them, but respond with a new post on the subject of the questions.)