The Soylent Diary


 * August 8, 2014 at 10:17am

8/8/2014 Day 1. I am consuming 1 meal equivalent worth of Soylent. Two roughly half cup sized scoops of the vanillinny smelling powder and 1 tablespoon of the supplied oil go into the blender with about 16 ounces of water and some ice cubes. This all fits pretty well into my Nissan Thermos Hydration bottle. After drinking a little, I popped a few extra ice cubes in. The taste? Pretty much as everyone has reported, sweet, bland, vanillinny, and very chalky on the finish. The texture is very slightly unpleasant but in a way that you probably could get used to pretty easily. There is a very slight aftertaste from the sucralose. The first thing that I notice about this, is because it is a beverage, I feel no obligation to consume it as a kind of discrete activity as you would a meal. The thermal bottle keeps it palatably cold and I've been taking a pull at it from time to time whenever I feel the urge. Day 1 is about just trying the vanilla product. On Day 2 I start experimenting. I'm thinking that a little bit of the Starbucks VIA powdered coffee might make a marked improvement in the flavor. 8/9/2014 Day 2. On the plus side, two sachets of Starbucks VIA Columbian greatly improved the flavor of Soylent. On the down side, I made the mistake of substituting 137 grams of ice cubes for the second scoop of water and putting the Blendtec on "smoothie." Apparently overblending Soylent thickens up the texture. It still wasn't bad. Tonight, I'll (lightly) blend up two days' worth and refrigerate it overnight. I've also noticed that even though I am measuring Soylent with the dip and sweep method, after using two meals worth from the three meal bag, what remains does not feel like a full serving. I will be weighing and dividing by weight from now on.I'm drinking the Soylent all through the AM hours and I find that a bowl of fairly light soup does nicely for lunch. I then go on to have a regular dinner, light on the carbs. So far, I feel great, haven't had much of an urge to nosh on unhealthy snacks, and the only sub-optimal side-efffect that i have experienced is that I've been a bit, um WINDIER than usual. I am given to understand that this will, so to speak blow over in a week or so. All other outputs are normal. 8/14/2014 Day 7. Skipped a few days of the diary (but not Soylent) because there was nothing particularly notable aside from a rather savage beatdown disguised as a workout that I received from my new karate sensei on Sunday. Mercifully the wind has died down to normal levels. The routine of Soylent + Starbucks VIA in the morning, soup with raw undressed vegetables for lunch and a moderate but tasty dinner has settled in nicely and I see no particular reason to escalate. Things that I have discovered: 1) You can mix soylent by shaking alone, but there will be a few small lumps of dry powder floating at the top. These can be easily broken up. No blender is needed. 2) I like to mix soylent 1 meal at a time. I weigh out 150 g. of soylent, 275 g. of cold filtered water from the fridge, 1 TBS of the oil and 2 packages of Starbucks VIA. I place the oil and water in my hydration bottle and dump in the powders in about three batches, shaking well between batches. When it is well mixed, a few ice cubes go into the bottle. I haven't done it yet, but if there's a day when I really feel like having a tasty full breakfast, I'll most likely do soylent at noon and soup&vege for dinner. After week 1, I feel good and I'm down 5 lbs.