 May 20, 2014 - 9:58am | Ok kids here is the future. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/05/12/140512fa_fact_widdicombe?currentPage=all http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_(food_substitute) https://www.yahoo.com/food/martha-stewart-for-love-of-food-the-case-against-86308618185.html Do you want to try it? Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
 May 20, 2014 - 10:19am | Strange. May be worth trying, but not to replace all food, but in lieu of the grab and go breakfasts and lunches. |
 May 20, 2014 - 2:09pm | Its sort of sounds like the Amway meal replacement shakes. If they cut a deal with Amway it will expand their distrubution. I'm a little concerned with the maltodextrin which enters your blood stream and acts exactly like sugar. No doubt they're using "sweet" maltodextrin as opposed to the "sour" to enhance flavor. i would hope that the carbs form this are not that many. Saddly they are using sucralose too which I dont like the taste of in my food. I am surprised that they were funded in 2 hours on crowd funding and that they garnished 3 mill for the campaign. I may have to take another look at this. EDIT: the link for the case against Soylent makes a very strong case IMHO. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 May 21, 2014 - 3:42am | Condensed powered/pill-formed diets are iconic in science fiction for a long time now. It is good to see someone take the first step in the right direction. It has the potential to deal with starvation and to make food production greener by reducing the resources needed to grow and cultivate our food while reducing the amount of food we take in. On the other hand, if this becomes common, actual food would become a luxury meals, and they could become too expensive for most consumers. In most down-on-earth sci-fi, like cyberpunk, they form the diets of people on the low end of the economic scale. Although, one could do a lot with this diet. Being powder, one could add other ingredients to alter the tease, texture, color, as well as other substances (alcohol, caffeine, etc.). I can totally picture characters in Star Frontiers adding different powders into a basic dietary compound bar, then placing it in water to be boiled by vacuum pressure to get what looks like mashed potatoes dyed in strange colors. To Spacers, this would be a normal meal. Hell, they might have been raised on this stuff. I always assumed this, since I first got into this game. |
May 21, 2014 - 5:10am | @ malcadon: I think you just described the universal survival rations from the equipment list. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 May 21, 2014 - 8:41am | This could fit with the crop mentioned in one of the choose your own adventure books. The crop could be a frontier bioconstruct grain that meets the average needs of the core 4 races. Likely synth corp created it and the crop made synth corp a megacorp. This becomes the economic win food source for the common citizens of the frontier. They make most foods out of it that are eaten for non-social reasons. There is a company in the Midwest that is growing protein meat. This could also be going on in the frontier as it would appeal to yazirians. -iggy |
May 21, 2014 - 9:02am | Still remember the food cubes from an episode of Classic Star Trek. They were different colors and mostly bite sized. Thinking they could have been made from this stuff. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
May 21, 2014 - 10:51am | Talk about classic Star Trek, I discovered that all this time, all those Soylent Cuboctahedron™ I have been eating are... MADE OF PEOPLE!!!!   Then again, they always tasted dry and chalky without milk. So I have been meaning to cut back.  |
May 21, 2014 - 11:38am | Those cube foods always reminded me of tafy or starburst blocks. Interesting soylent info (didn't review the wiki at length until just now). Lots of side effects until he got the recipee "right" -- though it still may have unexpected long term deficiencies. Also of eye-openning note is the cost. $150 per month, roughly for soylent for one person. Wiki also shows that in the US a family of four food purchases for a month would run approximately $584 (obviously depending on eating out or where you shop and how thrifty you are). So there is NO cost savings for going to soylent. |
May 21, 2014 - 3:35pm | The makers are hoping to further lower the cost but the savings come in the form of time not spent preparing food and clean up. Not to mention storage, like no refrigerators. The real idea is that you could keep working on that painting or software without extensive breaks. Don't think they thought of employers passing out cans of Soylent down the assembly line to keep the workers at their positions. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
May 21, 2014 - 3:58pm | Not to mention that lack of breaks and down time is counter productive. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
May 21, 2014 - 5:04pm | If you work for someone like Gates or Jobs then this is perfect since breaks are bad. Google thinks naps are good. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
May 21, 2014 - 5:30pm | If you work for someone like Gates or Jobs then this is perfect since breaks are bad. Google thinks naps are good. I'm developing the habbit of writing things while my mind is engaged elsewhere, namely my regular punch the timeclock job. That might sound impressive but its more of writing general ideas and hot footing it home after work to get things typed and fleshed out. Sometimes its whole paragraphs in my head but mostly general ideas and the true writing is done at home. It's like disengaging my brain from direct push on something juices the creativity. I have this happen in the shower and while laying in bed half awake. I've started to actively cultivate this when something isn't flowing creatively and I'll stop and play suduku or read an art magazine or a book on Dega or something. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
