Stuff You Should Know - How Soylent Works

Episode Date: January 19, 2017

Soylent is a meal replacement drink, but not really. So what is it? Total sustenance in a glass? Some say so. Is it made from humans? No, that's just a movie. Learn all about this odd concoction in today's episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there,

which means it's time for Stuff You Should Know. No. He's the DJ. I'm the rapper. Who's the DJ? Don't you remember that was the first or second DJ, Jazzy Jeff, and the Fresh Princeup album? Yeah, what didn't he do?

Everybody was totally confused as to who was who, so they actually named their album. He's the DJ. I'm the rapper. And like, Will Smith is pointing at himself and pointing at Jazzy Jeff. And then their newest album is called He's the Movie Star. I'm the one who asked you if you want fries with that soda.

Aw, poor Jazzy Jeff. That's so mean. I'll bet he's like a successful producer. I bet he is totally successful and probably way more successful than me, and I'm just a jerk. It's a little late now. I know, I thought it would be funny.

And I also insulted fast food industry workers, too. Yeah, he didn't ever, he didn't ever, swiped everybody. It's like that one Simpsons, where somebody I think was calling home or a chicken, and some giant chicken walks over and goes, he's insulting the both of us. That show just gave and gave and gave for decades.

I think DJ Jazzy Jeff, I'm looking right now, I think he's still a DJ, record producer, and still a DJ. Called. Like a DJ DJ. Yeah, yeah. I'm just mean. Sorry, Jazzy Jeff. You know who's not mean?

You? No, I'm pretty mean. Okay. A kid named, well, I don't want to call him a kid. I want to call him a kid because he's younger than me, but he's a dude now. Yeah. His name is Rob Reinhart.

Yeah, not Rob Reiner. No, no, no, no adult, Rob Reinhart. Although he had a movie called When Harry Met Soylent. That's pretty good. That was good. You know what? I'm ashamed to say I didn't even see that coming. It was so bad.

Emily always laughs when I laugh. She was like, you really cracked yourself up, didn't you? Like I'll just be walking down the hall laughing at myself. And she, that's a way to say. Chuck's drunk. Chuck's drunk. And you're not as funny as you think you are. Oh, I see what you mean.

Yeah. You really cracked yourself up. Sometimes. You should say somebody's got to. All right, Soylent, this is not a paid promotion for Soylent. Let's go ahead and just get that out of the way. No, but it's gonna pay off for him big time. Well, I mean, we're gonna talk a lot about a specific brand,

but I think it's worthwhile because it is a genuine, I think it's a genuine revolutionary product in a lot of ways. Yeah. And it's not an endorsement. I'm just saying it's really super unique. Yeah, not to endorse or whatever, but it's probably the single greatest thing humans have ever invented.

Have you ever had it? Have I? No, I have not actually. I wanted to try it today, but you can't just go down to the corner store and get it. No, you can't. You have to order Soylent from their website, soylent.com. Yeah, or Amazon, of course.

Oh, I didn't know you could get it on Amazon. Yeah, you can get it there now. That's good. The prices have come down from, so we're working from an article we should say from probably 2014. Yeah, I had to update a lot of this. In tech industry years, that's like 10 years ago.

Yeah. And this is definitely a cornerstone of the tech industry. And what we're talking about is a, well, a food replacement called Soylent. Yeah, or not a food replacement. Well, yeah, originally it was intended to be a food replacement or a meal replacement, or no. I guess it was originally intended to be a food replacement

where you could just live off of this stuff. You didn't need other food. And then now it's intended to be a meal replacement where you would eat other food, but you could, say, have this instead for lunch or whatever. Yeah, or you could eat it along with your meal. Sure. Like, let's just call it beige food in a semi-liquid state.

Yeah, pretty much entirely liquid. It's like pancake batter is what I kept running across the consistency. And who? I mean, doesn't everyone want to drink pancake batter? I've been known to take a sip of pancake batter, same fully. It sounds really gross.

We haven't tried it, and I really wanted to, like I said for this, but we may or may not get our colleague, Jonathan Strickland, in here. It just depends on if we can find him. He's been, he was being tattooed by NASA the other day. Oh, that happened, huh? Not by NASA, but sort of with NASA, for NASA? Under NASA's supervision.

Maybe, I mean, he got a tattoo for work. Yeah. Via NASA. Yep. So I haven't seen him since then, but if we can get him in here, he did this one thing for a while and he loves to talk, so he would be good.

As a matter of fact, let's just add a 30 minute silent part here that we can insert what he'll say after we introduce him. But anyway, I did not get to taste it, but it has been likened to everything from pancake batter to metamucil or cream of wheat, or a tasteless milkshake. Although they do have flavors out now, which we'll get to, but the original intent of Soylent taste-wise

was that it was just really just neutral and bland for the purposes of we don't want people to get sick of eating this. Yeah, and probably the best way to, yeah. Right, exactly. If you don't have a taste, you can't really get sick of a taste, right? But I disagree.

I'm sure you could totally get sick of this. Sure, but it also is something of a blank slate that people can add their own tastes and flavors to like maple syrup or fruit or peanut butter or something. Yeah, which I didn't think about. That's a great idea. Right, so they specifically wanted to create this product for a number of reasons.

And like I said, that guy who I said was nice. He actually is nice from the, I've read a New Yorker profile of him. Same as Rob Reinhart. And he actually, he went to tech. He's an Atlanta boy. Oh, nice. Yeah, and he was in San Francisco

working at a tech startup out of his house with some of his roommates. And he decided that eating was taking up way too much of his time. And money. Time, money, effort. It was just something he wasn't very interested in. And he also was, I think, concerned

with exactly what he was eating. I think he was just basically living off a ramen, he said. Which is not the healthiest thing you can possibly eat. Sure. So he decided to take a little time and research nutrition and how it relates to human physiology. And he had this idea that if you could get rid

of the unnecessary parts of food, like food is kind of a clunky, inefficient vehicle for delivering nutrients. If you could get rid of the clunky part and just have the nutrients, you could live fairly healthily on just the raw materials of food that we need from food, right?

Just the nutrients. Yeah, like I can save money. I can save time from going to the grocery store and cooking and cleaning. And I can get everything I really need to have a genuinely healthy diet right here in this. I mean, I guess I'll call it a drink. I mean, it goes down like a drink, right?

Yeah. Okay, so we'll call it a drink. But it's not to be confused with, I mean, there have been all kinds of meal replacement drinks over the years from insurer to slim fast and. Muscle milk. Yeah, protein shakes and stuff like that. This is not that.

This is supposed to give you everything you need in your body for a meal, nutritionally. Other meal replacement drinks are meant to be meal replacements, right? Like if you couldn't get enough nutrients from your food because you're recovering from surgery and you need an extra bit, your doctor may say like drink and insure every day,

whatever. Or like you said, protein shakes like muscle milk. If you're a weightlifter, you need to hit a protein after you work out. You will probably drink some sort of protein shake afterward, right? So there's very specific reasons for the meal replacements or supplements

that have been invented up to Soylent. What sets Soylent apart was that it was created intentionally to be a replacement for food. Like this was all you needed. You never needed to eat food again. All you had to do was eat Soylent every day. Drink Soylent every day. And ingeniously, and I don't think he intended to even,

he was just looking for something for himself. He wasn't looking to change the food industry or to start a company, I don't think. Not at first. A food company. But he very ingeniously started a blog in 2013 called How I Stopped Eating Food, which is super grabby on the internet, title-wise. Sure.

Like someone's gonna see that and go, well, what in the world is this all about? And that's what happened. It went viral. It blew up. He detailed on there that he lost weight. He said his intellectual and athletic performance improved. He said he spent a lot less money on groceries.

But he put athletic and scare quotes. He's like, if you know what I mean. Yeah, cause he did go to tech and he was a software engineer. I meant sex, but yeah, yeah, that's true. Gotcha. Well, there were. Either way, the joke worked. He said he spent a lot less money on groceries

and he only spent about five minutes a day making this stuff. And he described it as a, quote, sweet succulent hearty meal and a glass, end quote. And people were all over it. He said like after a week, he would see ads for food and it would just be nauseated by him. And that he came to crave the soiling, right? Which wasn't called soiling at that time.

No, he did call it soiling. Oh, I thought he didn't call it until he like got the Kickstarter going. From what I saw, I actually saw that blog post and I believe he calls it soiling in it. Oh, okay. Well, whenever he got it, he got it. Spoiler alert, by the way, upcoming.

There was a movie in 1973 called Soilent Green, very famous kind of classic cult classic sci-fi movie with Chuck Heston. And the big reveal in Soilent's about this future world, this dystopian society where these people are fed these rations and in the end, you realize that it's revealed that people are eating other people.

Soilent Green is people. People, right? And for that reason, because that was just such a famous ending, if that actually spoiled the movie for you, let us know so Chuck can come hit you with a hammer. Because it was in 1973. Everybody knows the ending of the twist

in Soilent Green, right? Yeah, I'm just, you know. But he, yeah, I know, that was nice of you. See, you're not a mean person, you're nice. Okay. He was lobbied by investors, friends, family, everybody's like, you gotta change the name of Soilent. But he would explain to him, it's actually not based

on the movie, he's based it on the book that was the source for the movie Soilent Green. The book was called Make Room, Make Room. And it was written by a guy named Harry Harrison. And it was basically about overpopulation. And in the book, the people are fed Soilent, which is a food made of soy and lentils. And that's what he based it on,

was that book, not the food being made from people. Which apparently the makers of the movie used some pretty deep artistic license to totally alter it at the end. Yeah, so it started out nerdy and it got nerdy because he was like, it's actually a deep cut. Right, exactly. From Make Room, Make Room.

Exclamation points. But he did detail it in this blog post. He did detail it in this blog post. And I'm pretty sure he did call it Soilent in it. And he did something. I think it was very clever. I think it was a really kind of a funny wink to call it that.

Sure, but he posted the recipe that he went by in a follow up post. And it's still up there. You can go see how to make Soilent yourself. And as a matter of fact, a lot of people do. There's this subculture of DIY Soilent enthusiasts. Soilent enthusiasts, people who are like so into it that they're creating their own blend

for themselves from scratch. Self Soilenters. Yep, Soilent Preppers. So he started that Kickstarter, got about three million bucks because people thought it was a cool idea. Submitted it to the FDA, right? Yeah, and the FDA went whatever. But they classified it interesting instead

of a dietary supplement. They said, no, this is a food. Like knock yourself out, nerd. Go get sued, we don't care. And then he got a co-packer, Rosa Labs in LA, and they produce it for him still. And people started eating or drinking this stuff up. Yeah, I mean, especially other people

who work 23 hours a day and didn't want to be bothered with having to eat because they didn't really care about food and or they were like, all I'm eating is mac and cheese. Like what am I doing? Like if I'm gonna care that little about food, then I might as well eat something that's healthy that takes even less time to make the mac and cheese.

And just the whole, the mentality behind Soilent really like tapped a nerve. And that stuff took off like very quickly. They started selling like 30,000 units of it a month. I guess packets a month by 2014. And it debuted, the first shipments sold or shipped in May of 2014. So like within seven months,

they were selling 30,000 units a month. Yeah, it went gold right away. Yep, like round and round by rat. We'll take a break here and I'll see if I can go find Strickland and we'll be right back. We'll be right back. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair.

Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in

as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me.

Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody

about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with a Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. No, no, Strickland yet. Oh, yeah? He has not appeared since the new year.

You know he's in Las Vegas right now, right? Oh, is he at CES? Mm-hmm. Well, that makes sense. I did not know. Company blog? Yeah, I did actually, I did see that on our internal blog. Right.

That we all post our daily goings on and laugh at each other. So Soylent, again, we said that the taste isn't the big thing, but they really aim to just say, hey, it's convenient. You're going to save some money. And if you're, like you said, if you're someone who doesn't put so much care into what you're making for yourself, like you could, like you said, you could eat nothing but this.

But even the owner said like you could. But like, why do you want to? Food's great. Yeah, and they've walked that back tremendously. I think the more venture capital money that's been invested. Yeah, the more they've walked that back. So originally it wasn't, he would give interviews and just tell everybody like, yeah, man,

you can you can just live off of this indefinitely if you want. Now they say it's not intended to replace every meal, but it can replace any meal. Yeah, I think it's a really good. I don't know if they've if they've tapped into the doomsday prepper segment. But like this seems to be the kind of thing that somebody could and should have,

like in the trunk of their car or along with their canned goods. In the role of masking tape. Yeah, you know, I mean, I literally, when I read this, I was like, you know, I wouldn't mind having a case of this in my trunk. They don't remember that. If you got into a fender bender, it would be a disaster. Yeah, a pickup truck that doesn't work.

Well, you never know. I mean, I doubt if I'm ever going to be like lost in the wilderness, but if I was, it'd be nice to have food for a week. Yeah, for food for a week. I mean, the seal packets unopened apparently last for a year. All right, so I'd have to, on day 364 every year, I'd have to drink them and get some new ones.

You'd have to drink nine months worth of food on one day to be a heck of a New Year's Eve. So we are officially on version 1.7. Yeah, I saw that too. As of about two weeks from this recording ago, they issued 1.7 and as of a couple of days ago, they introduced two new flavors. Yeah, and that's Soylent 2.0.

Oh, is that officially 2.0? Yeah, that's like technically a separate product. It's like pre-mixed Soylent drinks. Yeah, they've had those in the natural flavor since the beginning though. Oh, is that right? I thought they just started with powder and then came and added the drink

and then now they added those two flavors to the drink. I think the new flavors are new. They've had the drink for a while and they also now have a bar, a Soylent bar. That's unavailable right now and we'll talk about why in a little bit because it's quite interesting. I did not know that.

Do they have the coffeeist? Is that out? Yeah, that's out. So that's Soylent in a bottle with caffeine. Yeah. So that's your morning. Well, I guess whenever you want the caffeine jolt. Yeah.

I would say morning, but you never know what your schedule is. That sounds dangerous because I mean, like, this is food, right? And people have a tendency to pound coffee. You don't want to pound the stuff. Like you'll gain weight. I mean, I guess if you're trying to gain weight, sure, do it, but like this is,

this stuff is engineered to be just what you need to sustain you or maintain your weight. Or I guess if you wanted to gain weight, you would just drink more of it. Not to be pounded, you know? Supposedly lose a little weight if you go like a Soylent only for a few weeks, but it's all anecdotal.

I don't think they make any claims. No, I don't think so either. So they're on 1.7 now and on each version supposedly they just, you know, they're tweaking the recipe. They're listening to people, which sounds like the right thing to do. Like it sounds like they're really listening to people

and people are saying, oh, it's too thick. Like, I don't like 1.6. So they'll say, all right, a little xanthan gum, take that out. They switched the primary source of fatty acids from fish oil to algal oil, but now I think the algal oil's out now, right? No, no.

The algal oil's in. Oh, that's in. And they actually, the reason why they switched out the fish oil, well, two reasons, it made it vegan when they changed from fish oil to algal oil. Smart.

But they also, like it has far less of an environmental impact, algae farming does. Gotcha. But they even took it a step further and they're not using oil from farmed algae. They're using oil from bioreactors, which take up even less space and use less energy for algal oil production

than farming does, right? So they're really like trying to narrow the impact environmentally that this stuff has. Oh, they took out algal flour. Yes. Gotcha. And the reason why is it was very much linked to our artificial sweetener episode.

Somebody introduced whole algal flour to the market as I think a thickener. I think it also is an emulsifier and it just creates a pleasant mouthfeel, I think. And it's also somewhat nutritious supposedly, but it also can make people violently ill. And so all of Soil at 1.6 had to be suspended, including the bar.

That's why the bar is not available any longer because it all contained this whole algal flour. They had to basically stop selling it and then they tinkered with it. And that's why 1.7 came out. Huh. Well, if you don't know much about Soil and you're literally screaming at your car radio right now

or wherever you're listening, but what is it really? Then tell them what it's mainly derived from. Oh, it is soy protein. They replace the brown rice and the oat flour and potato starch and rice starch with basically just soy protein and a couple other carbohydrates.

So it's mainly just a soy-based meal. Soy, algal oil, something called isomaltilose. It's a, which they synthesize from beets. It's a carbohydrate, but also a bit of a sweetener. Yeah. Canola oil, I think. Rice starch. They took, I think they took that out.

And the reason you can actually- No, that's actually, this is as of today. Okay, so there is rice starch in it. They definitely took the brown rice, the oat flour and the potato starch out. Because if you go to their website, it's so cool. At the very bottom, the bottom navigation, they'll say release notes,

and it'll bring up PDFs of the notes about what they changed and why for every single version of soylent. So it'll say we took this out because we found that this is actually better for the environment or that this delivers the vitamin that we're trying to get better

or for whole algal flour, they said that they removed it to improve customer experience, which means not making you violently ill. Yeah. It's, I mean, like I said, it sounds like they're continually striving to get it right.

Yeah. But they're also, more than that, they're also sharing what they're doing. Because the whole thing was kind of based out of that open source tech ethos. And so they've kind of maintained that open source thing ever since they're just very transparent as a company. Yeah.

Looking at the, as of January 3rd, nutritional facts and one bottle, 400 calories, 21 grams of total fat, two grams of saturated fat. And this is for the regular natural. Right. Do I keep calling natural? Is that what they call it?

Original? Let's just say non-flavored. Yeah, original. A ridge. How's that? Cholesterol, no cholesterol, which they've had from the beginning. 300 milligrams of sodium,

36 grams total carbs, three grams dietary fiber, nine grams of total sugars, nine grams of added sugars, and then 20 grams of protein and a whole host of vitamins and minerals. Yeah. And those vitamins and minerals are important. The essential nutrients,

which are nutrients like vitamins and minerals that our bodies need, but can't make. They apparently went to the NIH and the FDA and several other groups and said, what does a human body need to function and thrive? And that's what they put in there. They have this blend of vitamins and nutrients that they include as part of the recipe for soiling.

One of the things that soilants, I don't want to, I guess, criticize for, I guess, but one of the concerns that people who are skeptical about it have is that it doesn't have any non-essential nutrients, which are nutrients that your body can make itself, like cholesterol. It has zero cholesterol,

but your body can make its own cholesterol. And that was a deliberate move on Reinhart and his co-founders' parts that they decided that they didn't need non-essential nutrients, that it was something that our bodies already make. And so therefore it was redundant, basically, to add this stuff in,

because this is just the basic bare minimum that you need to be healthy and thrive. But some people are saying, well, these things are also found in nature, in our food, and we take them in, and we don't really know enough about nutrition and how it affects the human body to say, you don't really need to take in from the outside

any non-essential nutrients. So people are saying, we're gonna have to see over the course of years what kind of effects this has on people who are just eating soilant, if those people do exist five, 10 years from now. Yeah, and especially if that's something that you kind of touted, or not you,

but he touted to begin with, which is, hey, man, theoretically, you could just eat only this. Yeah, but I mean, he was like this 20-something dude who had a really great idea, and didn't care about what the investors were saying, and he cared about people's health, and he wasn't doing it to be like a huxer,

or a snake oil sales or anything like that. You know, he was just not watching his P's and Q's like somebody who was from a PR department might ask him to. All right, well, let's take another break, and I'm gonna walk to Las Vegas. Get him. I'm gonna see if Strickland's up for this. Go get that guy.

And then I'll be right back in about 10 days. And hey, and put 20 on black for me. Okay. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear.

And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy.

You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say, bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, good news, bad news. I owe you $40.

Man. Oh, wait, no, that's good. Oh, good. Yeah. I thought you were paying me back with interest. No. Bad news is I couldn't find Strickland in Vegas. Actually, if we can't find Strickland, this is just hot off the presses.

Our buddy Joe Randazzo. Yeah. Currently, uh, of at midnight fame. Right. He drank Soylent for a little while. Yeah. And I asked my Texanum for a description. And this just came in and he said, uh, it tasted like the devil's chalk.

But some reptilian part of me appreciated obtaining sustenance without having to worry about flavor or preparation. Basically, space station serial killers should like it and no one else. That's our Joe. That's our Joe. All right. So if you want to buy Soylent, like I said, you can get on Amazon now. I think it's only available in the USA and Canada still, though.

Unless that's changed. I did not see that. But what you can do is you can buy the pouches of powder and mix it or you can buy the bottles. And you can get subscriptions that cut a little of the price off depending on how much of this you want to drink. And that is up to you as a human being to decide how much of this kind of nasty stuff. And I've heard our buddy Joe Randazzo had some of this too. And I tried to get a quote from him on what he would describe the taste.

And he hasn't replied yet. But I've heard some people say, like, oh, it's really not that bad. And I've heard other people say, like, it's disgusting. And you'd really have to choke it down. So I guess there's a spectrum. I mean, I guess I saw a couple quotes like that. But for the most part, it seemed like people were surprised by how either neutral or strangely strangely, strangely alluring the taste was.

Oh, well, yeah, I hadn't heard that. There's a great New Yorker article that profile I mentioned earlier called, I think it's called the end of food. It's from 2014 when this was like at the peak of its buzz. And Lizzie Winkham, who wrote the thing, tries to soil in herself. And it's weird. I think she actually says she starts to crave the taste after a while. Oh, interesting.

But then some of her colleagues give these pithy quotes about what it actually tastes like. And they're actually trying it. You know what I mean? Right. She was actually trying to subsist on it for a little while. She apparently came to like it. Interesting.

I'm curious about its longevity. Like when something like this comes out, I definitely see the allure of it becoming the rage for a while. But and I think one of the, we'll talk about what a dietitians think. But one of the allures of food is food and making it and sitting with friends. And the wonderful taste that you get and the experience you get of breaking bread with one another. And this really throws all that out the window.

You can't romanticize sitting down with a soylent shake in your friends. Even if they all have one on their plate. It's just not the same. And nor do they say it is the same. But it makes me wonder like once this initial fad wears off, what will it become? You know, it's bizarre. I just realized something. Well, you were saying that that this is the opposite of what we were saying, one of the

problems with artificial sweeteners is so instead of exciting the gustatory response of your reward pathway from eating food, all this does is create satiation. So you're, you're full from it, but you're not enjoying tasting it or eating it or smelling it or looking at it or thinking about it. So it's the exact opposite where artificial sweeteners excite that, that, that gustatory sensor, but don't fill you up. This does the exact opposite. Well, and then I wonder what kind of effect that can have on your body.

Like does it dull that and kill that gustatory response or does it make it so that when you do eat something is just like, wow, I can't believe the taste of the strawberry. And I, I don't know, I, um, I, that I read about this, this guy, um, his name's Angus Barbieri and he's a Scotsman from 1966. I think he was in his early twenties and he went 382 days without eating a thing. Wow. He was under the supervision of some mad scientist doctor who was giving him like vitamin supplements and monitoring him, but he survived just on these vitamin supplements and coffee,

tea and water for more than a year. And the reason he did it was he weighed 456 pounds and he was like, I'm tired of it. I want to get down to 180. And he did. Um, but he on the day he broke that 382 day fast, he had a boiled egg, uh, I think a piece of buttered toast and I think some coffee and he said, I enjoy the egg very, very much. So I would guess that, that you, if you did eat, if you ate like a whole food, you would find it pretty rewarding.

Whereas if you ate like a synthetic food, like junk food or whatever, you'd probably be like, Oh my God, this is terrible. Right. Right. Right. You know, but I'll bet that strawberry would taste pretty good. Well, if you ask a dietitian and we didn't do a poll, but, um, I think this one, uh, Dr. Joy Dubost, spokesman for the Academy of Nutrition and, uh, dietetics, um, I saw

some, not time that I saw her quotes from this article, but then I saw a lot of other ones and they have kind of all been in line, which is basically like, yeah, I mean, sure, this stuff is okay. And you can use it, uh, to a certain degree, but we don't, there just aren't studies like no one's going to come out. No scientist is going to come out and say, yeah, you could live on this stuff for a year because they just haven't done these peer reviewed studies and these longterm, uh, risk and benefit analyses don't exist.

So no, no scientist is going to come out like and put their name behind it in that kind of way. Right. Exactly. But it's like you said, like even if they would, even if they were like, you know what, this is fine. Go ahead and do it. Forget food.

There's something missing. Like communal experience, like you were saying, there's that the relaxing acts of cooking. Um, like I understand feeling like you're burdened with it sometimes when you're under the gun and you have to eat, but just getting everything ready and cooking it and then cleaning up afterward is, it can be a total pain. So I understand the sentiment behind it, but I also would never replace food entirely ever, never. Yeah.

Well, of course not. Um, cause we're normal people. Um, the other thing Dr. Dubost says, which I think is a very huge point is that what they've done is, I mean, there aren't a hundred different types of soylent depending on what kind of person you are. They basically said, this is just your basic nutrition for your average person. It's one size fits all and nutrition. She said they're making nutrition on one side fits all approach and nutrition just doesn't

work that way. Yeah. So depending on your age, your lifestyle, how active you are, what kind of like, you know, maladies you have in your life, um, it's, and, and again, they're not claiming to do that. Like all they're claiming is to do what it is, which is, Hey, we're going to make this thing. It might be good for some people to use sometimes.

We'll probably keep you alive. I saw there's, so I also remember I was talking about the, uh, nonessential nutrients that aren't in there. People are wondering what effect that might have. There's also another, um, thing that, that's missing that's kind of subtle, but it might have an impact. This Japanese study found that it seems the art or the, not the art, but the act of chewing has some sort of benefit.

So like it has a stress reduction. Interesting. And, um, it also probably controls the amount of glucose entering your blood by just kind of unlocking food slowly by chewing it into smaller and smaller pieces and you don't do that with drinks like Soylent. You just get hit with it all at once. Yeah. So there's a big flood of your, of, uh, nutrients into your bloodstream.

And fortunately with that stuff, it's, it's good stuff, but, um, like if, if there were say like the sugar probably has a greater impact on you than the same amount of sugar delivered through solid food. Yeah. And it just hits you faster and so your, your levels increase quicker. Hmm. Yeah. Think about that either.

I'm going to get some. Are you going to? Yeah. I'm going to get some and just have it on hand. And I mean, it beats driving to McDonald's if I don't have any food. Sure. You know, you should hide it in the wheel well of your spare tire. Well, I do have a pickup truck, so I have no truck.

That's what I'm saying. Oh yeah. Uh, geez. Where is my spare tire? I guess it's underneath. I gave away your hiding place. No, my hiding place is actually behind the rear seat. Oh, gotcha.

That's a good one. No one will ever find anything there. And there you'll find it's pretty salacious, but you'll find bungee cords and jumper cables. In John Strickland. Yes. With this. Are you got anything else? No.

Unless we insert Strickland, which would go right here, but if not, um, we'll just end it. Well, let's find out right now. All right. Nope. We didn't. Oh well. Um, I should probably say Chuck, and we probably should have said this fairly early on.

We have like no, um, uh, financial interests in Soylent whatsoever. Oh yeah. We didn't even back it on Kickstarter. No. I got, I got no interest other than wanting to taste this, uh, this junk. Yeah. All right. Uh, if you want to know more about Soylent, type that word into the search bar at howstuffworks.com.

And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. You know, it wouldn't surprise me if Reinhardt listens to the show. Oh, well, if he does, what's up, dude? Yeah. So at the very least we might get a case of this stuff at the office. Oh boy. Hint, hint. Um, I'm going to call this, well, I'm going to call this one of what may be several breastfeeding

email replies. Okay. Uh, first of all, we did a show two-parter on feeding babies. First part was on breastfeeding and we were both a little nervous and I have to say it went great and we've been getting great feedback and I'm super proud of these episodes. Yeah, they're good. Based on the feedback we've been getting very supportive, uh, which makes us feel good. Yeah.

We were pretty tense. All right. So this is one of those. Hey guys. Uh, plus she has a great name. Uh, I know you're worried about getting tons of attack emails for doing an episode of breastfeeding, but I promise this isn't mean. Smiley face.

I listened to the episode right after I got home from breastfeeding class. I'm currently pregnant due on February 20th. Uh, so man, this is going to come out probably about a month before that. And she does a big scream in anticipation. Uh, I took a class through my local hospital on breastfeeding to prepare. You guys, uh, you had really great things to say about breastfeeding and it pretty much lined up with what the lactation consultant running the class had to say. I'm so glad that you tackled, uh, tackle the issue, especially because you are men, um,

even though I know it scared you, the lactation consultant said the biggest barrier to women breastfeeding is not having a supportive partner. Uh, which I don't get that at all. Um, hopefully with your podcast, you read some partners out there who will now be more informed and better able to support the new mother and their lives. Uh, I hope so too. I was so glad that you mentioned the war over feeding currently going on as well. It is also a great option for feeding babies, no matter what militant moms have to say,

just feed your baby. Keep up the great podcasting and her name is Claire victory. Nice. And boy, she's so close to being named declare victory. Oh yeah. I hadn't thought about that. And she said, P.S. I'm never offended by the way when you say guys, uh, hope others aren't either.

I feel like we've really gotten to the point where guys is gender neutral. Sure. We're making that our mission in life. I hope so. Yeah. Well, thanks a lot. Claire. Yeah, you're a good guy.

We appreciate a big time and thanks to everybody who sent us notes of support for that one because they are very well received bias and clear. Good luck. Yeah. Yeah. Best wishes to you. Yeah. Yes.

Good luck. Hope it goes well. Uh, if you want to get in touch with us like Claire victory did, uh, you can tweet to us. I'm Josh, I'm Clark, and there's also S.Y.S.K. podcast where you can find both of us. You can also find us on Facebook at facebook.com slash stuff you should know. And Chuck is at Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com.

And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. Find a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever

have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.