A little background on me: I heard about Soylent years ago when they had problems fulfilling orders. A huge DIY community rose up to meet the desires of those who wanted to try out a nutritionally complete liquid based diet while soylent got their engines up to speed meeting the demands of their customers. Personally I wasn't ready to try putting together a DIY recipe, nor was I wanting to front the initial costs of buying all the ingredients. I'm still hesitant to do so, but maybe later on I will play around with a recipe or two.





A few years later, and a few more pounds around the midsection later I saw ads for Soylent online. They had rolled out their liquid pre-packaged Soylent 2.0 with such flavors as nectar and coffiest. It got me curious about Soylent again, and I started digging into how much it might cost for me to purchase some and begin to simplify my work food prep experience. It was still kind of cost prohibitive. I looked back into the DIY community and saw that some of the people who were making their own recipes ended up going commercial and selling their own versions of a nutritionally complete liquid based diet.





As I did additional research I decided that I wanted to do the powder, it's cheaper for one, and I could buy it from these third parties. I kept digging and on Reddit I figured out that the name brand Soylent's powder actually was one of the cheapest sources. I suppose it makes sense they probably can source their ingredients at wholesale prices, and mass produce the product. Either way I landed back on soylent (although I'll probably order some stuff from some of you third party producers... here's looking at you keto lent, and keto fuel. I've got my eyes on you down the road.





I will probably do another post later on about my reasons for deciding on doing a 100% soylent trial, but the short of it is I don't want to make excuses. I don't want to make excuses in order to eat junk food. I don't want to make excuses on how I didn't have time to prep healthy meals beforehand. I don't want to look at my bank account and see fast food places and grocery charges piling up. I also want to be able to quickly consume my breakfast and lunch at work and get back to work. I want to break the food habits that have landed me in such poor health. Finally, the girls in these pictures are the biggest things I don't want to make excuses for. I don't want to say, "Oh daddy's tired, I'll play with you later" and never get around to do it. They are the light of my world and I'll do anything for them. I'm not walking away from "normal" food forever, but my goal is to do at minimum two full weeks of 100% soylent. In addition I'll consume coffee and water, but that's it. Now onto the real purpose of this post... the product itself, SOYLENT!





First, let's talk about shipping. I ordered my package on Friday afternoon. They shipped it on Monday and it arrived here in my city on Wednesday. No complaints there. The only issue I have is that I live in an secured apartment building with a broken buzzer system. That means Fedex can't get into our building to deliver packages, and they are the only shipper that soylent uses (but hey every shipment over $20 is free so beggars can't really be choosers). So I drove out of town to a surrounding suburb to pick up my package from the fedex depot. I'm going to have to try to figure out a better solution to this issue going forward. Perhaps I can speak to my management about them leaving the package at the leasing office.





Once I got home the kids swarmed me. They thought it was a gift, which in a way it kind of was. I let them be my helpers during the actual unboxing.



I bought a two week supply. Which worked out to two boxes of Soylent. Each box comes with seven pouches. Each package contains 5 servings of 20% of the recommended daily allowance for each vitamin and mineral, as well as 400 total calories. This means each pouch is essentially one full day of everything your body needs to function.





My 4 year old daughter Evelyn here was thrilled to open up the box and take a look at what was inside. She promptly told me that "That's not food Dad!" I had to explain to her that that is the pitcher that would hold my food. A word about this pitcher, it actually is pretty high quality. The lid screws on tight [this is functional as you'll see later], but if you loosen it up it can pour. The container seems extremely well made and fits perfectly in my fridge.

I think she's bummed that there aren't any toys in the boxes.





One memorable quote from Evelyn during this process was that "This is not food, Dad". I had to explain to her that it's like protein powder, it's still food, it just mixes up with water and you drink it like a shake.



There is a third box which contains the free complimentary pitcher and scoop.Inside the box the pitcher is shipped within a protective sleeve.My two year old Fiona just celebrated her birthday party so she thinks she has this whole thing figured out.One memorable quote from Evelyn during this process was that "This is not food, Dad". I had to explain to her that it's like protein powder, it's still food, it just mixes up with water and you drink it like a shake.

The package also came with two Soylent stickers, so I put one on the pitcher so the folks at work would know that this isn't milk or something they can steal to put in their coffee (although they'd be in for a bit of a surprise if they tried haha). Also pictured there is the scoop. I honestly don't know why there's a scoop. There's way more than 5 scoops of powder in each pouch. Maybe two scoops equals one serving, honestly I'm not sure so I'll have to reach out to Soylent or the Reddit community to figure that one out. The directions on the side of the box only explain how to prepare the Soylent in the pitcher.

The instructions explain that you are to fill the pitcher half full with water and then pour the contents of the pouch into the pitcher. Okay, this is where things get messy... literally. So the pouches are resealable ziplock containers. This could be really nice for taking with you on the go and making servings on demand instead of in a large batch like this. The issue with the ziplock seals is that when you're making a large pitcher, they are not conducive to pouring. In fact you'll probably make a mess all over your kitchen countertop if you try. I ended up cutting off the ziplock seal on the pouch and that helped greatly. Secondly if you can see in the photo if you fill the water half of the way up the pitcher the contents of the pouch barely fits in the pitcher. Next time I'll put slightly less water as the powder was nearly spilling out of the top.Next you are supposed to screw that lid back on and shake the pitcher. Don't hold onto the handle to shake it. The handle isn't sturdy enough to give it a good shake. You'll have to grab the pitcher and show it who is boss. Unfortunately it still seemed a bit unmixed and I had dry powder stuck to the underside of the lid (a result of initially filling the pitcher to half-way). I took a butter knife and dropped the dry stuff into the water. Then I took my blender wand appliance, and added some power to the equation and afterwards it had the consistency of a thick protein shake.After you thoroughly mix the powder the directions state to top off the pitcher with water. I did, and gave it one more thorough shaking.Total prep time... less than 2 minutes. I can say I've never prepared an entire day's worth of food so quickly. Especially one that will meet all my nutritional needs and calorie requirements for a weight loss deficit.I then tasted Soylent 1.8 for the very first time. Not going to lie, it wasn't great. Neutral is the taste the creators were going for and they hit it magnificently. I didn't expect it would be delicious although there is a kind of a nutty flavor that I think I could get used to if I drank it cold. I think once it is cold it will be much much better. I'm going to try to last the week without flavoring this stuff, we'll see if I succeed. I might throw some splenda or stevia in there... hey flavoring isn't the same thing as sweetening right?Oh, and I let my daughter Evelyn have a sip of the Soylent, and she immediately spit it out. I guess this stuff is kid-failed, but parent approved. On the bright side, at least she won't ever ask me again to share it with her. I'll have to update this blog again tomorrow on my first full day of Soylent!