Not sure what your purpose is in rallying against this, anyway
Just one question - why would tech people be best placed to do this, not you know, nutritionists who have successfully, established products in an adjacent niche?
In Soylent's specific case it looks like they saw an unaddressed opportunity in the tech environment around them, then expanded from there. They took a marketing approach (it's about "science and efficiency") which that crowd responds to. Nutrition and food marketers weren't a part of that world and likely didn't have the chance to see the opportunity.
I wonder if Soylent would have been even more successful if instead of trying to "develop" a food from scratch with software engineer skills, they had instead simply rebadged or varied an existing NutriSlim-type product.
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Just one question - why would tech people be best placed to do this, not you know, nutritionists who have successfully, established products in an adjacent niche?
In Soylent's specific case it looks like they saw an unaddressed opportunity in the tech environment around them, then expanded from there. They took a marketing approach (it's about "science and efficiency") which that crowd responds to. Nutrition and food marketers weren't a part of that world and likely didn't have the chance to see the opportunity.
As GP said, the difference is marketing. This was marketed to "normal" people, which works best when created by a "normal" person.
Of course, now that "normal" people are aware that liquid meal replacements are a thing, there are other options.
I wonder if Soylent would have been even more successful if instead of trying to "develop" a food from scratch with software engineer skills, they had instead simply rebadged or varied an existing NutriSlim-type product.