Designing the experiment is also a problem they have to figure out. A part of the challenge is designing hypotheses that best represent the physical phenomena that are also testable. So instead of going for the whole enchilada, work on parts of the project and build to up to a whole. Solyent is pie in the sky the way Elon Musk's hyper-loop is: a bare minimum sketch (not literally, but in scientific terms) that requires a lot of sub-systems to work and a lot of theories to fall in place to be practical.
Answering your question directly, you could give the control-group a Solyent-type drink that is devoid of nutrients, and to the other group you can give a true Solyent drink. This can test if people report feeling better simply because they are drinking something healthy as opposed to the improvement being caused by the nutrients in the drink.
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How would you even double-blind for this? Double blind means neither the participants nor the people running the study knows who is on what.
You give half the people Soylent and the other half -- what?
Designing the experiment is also a problem they have to figure out. A part of the challenge is designing hypotheses that best represent the physical phenomena that are also testable. So instead of going for the whole enchilada, work on parts of the project and build to up to a whole. Solyent is pie in the sky the way Elon Musk's hyper-loop is: a bare minimum sketch (not literally, but in scientific terms) that requires a lot of sub-systems to work and a lot of theories to fall in place to be practical.
Answering your question directly, you could give the control-group a Solyent-type drink that is devoid of nutrients, and to the other group you can give a true Solyent drink. This can test if people report feeling better simply because they are drinking something healthy as opposed to the improvement being caused by the nutrients in the drink.
Wouldn't people in group A.. die?