Taking a look at the trendiest product on the meal replacement market
It’s midterm season once again, and the semester will only get busier from here. With so many essays, lab reports, and various other assignments to do, it can be difficult to make time for ensuring that your body gets all the nutrition that it needs to crank out a 12 page report. While meal replacements have been around for decades, most of the time their target audience has been individuals who are using the variety of shakes to try and lose weight, such as Slimfast, or liquid nutritional supplements like Ensure. The newest addition to the meal replacement market is known as Soylent, and is marketed towards individuals who find their day-to-day life too hectic to fit healthy cooking into their schedule.
Software engineer Rob Rhinehart initially developed the beverage as a nutrition experiment to see whether he could survive off of Soylent alone for 30 days. Originally a powder that could be mixed with water into a drinkable beverage, Soylent was released to the public during the first week of May 2014, but originally only shipped to the United States. The meal replacement began shipping to Canada in 2015, the same year that a pre-mixed liquid version, aptly name Soylent 2.0, was released. One of the other attractive benefits to Soylent drinkers is the cost. Soylent claims that drinkers can get “a full day of balanced nutrition made in three minutes for $3/meal,” an attractive option for those short on time and money.When it comes to nutrition, however, how does Soylent stack up? The concept of a cheap, quick, and healthy meal seems too good to be true. Couple this with Soylent being delivered directly to your door, and all of those hours spent in the grocery store can be used as extra study time. While Soylent meets the current requirements set out by the FDA to be sold as food, there have been plenty of critics calling into question the beverage’s claims of being a complete meal replacement.
One of the key ingredients in Soylent is an additive called maltodextrin, which is an almost flavourless starchy carbohydrate. Maltodextrin is commonly used in protein shakes marketed as mass gainers, but in essence is really just expensive sugar. While there is nothing inherently wrong with maltodextrin, it’s a fast burning carb, which means that it won’t keep your body satiated for as long as many people would like. Maltodextrin is also very high on the glycemic index, which can cause large spikes of insulin and possibly health problems further down the line.
Debates can be had about a variety of ingredients in Soylent, including those by critics of getting your daily protein requirements from soy-based products alone. Another main problem with Soylent is the uniformity of the product. As with any meal replacement, the goal is to make a product that covers the nutritional needs of the largest section of the population possible, or at least the largest portion of your target demographic. Soylent is based on a 2,000-calorie diet, and while the benchmark can be helpful for some individuals when learning the basics of proper nutrition, it can either be too much or too little, depending on your lifestyle.
Learning to eat healthily and tailoring a diet to suit your specific nutritional needs will always trump a readymade product designed for the hurried masses.