In the end though, it's just food. I could launch a kickstarter campaign that sold veggie shakes and claim it makes people feel healthier when they drink them and it would be no more harmful than this campaign.
Nowhere do they recommend that you replace every single meal with Soylent and the creator stated many times throughout his many blog posts that he continued to eat normal meals whenever he felt like eating normal meals. This is in contrast to something like the movie Fat Sick and Nearly Dead (http://www.fatsickandnearlydead.com/) which actually does recommend drinking veggie shakes exclusively for every meal for 90 days.
That to me doesn't sound like a recommendation to actually replace every single meal for that month. Rather, it's a unit of measurement that provides better context than simply giving the number of kilograms of powder you'll be receiving. Even so, I don't think it would be harmful to do it for an entire month anyways, and I doubt very many people will be that hardcore about it. It will work perfectly as an occasional meal replacement for busy geeks on the go. Attacking the extreme case is attacking the straw man, IMO.
Perhaps. There seems to be a lot of people who seem to have thought what I thought, though. Maybe it would be better if they gave an all-out disclaimer saying that, "no, Soylent cannot be considered as a replacement for your balanced diet"?
From his blog, he really did seem to push the idea of making Soylent his only food -- IIRC he felt like that the traditional idea of eating from a lot of different sources was stressful (I guess the decision of what to eat, etc, was stressful). His blog seems to be down for me right now, though, so I can't confirm that.
Yeah, I agree they should state that. He did mention a few times that he eats normal meals when he wants to, but even at that it was only a few times a week. If I buy the stuff I'm likely to only replace my breakfasts and lunches and continue having dinner with my family.
This is not a veggie shake though. I'm pretty sure most people who eat this would eat this in conjunction with other foods, but the few that really do try to eat Soylent alone, and for long periods of time, which is exactly the idea they're pushing, that may be harmful.
