Given that soy is one of the common allergens, this sounds amazing (especially with it being high-fat which matches modern nutritional science) except for the soy. They should make one called "Soylent -1.0" or something. Are there any alternatives?
I also am consistently disappointed by their reliance on wheat and soy proteins, I'm allergic (IgE) to both and struggle horribly to find typical office-lunch type food I can eat. Also being in the EU it's very difficult and expensive to procure Soylent anyway, even the alt. recipes as all of the Amazon shopping lists link to the US stores. Particularly the typical 3lb bag of flour, a couple of bucks in the US store is being sold for €200 on the German amazon store, presumably by someone trying to game people who've clicked a pre-filled-basket link on an Amazon shopping list.
This is actually a large departure from all prior formulas, which used brown rice protein exclusively. Their product has never had any wheat in it and the only soy was the soy lecithin emulsifier.
This change from rice -> soy and from powdered to bottle - the wording makes it sound like you need 5 bottles per day - is making me think it's time to cancel.
It's not liquid, but Quest bars taste pretty good, and are gluten free and free of soy proteins. It's not quite the same as soylent, of course, there's no real added vitamins and minerals, but it makes a decent lunch (I eat 1 or 2 every day for lunch - two a day during the week, one a day on the weekend).
Also not healthy to consume soy if you are male, apparently.
As for alternatives, there are many. There is a big community on the site which discusses recipes for rolling your own.
Edit: just read an article where he responds to that concern:
> The powder has always contained some soy lecithin, but the liquid actually shifts from rice protein to soy for its primary protein source.
>
>The change comes for a variety of reasons, including the water footprint of rice farming and the desire to make as many components of Soylent as sustainable as possible. Rhinehart also says that the switch to soy for protein enhances the product’s texture and taste. There are some public concerns about high consumption of soy, but Rhinehart is quick to dismiss them. "Because we’re not using whole soy, we’re just using the protein isolate…the isoflavone levels are much lower than what they would be in soy flour or tofu. There are some levels, but they’re well below any that have shown to have an effect," he explained. "There was somewhat specious research in the past on what impact soy can have on testosterone levels and those have been widely debunked. We’ve certainly done our research here and we’ll be posting our analysis on the Web as well."
