Soylent has a near-cult following in the US and now it's going international. The high-protein supplement is popular within the sports nutrition sector and it has also proven very successful with strapped-for-time individuals that have taken to consume the ready-to-drink shakes as meal replacements.
The parent company, named after an artificial food in a sci-fi novel from the mid-1960s called Make room! Make room!, is looking to replicate this success in the UK market but faces different attitudes to food and nutrition. From today, the rather dystopian meal-replacement drink is available in the country.
Soylent plans to target millennials, students and gamers with a product that is suitable for vegans, completely nut free and comes loaded with a long list of vitamins and minerals. There are very few differences in formulation between US and UK.
One main difference between the versions is that in the US, phytonadione, a man-made form of vitamin K, which also occurs naturally in the body and is a blood clotting agent, is added to the recipe. Here we deconstruct the product.
What's in Soylent?
This is a protein that is extracted from soybean meal – it has amino acid content similar to that in meat – that has been dehulled and defatted, making it nearly carbohydrate and fat free. It is used in a variety of foods – including pet foods – as an emulsifier and to provide texture. In addition, it can be used in pesticides, resins, plastics or adhesives.
Soy products contain phytoestrogens – plant-derived estrogens – and it has been alleged that it can act as a natural hormone replacement therapy. Soy protein isolate produced in the US is likely to have been made with genetically modified crops. (More than 90 per cent of soy produced in the US is genetically modified).
A polysaccharide – a long chain carbohydrate – made up of glucose units connected in chains of variable length, generally three to 17 units long – the shorter the glucose chains, the higher the sweetness. It is used as a thickener or preservative in processed foods. It is a hygroscopic – it absorbs and retains moisture from the air – white powder produced from starch in corn, potatoes or rice.
A sweetener containing glucose and fructose. It is found naturally in honey and sugarcane but it can also be produced in the lab using sucrose – it has a similar taste to isomaltulose but with twice the sweetness – as a starting material.
Lecithin naturally occurs in soy beans. It is used as a food additive, dietary supplement, emulsifier and to prevent sticking. You’ll find it in non-stick cooking spray.
A form of nondigestible fiber produced from corn. It is added to a myriad of products – baked goods, frozen foods, cereals, etc – to provide a valuable source of dietary fiber with lower sugar content. It is a prebiotic that helps feed microflora in the digestive system, meaning it’ll go through the stomach and small intestine undigested and it is only when it reaches the large intestine where the microflora will slowly digest it.
Naturally produced by the bacterium Sphingomonas elodea, this gum is a water-soluble polysaccharide used as an additive in the food, beverage and personal care industries to provide texture, as a binding agent and to prevent ingredients from losing their form due to temperature changes. It has applications in industrial cleaners, in the production of paper and as a gel base for experiments involving cells in petri dishes.
Cellulose salt is used as an additive in food because it allows an increase in bulk and fiber content without compromising the flavor. It is also a thickener and emulsifier. The substance is also an anti-caking agent in food.
A zero calorie artificial sweetener and sugar substitute that's also known under the E number E955 in the European Union. Although it is anywhere between 320 to 1,000 times sweeter than standard sucrose it is noncaloric because the majority of sucralose ingested by the body is not broken down.
There is a long list of vitamins included in the formulation of Soylent including Vitamin C (ascorbic acid), vitamin A palmitate (palmitate is attached to the alcohol form of vitamin A to make stable in milk), Ergocalciferol (also known as vitamin D2, used to treat rickets and hypoparathyroidism), Cyanocobalamin (a form of vitamin B12), folic acid (the synthetic form of a water-soluble B vitamin), DL-Alpha-tocopherylacetate (vitamin E).
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
