Soylent has always contained a certain amount of sweetener, sine many of the ingredients in it would taste quite bitter on their own. Something had to mask that, yet “sweet” as a sensation is somewhat against the stated goals of Soylent as a “flavor neutral” product, akin to water.

Recent formulation changes have really made it clear that they are trying hard to hit truly neutral, and they’ve been gradually reducing the sweetness of the product.  Many people are very happy with this and prefer the less-sweet taste, but some (myself included) really prefer it to be just slightly sweet tasting.

Thankfully we have some great advances these days in artificial/non-sugar based sweeteners!  For some time now (since version 1.2 I think) I’ve been adding liquid stevia to our Soylent batches.  I started out with 6 drops to a pitcher, then 4, and now I actually just sweeten my 20oz Contigo bottle (we love these bottles!) directly, with only a single drop.  I don’t even sweeten the pitcher at all and Shannon likes it “straight” unsweetened.

But I wanted to experiment with attempts to make the new 1.4 formula (of which I’m not a fan) taste as much like 1.3 (of which I’m a *massive raving fan* lol) as possible.  One of the key ingredient changes has been the reduction in sucralose, and apparently 1.4 has finally done away with it entirely, in favor of a new carbohydrate which is also quite sweet in its own right.  But some folks in the forum had suggested various powdered and liquid sucralose products as a way to try and bring back the taste of 1.3 (vanillin apparently is another possibly key ingredient that has also been removed from 1.4, and I ordered some of that as well as some orange oil extract, but they have yet to arrive).

So the other day, I hit Amazon for some liquid Sucralose.  I settled on NuSweet Concentrated Liquid Sweetener, in a 4oz bottle.  The reviews are overall quite good, and despite the product appearing to be somewhat “homemade” with its inkjet-printer-looking label, I ordered a bottle.

This morning was my first time using it, so I used just a single drop in my Contigo, just as I would with stevia.  I must say, I absolutely love the result!  It’s given me that faint sweetness I wanted, but to my surprise I actually think I like it more than the stevia, which I also quite liked.  It’s hard to describe as a single drop is pretty subtle, but for me it’s just perfect and I find my morning Soylent today to be even tastier and more delicious than ever.  I’ve been drinking it quite fast and should probably slow down a bit!  lol

I have yet to conduct any 1.4-to-1.3 conversion experiments, and I doubt I’ll be perfectly successful… but once the vanillin arrives I’m going to at least give it a shot.  Will report more later I’m sure!