UPDATE: Soylent 1.2 was just announced and is going to remove the enzymes which thinned the consistency! Boy that was a fast reaction to the many of of voicing our unhappiness with 1.1!
So as you may or may not know, Soylent 1.1 was recently announced. Effective of that announcement, all shipments were supposed to be 1.1 and 1.0 was no longer being shipped.
Interestingly (and fortunately, as I’ll explain in a moment) we got our next 28-bag supply a couple weeks later, and it was Soylent 1.0. I’m very thankful for this, but sure wish I could be assured of getting more.
You see, Soylent 1.1 made one major, functional change to the product that is a huge step in the wrong direction.
They made it thinner. So thin, that it’s essentially just water. Maybe more like the consistency of nonfat milk.
Someone in the forum said they felt it was the consistency of whole milk, but personally I strongly disagree with that assessment.
Now that we’ve tried 1.1 for ourselves, we’re both extremely disappointed with this change. Soylent is now something we don’t look forward to consuming. It’s not horrible, and we *can* consume it, but now it’s something we have to force ourselves to do because we know we have to. It’s no longer something we actually like drinking.
For us, this is heartbreaking. Soylent has been such a massively positive thing in our lives, it’s impossible to understate just how happy we’ve been with it. Every time we drink it, it’s been like a special treat. The creamy texture was a huge part of if feeling special – almost like a dessert except we get to have it any time, all the time.
Rosa Labs sprung this change on the general Soylent customer base without warning, and that’s another thing that is greatly disheartening to me. I’m guessing they have a group of beta testers that did know about it first, but the first time the general customer knew about this was when they were told it’s what they would now be receiving.
The thing is – this is not what we’ve been paying for the last 6 months. We have come to accept that Soylent is a specific product, and this is not that product. It is so different that I would call it a different product altogether, just as whole milk and nonfat milk are totally different products – even though both are technically milk.
If they offered the choice of 1.0 or 1.1, then obviously it would be different and we would very happily stay with 1.0. But they didn’t offer anything like that (and they probably can’t due to the costs of maintaining two different production lines) and instead simply changed the product out from under all of us. Imagine if you ordered whole milk and received nonfat instead and were told “this is now milk version 1.1”. You would not be happy!
And so, we are not happy. We are continuing with Soylent because we still would rather consume it than have to deal with conventional food all the time. But version 1.1 of Soylent has just sucked all the joy out of the product. It’s now just a necessity that we will tolerate, but not especially enjoy.
And in that respect, it’s now no better than conventional food.
Some have reported that adding Xanthan Gum thickens it up enough to be more like 1.0. But that’s an extra step and cost we shouldn’t be required to bear.
If anyone from Rosa Labs reads this, I urge you to update to a 1.2 as quickly as you possibly can and bring it back to the thickness of 1.0. I no longer have the enthusiasm to recommend Soylent that I did just a few weeks ago. Not that it’s bad by any stretch, it’s still a great product at its core. But the consumption experience is no longer enjoyable.
We’ll enjoy the 1.0 that we have left but… what a shame. We’re really quite devastated by this.
ROSA LABS PLEASE SEE THIS COMMENT.
THIS IS NOT HOW EVERYONE FEELS! 1.1 IS GREAT
I’m not sure if your entire comment made it through… it looks like it might have been cut off?
I’ve only had 1.0 and have no idea what the intended thickness is. I add water to the consistency that I like. Are you able to just… Add less water to keep it thick the way you have gotten used to?
I haven’t tried adjusting the water content yet myself, but read in the forum that someone tried about 80% of the normal water, and it was still extremely thin. I have a feeling that simply adding less water won’t really do the trick. It would probably get to the point where you’d have to consume like half the amount of Soylent. Then again, maybe that’s not a bad thing really… I will indeed have to give it a shot and see.
This article is really too hyperbolic, especially since you seem to be speaking for more than yourself. You should be more specific about whom you are speaking because you don’t speak for all soylenteers. Not sure who “we” is but I’m not crushed.
I find the v1.1 better, in that I don’t fart as much. Otherwise, I find it indistinguishable from v1.0.
In lieu of hard data, I think perhaps we should establish some online polls to gauge the reaction of the community at large, rather than one man’s opinion.
Evidently you aren’t up on who “we” are, or you would know that it obviously refers to the two people who author this site. Also if you read the Soylent forum, you will see that there are an awful lot of people who feel the same way about 1.1. Sure there are also people who prefer it, but it seems to me like more people prefer 1.0 than 1.1… if the forum is any reasonable sample to go off of (and it probably isn’t).
I don’t see how there’s any hyperbole here either. With 1.0, we look forward to having Soylent every day throughout the day, and it’s been a truly life changing product on numerous levels. With 1.1… I literally was dreading drinking it every time I looked at my thermos. That’s fine if you or anyone else prefers 1.1, as I was only speaking for us.
I finally got my first shipment of Soylent & it’s 1.2 but haven’t tried it yet, me, being the dummy I am filled the pitcher with water then tried adding powder. It went a lot worse than you’d imagine.
Do you have any thoughts on the criticisms of using Magnesium oxide & Calcium carbonate since they’re said to have poor bioavailability?
Oooh yeah, adding powder to a full pitcher of water would not be pretty. LOL Hope you were able to clean up after without too much of a nightmare!
I really have no idea personally on any of the discussions on any aspect of Soylent’s nutrition. Sometimes I read those threads but mostly they just descend into bickering or presentations of contradictory and confusing data/pseudo-data, which doesn’t really conclude anything useful to me anyway. For us Soylent was strictly about the convenience factor of not having to deal with conventional food unless we chose to. The nutrition benefits have been a wholly unexpected side benefit, but one we’re pretty pleased about now that we’ve experienced it.
Yeah, it wasn’t very pretty. The pitcher wasn’t completely full, I measured and put in as much water as it said to in the directions, but missed that it said to put the powder in first. At first it looked like there was enough room for all the powder too, but it quickly formed a giant clot on the top that made things far harder than they needed to be. I needed a blender to get rid of some thumb-sized lumps even after shaking. Even then the first batch was still terribly gritty & chalkey. At least I know I won’t make that mistake again.
I was also first attracted to Soylent for convenience reasons, but I’m also really cheap. I mean, a $9 per day food budget is great, but I’m always interested in seeing if there are ways to have cheaper ingredients that could make Soylent that’s just as good if not better than it already is.