If I could keep myself fully nourished for $5/day ($150/month), I'd be pretty damn happy. We don't even have to talk about the third world to see possible benefits. We're always hearing about how America's poor don't have time to prepare food and are thus "forced" to buy, essentially, McDonald's. Well, you can feed yourself 3 sandwiches off the dollar menu a day on that budget, or for $5/day you can get (theoretically) everything you need with no more effort than mixing up a glass of Tang.

You may or may not be old enough to remember "instant breakfast" [1] but it was a "week 2" meal in my dorm in college, meaning if your stipend/outside income was limited to a bi-weekly paycheck you could "get by" if some of last few meals in week 2 were just instant breakfast. Rice/beans/tortillas were a better choice but had more prep time.

That said, it's an interesting question on the market for food products the broader desirability for a product like Soylent. As a minimalist I'm intrigued, as a foodie I'm appalled :-) But could it put a dent in the McFranchises of the world? Perhaps. Could it, or a similarly engineered product provide the missing nutrition for at risk populations? If so what prevents it? (I'm watching for similar ideas to appear on the market if this gets any more press than it has)

I note however that 'feeding the poor' with a product like this might not get the reception an engineer/scientist might expect. As others have mentioned there are some cultural stereotypes built up around food and meals which are not well supported by an engineered food product that is designed merely to be nutritious.

[1] http://caloriecount.about.com/tag/food/instantbreakfast

Yep, I've had "instant breakfast", it can even be tasty if you don't have it very often.

When writing my comment, I wasn't really considering the sociological implications of where I was going, I was simply thinking that I, if living on a $5/day food budget, would be pretty happy with something like Soylent, especially since I presumably wouldn't get that general feeling of malaise that overtakes you after a few McDonald's meals in a row.

You're right, you can't simply go in and say, "Dear poor people, please consume this nutritious gloop". It could be effective as a form of rations in case of emergency, but attempting to put it out there as a basic staple food would be more challenging.

If Soylent is actually as awesome as the creator makes it sound, and it were available in a tub or in pouches at the grocery store, I'd definitely buy it.

You can easily. Rice, olive oil, frozen vegetables, almonds, bananas, oatmeal, cheap bread, salt, sugar, margarine, cheap spices, multivitamin. You can even splurge on canned soups (chunky even) once a day, with real meat in them. If you had to you'd figure it out.

Junk foods should not be buyable with food stamps. Though food industry lobbying results in that restriction not being abided by in a lot of cases.

Oh, I used to feed myself on about $5/day. It wasn't fun but I wasn't starving. But life's a lot easier if you just have to mix this powder into some water.

Are $1-$2/day wages common in the US?

That $150/month cost is a cost incurred in the US. It would be a different cost to source the ingredients in every country.

Also the price is entirely dictated by the market... If everybody was drinking soylent the price of the ingredients would go up.

That's a bit of a reach. Maybe long-term, if the whole world were drinking Soylent and it relied on some severely limited resources, this could happen. But in the short/medium term, if demand increases, it's very likely Rob will find someone who can produce/mix the ingredients in large batches, and economies of scale will kick in, making it significantly cheaper.