The issue I have with soylent and some of their competitors is that they get to their RDA amounts by directly adding vitamins and minerals, some of which have low absorption depending on how they are bound - for example zinc and magnesium oxides have poor absorption compared to other zinc and magnesium salts - and which is not substantially better than just taking a multivitamin as far as I can tell.
> they get to their RDA amounts by directly adding vitamins and minerals, some of which have low absorption
Do read the blogs from these companies. This is taken into account, and updated when new studies come out. From what I know, the reference intake was a starting point and they're definitely reading the research on real uptake from supplements. (Like, even you and I know about uptake issues, and it's these people's jobs to know about it. They're not stupid.)
Not sure if you saw, since I've been editing the post a bit, but also people that eat only this for months still have normal blood values, so either they're not measuring what they're deficient on or uptake is good. Last I checked was a while ago, probably they were on Jimmy Joy powder version 1 or maybe 2.
> not substantially better than just taking a multivitamin
I wasn't arguing that eating healthily can't be done via other ways. Waterluvian was asking about matching the reference intake, this would just be one way to do it. If you already do it with supplements or even just a lot of vegetables, power to you!
Oh, I think I started writing my reply before you added that. Will take a look.
>Even you and I know about uptake issues, and it's these people's jobs to know about it. They're not stupid.
Sure, but their primary goal is to get people to buy their product, not necessarily to be as nutritious as possible. You could apply this same argument to the myriad vitamin and supplement companies which use the cheapest possible mineral salts even if the absorption is trash.
