Actually this approach may be perfect for someone who is dealing with some health issue and has to be very careful of what they eat (example: food allergies). It would have to be modified to suit their needs, and in that way, I do appreciate the DIY approach. There appears to be a community involved in the DIY that could assist one in making the necessary modifications to insure meeting nutritional needs. But, I would see this as a beginning for such a person, for having to modify ones diet for health issues is very daunting at the beginning, and it would be a loss if this would be all they eat. This does have a social impact for such a person. When invited for a meal, they either have to ask what is being served, or bring their own food. But, true friends understand and, in time, adjust to the situation.
Just read through this article in the New York Times. I really enjoyed the first sentence:
“I just spent more than a week experiencing Soylent, the most joyless new technology to hit the world since we first laid eyes on MS-DOS.”
Edit: I was just looking through the ingredients of Soylent. While this might cover necessary nutrients, there is something that this will not provide and that is enzymes. Enzymes are necessary for many things including the suppression of inflammation, which is a major contributor to many diseases. Also, chewing food is good for oral health.
This is exactly the point @jeremy was making, and although all four of us appreciate good food, he’s the gourmand and gourmet among us. The creator basically doesn’t care about taste; food is merely a necessary evil. I think that this means he’s not actually tasted, for example, the chips from the chippy next to the indoor market in Stevenage, or Fry’s Turkish Delight, but regardless of his motives he’s managed to make a thing which even a Michelin starred dude like Jezza is prepared to try a bit and acknowledge there are uses for it, which ain’t nothin’.
Does this guy not count as a steam box? I know it does not run SteamOS, but it does ship with steam and was shown off at CES as a steam box.
Nope.
“All Steam Machines will have a SteamOS[2] version which is an open source Linux-based operating system developed for Linux-compatible Steam games as well as other entertainment.”
So they actually announced something like this recently, although in its current iteration it’s limited to a small number of hand selected sites. LQ is on the waitlist:
https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/
–jeremy
Ha! I did not know. I’ll even forego my commission for the idea. Sounds like a good one; nice, Google. Great minds, etc. 
Have anyone seen this movie, Soylent Green (1973) ? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070723/
I would recommend it.
Storyline
In 2022, Earth is overpopulated and totally polluted; the natural resources have been exhausted and the nourishment of the population is provided by Soylent Industries …
(…)
But Thorn continues his work and discovers a bizarre and disturbing secret of the ingredient used to manufacture Soylent Green.
I know were are not yet in 2022, but may be Soylent “tested” in this episode it is the begining of the Soylent of the movie …
I assume that the name of this product was a reference to the movie, so this isn’t a coincidence
Pictured: Soylent CEO
Well, but the secret ingredient (movie) would not be a good marketing “item” 
Given the product’s advertised “feature” of being bland and joyless, I don’t think they’re too worried about marketing.
Good point mhall119
Have never thought about it in this way, but you may be right.
Weeeell, they care about marketing, it is just they are marketing nutrition and convenience, not flavor.
Right, but the people they are marketing it towards are probably also the ones who will justify eating [spoilers] as a purely practical matter.
This isn’t what Soylent is about though. It’s not about replacing socializing. It’s about optimizing nutrition intake and creating a full meal solution that could also be used at some point to improve food availability in regions where that is a problem. Engineered nutrition is also going to be very important for landing humans on Mars and achieving further human space flight. It’s great in that I can use it to have a very quick meal, concentrate on something other than obtaining food, avoid driving and burning fuel to go get food, use less electricity or gas, since I don’t have to cook, etc… It doesn’t prevent me from still going out and enjoying food at restaurants or social settings, or going to the grocer and buying stuff to make stir fry or whatever, whenever I want. But fewer dirty dishes, lower carbon output, and proper nutrition, are a great win.
Also, the Soylent makers are very picky about the taste. It’s one of the big reasons why it’s taken so long for initial shipments to get done. They’ve done taste testing on changes to the mixture for different grains for probable fulfillment, and refused to use them because the taste was altered in the wrong way. It’s totally tasteless, and certainly isn’t the best tasting thing in the world, but it’s quite a lot better than many other food replacement mixtures that have been on the market for years.
I don’t think so. Try to think about it more of an API than as food. Instead of a frozen pizza for example, which already has all the ingredients combined, and has a certain set of flavors, and may not provide the full nutrition you need for a single meal, Soylent is a set of nutritional requirements distilled into its base components, and allows you to give it whatever flavor you want, and still be provided a complete nutritional intake. With traditional food, to get a complete nutritional intake for a single meal, the different types of foods you would need to eat would have too many flavors that disturb the flavors of other ingredients, you’d have to eat more than required, becasue the amounts needed are not balanced across the spectrum of food required, and you would produce a greater amount of waste, either as solid, liquid, or fat.
I think we all agree this is a good thing when applied to scenarios where there isn’t enough food (e.g. famine-stricken countries or space travel), but my concern more broadly is with the kind of people who are so focused on one thing they don’t take time to eat.
Also, I do have a side-concern that in the future we will discover that Soylent was bad for you all along. I just think it is safer and better to get your nutrition from the traditional places: fruits and vegges.
It’s not just about the time to eat though. For me, there are very many annoying things about the whole traditional food process. I live alone and work from home, and I can only eat so much at once, in the way of traditional food sources. Traditional food also doesn’t have particularly long shelf life, beyond some special things. I also don’t live in a location where I could walk to a corner market, and buy food in small enough quanties for a single meal or two, and place the burden on fresheness on the marketplace. If I go to a grocery store to buy food, to prepare, I’m literally going to end up throwing half of it away, most of the time, because it will go bad, simply beause it’s too much and I can’t eat it all before then. I love good food, but I absolutely hate cooking, preparing, shopping, cleanup, etc… As a result, I’ve ended up with a really crappy diet, and a quite expensive monthly food budget, as I just end up eating out all the time. Soylent basically solves all these problems for me. It takes only a couple minutes to prepare. I only have to do it once a day. Cleanup is only washing a few pint glasses and a pitcher. I don’t have to drive anywhere to get it. I can save about $600 a month on food. I don’t have to worry about what pesticides were used on the produce that I’m buying. I don’t have to wash my food before I cook it. I don’t have to worry about the food going bad. I don’t have to worry about salmolnella or e-coli recalls in peanut butter or strawberries. I don’t have to think about nutrition at all. For someone in a similar position as myself, it’s pretty much perfect.