Synectar

In the first part of the story we are going to tell you how we came up with the idea of ideal syntetic food, why we chose the DIY path, what other products we met along the way and why we eventually decided to start with Synectar.

“If you were offered the opportunity to free yourself from the trouble that comes with food and given some nutritionally balanced substance you were supposed to eat instead of regular food, but this substance would always be the same, would you accept?”

“If you were offered the opportunity to free yourself from the trouble that comes with food and given some nutritionally balanced substance you were supposed to eat instead of regular food, but this substance would always be the same, would you accept?”

That’s how many of our beer discussions began (along with saving and/or conquering the world, newest PC games and many other important-for-life topics). We regarded it as something between sci-fi and philosophy, something to think about, but with no real life probability.

The results of these discussions were always slightly different – food is sometimes a burden, it slows down our lives, it holds us from productive things. We have to buy it, prepare it and then also eat it! And eating is not even pleasant when you are under pressure. But on the other hand there is that unbelievable pleasure which comes with eating of a juicy burger, roasted pork fillet or even one of classic Slovak food – dumplings with sheep cheese.

Sometime around the summer of 2014 we came across a link to soylent.me. Web was nice, with futuristic design, and the structure was also appealing. We agreed that it could be interesting to try  but they ship Soylent only within USA. Cool… Of course, there are many ways to send it to Europe, but they cost not only money but also a lot of time. And we wanted it right now. Or right then. Or put simply – FAST. In the summer and even during writing of this post (October 2014) there was a message on the Soylent page which went like “New orders ship in 2-3 months”. And that looked like a very long time to make the decision impulsively enough.

But!

Section FAQ was hiding an interesting link – DIY Soylent.
DIY.
Abbreviation we really like because it gives us a feeling that we can really do anything. The truth is that it often comes up eventually as too difficult (another words for “We need to spend more than hour on it”).

We had some pages from this section open in browser tabs for a couple of days but our interest fell off quickly afterwards and we totally forgot about Soylent.

So we went on with our peaceful earthworm-like life when suddenly BOOM, link to Mana (ok ok, I’m little bit more dramatic than I should be, life wasn’t so peaceful and the link for Mana also changed nothing substantial).

What surprised us was quite strong resemblance to the page of Soylent, not only in content but in design too. At first, it appeared to us only as some European branch of Soylent. Some time after that we found out that it really is a different product with its own development (at least it’s written so on the page itself and the Mana creators present themselves so).

Now we faced the same problem – “We are delivering MANA to our new customers within 8-10 weeks.”

There we were again, browsing Slovak and Check recipes on DIY Soylent, with the same fate as the last time – only our excuse was now different – “lack of recipes from our geographic locality” (who knows what we would come up with if the recipes weren’t categorised by country of their origin there).

But!

Juraj likes to inspire himself from time to time with the blog called Raptitude. He looks there for ways to become a better human(oid?). And then he explains them to me. And then we talk, with a beer on the table, about how awesome it would be. Until we go home and we “sleep on it”. And then we really are going to change something. But that takes a lot of effort, suddenly.

Unlikely for us, it was quite different this time. Juraj sent me a link “Look, Soylent on the Raptitude”.

It took me a while to remember what that Soylent word even meant but it didn’t take long for my mind to confront me with all the old questions and thoughts. Finally there was a review from real human being (ok, only “internet real” one. But we are only “internet real” ourselves so everything’s ok), who tried it and wrote a report about his experiences.

Apropos, just to amuse the reader, one of the first questions that came to my mind was a very neo-philosophical one – “If I put only liquids inside me what will come out of me?”.

I found no answer then (maybe I just wasn’t searching hard enough) but nowadays I have the information about the sufficiency of fiber in securing the creation of some “solid matter” in the right places.

But the time will tell.

Sooo, here we go again.

Soylent.me? Excessive waiting period.

Mymana.eu? Excessive waiting period.

DIY? Too complicated.

Or maybe not?

Shouldn’t we at least give it a try?

…

The next episode – The Story, part 2