Delivered ready-meal slop corporations are a hilarious self-parody.

[omnidisplay]

It's just this new wave of hand-delivered microwave meals that I think is all shill, no buy.

Ah, gotcha.
Yeah I hope so.

I recall them generally being shilled pretty hard during COVID. Idk if that's the case anymore because I basically ditched every platform that runs ads about a year ago (and adblock the few remaining).

Funnily enough, I also remember creepy ketamine and other at-home-therapy-mystery drug advertisements during that time. Also using the same minimalism for branding. Might be worth digging my old screenshots from that and sharing elsewhere.

 

[ElSpankio]

"Life's too hard all the time, why not cut out some busywork?"

I can see why these have an audience, but the problem comes from the fact that to do anything good in life, you need to put in some elbow grease. While this gives you an easy out from having to cook something yourself, in a worse-case scenario, these would act like a payday loan and prevent you from ever moving on from them. In your mind, difficulty is to always be avoided, but you can't avoid difficulty, so you take a day off for the rest of your life. You can apply this problem to many other things but I wanna make shorter posts.

 

[punisheddead]

One thing 4chan successfully brainwashed me about is seed oils.

Seed oils aren't really that bad for you in their base unoxidized states, aka in cases where they aren't used for extended periods of time at very high temperatures, which in factory and fast food settings is near impossible to avoid. Most health risks come from their oxidized states, which can cause body wide inflammation and they unfortunately get embedded in most if not all processed and ultra-processed foods. This is le science of course, but not le science that benefits corpos so you're a conspiracy theorist if you don't want to guzzle galons of oxidized and processed canola and sunflower oils.

For the past 3-4 years I only used olive or avocado oil. Or butter.

Those are good options as they don't really go through processing, you just get the natural squeezed oil. Butter is pretty good too. I also use old school beef tallow, might make me die young from cholesterol (even that's debated lol, it's probably the sugar that gets you) but doesn't make me feel bad like when i eat something drenched in a seed oil.

P.S be careful with virgin olive oil, corpos have been caught time and time again just lying about it even being olive oil for the most part. It's such a widespread problem that there's even a wiki page on it lol.

 

[Andy Kaufman]

And here I thought I had rather weak arms, at least my arms/hands are stronger from not eating this goyslop especially in the past 5 or so years.

To me it always looked like he has some kind of disability/malformed limb or so. Like his arm does not look normal. Would also explain the machine.

By now, the entire internet familiar with Soylent, and the general idea of food-analogue nutrient slurries. The meme of goyslop is commonplace, and we all know the stereotype of the individual who can't even make a sandwich on their own.
Today however, arguably the most disturbing trend in recent years is the rise of these ready-meal delivery services. I'm not talking about doordash or similar, at least those are bringing you food that was just made (even if it's still garbage). No-no, as I'll highlight in this post, there's services now that have weekly/monthly subscriptions to have microwave dinners shipped right to your door! How convenient! This works great with my lifestyle as a work-from-home job as the vice assistant advisor to the secretary for the director of commerce at MetAmaZoogleX™! You'll never have to leave your house again!
Better yet is the collective lying about the healthiness and true-and-honest nutritionist research that goes into these meals! Don't worry that meal your microwaving is actually good for you!

I wanted to share a personal dive I did into some of these slop companies, due to how much of a comical self-parody their branding and identity is. Soylent is far from the only one, and arguably they aren't even the worst. There's some hilarious trends within these brands that exacerbate the most miserable and dystopic parts of internet and consumer culture today.

To keep this opening post somewhat brief, I'm gonna focus on these brands.
- Soylent (the og)
- Factor
- Huel (potentially the most disturbing)

Another honorable mention is Cook Unity but they have less of the most egregious issues mentioned below.


Some Common Trends

What is a 20XX corporation without minimalism?

Every single one of these brands utilize the same design language;​

• Bold, sans serif font on a plain background.
• Monochrome or limited colour palette.
• Typical "flat design" - as in, the type of shit you could design in Google Draw in 30 seconds.
• Lots of cheap vector art.

View attachment 136048View attachment 136049View attachment 136051
View attachment 136074

TRUST THE SCIENCE

'Experts agree!' type advertising and claims. Our nutrient paste is CREATED WITH SCIENCE!!! That's how you know you can trust the garbage gobbling up!​

View attachment 136052​

Factor75​

​

View attachment 136053​

View attachment 136064​

Soylent​

​

View attachment 136054​

View attachment 136056​

Huel. This one is a great image since it's next to what literally looks like vomit.​

​

They all also feature a bunch of meaningless citations that tangentially say X may be good for you (observational study). Since our food contains the shit mentioned in the article it must be healthy!!!!!​

View attachment 136059​

Factor​

​

View attachment 136060​

Huel​

​

ITS GOT MINERALS!!!!!!!!
Here at Slop™ we take care to shove as many random chemicals into our food because they're healthy vitamins (at 300% daily recommended intake) that any growing consumer needs! Why bother eating balanced healthy meals that provide those nutrients when you could get all those essential vitamins from our nutrient powder we mix into our food?
View attachment 136055
View attachment 136057
Huel meal sheet

View attachment 136058
Soylent

View attachment 136061
Factor


Soyboy testimonials!
Our slop™ is beloved by many! Just listen to what our (totally not automata) fans have to say!
View attachment 136065
View attachment 136066

Other Misc Stuff

• Many have a typical "low waste, good for the enviorment" whatever kind of shit. Which feels rich coming from companies that mail out meals in single use plastic containers and bags.
• Typical "no GMO" or anything else you'd expect. Basically any type of modern food psyop you can think of.
• They all have these insane 'quizzes' for determining what product is just right for you! Because I definitely trust a corporate algorithm to tell me what food I should be guzzling down.
• They all, as you can imagine, rely heavily on pushing low-cost (for production) foods. This is easily boiled down to maximizing profit margins, soy and oats and other livestock-feed is comically cheap to produce. If you can brand it as super healthy, and with all the above insane claims, then you can sell extremely cheap food at an insanely high markup!

---

Funny per-company shit

I really like this diagram Soylent has. Canola Oil and Sucralose is good for you!!!!! Because SCIENCE!!!!!!!!!!!
View attachment 136062




Insane claims on the behalf of Huel!
View attachment 136063

---

Enough with the screenshots / Some Specifics.
I swear I can do an effortpost that isn't just a bunch of screenshots to laugh at. Here's some general statistic and observations I have for these three companies.

Soylent
Particularly egregious when it comes to that late 20th century American 'healthy food' (corporate lobbied science), which is par-for-the-course when it's all plant-based, of course. Notable is all their talk about reducing "cholesterol" (with no distinction between types), meaning they justify objectively terrible oils and chemicals for you (as shown above with the canola oil diagram). Soylent also just, fully embraces their insane claims by pushing their chemical slurry as the future of food that everyone should be consuming in excess to live better lives. Insane shit like;

These insane claims go from "typical health brand garbage" to actively predatory, such as sharing a claim that "Soylent complete meal shakes help cancer patients maintain weight and quality of life." link

Their 12-bottle monthly subscription is 42 dollars a month.

Factor(75)
Somewhat comical in their food depictions in photos. Beyond the typical "packaging always looks better than the product," this shit doesn't even look possible as fake edited food;
View attachment 136067
Factor focuses a lot more on trying to prove their legitimacy as food rather than relying super hard on deh science. More claims like "chef crafted."

All things considered though, factor is probably the most boring out of this list.

For a 10-meal weekly delivery it's $124.

Huel
Potentially the most disgusting one on this list. I find their branding uniquely hilarious because "Huel" is a fucking disgusting word, literally sounds like someone throwing up.
And to keep the trend going, their food looks like vomit too! Consistently! They don't even try to hide it.
View attachment 136070

Beyond that, Huel checks every box mentioned above (not going to rehash examples), but they also have a couple different but equally hilarious claims and principles.

• "Plant-based-protein" right next to "no soy"
• Consistent mentioning that it's "nutrient-complete," essentially trying to claim that their slop has everything you need to survive. Why eat anything else!!!
• Randomly name-dropping a bunch of technical nutrient-terms and ideas to make their oat drink sound more legit. They basically throw the powder of every plant in existence in this shit to claim it has any benefit possible.

Huel's modern slavery statement is disturbingly hilarious, filled with question-dodging their own section titles.
For example;


Huel also seems really into their (boring and dystopic) branding, selling merchandise and branded bottles among other things. Who the hell would buy this shit?
View attachment 136069

The founder, Julian Hearn, apparently already made a ton of money from earlier ventures, so Huel wasn't profit-motivated (link). Yeah right.

Their 7 meals subscription is 18 pounds per month.

---

(Back to screenshots)
Last thing to mention. If you want to laugh at the people who actually buy this shit, there's subr*ddits for each of these companies respectively, as well as a general "ReadyMeals" one. They are all exactly what you'd expect.

View attachment 136071
>getting married
>can't make their own food

View attachment 136072

View attachment 136073

This shit along with almost every other online food hype is best ignored. The only scenario where I can see this being considered is more extreme, long term backpacking/traveling where you know you'll be away from civilisation for a while and have one or two of these just as a backup incase your actual food goes bad or so. Or maybe some other extreme use cases. IDK how long the shelf life is but if it comes as some form of powder or so I can see some preppers put a few ratoins into their go bags or so.
These drinkable meals also have the strong disadvantage of being... liquid. Our digestive system evolved to digest firm food slowly so drinking this stuff might actually lead to overeating. When this stuff enters your stomach, a few digestive processes are skipped since it already comes liquid. It's simply unnatural to get 500kcals by just drinking a few gulps.

 

[punisheddead]

I sincerely apologize for double posting but I remembered this gem from a soylent documentary I saw years ago. But the gist is...

clearly has no clue that standards are in place for food manufacturing.

Have you seen how Soylents first line of "manufacturing" looked like? They literally mixed that shit in a garment factory that had rats in it. I wish I was making this shit up and it was fine too because it was considered a supplement.

 

[Ross_Я]

Seed oils aren't really that bad for you in their base unoxidized states, aka in cases where they aren't used for extended periods of time at very high temperatures, which in factory and fast food settings is near impossible to avoid.

Well, not sure just how extended those periods should be, but I rarely cook once with one portion of oil. I'm too darn poor for that.

P.S be careful with virgin olive oil, corpos have been caught time and time again just lying about it even being olive oil for the most part. It's such a widespread problem that there's even a wiki page on it lol.

Yeah, that's why I prefer avocado, really. You can't trust anyone in this country... But avocado oil gets a bit too expensive evever now and then. Or rare.

I also use old school beef tallow, might make me die young from cholesterol (even that's debated lol, it's probably the sugar that gets you) but doesn't make me feel bad like when i eat something drenched in a seed oil.

Oh yeah, that's a good option, completely forgot about that. I prefer pigs every now and then. Usually in the form of bacon and/or salo, tossing it on the pan and letting it fry a bit on its own before cooking.
Just some tallow or lard works about as fine though. It is pretty much impossible to get those in the local shops though, you gotta extract those, like, manually, but it works.

 

[omnidisplay]

They literally mixed that shit in a garment factory that had rats in it. I wish I was making this shit up and it was fine too because it was considered a supplement.

Makes sense. Anything to keep costs down. Entire reason stuff like this exists, it's extremely cheap to produce.

might make me die young from cholesterol (even that's debated lol, it's probably the sugar that gets you)

At this point I don't even know what shit to trust when it comes to nutrition / what's harmful.
Generally (and it applies quite well in this case), if someone is trying to convince me somethings bad and they conveniently have the alternative, they're full of shit. I'd trust lard or tallow over canola. And similarly I'd consider sugar (or honey) over mysteryzerocaloriesweetenerolose anyday.

I think the fact that every artificial sweetener gives me a raging headache is sign enough from my body that this isn't shit I want in my bloodstream.

 

[punisheddead]

but I rarely cook once with one portion of oil. I'm too darn poor for that.

Shouldn't really be too much of a problem with avocado oil but you should still try to not over use it, a few times should be fine though. Ratio of saturated vs unsaturated fats is still different enough that oxidation isn't an as big of a problem as is with say sunflower oil. Applies to olive oil too, both oils are just healthier.

At this point I don't even know what shit to trust when it comes to nutrition / what's harmful.

Most of the hate regarding cholesterol has been based off a very old and flawed study, basically it concluded what we know, if you have "bad" cholesterol you might possibly have a heart problem. But cholesterol is just one element, one signal indicating a problem, most likely not the actual culprit. If your car has an oil leak, it's not the oil that caused it in most cases. Sugar has been pointed to as a more likely culprit. But it's difficult, it's shaking up decades old "confirmed findings" and with how much influence corpos have and how polarized and anti intellectual people have become it's tough to say if will ever really know the truth.

I think the fact that every artificial sweetener gives me a raging headache is sign enough from my body that this isn't shit I want in my bloodstream.

Usually this is the best course of action, if it makes you feel bad, stop eating it or at least eat less of it.

 

[remember_summer_days]

in consequence, grown up thinking it's a fact of life that "Protein" or "Fat" is abstractly interchangeable between a can of beans and a post-workout shake

... are they not? I know nothing about nutrition. I thought it was as simple as knowing your calorie intake lmao

To be safe, we should all just go back to eating Mammoth beef alongside a tribal roast fire.

 

[Ross_Я]

Shouldn't really be too much of a problem with avocado oil but you should still try to not over use it, a few times should be fine though. Ratio of saturated vs unsaturated fats is still different enough that oxidation isn't an as big of a problem as is with say sunflower oil. Applies to olive oil too, both oils are just healthier.

It's usually in the line of two-three times. Well, maybe four-five tops, every now and then. I guess I'm doing everything right overall, thanks for sharing the knowledge.

 

[remember_summer_days]

Might have to change the name of this thread to Agora cooking general...

 

[Orlando Smooth]

Regarding the branding style: in fairness, this is probably maximally appealing to the soulless coastal weakling software devs and engineers whose only notable talent is mindlessly following orders of their superiors in creating the tools of modern human suffering. You gotta give these companies credit where it's due, the know their audience and have tailored the marketing to them to maximize profit.

All right, tits or gtfo. Send picks of the hearty meals ya'll cooking.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm dog shit at food photography, but I do enjoy cooking as a hobby. Here's some highlights from the past couple months:

Steak au Poivre with potato salad medallions

Cornish hens on a bed of root vegetables

Cheesy baked pasta with sausage

Pork adobada tacos (homemade marinade from scratch)

At this point I don't even know what shit to trust when it comes to nutrition / what's harmful.

The closer it is to being what it was in nature, the better it likely is for you; an apple > apple sauce > apple juice. When it comes to oils, even as someone who goes out of their way to cook new things from all around the world, it's exceptionally rare that I need anything other than olive, avocado, or peanut - and peanut is for rare occasions (<5 times per year) that I want to treat us to something deep fried. Limit exposure to highly processed junk food - it's fruitless for most people to resist the urge to snack, but the big brain move is to make your own snacks. Salty, sweet, whatever you like you can find recipes that are almost certainly healthier than what you'd buy. Lastly, if your great-grandparents were eating it, don't stress about whether or not it's healthy, because any negative impacts are marginal in comparison to the crap people eat today. Don't overthink it or fall for fad diets: if you can visually identify what plant/animal it came from and it's not deep fried or covered in sugar, you're probably fine.

I also generally ascribe to the belief that if you're making it yourself, it's basically not worth worrying about at all. Assuming you're cooking with whole ingredients it is almost certainly less bad for you regardless of what you're making, compared to both restaurants and premade garbage.

 

[Andy Kaufman]

Seed oils aren't really that bad for you in their base unoxidized states, aka in cases where they aren't used for extended periods of time at very high temperatures

It's also very important to not use native oils (cold pressed, unrefined) for frying and cooking. I wish it was regulation in my country to explicitly add the so called smoke point (temperature beyond which it's unhealthy) on the labels because I know that a ton of people just buy the cheapest canola/sunflower oil for cooking and there the labels say for "light frying" somewhere hidden on the back which means that the smoke point is probably too low.

I buy explicit frying oil which has a smoke point beyond 240°C to be sure.

 

[omnidisplay]

Ah, gotcha.
Yeah, I hope so.

I recall them being shilled pretty hard during COVID as well. I haven't seen many of those ads recently since I ditched most platforms with ads about a year ago (and adblock the few remaining).

Interestingly, I also remember seeing those creepy ketamine and other at-home-therapy-mystery drug advertisements during that time. They used similar minimalistic branding. It might be worth digging through my old screenshots from that period and sharing them elsewhere for a bit of a nostalgic trip.

Mods. Kill this bot.

 

[Don Thuselah]

Man, I was two weeks away from debuting my patented Bachelor Chow, and then I find this thread.

 

[youtherthyf]

still reading my way through the post to give an actual opinion so for now

All right, tits or gtfo. Send picks of the hearty meals ya'll cooking.

been a good while sense i made mulukhiya(i forgot to add garlic :/ ) but the onions are sufficing for now

 

[Knows He Knows Not]

Another Agora thread that reads like twitterx4chan, I do tire of these Joe Rogan fueled posts about seed oils. Looks like the thread is already on track to start discussing cholesterol and how "its actually good for you", people who do no research and say "its impossible to know the truth", and we already have a post casting doubt on observational studies. Good stuff.

On the thread topic I'm not sure what the issue is, the people who buy Huel or the other alternatives would be ordering fast food instead, and I don't see how what amounts to blended oats, pea protein, flaxseed + supplements could be worse than a McDonalds burger+fries. In fact it would be much more healthy, not to mention more convenient for those who truly could not care about what food tastes like.

Really the alternative cooking photos show off the cold reality that despite all the lip flapping, I highly doubt anything being made by the rest of you is much better than a frozen meal - beyond a marginally lower presence of sodium, less preservatives, and a better taste. Pictures of refined carbs, fatty meat, alcohol, mayonnaise, cheese, etc. I can only imagine based on the history of this thread and the "safe diet" thread that someone will come to tell me how saturated fat is actually good for us, and that actually unhealthy habits are ok so long as you don't buy something with a boogieman logo on it.

 

[GENOSAD]

Another Agora thread that reads like twitterx4chan, I do tire of these Joe Rogan fueled post about seed oils. Looks like the thread is already on track to start discussing cholesterol and how "its actually good for you", people who do no research and say "its impossible to know the truth", and we already have a post casting doubt on observational studies. Good stuff.

 

[Don Thuselah]

Another Agora thread that reads like twitterx4chan, I do tire of these Joe Rogan fueled post about seed oils. Looks like the thread is already on track to start discussing cholesterol and how "its actually good for you", people who do no research and say "its impossible to know the truth", and we already have a post casting doubt on observational studies. Good stuff.

On the thread topic I'm not sure what the issue is, the people who buy Huel or the other alternatives would be ordering fast food instead, and I don't see how what amounts to blended oats, pea protein, flaxseed + supplements could be worse than a McDonalds burger+fries. In fact it would be much more healthy, not to mention more convenient for those who truly could not care about what food tastes like.

Really the alternative cooking photos show off the cold reality that despite all the lip flapping, I highly doubt anything being made by the rest of you is much better than a frozen meal - beyond a marginally lower presence of sodium, less preservatives, and a better taste. Pictures of refined carbs, fatty meat, alcohol, mayonnaise, cheese, etc. I can only imagine based on the history of this thread and the "safe diet" thread that someone will come to tell me how saturated fat is actually good for us, and that actually unhealthy habits are ok so long as you don't buy something with a boogieman logo on it. Good stuff.

Seems like you're having a hard time there bud.
Cholesterol is essential for the production of hormones in the body that's true.
Whether people start arguing that very low density lipo-proteins are healthy or not is irrelevant.
You seem, in your bad attitude to be straw manning future responses.

If you're too cool for the internet, then get off it, touch grass, have a cry about how people who haven't taken stats courses aren't as god-like as you.

Cholesterol is good for the body and the signaling that it is bad has been demonstrably worse to the uneducated masses than saying otherwise.

But as I'm sure you've seen this all before, please post sources backing up exactly why Cholesterol is bad.
Why you're blasé attitude to healthy discussions (no pun intended) is needed, and why for someone who seems so above it all, you still entered this thread, and shat it up, like a bitch.

 

[Digital Cheese]

To me it always looked like he has some kind of disability/malformed limb or so. Like his arm does not look normal. Would also explain the machine.

I suspect that is the case. It would be significantly funnier if his arm looked like that due to the soylent and *not* due to a disability or malformation, though.