Long-time lurker, first time commenter. I've seen several people mention that there have not been meal replacement products like Soylent ever. The nutritional profile reminds me of EAS Myoplex + additional vitamins. Myoplex has been around since the mid 90s and was always marketed as a meal replacement. Learned about it from a bodybuilder website when trying to gain weight and easily "eat" extra meals. They have never marketed in the way Soylent has but it serves the same purpose. I took it to replace at least one meal a day for about two years. Blood work during that time period was normal and it worked well imo. Nothing against Soylent but the product is not a new concept.
Soylent does look similar to EAS Mypolex (comparing the nutrition from here: https://www.amazon.com/EAS-Myoplex-Original-Protein-Chocolat...). One issue is that to get 2,000 calories of EAS Myoplex you'd have to drink about 7 bottles. If you drink 7 bottles you'd be getting way too much of some vitamins and not enough of others.
The purpose is not completely replace all of your meals with it. I realize some use Soylent as such but in general having one item be your sole food source is probably not the best idea. If I'm not mistaken even the packaging of Soylent state that it's not intended to replace every meal.
Doesn't seem to matter to investors nor consumers, so why care =) Baby formula has been around for long (I don't think it's as good as mother's milk, but seems geared towards "complete nutrition as far as survival goes, as best as we know today" --- same as Soylent then), ready-to-drink raw eggs have been around for our entire pre-history (but who likes to make a mess, that'd be too primal), etc..
