Category: News

A few months ago I was interviewed by an anonymous journalist for an article about ‘lents that never saw the light of day. So I thought I’d share it with you here! :)

What compelled you to create Super Body Fuel and start using meal substitutes?

I heard about Rob Rhinehart’s Soylent experiment back in 2013 when I was eating a strict, home-cooked Paleo diet, largely on account of my many food allergies. I thought it was an intriguing concept, though I was skeptical about how well it could work in practice. I liked the food I was already eating, and I felt really good on it, health-wise, but as the year wore on I started to resent the hours I spent cooking and cleaning every day, and wonder how much more I could accomplish on my indie game side projects if I had some of that time back. I mean, I liked food, but I didn’t necessarily feel the need to tantalize my taste buds three times a day…

Eventually I decided to check out the DIY soylent scene that had emerged in response to Rob’s initial blog post. Experimenting with chalky concoctions became a hobby, and then a side business, as people began spontaneously asking me to sell them some of my DIY mixes. After a few months, I quit my software engineering day job to focus on Custom Body Fuel full-time. My initial plan was to quickly come up with one good recipe and a brand name that would do it justice, and just outsource everything else to a bigger manufacturer a la Tim Ferriss’s 4-Hour Workweek so I could live my dream of being an independent artist – an indie game developer – but alas, it was not to be. Turns out I’m too much of a perfectionist.

So I turned it into Super Body Fuel and went inside the cocoon to iterate on formula, brand, and learning to be a manager and leader for the next several years, with the help of my employees and our thousands of customers. And when I say “inside the cocoon” I mean no marketing, no outreach, no nothing. Just working that feedback loop with our own customers, learning from experience, trying to make the best product we can within our “optimal nutrition for all” mission. Optimal and inclusive.

Every year it feels like we’re just about ready to emerge from the cocoon, and then that horizon stretches out to the next year for one reason or another. But we’ve finally pinned down the formula and the branding at this point, and we’re just putting the final pieces together as far as manufacturing and website development, so… Let’s just say I’m really looking forward to being a butterfly. And you can bet it’s not going to be called “Something Body Fuel” either!

With what sort of frequency/intensity do you use your meal substitutes? Is it a 100% replacement? Could you briefly walk me through a usual day of what you’re eating and when?

I’ve been using my own stuff (mostly Super Fuel) for anywhere from 30% to 90% of my diet, for the last several years straight. I’ve never gone 100% because I have no reason to – I like corn chips too much to ever cut them out of my diet completely, haha. But it’s rare to have a day where I go without it completely – Super Fuel with berries is the perfect breakfast for me, honestly. I keep a pitcher in my fridge at all times, and while I might also crave (and indulge) some crunchy chips, I never get tired of it. And few other meals leave me with such a perfect balance of energy and satiation, especially with my food allergies. It’s come a long way since the chalky concoctions of the early days.

Do you actively enjoy using meal substitutes or is consuming them more of a practical decision?

I actively enjoy them. I miss them if I’m forced to go without for a while – crave them, even. It’s also a very practical decision, but that’s not coming at the expense of pleasure. Cinnamon with berries is deliciously reminiscent of my favorite pie, and chocolate never gets old.

That’s the benefit of quality nutrition – your body craves it once it realizes how much good stuff is in it. And not in a compulsive way like sugary junk food. It’s a good way to reset your palate for healthy food if your brain has been hacked and hijacked by processed garbage.

Do you feel like they’ve made you healthier? How have they affected your body?

I came to this from a healthy diet, so I didn’t necessarily see the kind of dramatic benefits that so many people see when they’re coming from fast food. However, I’ve definitely learned to optimize for health further in addition to optimizing for convenience and cost, even calculating which vegetables I could combine for the best nutritional coverage when cooking for myself (spinach and broccoli is a great combination).

As far as my body, I got into this business while probably in the best shape of my life, practicing martial arts and parkour at least an hour every day on average, and walking an hour a day for my commute. Probably the best testimonial I can give is that I still have visible abs, even after all my healthy routines were obliterated by the stress and demands of starting my own bootstrapped business these last several years!

Do you feel like they’ve made you more productive? How have they changed the schedule of your day?

Yes, of course. But it’s impossible to compare life before starting a business to life after. Now that has changed my schedule and my life to an unrecognizable degree!

Food can obviously be much more than just sustenance for some folks — it can be a cultural thing, a social thing, an experiential thing, etc. — how do you see your relationship with “real food?” How has that relationship changed after you started using alt-food?

I think I’ve always had to be a lot more aware of the food that I eat, given my allergies and the general sensitivity of my body. But I really dove into the “biohacking” mindset once I got into the DIY soylent scene and beyond. My approach to food these days is a lot more “nutrition nerd” and a lot more utilitarian as a whole, though I’ve also learned to lighten up more and not be so strict about my diet at the same time. Like I said, I like corn chips.

Maybe you’re a little biased here, but do you feel like meal substitutes are “the future?” Could you see a world where people have entirely replaced their diets with these types of drinks?

I don’t think of this trend as “meal substitutes”. It’s really about nutritional completeness as a benchmark for processed food, which previously has been entirely about making something that is tasty, addictive, and cheap. The future isn’t Soylent, it’s Vite Ramen – delicious, gourmet instant ramen that is also optimized for nutrition, complete and bioavailable. And Tom and Tim, the founders of Vite Ramen, are good guys. I’m a big fan of what they’re doing, and it’s a huge honor that they have mentioned me and my work as one of their (many) inspirations.

That said, the processed food industry has been so successful at uprooting and destroying traditional food cultures, and replaced it with food that is so antithetical to health, that at this point there’s a lot of value in something as utilitarian as a powdered drink mix that can actually function as a complete and healthy meal. Powders aren’t particularly exciting, but there’s really no other way to make something cheap and convenient enough to compete with the junk that has come to dominate our diets, as a society.

I don’t see a future where people drink all their meals instead of eating them, but I really hope to see a future where people can choose to drink something healthy and cheap instead of going to McDonald’s for lunch or powering through at their desk with an energy drink. And where people expect solid nutrition from their instant ramen. I don’t think it’s that far off. And it can’t come soon enough – whether from an environmental or a public health angle.

What types of people, in your experience, use Super Body Fuel (or other meal substitutes,) and for what reasons?

Food is such a broad category that it’s hard to pin down any specifics. But the people who get the most benefit from it, and stick with it long-term, tend to be those whose work makes it hard to take time off for breakfast or lunch – whether those are the stereotypical workaholic programmers glued to their computer screens, or the hardworking people who are on their feet in a hospital, factory, or outdoor job site all day.

It’s also great for more specialized diets, whether that’s because of food allergies like mine, goals like weight-loss or bodybuilding, or even recovering from surgery or chemo where it’s hard to eat solid foods. It’s always really cool to hear from people about how this stuff has impacted their lives – you never know what to expect.

Have you seen growing interest in these sorts of products over the last few years? If so, do you have any ideas as to why?

Personally? No. I don’t doubt it’s happening, but I haven’t been focused on promoting my business at all, and things have been about the same for us, these last two or three years. I’m looking forward to getting involved, though. I think the next few years will be a lot more interesting. Being a butterfly should be fun.

Could you give me a short bio of who you are and what your life is like, generally speaking?

I used to dream of making beautiful art that would inspire people, and changing the world through the power of games. Now I live inside of a cocoon. Mostly metaphorically speaking. Though with the pandemic and everything else these days, who knows…

We are now selling (finally) all the samples.

Now that Rosa Labs has switched entirely to soy protein with the release of Soylent 1.6, we’ve been giving away a lot of Schmilk and Light Fuel samples to people with soy allergies. I’m one of those “allergic to everything” people, so all of our stuff is hypoallergenic, or rather, free of the top eight allergens – including gluten and soy.

Anyway, all that work going back and forth by email to work out each sample order and manually entering them into our shipping system has finally motivated me to actually add samples to the Super Body Fuel website as legit products you can buy. :p

So now you can get individual meal samples of any flavor, with the exact same formula and nutrients as the full packs:

• Schmilk Sample (cheap and actually tastes good to normal people)
• Light Fuel Sample (low-carb, closest to Soylent 1.5)
• Keto Fuel Sample (no-carb for ketogenic weight-loss)
• Athlete Fuel Sample (high-protein for muscle-gain)

Oh, and you can also use the SCHMAMPLE coupon code for 20% off. Enjoy. :)

Have you heard of Ample?

It’s a new Paleo soylent, just wrapping up its first crowdfunding campaign. And I just bought a lifetime supply. That’s right, I just pre-ordered a lifetime supply of a competing product. Why?

A year and a half ago, when I was running Custom Body Fuel, my dream was to make the ultimate Paleo (and vegan, and hypoallergenic) soylent that would follow all the latest science and make everybody happy – vegans and Paleo people alike. But I never succeeded in making this happen (though I did try, as some of you may remember). The thing is, I was just too busy trying to figure things out at Custom (and then Super) Body Fuel, focusing on what you all actually wanted, which was not necessarily the Paleo pipe dream so much as affordable, pretty decent-tasting, easily customizable meals for all different diet plans, from ketogenic to athletic.

But I still hadn’t let go of that Paleo soylent dream. And when I first heard about Ample earlier in May, I was pretty jealous! Here was someone doing exactly what I had wanted to do, and they were doing it really well, too, making none of the (many) costly mistakes that I made in the past two years, following exactly the advice that I would give someone trying to start something like this today. And they reached their funding goal in less than two days.

So I had to somehow come to terms with this. I realized that what I was doing at Super Body Fuel was different than Ample, and that it was still unique and valuable, along with my plans for where to take this in the future (more on that later). But I also came to realize that I was no longer the best person to bring this Paleo soylent into the world. Last Friday, I met Connor, Ample’s founder, and I honestly believe now that he is the right person to make this happen.

There’s only so much time we each have in this world, and only so many things we can pour our energy into accomplishing. It is a rare treat to find someone whose vision aligns so closely with your own that you can trust them to make the same decisions that you would have, except faster and more easily because they have focused their entire life into honing those particular skills. I have experienced this in creative collaborations with artists and designers on game projects, and I look forward to experiencing it here, too.

So I bought a lifetime supply of Ample. It’s a token of my belief in Connor to make the product that I’ve been looking for, and bequeathing this dream of mine into his hands. It’s an investment into a promising startup, but really, there are so many times when I’ve wished that I had a bottle of powder in my backpack, ready to fill with water and shake at a moment’s notice when I need a quick (but healthy) meal, that practically speaking, it’s any easy choice. I know as well as anyone that it’s not always easy to keep a pitcher of Schmoylent in the fridge at all times, and even when you do it’s not always nearby when you need it. And I’m allergic to Soylent 2.0. :p I’m looking forward to solving that problem with Ample.

So, if you’ve been looking for a Paleo soylent too, I think you’ll want to get in on this. You have less than two days to pre-order before the campaign ends, on Wednesday, whether you want a lifetime supply or a sample pack, at Ample Meal: Optimal Nutrition in 1 Minute. Even if you’re not Paleo, the nutrition is top-notch and the taste is surprisingly good. There’s also a vegan, hypoallergenic version available, Ample X (that’s the one I’m getting). Worth trying if you can get it. And you can.

And if you’re in Australia, check out PrimalKind. They’re also working on their own Paleo soylent, with a vegan version available as well. And I’ve been talking with both, doing my best to help them out (use monkfruit instead of stevia, to start with!) so that they can make a better product for all of us.

Thanks everyone.

We’ve upgraded our packaging.

No more simple plastic bags, with only a laser-printed Nutrition Facts label to elevate them above humble homebrew status. Instead, we are proud to package our product in heavy-duty mylar pouches, with zip locks and tear notches, and custom scoops. And of course, excellent impermeability to oxygen and light.

The labels still look pretty much the same, but you know, progress. ;)

The nice thing is, we’re noticing that this change is speeding up our manufacturing process considerably. Instead of measuring powder into five individual bags, sealing them, wiping them off, applying stickers, and combining them into packs, we measure the powder into one big pouch for each pack, and add a scoop.

That’s a good thing, because we’ve been a bit backlogged with orders in the past week, trying to adapt to this new process. But now we’re making an extra batch or two per day, and hopefully backlogs will soon be a thing of the past!

With some luck, this should also free up time to make some much-needed improvements to the website. Or, more accurately, to finish the website. :p We’ve been so busy just setting up operations and keeping up with orders, we have entirely neglected our poor website for the past nine months. About page? “Coming soon!” FAQ? “Coming soon!”

At long last, “soon” is finally coming, well… soon.

So, there’s that to look forward to. :)

The key innovation here is the addition of measuring scoops for each pack. Each product – Schmilk, Keto Fuel, Light Fuel, and Athlete Fuel – has a different volume of powder per serving, and a different scoop to match.

We found that many customers prefer to make one meal at a time instead of a whole day’s worth, and that the measurements make the most sense when each day is split into four servings. So we realized that we could improve the flexibility of the experience, reduce excess packaging, enhance the presentation, and streamline our manufacturing process by switching to larger bags with scoops.

Doing it right meant taking a lot of time to determine the correct scoop measurements, and figuring out which scooping methods created the most consistent results. The tricky thing about volume measurements is that powder can be bigger or smaller depending on how compressed it is. Lightly sifting flour into a measuring cup will result in a drastically different amount than packing it in as tight as you can.

We found that scooping from the naturally compacted powder within a bulk bag, then shaking off the excess powder to level it, produced the best results. It’s also the most obvious way to do it, given a bag of powder and a scoop. That, and a lot of trial-and-error with dozens of scoops of all sizes, is how we determined the sizing for each of our final scoops.

To account for the unavoidable margin of error involved in portioning powder by volume, we add a little extra powder so that no one is stuck with a missing meal at the end of the bag. Still, if you need to control your intake down to the nearest calorie (to whatever degree that is actually possible) you’ll probably want to use a digital scale to measure everything by weight. Actually, that’s what I use for everything – saves washing measuring cups for oil or milk. ;)

If it turns out that the margin of error is greater than we accounted for, we’ll adjust and add even more extra powder to each pack. Let us know how it goes for you! :)

Oh, and there’s one more thing you may be able to look forward to thanks to this change. Faster production means more time for other things, like… samples. Lots of people have been asking for single-serving samples of all the flavors of each product.

That just might be coming soon. Stay tuned. ;)

We’re tired of being the Soylent knockoff.

That made sense back when you had to wait for months for your Soylent, but now you can get it right away.

At Super Body Fuel, we’ve honed an inclusive but minimal selection of product lines to cater to all needs, from cheap and tasty Schmilk, to dairy-free ketogenic Keto Fuel. But we still sell Schmoylent, simply because there are people who have been using it for a long time now, and they want to keep using it because it works for them and they like the taste.

It’s time to make a change.

Coming from a Paleo dietary background, Richard and myself at Super Body Fuel like to encourage lower-carb eating habits versus the more conventionally high-carb Soylent 1.x and Schmoylent. It’s been gratifying see Soylent’s carb content gradually come further and further down, until with Soylent 2.0 the carbs measure at just 33% of total calories – close to the carb count of our low-carb Light Fuel blend!

But we’ve kept Schmoylent at the 50/20/30 carb/protein/fat ratio that Soylent 1.0 introduced. And that no longer makes sense. If you want high-carb, Schmilk is a much better choice than Schmoylent – it’s cheaper, tastier, and if you can’t drink dairy milk than you can use soy milk instead. There’s no reason to have two high-carb products when one is clearly better in multiple ways.

And if you want Schmoylent because of the taste and you’d rather use oil and water instead of milk because of an issue with dairy and soy, we have a new solution for you:

A new Light Fuel, redesigned to have a higher protein content, along with the oat-based taste of Schmoylent, while still fulfilling its low-carb function. It’s basically a merging of Schmoylent and Light Fuel. You could call it Schmoylent if you want, but we’re going to call it Light Fuel. Now available at a Super Body Fuel near you! ;)

All our Light Fuel customers are enthusiastically on board with the upgrade, and our Schmoylent customers will be switching to the new Light Fuel, the high-protein Athlete Fuel, or the conventional Schmilk, depending on their needs.

We’ve got a few more packs of Schmoylent Plain and Schmoylent Chocolate in stock, but once those are sold out, that’s it! No more Schmoylent.

Only Light Fuel will remain as its spiritual successor.

Schmoylent is dead. Long live Light Fuel! :D

We’re officially shipping to everywhere now.

That’s right, we’re now offering international shipping! :D

This is something people have been asking about since the beginning. It’s no wonder, since it’s really hard to find a hypoallergenic or ketogenic option like ours in Europe. We’re really glad to finally get our fuel to those who need it outside the US.

So far, we’ve had successful test shipments sent to Canada, France, Germany, Austria, and even Thailand. Now that we know it works, we’re officially opening to accept orders from anywhere in the world that USPS will ship to. So step right up! :)

Of course, international shipping can be expensive! When we only shipped within the US, we included shipping costs in the base price of each product and gave a bulk discount for ordering more at once, to approximate the cost savings of shipping more per package.

But now, we’re lowering our prices and charging for shipping separately, as shipping costs vary dramatically depending on where in the world you are ordering from and how much you buy. This means that the total checkout price will reflect the actual costs much more accurately.

Based on our numbers, a majority of people buy 1-3 packs at a time and will benefit from slightly lower prices with this change. If you buy 4 or more at a time, you won’t get as much of a discount as before. Our goal is to be transparent about the relative costs of each choice rather than encouraging the largest purchases possible.

Instead, we’ll have sales and introduce rewards for doing things that actually are beneficial, like setting up a subscription or sharing with your friends or bringing in affiliate sales. Should be fun. ;)

Anyway, we’d like to extend a warm welcome to our new international customers and thank all of our US customers for their continued support. If you haven’t already, make sure you take advantage of our 10% off New Year’s sale with the coupon code RESOLVETHIS before it expires on January 10th!

Hope you all have a great 2016! :)

At long last, you can now buy a little Schmilk, just to try.

That is, we’ve added a Schmilk Sampler to the shop! :D

For $15, you get two different flavors of Schmilk – your choice – to try for three meals each. That’s six meals in total.

Of course, for the Sampler, the Schmilk you’re getting does not have the added vitamins and minerals of the real deal. So, it’s just a taste. But it’s a big enough taste to share with your friends! (Last-minute holiday shopping, anyone?)

So if you’ve been on the fence about Schmilk, this is your chance to try it, without a big financial commitment.

And especially for our loyal blog readers (thank you!) we have a special 20% off coupon code for your first Schmilk Sampler purchase:

SCHMAMPLE

Try it for $12 instead of $15. That should sweeten the deal a little. ;)

Enjoy! :)

Some famous people stopped by the Super Body Fuel factory the other day.

We’ve had a few customers stop by the factory before, just to check out our operation and say hi. It’s always fun to meet people in-person and show off what we’ve been working so hard to create.

But this is the first time we’ve had actual famous people in our factory.

Pendleton Ward is the much-beloved creator of the cartoon show Adventure Time, now in its seventh season. Back in June, he actually sent me a nice fan email after being inspired by one of my old games, The Love Letter. And in the process of trying to find my email address, he discovered Schmoylent.

As it happenened, he was visiting San Francisco for this indie game event called Day of the Devs, and wanted to buy some Schmoylent while he was here. So I invited him to a tour of the Super Body Fuel factory.

He brought some friends.

Specifically, Tim Schafer, head of game company Double Fine Productions, and Erik Wolpaw, best known as the writer for the hit game Portal.

Turns out that Tim Schafer has lost a lot of weight by juicing in the past, so he asked me if I had a “fat guy” version. In fact, I did, I told him – it’s called Keto Fuel! Very popular for weight-loss, as it puts your body into a fat-burning metabolic mode called ketosis. He accepted a sample – chocolate, my recommendation – and a Schmoylent too, just for good measure.

Erik Wolpaw was not so fond of liquid diets, but revealed that he did in fact drink protein shakes as a post-workout meal at the gym. When I showed him the Nutrition Facts for Athlete Fuel, he expressed a grudging acceptance of the protein content (about 60g per meal), and I gave him a sample to try at home.

For Pendleton Ward, I just gave him as many different samples as I could find, so he could try all of them and see what he liked best.

So if you ever find yourself in San Francisco, please stop by the Super Body Fuel factory and say hi! Let us know ahead of time and we’ll make sure to have some free samples for you too. ;)

Hope to see you soon. :)

We’ve finally cleared out our backlog.

This means no more long wait times. If you place an order now, we’ll ship it out the next day if it’s in stock. Otherwise, we’ll make it over the next few days and ship it out to you once it’s ready, within two weeks at the very latest. Accordingly, we’ve updated the website to show which products are in stock and which are not, so you’ll know what to expect as far as shipping times. Yay! :)

Over the course of this month, we’ll be building up our inventory until we have a couple batches of each variation in stock at all times. At that point, every new order will ship next-day, unless a ton of people order the same thing at once!

In other news, you may have noticed that the product labels – complete with instructions and Nutrition Facts – are now visible on each product page below the main product image. We’ll be updating the product pages with more detailed nutrition information later, but we hope these labels will help answer some of your questions in the meantime. If not, just send us an email. ;)

So, we’re still making very small batches, and that’s slow. But we’ve finally made it through our backlog, and now we can begin to take advantage of the one benefit that comes with small batches…

That is, variety. Flavors. Popular flavors, experimental flavors, rotating flavors, limited edition flavors, seasonal flavors… All kinds of flavors.

We’re looking forward to ramping that up. Coming soon.