In my opinion, probably not, for example because he seems to be developing it via trial and error and an FDA list of nutrients -- the article Soylent Month Three is dated April 25, 2013 (i.e. recently) and starts with,
After three months I should be finding deficiencies, and I did. I started having joint pain and found I fit the symptoms of a sulfur deficiency. This makes perfect sense as I consume almost none, and sulfur is a component of every living cell. Sulfur is hard to miss in a typical diet so the FDA would have little reason to recommend it.
The same post ends with,
I promised that if I was still healthy after three months of soylent I would launch a Kickstarter campaign to bring it to the world. That time has come. The project is currently being reviewed and if approved I will post the link here, and tweet about it as soon as it is up.
The next blog post titled In Defense of New Food dated May 21, 2013 starts with,
Over the past few months I've gotten to engage with a lot of picky thinkers regarding soylent.
I will cherry-pick some extracts from that article to explain why my opinion was "probably not":
My net enjoyment of food is far higher than it has ever been. Being in excellent health, never eating poorly, and still enjoying good food socially is a win-win-win.
... so he doesn't eat only Soylent (one newspaper article said that he eats or ate "real" food on weekends).
It was a concern that nutrients can affect each others' absorption, but there have been no deficiency symptoms, and if this becomes a problem the amounts can be changed to compensate.
... however saying that "if we discover a problem then we'll fix it" isn't the same as saying "there is not and will not be a problem".
Some say this experiment makes no sense because we do not understand everything about the body. I think this is backwards thinking. If we do not understand something that is all the more reason to experiment with it in the pursuit of greater understanding.
... so it is still experimental -- the current version of the recipe is labelled "version 0.8" (i.e. not even the first 'version 1.0' release).
The next and last blog post titled Nothing to Fear is content-free, i.e. it hardly mentions Soylent at all. Previous blog posts talked about his diet's effect on his mood, his experimenting with nootropics, etc.
The OP makes and questions a very strong claim for the product, i.e., "all the nutrition needed for a healthy existence without other food". Soylent's developer might be making weaker claims, for example (and these are my impressions, not direct quotes):
- I have tried it for some months, 5 days out of 7; it's a fascinating experiment and I feel better than before
- Many people have a very unhealthy diet of regular/normal food: Soylent isn't perfect, but it's better than that
- This is a great idea in theory, and R&D is worth pursuing.
"Complete" is presumably a matter of degree: perhaps it is relatively complete and is presumably not absolutely complete.
To illustrate what I mean by "a matter of degree":
- He is young, has been testing for months, thinks his new diet is better for him than his previous one, and doesn't like to bother with preparing food
- I am not so young, have 30 years as an adult of learning to be a vegetarian, and hope to live for decades more
My opinion ("probably not") is influenced by the time-scales involved: the length of the test period, the number of self-selected test subjects, and the quality of the testing and documentation.
http://discourse.soylent.me/t/whole-foods-versus-soylent/4272 is a discussion with the authors on the topic "Whole foods versus Soylent" ... the last entry in that discussion says,
What are the implications for long term health effects for people that consume soylent for an extended period of time?
We do not know, but we are going to find out!
Soylent, for me, is an experiment, an adventure! I am certain it is healthier than smoking or being obese, so the long term effects can not be that bad. If something does pop up, I will fix it or stop soylent. But for now, we will see :-)