A super late update!

I realize it's been a while since our last update! Our last entry talked about starting the study. Right after that, finals season started and we forgot to write an update. Sorry if the tardiness caused any concern!

As a reminder our study had 14 participants total, 5 in the regular diet group and 9 in the Soylent drinking group. Regular dieters stuck to their regular diets for 10 days, while Soylent drinkers had a 4 day pure soylent + water diet from day 3 to day 6. Samples were collected 8 times throughout the 10 day period.

Overall, the study went smoothly. Sample collection was straightforward and all participants logged their daily information consistently, reporting their regular diets, bowel movements, and any symptoms or discomfort.

The regular diet group did very well and there were no complications in sample collection.

The Soylent group had mixed reactions. Some individuals really loved it: they felt energized, full, and really enjoyed the time that they gained from not having to prepare food. Some individuals on the other hand experienced minor lethargy. Most people missed real food. One participant very much disliked the taste and did not consume the recommended amount of Soylent per day. As a result we will likely not use the data from this participant since there was a large deviation from the study design.

No participants had negative physical reactions (nausea, bloating) to Soylent. As a result, we have 13/14 successful time-series, which is quite nice!

All samples were sealed by the participants and returned to us. Between classes one day, I took the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) over to San Francisco and dropped off 2 boxes of samples at the uBiome HQ.

We are currently waiting for the sequencing results from uBiome. It has taken a little bit longer than expected, but that is understandable since we made a few technical requests to reduce variability in sample processing.

We are excited to get the sequencing data soon and look forward to sharing the results!