I was thinking more at the molecular level. In chemistry class, I vaguely recall learning about a kind of babyfood that had amino acids in them with the wrong enantiomer, which led to birth problems / deaths. Because of the way the food was processed, it produced the mirror image of the desired substance, which forms entirely different crystals and damaged cells. My problem with this is that you don't know what you don't know. When you blend such a large and diverse amount of minerals / proteins etcetera in one substance, the likelihood of one of them negatively reacting with another in the long term seems high to me.
Your concerns seem valid, I am just curious to know if you would apply this level of scrutiny to other foods. Many foods are made with "a large and diverse amount of minerals / proteins etcetera." Soylent contains eight or ten food ingredients plus about 24 vitamin and mineral additives. Pop-Tarts contain about thirty ingredients plus about eight vitamins and mineral additives. Probably you don't consider Pop-Tarts health food, but do you "trust" them? Pop-Tarts have been around for a while, and we should perhaps feel more comfortable with foods that don't have a "startup image" (though the "organic" movement does just the reverse, making us doubt the safety of the fruits and vegetables our parents ate). I think it's the idea that this stuff comes out of a laboratory, and doesn't have the familiar look of food, that makes us suspicious. But these days probably a lot of food comes from places just as sterile as a laboratory. The additional scrutiny a novel product like Soylent gets might work in favor of its safety. And our intuitions can work against us: the wholesome image of a grilled hamburger at a family picnic conceals significant risk of bacterial and carcinogenic pathogens.
Good points. The lab-grown aspect definitely colors my image of Soylent negatively. While I don't really mind whether my food comes from a lab or not, I do think food is inherently 'better' when it's created by combining and altering regular food (for Pop-Tarts, it's wheat / corn) versus starting from mostly boxes of powder. Whether it's actually safer, I don't know, but the perceived safety of a Pop-Tart is definitely higher. For me, it's also the diversity aspect: Soylent tries to include as much good and nutritional ingredients as possible, whereas most food does not (or not to such a degree as a Pop-Tart). The diverse combination of ingredients that Soylent has is likely not as understood as a combination of wheats, corns, vitamins, colorings, preservatives etcetera that most of my food consists of. To put it bluntly, it's a bit scary because it's new. I wouldn't want to test a new type of parachute for the same reason. Give me the tried and tested when my health is at stake.