Amazon launches… own brand Nutritional Drink

This is… different: Amazon have launched their own-brand nutritional drink. It’s caught me a little off guard not least because I had no idea that Amazon even had?own-brand products, but it’s totally a thing in both the USA and UK and in fact it seems that as of October 2018 Amazon owns more than 80 private label brands. Who knew?

I digress. The particular brand we’re interested in here is Solimo. Tagged?”Simple to shop. Easy to love” it’s Amazon’s assorted goods line and whilst it’s focused mostly around coffee pods in the UK there’s also?razors, incontinence underwear, chest rub,’skin lotion… the list goes on becoming ever more diverse with each results page viewed. And now they’ve added a meal replacement to the list. How do they describe it?

Solimo Nutritional Drink is a delicious shake, it contains 9 grams of protein, providing complete and balanced nutrition to help you stay healthy, active and energetic.

And that’s about it.

Each $27.99 box contains 28 x 237ml?cartons and each carton is 220kcal. So that’s 99 per 220kcal meal – which is ridiculously cheap – in fact it’s near half the price of Soylent drink per calorie and continuing the comparison?it’s micronutrient content is way more?concentrated at around double that of Soylent.

That 99 per meal means $2.25 per 500kcal vs Soylent’s $3.36 but the comparisons’slow down there.?If we put Solimo into our usual Complete Food format…

Which looks pretty favourable for a 100% diet until you hit the macros…

…where things are less impressive. There’s enough protein and carbohydrates but nowhere near enough fat or fibre to meet adult RDI’s, and with 25 to 30% of RDI’s for most of the micronutrient content using them for 100% of your diet doesn’t seem sensible.

And that’s before you consider the 135g of sugar that 9 of these would provide.

So it’s clearly not a full on meal replacement in the Complete Food sense and to be fair to Amazon here; calling it a “nutritional drink” isn’t really attempting to describe it as such. It’s pretty hard to argue with how nutritionally dense it is though and as’reddit user?u/r-e – pointed out; it’s curious that Solimo Nutritional Drink has?the same calories, sugar, protein and fat as Ensure drink – so perhaps that’s Amazon’s target?

I don’t think this necessarily belongs on Eat Complete but I do see a use for it as part of a complete diet for people trying to make sure they hit RDI’s, or just those replacing the odd meal as they try to gain control over their nutrition. Of course, with the high sugar content comes positive reviews about the taste and flavour but generally, I’d try it if it wasn’t US only.

Curious about Solimo’s Nutritional Drink? Head over here?if you’d like to find out more.