What utter bollocks. We're (as in, scientists studying nutrition and how utterly wrong food industry has gotten that in the 20th and early 21st century) finally starting to get our collective heads around the benefits of whole foods vs. highly processed foods, and just how badly our bodies deal with the latter. It may be theoretically possible to create some processed food that's on par with the nutrition of whole foods, but I doubt that anyone alive today knows how to do it. He may see "good" results on some metrics due to a lack of any desire to go hypercaloric -- i.e. there's probably no artificially boosted food reward[1] mechanisms in his glop. But that won't make up for the glop's likely deficiencies.
So an impatient _software engineer_ comes along and claims to have whipped up a drink that eliminates all that. A task that specialists have so far failed at.
> "I read a textbook on physiological chemistry and took to the internet to see if I could find every known essential nutrient."
I've seen this enough to be sick of it; it seems to be form of the software "everything is just an [easy] problem" mindset gone badly wrong. The supplement and meal replacement powder/drink industry is a multi-billion dollar market. First sanity check: _no_ staff scientists for any of these companies thought to go look at a textbook and the intertubes and do the same thing? DOH! Egg's on them!
Another example of this failure: when software/CS types wander off to do experimental science (e.g. human subjects) without _any_ training in how to do experiment design, data collection, or analysis. "Just ask 'em some questions!" The general form of the problem seems to be a blindness to the depths of domain knowledge required to be effective in other disciplines.
The guy who invented the spreadsheet didn't have to absorb all available accounting literature first, and Elon Musk didn't spend 30 years in the Apollo program before being allowed to send his own rocket to space. Nutrition is a field full of pseudoscience and highly susceptible to disruption. People should be encouraged to try new things here. If this guy is wrong it's at his own cost, and if right the potential benefits are enormous.
One fair point (in defense of the Scrawny Pale Guy Diet he is advocating) is that the food industry in general devotes a large majority of its funding to making foods that TASTE really really good. If that gets in the way of nutrition, taste wins every time.
But you are correct in the fact that this is crazy. Hell, I drank and smoked a lot when I was 24, and still looked healthier than this guy. Does that mean that I stumbled across an amazing new diet of beer, burgers, and weed when I was 24?
It is possible that the nutrient powder (and similar) industry hasn't given much thought to this idea because its radical and potentially risky, especially as a business venture where legal liability might be very, very high (all it takes is one person to die or be seriously injured as a result of this drink, and they are in big trouble). I'd say that IF any of these supplement producers did consider this type of drink, they probably dismissed it as too risky (both legally and financially, as I don't see the demand exploding for this).
Also, he's not claiming that he has solved any problem. He's only claiming that after some research, he whipped up this drink, and that it seems to be working fine for his body chemistry. In fact, he's pretty clear about this being experimental and potentially dangerous (Though apparently there have been no negative effects as of now). I think its a really interesting idea, but nonetheless, I'd feel much better if he was a scientist focusing on a similar field. This seems like the exact kind of thing where small, seemingly unimportant details may propagate into significant risk.
I seriously wish him well though. Personally, I wouldn't do much more than use this as a supplement (perhaps to replace lunch), but Im not the risky type when it comes to things like this.
About 18 months ago I gave the Four Hour Body diet a whirl, primarily to lose weight. I was very surprised to notice that my psoriasis improved. A lot. While I was eating well. Took a stressful contract gig, resumed eating poorly, psoriasis came back with a vengeance. So I tried harder to stick the diet and my skin's health improved.
Maybe 9 months ago I saw Dr Terry Wahls TEDx talk. I thought "Aha!" I'm a software guy, not a nutritionist. And I really just want to know what I'm supposed to do, the bullet points, not really needing the details.
Since then I've tried very hard to eat like Wahls suggests. My psoriasis is now about 2/3rd gone. From bleeding breaking skin plagues back to normal skin mixed with flakiness.
I see my dermatologist next week for my yearly. I'm quite eager to see if he notices the improvement. I've been dealing with this stuff for 10+ years and have gone to great lengths to treat it. I'm a bit chagrinned (grumpy) that all I had to do is eat more vegetables.
So I believe, but cannot prove, that I lacked the proper nutrition and now that I'm eating a very diverse diet my health has improved.
It's pretty uncontroversial. I'm impressed by the commenters who take great exception to your points. Like my scientist cousin is fond of asking skeptics (e.g. creationists, climate change, economics) "What level of proof do you require?"
Exactly. Yeah, he seems to have done a pretty good job of making sure his glop includes all the things we know we need.
It includes exactly zero of the things we don't know we need.
As a young developer I was often told "you can't do that" or "stop jumping to solutions" and as a now much, much older and very slightly wiser man I recognise that these were the knee-jerk fears of threatened reactionaries stuck in their ways, not the wise voices of experience that they thought they were.
As someone else implied, the appeal to authority is one of the least credible forms of supporting argument.
But, being stupid help solve BIG problems. This guy is risking his health for the sake of science. He has a very high risk/reward ratio. I don't think he is not serious. He is not even trying in animals (which I thought he was doing before reading the rest of the article). He's obviously stupid when it comes to experimentation, but this is when it yields interesting results.
Incidentally, all you have shown in this thread is some bullshit about "processed foods" and "mitochondria", plus some TEDx talk "based on personal narrative" that shows all signs of being made by a fucking crank, about how your mitochondrial bullshit will, in fact, cure cancer. Well, not really. Just multiple sclerosis. (... are you fucking kidding me...? To think I had upvoted you at first... )
When you study, say, biology, you'll probably learn about all the wrong turns that very smart people made along the road to where we currently stand: self-moving principles in Aristotle; vitalism; spontaneous generation; enzymes as living organism; and many many more. That background gives you a sense of how hard it is to be right, and the importance of modesty and self-doubt.
Whereas with computer science, what you learn about is the (relatively short, historically speaking) string of amazing successes in the field. And the more practical side of it (e.g., what software we produce for consumers) is even more unique in having this underlying exponential growth (Moore's law) foisting it up, and drastically changing at every moment what is possible, so that in fact there are very many opportunities that no one thought about simply because they weren't opportunities three years earlier.
And then programmers start thinking that, not only is improvement easy in all fields, but also the fact that other fields don't have as much to show for themselves by way of these improvements (whereas they do) just indicates how much better and smarter and innovative they are, and how in light of this it really isn't surprising at all that they may, even as outsiders, have a lot to contribute to any given field.
> when software/CS types wander off to do experimental science...
When a random nutter makes some woo, we just call them random nutters and ignore them.
...But when that random nutter happens to be a software engineer during the day, suddenly it is game on for slagging engineers? Clearly it must be indicative of some sort of common hubris in the industry?
There is some selection bias going on here.
One key thing I learned in university: Once you start reading papers, you're quickly going to turn into the world's leading expert on the tiny corner of science that you're reading on. (Of course, this has nothing to do with being a genius, and everything to do with no one else ever having cared about that corner before. :-P )
That being said, I hate that stories like this get more attention because everyone here is irate over how obviously wrong it is while someone's great Show HN project gets passed over.
Maybe this particular example is missing something, I don't know. But you seem opposed to the very concept, which makes no sense to me. Why does it matter whether you take your food in as a bland mix or as individual pre-blended components?
No offense but we've heard the exact same thing about every successful idea.
And what's more:
People look at the human GI totally wrong anyway. They think, what can I put in to get the best results? When in reality, the human GI evolved to support an extremely broad range of inputs as it's most significant factor.
With humans all over the earth eating an extremely disparate diet pre-civilization (and even post), the most significant factor of the human GI was it's ability to handle the wide variety of chemically diverse inputs and provide a consistent, reliable output.
So why do you approach this, which is nothing more than a new input, and claim that the output is going to be different? Dangerous? Impossible?
Seems to me like you're indignant with a touch of ego: "How dare he pretend to do my job. It's an insult to me that he is doing this!" That's the feeling I get from you reading this post.
What does the food industry have to do with anything? They aren't trying to get nutrition "right", they are trying to sell their products. This is the same reason people who don't know anything about nutritional science claim that "science doesn't really know anything about nutrition, one day fat is good, the next day it is bad". Science never said fat was good or bad, marketing weasels for food companies deliberately misrepresent research to support unsubstantiated claims.
>finally starting to get our collective heads around the benefits of whole foods vs. highly processed foods
Except, there is no evidence to support that claim at all.
>It may be theoretically possible to create some processed food that's on par with the nutrition of whole foods
Not just theoretically, but practically too. What exactly do you think they are feeding people on feeding tubes? It isn't salads. http://abbottnutrition.com/Adult/Adult-Tube-Feeding-Products...
This sounds like the naturalistic fallacy.
For anyone that doesn't understand that statement, I recommend taking a few years off work, where you spend your time getting up early every day, doing something all day (hiking, walking, gardening, building, whatever) and go to bed late in the evening (i.e. Full days of activities you want to be doing). I spent 2 years doing this, and I was shocked how much time is wasted buying, cooking, and eating food three times a day. It's really a huge chunk of time you can't spend doing what you want.
Now I'm back in the 9-5 routine, and it's not so obvious - partly I think because taking time away from my desk to eat is actually nice, as-is dinner with my girlfriend and others.
When you've got other things you'd rather be doing, eating is a time-consuming PITA.
I really don't, how do you define what is a waste of time and what isn't? Why eating is a waste of time and working isn't?
For some people, it may seem like a waste of time, but for me, it's a way to connect to other people.
I have had different phases in my life (currently I eat mostly paleo), and even though now it is the moment of my life when I spent more time cooking, I used to cook only once per week, having to re-heat the food on each meal.
You can also prepare food using slow cooking if you know the time you will be having the meal.
In my case, I "parallelize" and I work/study/work out/whatever while things are being cooked.
I am still unsure of the viability of these systems where they mix every single thing "needed" by the human body. How much time is needed to ensure this method of feeding is viable for humans?
PS: the drink kind of reminds me of Wall-E...
How did you afford this, financially? What was the before/during/after story of how you organized life to do this?
Suddenly up and leaving my job and financial obligations (of which I have few), for a period of a year or two and then resuming where I'd left off does not seem even remotely feasible.
I try and go surfing every week day, and most of the weekend, and i don't want to be bothered with taking time out to eat (i've got 2 kids too - so I don't have much time). Sure I can easily go grab some junk food and eat on the go but I really don't want to when I'm trying to keep my body in good shape.
I usually mix a bunch of raw nuts, raisins, fruit/berries, yogurt into a smoothy and have that as food. but it still requires time to make a clean up, not to mention the cost of fruit and nuts. Dinner is usually cooked by my wife, so that's not an issue for me because it's time with the family.
You can spend little time and little money, and get something that's not very healthy for you. The dollar menu, for instance. You can spend a little time and a lot of money buying pre-prepared food at say, the deli at Whole Foods, and get something pretty healthy. If you have the time, tools, and knowledge, you can make cheap healthy food at home.
It just depends on what resources you have and what sacrifices you want to make. Shopping, cooking, doing the dishes, those things all take time you could use to do other things.
in 2008 I've took a seven month unpaid leave from my job to travel through central america and the caribbean. I never felt buying, cooking or eating was wasted time. Quite the contrary. Some of the most memorable moments of my whole journey came with those. Being it, cooking with people from all around the world in hostels, learning how to open a coconut and make a spoon out of the shell with a machete (yes, pretty touristy), or getting invited by a local family and let the kids show me how their favorite dish is done.
And I wasn't an avid chef before. I barely cooked by myself back home. Now i love it. Every step of the process. Its like programing – with real time compilation.
Yes, it is really time consuming. When I had other things to do, i just didn't spend that much time on it. I actually never had three meals a day (and i don't have now either).
I understand the statement and I find the idea of a having a food replacement in some cases very interesting. Its not anything new after all. But in my opinion, his motivation is questionable. Honestly, this Soylent-Shake thing remembers me of employers trying to squeeze everything out of their workers for sheer productivity. But, to each his own. If that guy is happy with his choice, he should continue doing it. If people blindly follow his way, its not his fault – they'd follow someone/something else. (As long as he is not starting a big campaign, saying that his way of life is the only right one)
This worries me. It's not a misquote, either. From his blog^0 :
>...I get all the nutrition and energy I need with about 1/3 the calories the average American consumes...
The average American consumes 2,757 calories^2 . There's a term called the Basal Metabolic Rate. It is the amount of calories your body needs just to keep living, without thinking about movement^2 . A sample man's basal metabolic rate is over 1800 calories^3 . So thinking you can drop that down to 900 is suspect, especially in the long term.
[0]http://robrhinehart.com/?p=298
[1]http://www.livestrong.com/article/347737-the-average-america...
[2]http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/metabolism/WT00006
[3]http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/ for a 5'10", 175 lbs, 30 years old, inactive man
Maybe the human body is not efficient when eating heavy, processed things like bread, steak, etc. etc.
Is it possible that by eating only what is essential, and in the right balances, the body is more efficient and can extract more useable energy from what goes in?
And obviously the mix is different for every person / body type / activity level etc. You can't do this kind of thing and not watch your weight, blood content, etc. carefully.
The article mentions that he can raise or lower his weight by simply changing how much of the stuff he drinks, so consuming more calories is simply a matter of drinking an extra glass at "dinner".
Carbohydrates (200g) 200 * 4 kcal = 800 kcal
Protein (50g) 50 * 4 kcal = 200 kcal
Fat (65g) 65 * 9 kcal = 585 kcal
That's a total of 1585 calories.
And let me also point out something: Why didn't the journalist think to ask what the diet costs him per week/day/month? I'm interested.
(It says 200 grams of carbs, 65 grams of fat, 50 grams of protein)
Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_food_energ...
I can't recall the details, but if you're interested, start googling - it's a legitimate field of study with some surprising outcomes (to a layman like me, at least).
I'm 6'2 and uh... not nearly that heavy. So I think this drink might be a bit dangerous for me, as it is.
Cooking is (obviously) an activity that is not enjoyed by everyone, but it's an enormous leap to call it "a waste of time". Imagine, if you will, that someone has invented a speedy way of deodorizing yourself without water and soap, as showering is as much a waste of time. Sounds great, until you realize that there is a reason for these rituals. It takes me away from code, writing, and working, and offers me a moment to clear my head. What does your morning shower take you away from? What does preparing your breakfast, a cup of coffee, or dinner take you away from?
Not everything needs to be optimized for efficiency. If you've ever been to France, you'll know that many people spend an hour or more at breakfast. It slows people down, and provides them a chance to think, contemplate, and relax. Sometimes, the very act of something being inefficient can be beneficial in its own right.
You mentioned strudels and potatoes, and one could extend your list ad nauseum with all of the magnificent culinary fare, all of the diverse textures and smells, the sublime human sensory experiences that can only be shared over a fine meal. To trade all of this for some homogeneous slop would be like adopting artificial insemination in order to avoid having to waste time with all of that inefficient sexual intercourse.
Also the relative success of fast food restaurants vs gourmet grocery stores does tend to point out the majority has already decided in favor...
I think the Buddha would agree.
My first reaction, being an ardent lover of many ethnic cuisines, was "of course I'd never use something like that" but then I got to this line:
Eating to me is a leisure activity, like going to the movies, but I don't want to go to the movies three times a day.
Suddenly, I'm imagining "A DVR for eating." You have a steady intake of Soylent (the name absolutely must change), and when you have time to prepare a nice meal or go out to a restaurant, you adjust your intake ahead of time so your hunger level is appropriate. Crazy, but now I have another ingredient for my sci-fi universe.
Second group are bodybuilders, weightlifters and some elite athletes who want to easily ingest a specific number of calories with a carefully controlled macro-nutrient ratio several times during the day. Doing this through traditional meals is not compatible with a traditional full time job in any shape or form. With meal replacement protein powder it's pretty easy: just add water and maybe some milk to your powder which you already have in your shaker and shake.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=meal+replacement+protein+pow...
I'm hoping for it to spread to impoverished countries or slums. If the price of production is indeed low, this could be a great chance for them.
Then let's hope it doesn't get associated too much with homeless people's food, and the rest of the world might adopt it as well. Once a large-scale production industry exists, there might not be such a high threshold for adoption. People are in a hurry to eat so often, if they could just pass by a place to grab some Soylent, they'd certainly take the opportunity.
The danger is that there are far more essential nutrients that we don't know about, than nutrients that we do. And the only way to get these nutrients is to eat a well balanced diet.
That being said, this would be amazing if it works and I applaud him for trying.
That said, almost no one eats a whole food diet these days. I imagine this would be a step up over 70% of the diets in modern America.
Of course, the rebuttal is "eat food occasionally", but that may just postpone the outcome, making it even harder to know if it is safe.
Problems with the digestion system, teeth and gums will occur that way. So, even if it was healthy, it would lack fibers and structure that cleanup our digestion system and make our jaw, teeth and gums stronger.
Chewing your food thoroughly also exercises your teeth and stimulates the vitality of the socket and gums which hold the teeth in the jaw. We know that activity that causes muscles to stimulate the bone protects against bone loss and one loss and decalcification is one of the many ways which teeth become lose in their sockets and contribute to plaque and bacteria getting under the gum line, which is a primary reason for tooth loss.
http://www.nestlehealthscience.com/products/modulen_ibd A similar, more familiar product: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensure
Pretty terrible experience. I had to drink close to a dozen cups of the stuff a day and it didn't go down easy. The stuff worked however and I went back into remission.
Defecating while on this became a very rare occurrence but otherwise almost normal if I recall correctly. And another interesting twist: while I was very weak, I gained some noticeable muscle mass - I imagine because this is essentially taking protein powder consumption to an extreme.
It seems like this perhaps guy created a better version than Nestle on account of it actually tasting good and not needing a dozen cups a day - it is not a good lifestyle for healthy people but is very interesting as a supplement.
Drinking one can of something a day to insure you get all the nutrients necessary, including the rare ones, is a lot easier than adhering religiously to a very balanced diet. Sort of like a multivitamin that actually works.
Just speculating here, but the limiting factor for Nestle might be to get the same stuff that he is using into a product that you can deliver as a ready-made "just add water" mixture. He specifically wrote that he has to make it fresh every day, so that could be the difference.
I just want to point out that it doesn't actually taste good. He says it does, but try mixing whey powder, olive oil, and maltodextrin in water and drink it. It tastes fucking awful.
I should stop watching scifi.
Then just go a step further, have it delivered by automated transport, brew itself, and you just go grab a cup of juice to keep you alive and get on with your day.
I tried Googling some articles to back up what I'm saying. Unfortunately, there is nothing presented in a pretty pre-packaged form. So go with this. e.g.: CTRL + F "vitamin C supplements can destroy dietary vitamin B12" and "Potassium" here: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/natural/926.html
He may not be absorbing all the nutrients. Talking about absorption, through my own experience, I believe a body absorbs naturally occurring things like protein, carbs, and fat better than when it is isolated. Again, I couldn't find some quick hard scientific evidence, but found very general malabsorption of nutrients info here: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000299.htm
Generally, it is thought that loose stools means you are not absorbing nutrients properly. So, joking aside, I am interested to know what type of stools this man has.
I'm sure we can gain some interesting insights, albeit from one single person, if he tracks his experience/diet properly.
I will ask my farmer great-uncle to ask his cow owning friends about this, and one of my wedding guests is/was a veterinarian and he'll likely have a lot to say. I will say based on evidence that humans Might be the only animal who require nutrition isolation, because I am unaware of any practice like this with livestock or pet nutrition. Now I do have personal experience that some farmers "mix their own" a cup of this to a sack of that to a spoon of this and shake it up, but others just use premix, and as far as I've personally seen even the home-mixer livestock farmers might custom mix but they then feed the same stuff every day. I'm intentionally excluding mammals drinking milk, I've read this guys blog and I think we can safely assume he's a young human but well past weaning.
I don't know anyone raising pets with nutritional segregation, and I've never heard of them accused of animal cruelty and never seen malnourished housecats because they've eaten the same food for many years.
Let's assume that the structure of Apples, Bananas etc. serves a specific purpose. (Like everything else in Nature) Effectively to transport nutrients within nano-structures more effectively to their destination, than isolated consumption.
Well, there are always pathological cases like this particular man in question but I dont think anyone else should even try this sort of stuff.
Secondly, our body has evolved not just to digest nutrients but also normal food which may contain many other essential things science is not yet fully aware of. So this sort of artificial diet is risky and it might cut your life by few years. Is it worth it ?
You can't blame him for trying. That's more than most of us are doing.
There are also many people who would try this, including me. We don't know what we don't know and this might be a way to find out. Is cutting your life by a few years worth prolonging the lifes of billions of others?
Sleeping is a waste of time.
This mechanism can also metabolize protein and fat, but the brain can only use Glucose for energy. In fact, the brain uses 25% of the body's glucose, though it accounts for only 2% of its weight.
This would have me concerned if I were considering this. While 100% true, it neglects the entire ketone metabolic pathway[2], which the brain will use fine instead of glucose. If this something big like this has been missed (it's the foundation of many very-low carb diets, treatments for epilepsy and other brain disorders, etc), what subtle things have been missed?
I don't think we're as delicate as you're worrying. Heck, for those people, this is probably an easy step up.
I think it's something that should be tested in a scientifically rigorous way. Trying to hack your body like this is bold but if it fails it will fail in a very public way that might tarnish the idea for a long time.
we'll have to give up many traditional foodstuffs like fresh fruits
and veggies, which are incompatible with food processing and scale.
Soylent can largely be produced from the products of local agriculture
...and that's when it falls apart.
To quote Edison, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
He's out there trying something, seeing what works. If it turns out that there is some essential nutrient missing? Well? We found something out. And that's pretty cool.
Personally, I think it'd be worth setting up a study around this kind of thing. If we could cheaply produce a human chow of sorts, a lot of good could come of it.
Personally, I'd be down with it. I'm a bit of a weekend warrior foodie, I love making big meals on the weekends, or every once and awhile during the week. However, for the most part, day to day eating is just kind of rote. It takes too much time to make something decent, and so I usually end up eating a sandwhich, or maybe fast food, or perhaps some microwavable thing. If I could supplement 80% of my eating with a nutrient rich drink, I'd be pretty happy to do so. Finite control over calories would be a big plus, as well.
I'm fairly confident that that's not a good assumption. And that a long-term diet of his soylent will lead to some nasty deficiency. (Of course, if he's willing to be the research guinea pig for the rest of us, more power to him.)
Consider the diet of livestock and pets. Not unusual for multiple generations to eat the same product.
If livestock and pets were generally scrawny and sickly you would have a point, but they generally seem to live much longer and healthier than in the wild, usually by a pretty large multiple. I've often wondered if I'd be willing to drink "ensure" for 240 years, much as serving meow mix to a cat seems to result in a extremely long feline lifetime. It might be boring... but 240 years might make it worthwhile.
Binary thinking always strikes HN pretty hard. This is a tar baby or minefield for startup thinkers. It doesn't have to beat the best possible diet definable, for all people in the entire world... it merely needs to be better than J6Packs average diet. And that's a very low metric to achieve. Sad to say that Meow Mix probably would be better than the average american diet... And this is before we go 3rd world and compare to the average Somalian. I think its not very controversial that the average inner city kid would probably be better off with soylent than a big mac or a school lunch.
That brings up the interesting point that we live in a nearly completely centrally controlled economy WRT food production as opposed to an actual free market and lots of people make a lot of money selling vastly inferior product, and they're not going to be too happy about this.
Without any variety in your food intake, it's an all-or-nothing approach which seems pretty risky. You'd need to keep a close watch on your vitals to ensure you're not missing out on specific nutrients. Something like this would need to be tailored to each person's needs depending on their lifestyle, which can also change depending on various factors like climate, age and so on.
This could be implemented not only for hunger in impoverished nations, but for world overpopulation and depletion of resources including livestock and agriculture.
People are commenting this guy is crazy. But in the next few decades I'd rather there was 100 crazy guys trying this for every McDonald's junkie.
The solution is to find cultural limits lower than our agricultural limits. It's possible that we've already done this, and we won't know it until all of Africa undergoes the demographic transition. (Please note: by cultural limits I mean things like changing family norms rather than forced sterilization, resource-motivated warfare, and other such monstrous practices.)
Anyway, world hunger right now is not a problem of there not being enough food, it is a problem of food distribution. There is enough arable land in the Democratic Republic of Congo to feed all of Africa, but wars, greed, and other things stop it from happening.
>> "I'd been reading a lot of books on biology"
Well award this man a degree already. Am I the only one who doesn't trust these kinds of qualifications? A software engineer who is a hobbyist bio-chemist is telling me about a system that "costs 150 a month, cures skin diseases in 9 days, will get you in the best shape of your life, and tastes great." (per his blog)
Really? I mean... really, really? If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And in this case, it's probably very dangerous as well.
Because saying you need a masters in biology is short sighted like you can onyl develop the necessary skills in a singular environment.
Reading is the most effective information transfer methodology we have besides hands on engagement learning, and I don't see many circumstances where you can get hands on experience brewing nutrient sludge.
Bit of nerd pedantry: this is incorrect. "Soylent" is the name of a type of processed food. There are different kinds made from various things. "soylent green" is a new variety introduced in this category that is supposedly made from kelp (or something like that) but is famously made from something else entirely.
It's actually a pretty apt name.
I'll check back in 5 years and see how healthy he is, assuming he sticks solely to Soylent without problems till then.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1410941/pdf/gut0...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elemental_diet
Some hospitals may serve this to very ill patients. It has been the subject of much study. It is customized based on the needs of an individual. Most can't stand the taste. It generally works well in the short term, although I am not aware of any long term studies that have been done.
I too am interested in this. Have they determined that animals live longer or shorter lives on this diet? It could be rather easy to determine this: considering the relatively short life span of earthworms or fruit flies.
Anyone who is interested in this topic: email me at: nickelnerve@gmail.com
The problem starts if he is right. We could be reading about the food of the future. Normal food will be a luxury reserved for a few.
I doubt it. We have somewhat accurate idea of what's good for the body, and what's not good for the body. That "what's not" is widely in circulation. People haven't dropped their french fries for the salads; for sure they aren't going to ditch them for a monotonous diet of shakes.
However, a grown man whose body is used to solid foods probably won't be able to adapt so easily, similar to what happens to long-time vegetarians who go back to eating meat again.
I'm a little confused as to why people are so quick to turn this down. Even if nutrition interaction is complex, there's probably still a solution to make this work (different drinks at different times, etc).
I wasn't eager for her to start eating solid foods, actually, because I did most of the diaper changes, and while she was still on a breastmilk-only diet (and once her digestive system was developed enough, after 6 months or so), she wasn't constipated, but would simply only poop once or twice a week (and it wasn't even unpleasant-smelling).
I haven't researched the subject, but anecdotally other parents who nursed their children for more than a few months have similar accounts.
My concerns about a similar diet for adults, though, is that it's a serious tangent from the eating habits humans have evolved with.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that people switching to a liquid-only diet like this saw a jump in colon cancer, or something like that.
Generally accepted ad a hoax or ruse of some kind.
My opinion: Food is good. I don't want to replace food.
"Premature optimization is the root of all evil."
See also: Invention of Fire.
A picture perfect display of modern belief in vitalism theory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalism
A fairly stereotypical way to being an organic chemistry class is to start out with traditional vitalism and pivot into the historical first complete synthesis of urea, of all things...
Myself, I eat almost exclusively low carb. Salads, chicken, various low carb veggies, eggs, cheese, etc. I supplement with a lot of protein shakes to increase muscle mass from working out. I feel fantastic, I have very little body fat, and my mind stays much clearer than when I'm carbing.
I think the whole low-carb trend showed us that the dogma surrounding foods and diet has been a load of crap. There are lots of approaches to eating that can work, and many are far superior to the "food pyramid" nonsense that has practically ruined the health of America.
Experiments like this one in eating (er, not eating) may show us things about our metabolisms that we never realized.
I, for one, would love to get rid of most food preparation, save money, and maybe even be healthier. Kudos to Rob Rhinehart for looking for a new approach to the problem of sustenance.
Part of the reason Soylent makes sense is that we are already eating 'food-like substances' (to paraphrase Michael Pollen) much of the time. He is just doing it in a controlled instrumental way.
When I go to the datacenter (5 miles from the Lincoln tunnel in the godforsaken New Jersey Meadowlands). I generally pack the same food. kefir, beef jerky and an almond cranberry mix. Purely functional food so I can stay there and concentrate. Is it balanced and nutritional? probably not really.
I am American and the soylent thing feels very American to me. Which is not a bad thing. I love food and good eating but when I compare my relationship with food and eating with my wife's it is totally different. I was raised on frozen stringbeans with a sauce made of canned mushroom soup next to pot roast cooked to medium well...
My wife is Korean and food is totally different - more like what I would associate with someone from Italy or the south of France, etc. Ingredients and process. Her kimchi or the way she cooks rice (6 kinds of grains) - the innumerable side dishes all complementing one another, table grilled meat. Friends, wine. Strong coffee afterwards.
I could not imagine life without that - even though much of the preparation is time consuming. When she roasts seaweed over an open fire it takes hours. My boys seem to eat it in minutes...
Homemade dumplings involves the whole family and flour all over the place and a few hours of work to make about a gross of dumplings...
All of that is not something I would like to replace.
However - how often do you have a meal like that? 10 - 20 times a year.
What happens the rest of the time? There is an element of drudgery to daily eating. I use a hand grinder and a moka stovetop pot for my coffee. A pain in the ass - but I am addicted to the result.
Maybe a routine where you ate soylent for the instrumental times and had festive meals when desired (or when you really craved something).
I have a negative appetite in the morning and used to forego breakfast. Last year I opted for a protein and fruit shake as soon as possible after waking and began a low-carb low-sugar diet. I highly recommend it for a lifestyle that unavoidably includes sitting far too long in front of a computer.
His idea is taking that to an extreme - but I'm certainly interested in trying that extreme.
There are plenty of liquid feeds already in existence. These contain fibre and all the other nutrients you need to survive, and they come in a variety of flavours.
And you can have a naso-gastric tube fitted, to eat while you're doing just about anything else.
Most of the mass in poop is actually dead bacteria living off of the food that you can't process (and whose waste we reabsorb at times). We know from studies that the intestinal flora varies quickly depending on what you eat. I also know that my mood swings depending on what I eat.
So his account of mood change (he said he felt very energetic) is very plausible.
It looks to me that he reduced the numbers of intestinal bacteria by a dramatic amount with his diet. I wonder what potential side effects (good or bad) this could have.
Scientist studying the intestine here? Something to look into I guess. :)
No one will take that for long unless unable to do otherwise thought. Not that the taste is unbearable, but eating is more that nutrition, it's also fulfilling desire... Not even speaking of the social aspect...
Maybe if you add the two together, that would be a balanced diet.
The thing that worries me most about this diet is that, while in some ways it may be of great benefit in energy, etc., some of the side effects may not be seen for months, years, or perhaps a few decades.
It is an interesting experiment, but I think it would be a good idea if it were controlled and monitored by a doctor.
Also he said, "This is one case and it's only been a month". I ate almonds, peanuts, cheese, meat, and veggies for a few months, lost 15 lbs. But, since I've gained it all back and then some. One month at a new diet something hardly makes one an expert.
Isn't it well known that chemical fertilizers, pesticides, preservatives, heavy metals and other nasties do affect foods supplies through the conventional food chain? I think people who enjoy naturally grown food do so with the knowledge that they are avoiding all of this. Sure, it's not going to make a great difference over a few meals, but if you spend your life eating well rounded meals grown naturally your body is certainly going to benefit.
Secondly, I am currently under the impression that evidence of bioavailability for many supplements is pathetic to zero.
Finally, the damage that extracting, packing, shipping, storing, ordering and measuring these artificial food replacements causes to the environment (ie. the real ecosystems they are ultimately sourced from) is vastly greater than that of simply plucking a fresh tomato from the vine.
I don't think the liquid approach he is going for a good one though from a mechanical anatomical view. Bulk provides important functions, especially in the colon. Not having it in the diet could mean if he did end up with a girlfriend, that first date could be spent in the bathroom.
I think my approach would be more along the lines of a porridge with some supplements added in.
Whenever you restrict your diet consistently over time like that, you run the risk of deficiency. So if you take it to the extreme of eating the exact same thing for every meal, you had better make sure that that one meal really does contain everything your body needs, or else you are going to develop a deficiency very quickly.
If his diet is unbalanced, it's an issue with the official daily requirements being wrong.
If he's planing on marketing his innovative product, it's a failure of marketing.
Either way he's not very liable of failure.
It would also be interesting to see the effect of this on gut microbes, which are seem to be increasing in importance in the formula of overall health [1,2]. I wish him the best of luck, but it's not something I'll be doing.
[1] http://www.nature.com/ismej/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ismej...
[2] http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120815174902.ht...
If we do end up developing a meal substitute it could also provide a solution to world hunger. I remember reading about a gel that is distributed to Africa in cans which was helping the food problem there (can't find it via Google now).
On average, I might like only 20-40% of what I eat. Mainly because good/tasty food is expensive, hard to find, and/or prone to change in taste due to various elements. I really believe if there was balanced nutritious drink out there that gives me what my body needs, tastes ok, and costs relatively cheap, I would be one happy customer.
I'm keeping my eye on news like these from now on.
Like Dilbert, the animated series (second season wasn't actually that bad), Dilberito has not caught on.
I find it amusing but not for me. I for one consider food pleasure and even bigger pleasure when eaten with friends and family.
ED sufferers also report euphoria, and a keen focus on key metrics such as weight loss and exercise allows them to ignore negative health effects.
I would suggest this guy's experience is textbook typical of very low calorie diets (VLCD). That doesn't mean it will be healthy in the long-term - according to wikipedia, he might expect gallstones.
I mean, harvesting wheat isn't exactly what I would call "inefficient"
It's inefficient because it's important. The production and consumption of food is one of the most ritualized aspects of humanity, and most cultures define themselves in no small part by their culinary traditions.
To humans, food is far, far more than simply the output of some nutritional optimization technique.
> I don't miss the rotary telephone and I don't miss food.
A friend of mine frequently goes on crash diets and fasts and always reports that he feels sharper in the beginning. I'd guess (unscientifically) this is actually evidence that he is missing a few important nutrients.
But I wonder if his throat will start to constrict from lack of bulk going down it, he probably needs some bulk or at least the option of liquid and solid.
Plus his teeth and gums will probably suffer from lack of stimulation.
Is this a predominantly American thing? I've never even heard of these things used to describe food before I came to the USA.
Wow, how much is he spending on water for this to be a tangible benefit?
Eating a meal and talking about life with others are things I consdier the most precious of them all.
Here's a book recommendation: http://www.amazon.com/Never-Eat-Alone-Relationship-ebook/dp/...
I as deep a distrust of people that don't love food as I do of people that don't love music.
Ghostery is showing up 14 blocked trackers, which is a way too much I think.
Don't eat sugar, any fruits which don't have a Greek or Hebrew name or any liquid which is less than 1,000 years old. (Taleb) ;-)
Things must be really different in Atlanta....
EDIT:
Downvotes? Really? On a site presumably full of hackers, you are gonna tell me "modern things" are really streamlined and efficient? Software for the most part isn't. Cars aren't. Houses, apartments, restaurants, workplaces, none of it is. Come on. It's a pretty absurd statement.
> Doesn't let anyone know ingredients
Besides the disturbing nature of this guy, I always like the idea of the matrix glop food.
Someone should really open source working on this, I understand it is a hard thing to get right but enough people working on this and using strictly whole foods as base ingredients would probably lessen any negative outcomes.
And really, it can't be much worse than my nightly chow down on fast food.
Stop fucking, for fuck's sake!
He probably discovered milk, but it seems to me that milk tastes better.
I, for one, hope that he proves everyone wrong, and a year from now, I'm mixing up my own Soylent, because though I do love a good meal, I'm a busy person, and I often find myself eating simply to sate hunger. If I could replace that footlong sub with a glass of soylent, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
I am glad I still have the freedom to eat what I choose. I hope that never changes.