Let's see how well he's doing after a year of living off the stuff. There's probably more complexity to food than breaking it up into vitamins, minerals, and calories.
This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again
11–20 of 516 posts
Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again
#12"So what’s in Soylent, exactly?
Everything the body needs – that we know of, anyway..."
...and that's when it falls apart.
Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again
#13This is the kind of idea that will probably go nowhere, but could change the world. 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 S…
Yeah some sci-fi books/films have incorporated that idea. For example the scene in the Matrix where they eat goop that contains "everything the body needs".
Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again
#14A link to his blog: http://robrhinehart.com/
Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again
#15This is the kind of idea that will probably go nowhere, but could change the world. 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 S…
This stuff, which I'm going to call meal replacement powder [1], already changed the world for two groups of people I know of. First ones are famine victims, who need a special diet to recover, a diet which was time and work intensive for relief workers to prepare until meal replacement formula became widely adopted. Might sound crazy but this plus rehydration salts save lots of unlucky people every year.
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...
Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again
#16I read a textbook on physiological chemistry and took to the internet to see if I could find every known essential nutrient.
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.
Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again
#17Previous discussion on the creator's blog: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5215223 Generally accepted ad a hoax or ruse of some kind. My opinion: Food is good. I don't want to replace food.
I don't think it's a hoax - he's sending me a batch and I can't wait to try it. I enjoy food occasionally, but most of the time it's just a giant pain in the ass.
Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again
#18Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again
#19I read a textbook on physiological chemistry and took to the internet to see if I could find every known essential nutrient. 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.
Yes, food is complex and we can't pretend to understand how it it used by our bodies. A whole food diet is still surely healther in ways we can't quantify. And if it was it would be very hard to prove affirmatively.
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.
Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again
#20I have Crohn's and as a result had periods in my life where I was on a liquid diet of something called Modulen for weeks and months at a time.
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.