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This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

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Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#81

Post by pilgrim689 »

Zimahl wrote: post #31
tresta wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer the name Bachelor Chow myself, though I'd try Soylent as well. I wouldn't want to eat it for every meal but every once in a while I'm in such a hurry that it would be practical to do this for a period.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who instantly thought of Futurama. This does seem like a food product for people who are too lazy to make even a simple meal and clean afterwards.

too lazy, or too busy? I could be doing a bunch of other non-lazy things I much prefer doing instead of cooking, such as coding, exercising, music, reading, etc.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#82

Post by shiven »

Overhyped synthetic-milk or what. Another misguided 'engineer' thinking he can 'hack' a system, which modern science is still figuring out, and that too without any controls or rigorous monitoring...

I'll check back in 5 years and see how healthy he is, assuming he sticks solely to Soylent without problems till then.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#83

Post by goostavos »

impostervt wrote: post #12

"So what’s in Soylent, exactly? Everything the body needs – that we know of, anyway..." ...and that's when it falls apart.

I don't think that's where is "falls apart" at all!

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.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#84

Post by randomchars »

Kluny wrote: post #39
dxbydt wrote: post #22

If he's a true programmer, he'd code up an iphone app that controls an arduino that mixes up the precise amounts of amino acids, boron, saccharides, glucose and polyphenols for the perfect Soylent to start his day. Maybe even post his objective C on github so I can issue a pull request with 200% more boron. You know, here in the bay area, we have plants that tweet when they run out of water. I can rig up a tweetbot s…

"plants that tweet when they run out of water." Get off my damn lawn.

But I was only trying to water your lawn! It sent me a DM!

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#86

Post by smalter »

grecy wrote: post #53

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. 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 doin…

Oddly enough, for me, playing The Sims taught me how much time is spent eating, defecating, and sleeping.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#87

Post by bnegreve »

grecy wrote: post #53

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. 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 doin…

> For anyone that doesn't understand that statement, I recommend taking a few years off work,

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?

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#88

Post by zanny »

dxbydt wrote: post #22

If he's a true programmer, he'd code up an iphone app that controls an arduino that mixes up the precise amounts of amino acids, boron, saccharides, glucose and polyphenols for the perfect Soylent to start his day. Maybe even post his objective C on github so I can issue a pull request with 200% more boron. You know, here in the bay area, we have plants that tweet when they run out of water. I can rig up a tweetbot s…

If you took it to production you could just distribute a mixer that has compartments for independent ingredients, maybe even go so far as to standardize cartage sizes of them to use as a fixed insert, have them delivered regularly, and plug them in to make your nutrient sludge once a day.

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.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#89

Post by ellyagg »

thejsjunky wrote: post #29

> because "soylent" is the name of a wafer made out of human flesh and fed 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 nam…

It may be apt, but it's a stupid name from a marketing perspective because of the associations it brings to mind. I noticed how eager he was to correct the record about the term "soylent", demonstrating a common blind spot among technical people. He should be focused on persuasion but is wasting attentional resources on pedantry and ego stroking.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#90

Post by Robin_Message »

grecy wrote: post #38
zck wrote: post #25

>Soylent contains all of the nutritive components of a balanced diet, but with just a third of the calories... 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 ne…

I wonder if it's an efficiency thing. 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 thin…

Digestion involves heavy duty mechanical crushing and grinding, at least three sets of enyzymes, dissolving in acid strong enough cut metal, more mechanical squeezing action, and anything microbes can do to the remainder, over the course of several hours.

Up against that, ageing a steak is not going to make a difference. As for bread, if anything, it is easier to digest than something "natural" like raw grains since it has less fibre and anti-nutrients.

The food in question is ever more "processed", since it seems to be made mostly of the base nutritional chemicals.

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