This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again • Hacker News Board

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#171

Post by oscilloscope » Wed, Mar 13, 2013, 8:35 PM UTC

jgoney wrote: post #121

jgj wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First off, thanks for dampening the enthusiasm I was feeling after reading the OP. I would love to hear your thoughts on what, specifically, his formula is/may be missing. I can think of nothing more amazing than to consume a magic glass of nutrition a day and be done, and your post has given me pause.

Does he get enough fiber? I had always understood that the lower digestive system requires adequate fiber to function correctly. And less relevant, I had to chuckle at the "if I had any money or a girlfriend" part. He's not doing anything to break any stereotypes, there.

It's definitely more nutritious than packaged ramen, at the least.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#172

Post by criley » Wed, Mar 13, 2013, 8:35 PM UTC

saidajigumi wrote: post #157

criley wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound like an industry-insider explaining why a new startup will fail. "They're too young!" "They don't have the experience" "We've devoted our LIVES to figuring this out, one kid in his basement didn't do it in a few weeks!" Etc etc 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 t…

> You sound like an industry-insider explaining why a new startup will fail. I certainly don't want to rain on some new visionary's parade, but I spend a lot of time tracking folks who I consider to be the real visionaries in this field. As in we are currently in the midst of the greatest revolution in human health of our lives, and this guy is running in the wrong direction. We're seeing astonishing results with die…

>"Extraordinary claims, extraordinary proof, or GTFO."

>"I see this guy's protocol as nothing but poisonous in the long run."

You place a burden of evidence on him that you yourself in this very post violated on a number of occasions. You CANNOT call his diet poisonous simply because you disagree with it.

You admitted it yourself:

>"Current research is showing that we are only just beginning to gain understanding of the complexity and health of the GI."

So no offense, but you have literally no ground to say that this is poisonous in the short OR long term, no evidence to back that up, and you cannot rely on a field that cannot support your view.

You have a view on this, congratulations, but it is nothing more than a well-informed opinion. It is not fact, it is not supported by fact and as you've admitted -- it CANNOT at this point be supported by fact that does not yet exist.

Even your link to a TEDX (aka, unvetted content) states upfront: "This talk is a personal narrative and is not yet backed by larger experimentation."

I'm sorry, but you've been consistently and narrow-mindedly against what the OP has put forth. You dismiss his views for their lack of credibility but turn around and post sources that themselves have no credibility (admit to being anecdotal).

You seem to have picked what is correct and are now looking for evidence to support your preconceived notion. You also seem to be falling for the naturalism fallacy by pretending that since his food is "pill and scalpel" it is therefore wrong/bad.

Just my conclusions: obviously he hasn't posted data or even analyzed it, but you present many issues in your posts that I disagree with more strongly than what he puts forth (and I'm not a layman).

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#173

Post by yasth » Wed, Mar 13, 2013, 8:36 PM UTC

criley wrote: post #103

saidajigumi wrote: post #75

> a 24-year-old software engineer > ... > Soylent contains all of the nutritive components of a balanced diet 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 latte…

You sound like an industry-insider explaining why a new startup will fail. "They're too young!" "They don't have the experience" "We've devoted our LIVES to figuring this out, one kid in his basement didn't do it in a few weeks!" Etc etc 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 t…

Except this isn't new software. There is an actual answer to what this purports to be, i.e. a complete nutritional food. It is a very hard question to answer, and even if you had the absolute top minds of the industry making a food source in this manner you'd be provably messing up badly as recently as ten years ago. You'd probably be messing up today but we don't even know how at the moment.

I mean look at the warnings on what is basically the next step, TPN http://www.merckmanuals.com/professional/nutritional_disorde... . He is basically drinking almost exactly this. Look at all those scary scary warnings. Some of them are IV dependent, but things like "Metabolic bone disease, or bone demineralization (osteoporosis or osteomalacia), develops in some patients given TPN for > 3 mo. The mechanism is unknown. Advanced disease can cause severe periarticular, lower-extremity, and back pain. Temporarily or permanently stopping TPN is the only known treatment." and such are probably some odd nutrient problems.

Any nutritionist will tell you that there just isn't a great long term complete meal replacement. If this guy has one that is great, but he has done nothing to prove it yet. I mean he isn't even completely replacing meals, and has only been doing it for 6 weeks. Which is shorter than some people have done entirely cabbage based diets. Heck he could have subsisted on beer for this long. ( http://blogs.menshealth.com/health-headlines/the-beer-diet/2... )

It is sort of like some blog post claiming to have solved scaling and not actually had any real workload. I mean sure it doesn't look completely broken at a glance, but it hasn't been shown to even work yet. Come back in a year or two when you've dealt with some load (or merely a couple years of drinking the same thing in this case).

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#174

Post by grecy » Wed, Mar 13, 2013, 8:39 PM UTC

ZoFreX wrote: post #166

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…

If I could afford to give up work, I could afford to not cook. The actual eating takes up very little of my time.

> If I could afford to give up work, I could afford to not cook.

Conversely, if you cooked more, you could afford to give up work sooner :)

(One of the ways I was able to go 2 years without working was by cooking almost every meal. The only ones I didn't was when it was cheaper to buy than cook, i.e. an entire meal for 0.75 USD in cheap countries)

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#175

Post by VLM » Wed, Mar 13, 2013, 8:40 PM UTC

nickheer wrote: post #137

I (half-Swiss) like efficiency as much as the next HN reader, but at a certain point, efficiency must be weighed against enjoyability. I can't imagine not eating a delicious roasted vegetable strudel with a balsamic vinegar reduction, or potatoes with crème fraîche and chives in puff pastry. I delight in the delicacy required to prepare these items, and enjoy eating them even more. Cooking is (obviously) an activity…

You can have a lot of fun with your post doing a literal or subjective search and replace of your "eating" with alternatives such as "hunting game" and "butchering". Or "vegetable gardening".

Also the relative success of fast food restaurants vs gourmet grocery stores does tend to point out the majority has already decided in favor...

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#176

Post by pbreit » Wed, Mar 13, 2013, 8:41 PM UTC

saidajigumi wrote: post #157

criley wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound like an industry-insider explaining why a new startup will fail. "They're too young!" "They don't have the experience" "We've devoted our LIVES to figuring this out, one kid in his basement didn't do it in a few weeks!" Etc etc 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 t…

> You sound like an industry-insider explaining why a new startup will fail. I certainly don't want to rain on some new visionary's parade, but I spend a lot of time tracking folks who I consider to be the real visionaries in this field. As in we are currently in the midst of the greatest revolution in human health of our lives, and this guy is running in the wrong direction. We're seeing astonishing results with die…

Jeez, man, chill out. History is littered with amateurs making breakthroughs. You're take down is uncompelling. Processing for health is a bit different from processing for cost.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#177

Post by tiglionabbit » Wed, Mar 13, 2013, 8:41 PM UTC

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…

It's quite possible to live on a very low calorie diet[1] of 800 calories or less. In fact I've read about successful studies using only 300 calories per day.

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_low_calorie_diet

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#178

Post by Evbn » Wed, Mar 13, 2013, 8:41 PM UTC

aplusbi wrote: post #132

jl6 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it, don't you have to buy, cook, eat every day even when you are working?

I think the point is that doing these things is a welcome distraction from work. Eating becomes a chore when you could be doing something better.

Yeah, but then that better thing becomes a chore, when you do it all day every day.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#179

Post by stephengillie » Wed, Mar 13, 2013, 8:41 PM UTC

baak wrote: post #126

zeteo wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>an impatient _software engineer_ comes along and claims to have [succeeded with a] task that specialists have so far failed at 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 disruptio…

Elon Musk designed the rocket? All by himself? Wow! What a renaissance man. I figured he had physicists, engineers, mathematicians, biologists, chemists, and you name it. But I guess he just read a few books on his weekends and that was enough to design and launch the rocket. This guy is a hobbyist who is claiming his diet has cured most of his ails. You aren't the least bit suspicious of that claim?

Most of his ails were probably caused by moderate obesity, and his meal replacement shakes probably have him on a calorie-restricted diet.

At the very least, this guy is probably more aware of his calorie intake than he was when he was free-eating.

(free-eating is when you eat what you feel like whenever you want to, without worrying about what or how much you're eating)

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#180

Post by SoftwareMaven » Wed, Mar 13, 2013, 8:44 PM UTC

duskwuff wrote: post #129

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #46

From the "recipe"[1]: 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…

Ketone metabolism works , but it's treated as if it's some kind of fallback -- it's only used when no other source of energy has been available for a few days. While it does seem like it's helpful in some situations, the way it's treated leads me to suspect it's probably harmful in the long run for otherwise healthy individuals.

I look at it just the opposite. Alcohol, in too much quantity, is essentially poisonous to your body, so it processes it out first. Glucose, in too much quantity, is also poisonous to your body, so it processes it out second. Ketones, on the other hand, are produced[1] by the body, so can stick around as needed.

1. Trust me, I know everything produced by the body is not good. It's just that, when comparing ketones to glucose and alcohol, I think ketones win hands down.