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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

#271

Post by reinhardt »

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…

You sound like a software dilettante explaining why (formal) education is obsolete. "So what if it's a triple nested loop, hardware is cheap" "Encapsulation? Relational algebra? Who cares about this CS mumbo jumbo just show me teh codez".

No offence but we've heard the exact same thing from every amateur that "learned programming" by toying with Wordpress or Jquery copypasta.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#272

Post by kyllo »

The merit of this experiment depends highly on whether he's actually captured all his nutritive and caloric needs within his recipe. There are a lot of vitamins and minerals that we need, but that aren't found in that many things. We get them through diversity of diet. Vitamin B12 is a good example--it's found in meat and some types of seaweed and not much else, so vegetarians and vegans are usually deficient in it without supplementation.

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.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#273

Post by qu4z-2 »

scott_s wrote: post #162
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…

They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. - Carl Sagan Sure, he could be on to something. But we also need an enormous amount of skepticism when evaluating it, just as we do when evaluating any large claim. What pings my radar is that we're still trying to understand how our body processes "whole food" as opposed to vitamins in supp…

In fairness, Columbus was also wrong.

If they hadn't happened across the Americas, they would all have died. India was nowhere near where he thought it was, and almost exactly where the common knowledge of the time (and Eratosthenes) said it was.

Sorry. It's just a pet peeve of mine when people think Columbus was somehow right, or even worse, that people believed the world was flat pre-Columbus.

EDIT: To be clear, I'm not implying you think that, but it seems to be implied in the Sagan quote that Columbus was something other than completely wrong in his assessment of the situation (or possibly lying 'cause he wanted to explore the other side of the world. He certainly seems to have been brave enough)

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#274

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

davidwparker wrote: post #245
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…

I don't know what your situation is, but personally, being married, I love spending time cooking with my wife. For example, last night we spent 2 hours cooking crab cakes, chocolate souffle, kale chips... it was fantastic. We both enjoy one another's company while cooking. For some people, it may seem like a waste of time, but for me, it's a way to connect to other people.

While the cooking is a big part of it, I would argue it's really predominantly the company you're enjoying. Subtract the enjoyment you get from cooking alone day in and day out from the enjoyment you get from cooking with your wife, and see what's left over.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#275

Post by jessaustin »

rosser wrote: post #196
tantalor wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The field of food preparation has been around for tens if not hundreds of millennia. We've been trying to optimize it for a long time. See also: Invention of Fire.

This optimization is premature in that he's trying to optimize for time and effort when we haven't yet nailed — in terms of fully understanding — the whole "optimal nutrition" thing. Optimizing for performance before you have a fully working implementation is exactly what Knuth was decrying.

This optimization is premature in that he's trying to optimize for time and effort when we haven't yet nailed — in terms of fully understanding — the whole "optimal nutrition" thing.

Yet every single chef in every single restaurant and every single cook in every single home also optimizes for performance, although not quite as exclusively as Soylent Dude. I think you haven't articulated your actual complaint here.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#276

Post by A1kmm »

dasil003 wrote: post #209
criley wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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…

> 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. Nutrition science is in its infancy. It's clear that the complexity of the interaction of food as it is digested and interacting with our organism has barely had the surface scratched. Also, if you look at the rise of processed foods alo…

It sounds like the drink is made from natural sources, so it probably contains compounds that he isn't aware of. The risk (and the value of the experimental results) would probably be higher if he had found a way to isolate the compounds in the drink so he could enumerate the exact chemical composition.

If there is a risk, it is that his diet is potentially more homogenous than a typical diet, and doesn't include anything from some class of foods that nearly everyone on a more heterogeneous diet eats occasionally.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#277

Post by timdorr »

JPKab wrote: post #97
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'm sorry, but the dude doesn't exactly look like the portrait of health, either. I don't think the Scrawny Pale Guy Diet would sell well. Not that it would be remotely scientific to judge the diet based on a sample of 1. Which is essentially what the article is doing. 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.

He's only been doing it for approximate 6 weeks, so I wouldn't expect to see a significant change in his appearance just yet.

Nor is that a stated goal here: He simply wants to eat easier, not necessarily lose weight. The ideal experiment would be to completely replace his current food intake, not also reduce it. That would introduce an additional variable for which there is no control.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#278

Post by nitrogen »

DanBC wrote: post #190
saidajigumi wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Dr. Terry Wahls, "Minding Your Mitochondria": She needs some reputation management, because at the moment there's a bunch of flags that make her sound less than reputable. 1) "Mitochondra" - unless this is a peer reviewed respected journal most people using htis word are cranks. 2) TEDx - Sadly, now tainted as home of cranks. 3) Cured MS through diet - ridiculous claim etc etc.

Why is 3 a ridiculous claim? I agree that there should be evidence presented that the demyelination of MS has been reversed, but why do the words "Cured MS through diet" alone constitute a "ridiculous claim"?

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#279

Post by DanBC »

jessaustin wrote: post #275
rosser wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This optimization is premature in that he's trying to optimize for time and effort when we haven't yet nailed — in terms of fully understanding — the whole "optimal nutrition" thing. Optimizing for performance before you have a fully working implementation is exactly what Knuth was decrying.

This optimization is premature in that he's trying to optimize for time and effort when we haven't yet nailed — in terms of fully understanding — the whole "optimal nutrition" thing. Yet every single chef in every single restaurant and every single cook in every single home also optimizes for performance, although not quite as exclusively as Soylent Dude. I think you haven't articulated your actual complaint here.

> Yet every single chef in every single restaurant and every single cook in every single home also optimizes for performance,

No they don't - they often optimise for taste. Some people accidentally get adequate nutrition because they eat so much food, and some of that food is fortified with micronutrients.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#280

Post by sxcurry »

shmageggy wrote: post #155
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…

I'm surprised at how many people are pointing out objective, scientific issues with the product instead of the subjective component. Even if this stuff worked perfectly as advertised (highly doubtful) I wouldn't buy it because I don't share the same viewpoint as its creator. To me and you, eating isn't an annoyance that needs to be optimized away, it's a one of the fundamental joys of being alive. You mentioned strud…

Exactly - the human body is well designed to eat and enjoy a wide variety of foods. Many (most?) of us enjoy eating - when I travel that's one of my main goals - to eat as much different and interesting food as possible.

Why do you think we have all sorts of teeth - canines, incisors, cuspids, etc - not to slurp down some disgusting goo!

As far as sexual intercourse, it may be that a certain percentage of the HN readers don't have to worry about that problem. (That's a joke BTW)

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