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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

#331

Post by damoncali »

zeteo wrote: post #134
baak wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

>I guess [Musk] just read a few books on his weekends and that was enough to design and launch the rocket Ah, I love it when people think they're sarcastic but they're correct: >"I was sitting behind [Elon Musk] on the flight back to London when he looked at me over the seat and said, 'I think we can build a rocket ourselves.'" He showed Cantrell the spreadsheet he'd been working on. "I looked at it and said, I'll be…

I can assure you (as someone who has designed part of a rocket) that Elon Musk did nothing even close to designing a rocket. That paragraph describes a school project for a propulsion class, not a rocket design. Good on him for doing what he's doing, but he's not doing it alone.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#332

Post by droopyEyelids »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #264
acgourley wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The burden of evidence should be on the person claiming to have a miracle drink. The burdon of evidence should be even greater when it's a non-natural source, as Nassim Taleb argues in Antifragile, "The "non-natural" has to prove its harmlessness." If you don't take this viewpoint, you end up with cigarettes, transfat and radium jewelry.

But he doesn't have a 'miracle drink'. He has a generic food mash and his only claim is 'contains basic nutrients and calories'.

It's a curious statement about our society where the idea that the fuel for the human body could be simple. "Basic nutrients and calories"

It's all produced by self replicating lifeforms we've only begun to comprehend, right?

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#333

Post by caublestone »

DanBC wrote: post #167
pilgrim689 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> still looked healthier than this guy What makes you think he's unhealthy? Because he has whiter complexion and he isn't bulky?

> isn't bulky? What? He looks a bit chunky to me. Does he list his height / weight anywhere? (Yes, I'm aware that BMI is flawed. You have olympic athletes with almost no body fat but 'obese' BMIs. This guy? He's no athlete.)

He's 6'3 190. He's lost a health amount of weight since starting the diet and has maintained the 190 level for a while.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#334

Post by lucisferre »

gnosis wrote: post #64
lucisferre wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually there is a lot of evidence to show that calorie restriction can lead to longer lifespans. I'm not a nutritionist, doctor or someone who is on a calorie restriction diet (though I'm sure I eat less than the average American). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie_restriction

Caloric restriction used to be thought to increase lifespan, but more recent studies don't support this.[1][2] [1] - http://earthsky.org/human-world/oops-caloric-restriction-may... [2] - http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v489/n7415/full/nature1...

Yeah it didn't make much sense to me either. More I was just saying that obviously people can go well below these "minimums" with limited ill effects.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#335

Post by [deleted] »

dougk16 wrote: post #325
pifflesnort wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you can't. This is quack science.

Well, I could link you to a bunch of studies that say otherwise, but then you would tell me all the reasons that those studies are bogus, and then show me a bunch of studies that show there is no connection (probably sponsored by those peddling chemotherapy et al.), so I guess we'll just avoid the rathole and stay convinced of our own opinions :)

[deleted]

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#336

Post by driverdan »

randomchars wrote: post #101
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…

His "What's In Soylet" [0] article provides a little insight. 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. [0]: http://robrhinehart.com/?p=424

Unless he has almost no physical activity those calories are lower than recommended for weight loss. Also, when on a diet with calories as low as this your body's protein requirements increase, as they also do with higher physical activity. 50g is much lower than recommended.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#337

Post by mbubb »

Fascinating. The discussion as well. Surprised at how few comments there were about the culture of eating.

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).

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#338

Post by damoncali »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #264
acgourley wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The burden of evidence should be on the person claiming to have a miracle drink. The burdon of evidence should be even greater when it's a non-natural source, as Nassim Taleb argues in Antifragile, "The "non-natural" has to prove its harmlessness." If you don't take this viewpoint, you end up with cigarettes, transfat and radium jewelry.

But he doesn't have a 'miracle drink'. He has a generic food mash and his only claim is 'contains basic nutrients and calories'.

He says it contains all the nutrients the body needs. That is a big claim.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#339

Post by JoeAltmaier »

withad wrote: post #115
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not as dangerous as a stead diet of McD's. See it in persepective. He's at least trying, not just stuffing his mouthhole with salt-sugar-fat crap.

A steady diet of McDonald's (or any equivalent fast food) isn't nearly as inherently dangerous as things like "Super Size Me" would have you believe. Morgan Spurlock was eating 5000 calories of McDonald's a day, with most of it coming from the milkshakes, not the solid food. If you force-feed yourself 5000 calories of anything every day for a month, you're going to have health problems.

Right. Human physiology is incredibly resilient. Populations around the world have subsisted on the most amazing limited diets with fair success.

Fast food won't kill you. At least not right away. This stuff won't kill you. At least not right away. The alarmists are as wrong as the op.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#340

Post by notdrunkatall »

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…

Yeah, the guy's testing on himself. We'll see in a year.
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