Two Months of Soylent • Hacker News Board

Re: Two Months of Soylent

#201

Post by stan_rogers » Tue, Mar 19, 2013, 1:25 PM UTC

dandelany wrote: post #61

lnanek2 wrote: post #42

Couldn't you just buy Ensure or some other meal shake at the local pharmacy?

You could, but what fun would that be? :) In seriousness though, much of OP's intent was to make Soylent as affordable as possible. To that end, a quick cost comparison: You can buy 24 8-oz Ensure drinks on sale from Amazon for $42.50. Each drink contains 350 calories, so: (24 * 350) / $42.50 = 198 kcal/dollar. Rob claims to get 2629 calories a day from Soylent, and his monthly costs were $154.82, so: (30 * 2629) / $…

That's WAY overpriced. I live a good part of my life on the stuff (swallowing problems arising from Parkinsonism) and at local pharmacies it's regularly on sale for $9 for a six-pack (bottles, not cans—they're almost always more expensive in cans, and the cans and bottles are the same size), or $36 for 24. But that's if you buy the Abbot-branded stuff; most of the large pharmacy chains sell a house-brand version for a little less ($7/six-pack, or $28/24, in Toronto is not unusual for Shoppers' Life Brand, and there's a President's Choice version in the Loblaws chain as well). Note that there are three versions: regular (intended as a top-up supplement for people who are eating, just not well), "plus calories" (mostly more fat), and "plus protein", each of which is aimed at people with different requirements.

And no, it's not an adequate diet replacement for the average case. If you really don't like food and consider it an inconvenience, maybe—but that ain't normal. And it's not just a matter of getting used to it (goodness knows I've had enough of the stuff); normal people actually enjoy the tastes and textures of good food.

Re: Two Months of Soylent

#202

Post by jilted3 » Tue, Mar 19, 2013, 1:33 PM UTC

The problem with this idea long-term is that the body will 'plateau' and what may happen is decreased immunity and inability to adapt to natural seasonal and/or drastic weather changes. The body is not so simple as to be relegated to some normalizing diet. Food is as much about energetics than just protein/carbs/calories.

Re: Two Months of Soylent

#203

Post by silasb » Tue, Mar 19, 2013, 1:35 PM UTC

bsmith wrote: post #7

> Some people tell me going "ketogenic", or reducing carbs is healthy. I am now skeptical of this claim as lowering carbs makes me feel hungry and tired, and the drink taste less sweet. Perhaps it would be possible after an unpleasant transition period, but I don’t see the ultimate gain... Their advice seems to fall in line with the paleo/primal philosophies—in a nutshell: man only started eating a significant amount…

I'm on Keto now. The biggest change that I noticed while being on Keto is that I eat a lot less and I get fuller on smaller portion sizes.

Typical breakfast is 3 pieces of bacon (yummy) with peanut butter. Large cup of coffe with 1~2 tablespoons of coconut oil.

Lunch is a small $3.50 salad at the salad bar.

Dinner is typically cheese and deli meat with more peanut butter.

I drink about 60 oz. of water a day plus 2 large coffees.

I'm only tired because I'm staying up late and not getting good night of sleep. Hopefully ASMR will help with that.

Re: Two Months of Soylent

#204

Post by XorNot » Tue, Mar 19, 2013, 1:54 PM UTC

lilsunnybee wrote: post #185

XorNot wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is in fact why multi-vitamin pills are a useless generic habit. Vitamins are trace compounds/elements by nature, and your body is very careful to eliminate excesses (since they can catalyze all sorts of side-reactions which can be otherwise harmful). The classic example is if you take multi-vitamins, you usually have noticeably different colored urine. That's no coincidence.

Yeah except you might be deficient in some vitamin, and in that case you're screwing yourself over by not taking a multivitamin that has just 100% of the RDA's. Not everyone can afford to eat a world-class, healthy diet, and obtain all nutrients sans a multivitamin.

It is medically very difficult to be vitamin deficient. Modern food is fortified in so many ways that its now almost impossible unless you do something like eat exclusively exactly 1 food product. Even then.

It's not about a healthy diet - it's about the fact that vitamins are trace components that your body holds onto what it needs and discards the rest. This is very different to the general nutritional needs of the body (carbohydrates and the like - all the things the Soylent maker is principally concerned with).

Multivitamin pills are an expensive "worried well" type supplement. Very very few people need them. They're not "generally a good idea", and if you can afford them you should be using that money to buy better quality foodstuffs because they certainly won't surrogate for poor nutrition in the major groups that you do need in large quantity.

Re: Two Months of Soylent

#205

Post by ricardobeat » Tue, Mar 19, 2013, 1:55 PM UTC

jaggederest wrote: post #127

cheeseprocedure wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be really handy to have a table of common raw ingredients, the temperatures at which they become safe to eat (if applicable), and the temperature at which their various nutrients denature.

> the temperatures at which they become safe to eat (if applicable) Most modern food can be eaten raw. Or lightly seared to kill surface bacteria. Modern food safety is pretty neat. It probably won't taste great though. NB this does not apply to raw processed meat - for example, ground beef/pork/chicken is probably a bad bet. Surface area to volume ratios are key.

Tuna to the rescue. Delicious when seared but raw inside. If it wasn't for the mercury content...

Re: Two Months of Soylent

#206

Post by rthomas6 » Tue, Mar 19, 2013, 2:04 PM UTC

mamoswined wrote: post #114

geoka9 wrote: post #12

Sorry, but after reading the following (elsewhere on that blog), I'm hard-pressed not to dismiss this as an elaborate troll. "I read a book on Number Theory in one sitting, a Differential Geometry book in a weekend, filling up a notebook in the process."

The whole thing is hilarious. Sorry, but nutrition is not like math or C++, where you can teach it to yourself by googling things and reading textbooks. Has he even read the massive body of research on food replacement in the form of parenteral and enteral nutrition? For those people it's a matter of life or death, since many patients are incapable of eating. They have to do a lot better than he does.

>Sorry, but nutrition is not like math or C++, where you can teach it to yourself by googling things and reading textbooks.

That's probably true, but hopefully one day nutrition science will be on that level. Perhaps then a much smaller amount of people will have things like obesity and type II diabetes.

Re: Two Months of Soylent

#207

Post by papsosouid » Tue, Mar 19, 2013, 2:07 PM UTC

andrewfelix wrote: post #46

bsmith wrote: post #7

> Some people tell me going "ketogenic", or reducing carbs is healthy. I am now skeptical of this claim as lowering carbs makes me feel hungry and tired, and the drink taste less sweet. Perhaps it would be possible after an unpleasant transition period, but I don’t see the ultimate gain... Their advice seems to fall in line with the paleo/primal philosophies—in a nutshell: man only started eating a significant amount…

"in a nutshell: man only started eating a significant amount of carbohydrates about 10,000 years ago." This is a myth and patently wrong. Anatomically modern humans evolved on a diet of cooked food, the bulk of which was tubers and other root vegetables. EDIT: 'tubas' -> 'tubers' derp.

Also, the 10,000 years thing is old info. We found evidence in 2009 that man was harvesting and milling grain 100,000 years ago at least.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ioTpi8xdw...

Re: Two Months of Soylent

#208

Post by papsosouid » Tue, Mar 19, 2013, 2:13 PM UTC

paduc wrote: post #155

I wonder if this guy realizes his teeth are going to fall off. Since he has very little chewing action, the gums and underlying bone are going to go soft and eventually the teeth are going to begin falling off. But who cares, right? He doesn't really need his teeth. He should be prepared to accept a new and maybe uncommon physical shape.

>I wonder if this guy realizes his teeth are going to fall off.

I wonder if people who say ridiculous stuff like this realize that there are already lots of people living on liquid diets, feeding tubes, or IV nutrition because of health problems. And their jaws don't magically turn to mush and their teeth don't fall out.

Re: Two Months of Soylent

#209

Post by papsosouid » Tue, Mar 19, 2013, 2:16 PM UTC

goggles99 wrote: post #144

This product would never work for me (I can't speak for everyone else) because such a thin, denatured substance transfers into the intestines (digests) rather quickly. This leaves the stomach empty and me feeling hungry. My brain starts to make me feel bad at this point. Even if I have consumed 4000 calories, it does not care. My brain wants some food in there. This is one of the same reasons why babies who can't eat…

I do something similar but I mix it into jello instead of just water. I find that helps with the fullness feeling, and it doesn't taste horrible.

Re: Two Months of Soylent

#210

Post by nsxwolf » Tue, Mar 19, 2013, 2:19 PM UTC

jtheory wrote: post #192

nsxwolf wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What question is really being asked - did we evolve the ability to digest carbs? We've apparently always been able to do that. Or did we evolve the ability to eat large amounts of carbs without risking various ills like type II diabetes and heart disease? The paleo hypothesis is that we haven't adapted to carbs to the point that they don't cause disease. Carbs aren't dangerous enough to kill us before we reproduce, s…

Gene selection isn't that simple. Population members aren't useless to preserving genes once they're done having babies. Elders use and share collected knowledge (particularly skills that take a long time to master), care for babies while the parents are hunting/etc., help with gathering/cooking/cleaning/etc.. If they are all sick & dying instead of doing this work, your group isn't going to do as well as the competi…

Fair enough, but I still don't think we can show that humans have evolved to the point of achieving optimal health on a high carb diet in a few thousand years.

Grain eaters are still overall pretty healthy, so they can still accomplish the beneficial things you describe, allowing their less-than-optimal genes to carry on.