Soylent Campaign • Hacker News Board

jcampbell1 wrote: post #492

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that those hippies don't raise $100k+ on the web. "Soylent is perfectly balanced and optimized for your body and lifestyle, meaning it automatically puts you at an optimal weight, makes you feel full, and improves your focus and cognition" The techniques and the wording seem snake oilish. Also, if anything those dumb hacker kids build breaks (email, web app, game) etc, they won't hurt you physically. The body…

While this product clearly doesn't meet the risk-reward profile for you (or me), do you not enjoy the idea that a few thousand people are about start an interesting experiment? One though I had was, if Ben and Jerry are adored for making a product that is delightful but contributes to the obesity epidemic, why can we not also praise people trying to do the opposite?

Yea, a lot of people are already hurting themselves with their regular diets. Might as well try something new.

Re: Soylent Campaign

#513

Post by goostavos » Wed, May 22, 2013, 5:28 AM UTC

joegaudet wrote: post #507

goostavos wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The techniques and the wording seem snake oilish. You know, every time this guy's story has popped up on here I've defended him. I like that he's trying to do something big, I like that he wants to solve a very real world problem, and I like that in his blog posts and updates he phrased all of his results as personal findings needing further study. However, this: >>"Soylent is perfectly balanced and optimized for yo…

The issue I would see with the placebo sludge, would be that it would immediately present as no the real deal... As I assume one cannot live off of sugar water for very long. I'm not exactly sure what the control would be, I guess what ever it is they stick in feeding tubes?

I'm not a totally sure what would be a control. I typed that last section with quite a bit of haste, but I assume that it could be tested against a traditional food based meal that has similar nutritional value.

The meal replacement idea is not entirely new, though, they've always been more in the area of supplement, rather than outright replacement. Things like ensure, slim fast, and a host of other meal in a can things exist. A quick googling led to this study: http://www.nutritionj.com/content/9/1/11 which indeed did follow the shake vs traditional food format.

If nothing else, it could be benchmarked against existing meal replacements.

I'm now actually curious how these things do get tested, and over what period of time. I'll have to hit my school's database tomorrow and see how trials have been run in the past

Re: Soylent Campaign

#514

Post by hirenj » Wed, May 22, 2013, 5:31 AM UTC

tree6014 wrote: post #320

[deleted] wrote: post #239

[deleted]

I read his blog posts leading up to this and liked the idea. So, I decided to try it myself. After many revisions, I finally figured out a good way of doing it and it ended up being more expensive than just eating regular grilled chicken, sweet potatoes, etc. He is using Maltodextrin for carbs. It likely contains Glutamic Acid and has a horrible glycemic index. You might as well eat sugar. I don't know what he is usi…

I'm glad someone mentioned the carbs here – it gives me a good excuse to pipe in. Maltodextrin is a ludicrous oversimplification of carb intake. The carb intake in whole foods is ridiculously complex, given the ubiquity of the variety of carbohydrate in all of our foodstuff. Not only do you have to take into account the stuff that we directly metabolise, but all the stuff that the little bacteria that live in our gut like to eat too.

Experiments have been done with mannose to try and recover a genetic disorder where the bio-availability of mannose has been impaired. A kid was fed with mannose in what was assumed to be the right amount of the correct monosaccharide. Turns out he ends up having a toxic reaction to the mannose, even though it goes part-way to curing his particular disease.

I know researchers in this area that don't eat red meat because they're worried about the incorporation of particular sugars into their body that are not natively found in humans. I never really understood why I looked down on biology when I was younger. It's one of the most complex and intriguing problem spaces in the world, and well worth investing your time (on the order of decades) to try and figure something out.

Re: Soylent Campaign

#515

Post by djt » Wed, May 22, 2013, 5:44 AM UTC

blhack wrote: post #369

Wow there is a lot of hate in this thread... A lot of the arguments here seem to boil down to "Much smarter people are working on this and they haven't solved it, who the hell does this KID think he is?!?" That's pretty depressing for a website that, at least originally, was to help startups talk to one another. Shame on you, hacker news. You're smarter than this. By this logic, never ever trust your data to anybody…

None of the people on the team have a nutrition background. That makes no sense to me.

The body is complicated and stopping eating this diet if you feel sick doesn't necessarily mean that you won't have ongoing health problems even when you go back to a normal diet.

Re: Soylent Campaign

#516

Post by _pmf_ » Wed, May 22, 2013, 6:09 AM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #388

blhack wrote: post #369

Wow there is a lot of hate in this thread... A lot of the arguments here seem to boil down to "Much smarter people are working on this and they haven't solved it, who the hell does this KID think he is?!?" That's pretty depressing for a website that, at least originally, was to help startups talk to one another. Shame on you, hacker news. You're smarter than this. By this logic, never ever trust your data to anybody…

> it appears that he is taking things are already approved from human consumption, and mixing them together. ...and then saying that the nutrients are stable for years. > A lot of the arguments here seem to boil down to "Much smarter people are working on this and they haven't solved it, who the hell does this KID think he is?!?" Mavericks can solve big problems. They show their working; they provide a demonstration;…

> This guy has gone from self-experimentation (and caution about letting other people try it) to a full blown sales pitch full of errors and over-blown claims.

So it's exactly like any other campaign for supplements. But he is one of us, so apparently we cannot let him get away with it.

Re: Soylent Campaign

#517

Post by Wingman4l7 » Wed, May 22, 2013, 6:20 AM UTC

Eliezer wrote: post #229

jckt wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mind explaining why Soylent is the solution for metabolically disadvantaged people as opposed to a "traditionally balanced diet"?

Because we tried your traditionally balanced diet, the high-protein diet, the high-fat diet, the paleo diet, the improved paleo diet, the four-hour diet, and yes, exercise, and nothing worked. (Shangri-La resulted in 20 pounds of very easy weight loss then stopped working and never worked again.) Maybe Soylent won't work either, but the concept behind Soylent seems dissimilar to all of those diets along dimensions in…

The problem is that you're trying a bunch of fad diets.

Weight loss is deceptively simple. Take in less calories per day than you burn, and you will lose weight. That's it. "Types" of calories is important too but is focused on too much. Exercise is very important, but trying to lose weight via exercise is ridiculous. It's much easier to just not intake those calories in the first place.

There are calculators that will help you to figure your BMR (basal metabolic rate) which will allow you to figure out the corresponding amount of caloric intake you can have that will allow you to have a net caloric "loss".

Actually putting this into practice does involve meticulous calorie counting and very probably feeling hungry a lot of the time, as you are used to a higher caloric intake; that is where the "deceptive" bit comes in.

Re: Soylent Campaign

#518

Post by cmccabe » Wed, May 22, 2013, 6:40 AM UTC

javert wrote: post #470

w1ntermute wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still manage to do okay choosing my own food at the grocery store That's because the FDA regulates food. Read The Jungle [0] if you want to know how things were before the FDA existed. These guys need to understand that biotech is nothing like tech and shut this shit down before they kill someone. There's a good reason why you don't see uneducated teenagers "disrupting" the food and drug industries. This isn't li…

> Read The Jungle[0] if you want to know how things were before the FDA existed. Yeah, because before 1906, people were constantly dying from bad food. There wasn't any safe food to eat. In the whole world. For all of history. Until the FDA came along to save us in 1906. I mean, it's demonstrably true that people aren't capable of caring for themselves. We need the government for force us to take care of ourselves. P…

Wow, the depths of ignorance in this post are truly shocking. Even holocaust deniers or creationists have more of a leg to stand on than you do. Grow up a little, read some history, and learn what people used to put in food back when they could. And in some parts of the world, still do... melamine in baby formula is nothing compared to what used to go on.

Re: Soylent Campaign

#519

Post by frozenport » Wed, May 22, 2013, 6:41 AM UTC

Afforess wrote: post #381

frozenport wrote: post #211

This is poorly motivated: 1. I can make a Hot Pocket in about 3 minutes. While the microwave is running I can browse my email on my cellphone etc... 2. Some instant food is unhealthy, perhaps healthy instant food is market for disruption? 3. Are we living in a society where people can't stop for 3 minutes to grab a bite to eat!?

1. If I eat a Hot Pocket every day I will shorten my lifespan considerably. 2. Healthy instant food tastes bland or like garbage. 3. Yes. I don't like it, but most of us don't have choices.

You can't wait 3 minutes for the microwave!? Even if you can overlap microwaving with doing other things like reading HN on the ipod.(common threading paradigm). You don't have a choice for 3 minutes!

Re: Soylent Campaign

#520

Post by cmccabe » Wed, May 22, 2013, 6:53 AM UTC

rglover wrote: post #452

chasing wrote: post #65

"Soylent is perfectly balanced and optimized for your body and lifestyle, meaning it automatically puts you at an optimal weight, makes you feel full, and improves your focus and cognition." Bull-fucking-shit. This is a product made by four twenty-somethings, none of whom appears to have a background in nutrition or any kind of health studies. To trust your health to these people would be fucking stupid. Jesus. Also:…

The FDA has an entire document on allowable amounts of rat feces and insect parts that manufacturers can have in their food: http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocuments... . I'll listen to what the kid has to say.

So what. Did you think that food was carefully grown in a sterile lab and delivered to you in a vacuum-packed container? It's grown in the dirt, harvested by day laborers, and stored and transported in big heaps out in the open.

Word of advice to you, sir. If you care about avoiding rat feces, spoiled food, and contamination in general, buy whole foods. For example, buy apples rather than applesauce. Buy steak rather than soylent. When you can visually inspect the thing, you see a lot of defects that are hidden when you grind or mash it all up.