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You may not see a problem, but over 10,000 backers (myself included) do. I'd be happy to go into more detail about why if you would like.
I am too.
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Comments like this are why I read HN, and why it's often so valuable to read the comments before the article. Thanks for sharing your insights.
I think it's even better to read the comments after reading the article. Here's a possible flow: 1. Read the article 2. Analyze. Establish your position/beliefs 3. Read the comments 4. Adjust your beliefs in the light of new evidence :)
Soylent aside, im amazed at how terrible his traditional normal days meal is? I mean hes eating a processed breakfast subsitute in the morning, take away mexican food with a soft drink for lunch and more take away for dinner. You don't need to be a nutritionist to know thats going to have a terrible impact on his life later down the track. Postnote: Now that Ive read the whole article, I wonder if all the benefits he…
I'm a bit pessimistic, so I think that his diet is probably not far off from the average American's diet, probably a lot better. That's a depressing idea in itself, but does lend credence to the idea that a simple, cheap alternative would be beneficial to people who are too busy/stupid/ignorant/poor to solve the problem for themselves.
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I think it's even better to read the comments after reading the article. Here's a possible flow: 1. Read the article 2. Analyze. Establish your position/beliefs 3. Read the comments 4. Adjust your beliefs in the light of new evidence :)
I'm not in a position to do step 2 on this subject, as I'm not sufficiently into nutrition or medicine or judge the claims in the article independently, and for a non peer-reviewed source addressing what looks like a food fad, there's a good chance that it won't be worth my time to repair that deficiency.
EDIT: It wasn't my intention to offend if that was the reason behind the downvotes. It wasn't about anybody specifically, I was just trying to elaborate on a slippery slope issue that seems to be common among smart people.
Soylent aside, im amazed at how terrible his traditional normal days meal is? I mean hes eating a processed breakfast subsitute in the morning, take away mexican food with a soft drink for lunch and more take away for dinner. You don't need to be a nutritionist to know thats going to have a terrible impact on his life later down the track. Postnote: Now that Ive read the whole article, I wonder if all the benefits he…
What's the big deal? What this guy is eating already is definitely above average in quality. A Chipotle burrito bol (fresh whole ingredients, sans tortilla) is a legit meal. Other than dental impacts from the carbonation, health hysteria about diet soda and aspartame has been debunked. I don't know about the take-out Thai, but at least it's real food and not some preservative-laden packaged food product from the groc…
The health hysteria over aspartame hasn't really been fully debunked, there are still countless conflicting studies about the effects of aspartame, one of the more recent ones finding the metabolic effects of artificial sweetener to be the same as an actual HFCS-sweetened soda.
Soda may or may not be bad for you, but it's certainly empty calories. He shows a picture of Diet Coke but mentions Vanilla Coke throughout. Your parent comment is on the mark.
With the plethora of well known and well researched meal replacement solutions out there, why is Soylent getting so much attention?
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I'm curious. Specifically about what you think Soylent offers that the wide variety of MRPs rhat have been on the market dor decades don't. Is it the concept of literally replacing all of your meals? To me it seems that there are dozens of existing MRPs that beat Soylent on price, flavor, and quality. But I have rarely seen any manufacturer claim that you can replace every meal with their product, and when they do it…
The main difference for me between Soylent and the other options on the market is the specific goals of the products. There are a variety of other options, but as you said, the majority aren't intended as replacements for your entire diet (those ones also tend to beat Soylent on flavor only by being chock full of sugar). There are a few that are complete diet replacements, mostly used for medical purposes, but the fa…
There's no difference. The point is that those are expensive because getting a concoction of nutrients that doesn't damage you in the long term is hard.
I'm all for people having the freedom to eat whatever they want and I really like the quantified self aspect of seeing how diet affects how they feel and metrics of health, but I have to say the author grossly does not understand the medical tests he had done and misinterprets the data. I'm not going to comment on the drink, but rather on his misunderstanding of medicine. First, EGFR is not "Epidermal Growth Factor R…
Nice job missing the forest but spotting a few trees. I see some promising initial signs given the short duration of the trial. Imagine if there was a new drug that gave the mental benefits the guy reported after two weeks of use and saved you money too. It would be front page news. The guy doesn't claim to be a medical expert, he just did his best to report the results of a bunch of miscellaneous tests that were sug…
I'm not trying to refute what he says about how he feels, whether that saves him money, or his mental ability - those aren't my areas of expertise. I do know a little about medical tests, and I think it's valid to point out that he clearly does not and how the results he reports are either incorrect or irrelevant. I'm just suggesting you shouldn't consider his medical tests in deciding how good this product is.
I have no horse in this race, but I'll tell you if this racetrack is not standard regulation. Self experimentation might be useful, but only if you understand the metrics you measure and whether it's stochastic noise or meaningful results.
There are many other reasons to be skeptical of Soylent, even from a cursory read on Wikipedia, the website, and Kickstarter page. First, the diet has caused Rob Rhinehart anemia, tachylcardia, arrhythmia, and joint pain from taking Soylent (from Wikipedia, Economist article). While the formula has changed since, do you trust a diet that only months ago caused the creator serious health ailments? Secondly, even if Rob Rhinehart has no nutrition background, and neither does anyone else on the Soylent team. I would expect someone on the team that knows something about nutrition. Looking on the website the Soylent team includes no mention of a nutritionist or dietician or foods manufacturing expert; key people in developing a new meal replacement product. Thirdly, anything to do with creating a new, stand alone meal replacement product requires someone know about the foods business or operations or something along those lines. It is not clear that their current team understands how far you can go with marketing claims, how to test medical claims, nutrient interactions, etc.
This is not the first time people have been skeptical of Soylent, and certainly not the last. There are so many red flags from just a quick search and gut checking against their claims that I would definitely not recommend it to anyone I know, let alone trying it out myself.