Even with all the data he's recorded, you just can't draw any sort of conclusions from this. The diet's effects on health can take years to take effect. Just because his standard blood panels are normal for two weeks doesn't mean it isn't causing problems. Specifically, the bioavailibility of the supplements in soylent may not be high. I think it could be really dangerous to eat this stuff as your primary source of food for a long period of time. Eating it from time to time, though, could be convenient and nutritious.
Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks
111–120 of 372 posts
Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Even the veggie burrito bol is in the 800 range for calories, and based on how employees heap stuff on, much more than that. It's really two meals' worth of food. Even the highest quality starch and fat filled meal is still a starch and fat filled meal. 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 re…
800 calories for one of his two daily meals is not bad. And I'm curious what you think he should be eating for calories as a vegetarian (he said he didn't eat meat) if fat and starch are both off limits. A raw vegan diet is the only one I can think of that limits both of those, and I would dispute its healthfulness.
Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks
#113With the plethora of well known and well researched meal replacement solutions out there, why is Soylent getting so much attention?
Soylent is affordable. Many other complete food supplements which are primarily used by hospitals and other care facilities, will cost significantly more. Other than that, it's a "fun" experiment as it has not been clinically proven to be either healthful or harmful, though the ingredients are FDA approved.
Soylent is $65 for 21 meals
Jevity is $40 for a case of 24 cans http://www.amazon.com/Jevity-1-2-Cal-8-oz-case/dp/B002HQMBZM...
Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks
#114What I get out of this and, by proxy, a lot of successful crowd funding is that it is a market validator. This guy will no doubt make some money on selling Soylent, but what will also happen is that a large multinational will swoop in with more credible competition.
Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks
#115I have a big problem with the "you might miss unknown-to-science micronutrients" argument. If that's the case with Soylent, it should also be the case for the average person's diet, which is far from optimal. I'd rather get all my protein, fat, carbs, vitamins, etc and potentially miss an unknown nutrient than eat what I currently do.
> I have a big problem with the "you might miss unknown-to-science micronutrients" argument. If that's the case with Soylent, it should also be the case for the average person's diet (...)
And it is the case. But because most people vary their diets, the deficiencies are not so severe. For instance, most diets lack magnesium, but on average, people also rarely go long periods without eating something like fish or sea food, which provide a good amount in one meal and keep the person above dysfunctional levels for some more time (it will still be a problem later in life).
This is why restrictive diets (vegetarian, vegan, zero-[something]) and other fads should never be taken lightly. Nutritional deficiencies compound over time and wreck havoc on your body. That includes concoctions like Soylent (and even the ones used on patients in critical condition, which cost way more, are more complete, and still are not advertised as perfect meal replacements).
Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks
#116This is all a bit silly.
Here's an advertisement for a bunch of full meal replacements for people of normal health or crappier:
http://www.abbottnutrition.ca/static/cms_workspace/en_CA/con...
As you can see, they've been on the market for decades, and people have been using them as sole-source nutrition for decades.
Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks
#117I just posted this to Tim's Blog: --------------------- It seems probable that soylent is better than much of the manufactured food on the market. It also seems unlikely that soylent is better than quality whole food. I take Nassim Taleb's approach. We don’t know what we don’t know about food. I’d like to address two of Shane’s points. I'm listing the objections Shane raises, then his reply: Shane's first point: Obje…
> We have thousands of years of history of humans doing well on whole foods, and zero evidence that the human body can do as well on artificial foods. We had thousands of years of history of humans doing well on earth, and zero evidence that the human body could survive in space. How do you find out without testing?
You switched terms. The human body can survive in space, but it doesn't do well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_spaceflight_on_the_h...
My point wasn't that humans couldn't survive on soylent. It's that I doubt it will beat real food. Further, it will be very, very difficult to test.
The reason for the presumption in favour of real foods is that thousands of years of testing by our ancestors let us identify foods that worked reasonably well.
We don't necessarily know why foods work, but any hidden defects would be more likely to surface over a several thousand year period, vs. the short term period we will be testing soylent.
Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks
#118Soylent 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…
Soylent fans would argue that this alone is a valid benefit of Soylent - reasonable, healthy nutrition that takes no planning or decision-making, and is cheap and easy. Getting people to eat better is not an easy problem to fix. (BTW, it's also easy to paint restaurant food as bad, without actually examining why. It's also easy to make unhealthy home-cooked organic food.)
You know, "you are too stupid to be allowed to make your own food," is probably not a good selling point for most people. I'm going to go out on limb and suggest that it's not a good selling point for anyone.
"Soylent fans" who are fans before the actual product has been seen or tested in any significant way might self-identify as people who need to be targeted by the first paragraph of this reply, however.
Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Again, my first paragraph is: > 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. I'm not tryin…
"Self experimentation might be useful, but only if you understand the metrics you measure and whether its stochastic noise or meaningful results." I feel you miss the whole point of self experimentation. If your aim is for improved mental function, more energy, less health problems, etc., you don't need to know how to interpret any obscure tests. You'll know. A low-risk food product (such as this) can simply be trial…
> If your aim is for improved mental function, more energy, less health problems, etc., you don't need to know how to interpret any obscure tests. You'll know.
Perception is different from reality, as exemplified by an Apple anecdote:
http://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html
We’ve done a cool $50 million of R & D on the Apple Human Interface. We discovered, among other things, two pertinent facts:
- Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than mousing.
- The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than keyboarding.
This contradiction between user-experience and reality apparently forms the basis for many user/developers’ belief that the keyboard is faster.
Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Can you name 2 or 3 (1?) that are marketed for 15-21 meals per week? I don't think anyone is expecting to replace all 21 meals per week with Soylent (including the creator, who specifically said that his regular meals have become more delightful). For me, the aspects that resonate are: 1) weight management, 2) ease and time savings, 3) cost savings & 4) increased alertness & energy. If you have any suggestions on wha…
Depends if you want to go into ketosis or not. There are ketogenic full meal replacement plans out there. I lived on nothing else for 3 months a couple of years ago, in the UK. 28 drinks per week for 4 weeks, then 21 + 7 protein bars. You could presumably avoid ketosis and weight loss by adding in caloric drinks, though obviously not intended.
Afraid I don't know of any in the US, though (assuming location based on time). Medifast seems the closest but they advocate meals alongside the replacement.