121–130 of 372 posts
It would be very exciting to see some long-term study results on this. Also: Q: As long as we're food hacking, why not open-source it and post it on GitHub? A: It's a liquid. You can't fork it. But seriously, the open-source version of this could be the nutritional version of the OLPC.
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…
As the author himself, I can corroborate your statement that I don't understand medical tests as well as a trained physician. :) However, the point of the post was to present the data so others could interpret / draw conclusions. I gave my observations and perspective, but I made every attempt to indicate the potential weaknesses in my experiment. I do hope people don't lose miss the forest for the trees here.
The EGFR thing is regrettable. Thanks for pointing it out!
With the plethora of well known and well researched meal replacement solutions out there, why is Soylent getting so much attention?
Can you name 2 or 3 (1?) that are marketed for 15-20 meals per week? Ensure Complete (but not any other versions of Ensure) is sorta close but marketed as a supplement.
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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...
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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No, it's more like if you were forced to have sex three times a day every single day, and most of those times it was with someone you weren't attracted to. Every time I eat fast food or takeout because I'm either too tired from work to cook or don't have enough time to, I feel terrible, I spend too much money, and I damage my body. If I can replace that experience with something reasonably healthful, affordable, and…
> Soylent is a fantastic alternative. This is where you lose me. Extending my analogy, you're replacing sex thrice daily with anorgasmic sex, thrice daily. I'm not seeing the upside.
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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 are a few that are complete diet replacements, mostly used for medical purposes, but the fact that they're designed for patients who can't eat means that there is a lot of room for improvement given Soylent's different target market. 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 .
For some reason this subject hits a nerve with some people really, really hard (Aside: it's actually really fascinating to think about why that is. Health concerns are definitely not enough to explain the level of vitriol.). Those people then tend to use some really disingenuous arguments against Soylent. For example, I can't say how many times I've seen people dismissing Rob as "having spent a couple weekends reading Wikipedia". Well, no, he spent quite a significant amount of time reading textbooks and journals, getting a pretty reasonable grounding in the science. It's also not like it's his first time studying science, seeing as he is an engineer, yet somehow people are actually describing him and Soylent as "anti-intellectual". Obviously he didn't go through a traditional degree program in nutrition, but I've seen what comes out of a lot of those traditional degree programs, and that's really not much of an argument against him.
It's especially fascinating to see this backlash in a community like HN, where most of us work in a field that has done a lot to cast off the traditional model. A lot of our role models didn't go through those traditional degree programs either, yet something about nutrition makes people completely freak out. Yes, I get it, nutrition is complex and we know relatively little about it. Yes, I get it, if you screw up on nutrition people's lives are at risk. And yet, as Rob often points out, nobody was up in arms yelling at him when he was eating a terrible diet of pizza rolls and fast food. I find it really hard to believe that Soylent could be worse for you than that.
Sorry for going off on a bit of a rant, obviously I've thought about this all for a while.
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>That’s not a good reason to not try to innovate. Innovation only really works if you're solving a problem. I don't really see much of a problem with our food/nutrition system as is. Yes, there are parts of the world where people are starving, so maybe there is an application for this there, but if the aim is to test this product out in the Bay Area, I don't really see it going anywhere. I could be wrong, but that's…
A small just-add-water packet that can keep you alive for two weeks is going to find a home in every survival/hiking/camping/boat pack. Also things like disaster recovery, refugee camps, anywhere that you need to get sufficient food to a lot of people in a hurry.
also, doesn't it have to be blended?
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I'll just say this: I hate cooking, and ordering delivery every night, while easy, isn't ideal (cost, etc.). Eating delicious, real food every once in a while is a great treat, but why the hell do I have to put so much energy into this ritual of choosing/preparing/acquiring meals every single day of my life ? Sometimes I just don't want to be hungry, and I don't really care how I get not-hungry. I'm withholding judge…
1. There are existing MRPs. 2. There are companies that will prepare and deliver meals for you. Usually lower in sodium than dining out / take-away. 3. Soylent is surrounded with controversy because of the deliberate avoidance of expert input leading to trivial but potentially life-threatening errors: http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/1jvsie/the_man_w...
I'm not disregarding what Herman says, he seems knowledgeable. But if you act like a dick, it's less likely that most people will really warm to your advice.
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"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 s…
If the changes are great enough in magnitude to be obvious, then you know you're on to something. Also, measures like weight and computer mental agility tests can be quite reliable if you are consistent in your testing, and they aren't subject to misinterpretation or wishful thinking.
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Below, skore is skeptical that a person can notice a significant change to their own health. I respectfully disagree.
Check out the blog of Seth Roberts. He is a professor who is involved in the quantified self movement. He records many subjective measures qualitatively, and feels he has made some significant discoveries doing so. I won't try to summarize anything here, but anyone interested can read for themselves on his blog. Roberts studies rats, and he is the ultimate human rat.