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Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks

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Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks

#261

Post by julius »

namdnay wrote: post #253
visakanv wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's like that story of Colonel H. McMaster, who DID technically find "one weird trick", and the Army DID pass him over for promotions, etc... I'm not for or against Soylent, and I usually find this kind of advertising annoying, but it's also entirely possible that people further down the chain of command in any system discover things that people higher-up won't or can't. That's part of the entire premise of why…

> people further down the chain of command in any system Here we're talking about people who aren't even in the same system!

Einstein was a patent office guy. Yet his notable weird tricks (like constant speed of light) aren't even in the same system.

Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks

#262

Post by mogrim »

jacques_chester wrote: post #60
mortenjorck wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This to me is the real draw of Soylent: Not subsisting on it for weeks at a time, but rather using it as a "DVR for eating." In this way, Soylent could actually improve one's enjoyment of food by allowing one to focus on eating well only when time allows. Imagine not having to eat most of the time, but always having two hours set aside every Wednesday night to cook a feast.

Or you could try different foods . There are probably more distinct dishes to try than can be tasted in a standard human lifetime. Or enough that you might be forced, say, to try something twice in your entire life. Oh noes. And it goes on. Perhaps you really enjoy Caesar salad. I know I do. When I am trialling a new place I will often order the Caesar salad as a reasonably reliable proxy for the quality of the kitch…

you... bastard. Did you really have to mention ribs? I'm starving now :(

Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks

#263

Post by jerf »

julius wrote: post #261
namdnay wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people further down the chain of command in any system Here we're talking about people who aren't even in the same system!

Einstein was a patent office guy. Yet his notable weird tricks (like constant speed of light) aren't even in the same system.

Yeah, a "patent office guy" who knew nothing about physics at all until he suddenly overturned the entire world through sheer force of will. Certainly not a guy who already wanted to be a physics teacher with all the requisite training and credentials, including published papers in prestigious journals in his first year of working in the patent office, but had to find a job to make money in the meantime while he searched for one.

Einstein was someone who went up the academic course for physics, but had a brief detour during a jobless interval. I imagine many of us here can relate to that. He's not some sort of quintessential outsider.

(He's not a quintessential insider either; while the rumors about his poor grades are overstated, he did have a rough relationship with any academic subject he didn't really care about. He certainly wasn't the valedictorian type or a groomed, perfect academic from tip to toe. But neither was he an outsider. He's just an average everyday genius who combined tons of hard work with immense native talent.)

Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks

#265

Post by [deleted] »

beagle3 wrote: post #258
will_work4tears wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"That you can only get B-12 from meat" Well, maybe "meat sources (dairy products under the umbrella) are the only significant source of B-12 without supplementation" is more accurate. Cereals are "fortified" so I count that as supplementation. Sure, many yeasts contains B-12 too, some quite a bit. I'd even agree that it is significant, but it doesn't occur in foods people normally eat (maybe a guess here, but if that…

And now for the science: neither people nor animals make their own B12. Instead, we employ good bacteria in our gut to do that (and so do cows). After the discovery of antibiotics, many people in the western world became B12 deficient - especially vegetarians. However cows and other animals are just as incapable of making it - and in the last 30 years or so, just as deficient as humans, as they've also been getting l…

[deleted]

Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks

#266

Post by jonnathanson »

hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #92
plainOldText wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

OT: Often I read HN comments before reading the article, it helps to filter the BS off.

That, and briefly glancing at the outbound URL before clicking the link. In this case, my logical progression was: 1) "Hmm, that title looks interesting." 2) "Oh, it's by Tim Ferriss." 3) "Skepticism shields up!"

I have nothing against Tim Ferriss in general. I think he's an interesting character, and in a weird way, he's to be commended for his exceptional skill at self promotion. He's sort of our generation's equivalent of P.T. Barnum. And occasionally he'll even make a really insightful point. But I take at least 70% of what he says with a grain of salt.

Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks

#267

Post by jacques_chester »

vidarh wrote: post #226
jacques_chester wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apart from being calorically dense and salty, fast food is still food . Ordinary food, even fast food, contains an abundance of complex nutrients, some of which are only poorly understood. Companies with actual dietitians and biologists and millions of dollars and labs and decades of lead time haven't been able to create a total replacement for food. There are too many variations in what different people need, too ma…

> haven't been able to create a total replacement for food. Haven't they? I've seen this claim repeatedly in debates about Soylent, but I've never seen it substantiated other than by pointing to marketing claims on related meal replacement products, which may be motivated very much in part by there not being any real benefits to claiming it is a full food replacement, coupled with a lot of potential downsides such as…

Let's not kid ourselves. The original hook was replacing food.

Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks

#268

Post by [deleted] »

beagle3 wrote: post #258
will_work4tears wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"That you can only get B-12 from meat" Well, maybe "meat sources (dairy products under the umbrella) are the only significant source of B-12 without supplementation" is more accurate. Cereals are "fortified" so I count that as supplementation. Sure, many yeasts contains B-12 too, some quite a bit. I'd even agree that it is significant, but it doesn't occur in foods people normally eat (maybe a guess here, but if that…

And now for the science: neither people nor animals make their own B12. Instead, we employ good bacteria in our gut to do that (and so do cows). After the discovery of antibiotics, many people in the western world became B12 deficient - especially vegetarians. However cows and other animals are just as incapable of making it - and in the last 30 years or so, just as deficient as humans, as they've also been getting l…

[deleted]

Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks

#269

Post by namdnay »

jacques_chester wrote: post #51
w1ntermute wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the best parts about this whole Soylent debacle is getting to watch well-known people make complete fools of themselves by commenting on things that they clearly know absolutely nothing about, but still feel like they have the right to make authoritative statements on.

Funnily enough, that's the whole pitch for Soylent. "I'm just a smart guy with a fresh pair of eyes who spent a few weekends reading undergrad textbooks and skimming pubmed". Not: "we're a large company with deeply-interested professionals who've made this their life's work, our own multi-million dollar labs and decades of accumulated experience in the development, testing, validation and manufacture of temporary foo…

It's brilliant marketing though, because they've managed to sell a $230/month system as cheap!
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