Most of what he described in the first days could have been caused by fructose withdrawal syndrome.
Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks
281–290 of 372 posts
Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I can't guarantee they are better than fast food. But, I bet you can find one that is similar to Soylent. It is more convenient than fast food. I actually kinda like the McDonald's salads. I mean, as far as you can like fast food at all. If you go easy on the dressing, (the dressing comes in a package that looks like a giant-size katsup packet, so you get to decide how much you eat.) I think it's probably prett…
Hmm, thanks. If they don't sate my hunger, there's no reason to them. I'll either keep cooking chicken breasts (you just pop them in the oven for an hour with minimal preparation and are delicious) or have milk with cereal, one cup of which keeps me full for 5-6 hours. Losing weight with that sort of diet has never been a problem, as I feel full all day and still manage to have a nicely-sized dinner. About the target…
I bought a week's worth of Ensure Complete and was unable to sustain any sort of meal replacement plan on it. Each drink only seemed to alter the 'flavor' of my hunger rather than sate it in any way.
Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmm, thanks. If they don't sate my hunger, there's no reason to them. I'll either keep cooking chicken breasts (you just pop them in the oven for an hour with minimal preparation and are delicious) or have milk with cereal, one cup of which keeps me full for 5-6 hours. Losing weight with that sort of diet has never been a problem, as I feel full all day and still manage to have a nicely-sized dinner. About the target…
I bought a week's worth of Ensure Complete and was unable to sustain any sort of meal replacement plan on it. Each drink only seemed to alter the 'flavor' of my hunger rather than sate it in any way.
You can add fibre, if you think that's going to help.
Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks
#284Earlier 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…
>to people who didn't know there were existing products
Would you care to link to where people can purchase these existing products? It seems that every time someone makes that claim they are either referring to medical products not available to the public, or to crap like MET-Rx that doesn't provide a complete, balanced micro nutrient profile.
Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not at all. Say, for example, that I'm replacing fast food. In that scenario Soylent costs less money, takes less time (don't have to go to the fast food place, less time actually eating), is almost certainly healthier, and won't make me feel like crap afterwards. At this point I can't think of any way to continue extending the sex analogy that doesn't get a bit too off-color.
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…
This is an absurd claim. We've had dry dog food for a long while now; we totally understand enough about nutrition to create complete diet replacements. Humans are more complex, but not orders of magnitude so.
The only reason there isn't any such product in the consumer market is because there's little incentive for it: too commoditized, lots of liability.
Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
>to people who didn't know there were existing products Would you care to link to where people can purchase these existing products? It seems that every time someone makes that claim they are either referring to medical products not available to the public, or to crap like MET-Rx that doesn't provide a complete, balanced micro nutrient profile.
> they are either referring to medical products
Very few of these products are prescription only or even pharmacy only products. It is possible to persuade companies to sell to individuals. To answer your question - Ensure brand includes complete meal replacement products; the Fortisip range also includes suitable products. There are a bunch of others but these are easiest to obtain.
Most companies are very careful about selling these products. Some people think that's a good thing.
Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are they? I'm interested in "I'm too lazy to cook today but don't want to eat unhealthy fast food" food.
Seriously? You are unaware of meal replacement bars and drinks? https://www.google.com/search?q=meal+replacement+shakes Almost all of them are marketed to the diet crowd. There are a bunch of 'atkins' branded bars, too, if you are going the low-carb route. Slim-fast, I know, can be had in giant tubs for relatively little money per serving; I remember as a kid, looking through my grandparent's pantry and finding a gia…
How about actually clicking the links in those search results. Nothing in the first few pages even attempts to provide a food replacement. None of them provide 100% of known essential nutrients. You will develop a vitamin deficiency consuming any of those exclusively. That is in no way accomplishing what soylent claims to do.
Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks
#288Earlier 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…
This is an absurd claim. We've had dry dog food for a long while now; we totally understand enough about nutrition to create complete diet replacements. Humans are more complex, but not orders of magnitude so. The only reason there isn't any such product in the consumer market is because there's little incentive for it: too commoditized, lots of liability.
Dogs are not highly intelligent omnivores with average lives of 60+ years.
Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's true, from both the "for" and "against sides". Anyone who things that only happens on one of the sides should check their confirmation bias. And no, this is not an "every opinion deserves equal airtime" claim. The vast majority of nutrition and health experts draw on a mix of science, pseudo science and superstition, and assume it is all science. (Quick check: Think salt intake causes hypertension? That dietar…
Yes, you are making a "every opinion deserves equal airtime" claim. When someone who isn't trained at all in a field claims to have made a revolutionary advance in that field, the rational response for a non-subject-matter-expert member of the public is deep skepticism. The discovery might indeed be revolutionary, but the way we find out is by running proper scientific tests on it, not by pioneering the revolution. T…
>the rational response for a non-subject-matter-expert member of the public is deep skepticism
And the response in question is not deep skepticism, but equally non-scientific and inaccurate nonsense. "Soylent will kill you because you need the magic spirits of whole foods!" is not skepticism, it is bullshit.
Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks
#290Earlier 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…
Above average in quality? He was taking in nearly twice the daily recommended intake of sodium [1] and nearly all of his self reported vitamin/mineral intake was about 1/3 of the daily recommended levels. [1] http://www.cdc.gov/Features/dsSodium/
>and nearly all of his self reported vitamin/mineral intake was about 1/3 of the daily recommended levels.
Yeah, and that is above average. You are seriously over-estimating how healthy the average american's diet is. This is one of the big reasons people are interested in soylent, getting 100% of all your vitamins and minerals by just eating "real food" is actually very difficult.