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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

#321

Post by stcredzero »

raverbashing wrote: post #217
ekianjo wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You did not mention the placebo effect though. That's the largest weakness of such an experiment. Your brain may be convinced (without you being strictly conscious about it) that Soylent is good for you and trigger all kind of benefits that you assessed yourself. That's why clinical trials are running in double-blind modes, to remove as much as possible the placebo effect. A self-assessed experiment is, and will alwa…

Well, they can't use a placebo for that, you'll starve the placebo group. You could provide a different meal replacement powder and compare the results (provided the subjects don't know which one looks like what)

We don't need to re-research nutrition starting from verification of macronutrients. The placebo could be an imbalanced mix of macronutrients. That way, you would expect malnutrition, not starvation.

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

#322

Post by stcredzero »

JPKab wrote: post #297
mseebach wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Let's keep one thing that the poster you are replying to had in mind: Human nutritional science is HORRIBLE from a "meta-science" perspective. Gary Taubes, who admittedly is a bit of a one trick pony, has written extensively on the failings of the nutritional scientific community to adequately fund real, controlled studies that test out poorly performing hypothesies that have been taken as gospel. Eggs are good for y…

> Human nutritional science is HORRIBLE from a "meta-science" perspective.

What most people don't realize is that their gut is probably the single thing with the biggest influence on nutrition, and it is practically its own goddamn biome. Also, what we know of human metabolism would fill an entire wall with an intricate nightmare spaghetti chart, and that would be the abridged version.

At this point, the only viable way to proceed is to continue research and empirical data on large populations. This is why traditional diets and whole foods win, because we already have a lot of data.

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

#323

Post by smcl »

The pictures he takes reminds me of those deceptive "before" and "after" shots from makeover shows (dour, poorly lit shot before, and lovely smiling pic after). It starts with him looking a bit peaky with his face illuminated by artificial light and ends with him grinning in the sunshine.

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

#324

Post by gnaritas »

foobarbazqux wrote: post #298
gnaritas wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's rather the point of people wanting something like Soilent to begin with, people often don't want to take the time necessary to make proper healthy food. It shouldn't be so much work to fuel up.

My point is that taking the time necessary to make (and eat) proper healthy food is a large part of what makes it healthy.

Which is the bug things like Soilent (not that I support Soilent) are trying to fix. In this day and age, science should be able to fix problems like this so we can have fast and healthy food. You're begging the question.

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

#325

Post by Retric »

asdasf wrote: post #312
Retric wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahh, ok your assuming nutrients all need to hit exactly 100% each day to be heathy. The reality is perfection changes with age, Heath issues, pregnancy, sun exposure, body weight, and a host of other issues. However, close enough is plenty to stay in good heath. So, while there is no diet that works equally well for a nursing mother and a sedendary accountant both can stay heathy eating just rice and a multivitamin o…

No, I am not assuming anything. I gave you a specific real example of an actual problem. Do you have anything constructive to add to the discussion, or did you just want to provide an example of the kind of deliberately dishonest hand-waving I was referring to?

Let's look at some actual science.

http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/DRI/DRI_Vitamin_A/394-419_150.p...

The Manganease recommendation is based on observed western diets not actual need. From existing studies it looks like there is a fairly wide tolerable range for Manganease with some people needing quite a bit to maintain Manganease levels. Anyway, 5x ensure is well within the 'Tolerable Upper Limit' and thus Not an issue.

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

#326

Post by asdasf »

Retric wrote: post #325
asdasf wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I am not assuming anything. I gave you a specific real example of an actual problem. Do you have anything constructive to add to the discussion, or did you just want to provide an example of the kind of deliberately dishonest hand-waving I was referring to?

Let's look at some actual science. http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/DRI/DRI_Vitamin_A/394-419_150.p... The Manganease recommendation is based on observed western diets not actual need. From existing studies it looks like there is a fairly wide tolerable range for Manganease with some people needing quite a bit to maintain Manganease levels. Anyway, 5x ensure is well within the 'Tolerable Upper Limit' and thus Not an issu…

Except that most people get a significant amount of manganese from their water, thus putting them at risk. This is what I said in my post, which you should read before you reply to.

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

#327

Post by nazgulnarsil »

tocomment wrote: post #250
nazgulnarsil wrote: post #216

I'll keep bumping my open source, whole food, cheaper alternative as long as soylent remains popular. I've been using this as about 40% of my calories for about a year now and my blood panel numbers are great. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjA38cUd4BZBdGZ...

That's pretty cool. How does it taste? How long does it last after prepared? Have you considered olive oil?

Olive oil is something you can add to alter the macro breakdown, but I'm happy with the fat content of the whole milk as it stands. It tastes good to me, though the marmite and potassium make it taste strange to some. I always drink it immediately, and reports say it separates too much if left to sit in the fridge. Though I suppose one could use a magic bullet and reblend right before drinking.

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

#328

Post by Fuzzwah »

w1ntermute wrote: post #41
alphaoverlord wrote: post #9

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…

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.

I think the best part of all this is actually that more and more people are realizing that no human clearly knows what humans should be doing to get the most out of a human body.

Maybe "no human" is over stating it.... I could easily just slot "the vast majority of intelligent adult humans" into the sentence and it should still be mind blowing.

People have used their brains to explain nuclear physics, create a network of computers which spans the globe and landed a man on the moon. Yet no one can clearly tell me what I should be fueling my brain and body with?

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

#329

Post by Fuzzwah »

speeder wrote: post #57
cup wrote: post #6

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 was bothered by that too. I think soylent would have a hard time beating my diet WHEN I eat correctly (some recent issues resulted into me drifting far from my normal diet, but now I am returning to it again). My normal diet, breakfast: toast, cheese, chinese tea (I like all colors) or matte tea (it remembers black tea, but with a less harsh taste and less caffeine) lunch: vegetables and proteins (meat, cheese, sas…

Your weight numbers could do with some units. I hope / expect you're talking 125kg down to 100kg. But I'm an Aussie living in the US so I have a clue what you mean. I suspect many Americans wouldn't.

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

#330

Post by IanCal »

gnaritas wrote: post #320
IanCal wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We don't all think of eating as an event or a treat, it's often just a burden of being biological. Boiling a kettle is so burdensome it's only done by those looking for a treat or some special event? I'd understand if we were talking about preparing a roast (I still think that takes very little time out of a day), but boiling a kettle or frying a steak? These are things that can be done while thinking, reading, pla…

Do you fail to understand what "in a hurry" means? Slapping together a sandwich is fast, microwaving something is fast, cooking is not fast. I could be out the door before the water even warms up. > Well we're talking about people who seem to find boiling an egg such an ordeal they're giving up food altogether as it's a "burden of being biological", I don't think the difference is going to be a deal-breaker. Yes it w…

> Do you fail to understand what "in a hurry" means?

The original question was "I have not been able to find a breakfast food that's quick, tastes ok, and isn't high in carbs.", not "What can I make in less than 20 seconds?". You introduced that

I'm saying if you're regularly in such a hurry then you're doing things wrong. This is an extreme hurry. Yes, yes, every so often you'll sleep through an alarm and need to run out of the door but if you're always doing this then something is very wrong with your schedule.

> Yes it would be, eating a meal replacement doesn't change the way I like my food prepared and an un-rested steak is just awful IMHO.

Well then you might have to plan in an entire 10 minutes of reading or coding into your schedule. Shocking I know, but such is the terrible price of haute cuisine.

I really don't get how this is such a terrible thing. Read HN? Steak on, read a couple of stories, take steak off, go through a docker tut or read more, eat. That's the amount of time required to have steak for breakfast. Or start reading your emails, or coding, or ...

Or cook something other than steak. Bacon and eggs on toast, or just bacon and eggs. You can even take it with you if you don't have time to eat at home.

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