Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks • Hacker News Board

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

#331

Post by ovoxo » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 8:20 PM UTC

ars_technician wrote: post #174

lysol wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Soda may or may not be bad for you, but it's certainly empty calories. Not diet soda. There are NO calories in it. It's not "empty calories". With your level of ignorance, I'm surprised you haven't poisoned yourself. >Even the veggie burrito bol is in the 800 range for calories, and based on how employees heap stuff on, The calorie counts have to be based on the average serving size, or they will be fined by the FDA…

Wait, did you just say that diet soda has "no calories" then proceed to call someone ignorant?

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

#332

Post by speeder » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 8:45 PM UTC

Fuzzwah wrote: post #329

speeder wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

actually, I thought that I had typed kg, but somehow, I didn't :/

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

#333

Post by foobarbazqux » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 9:05 PM UTC

gnaritas wrote: post #324

foobarbazqux wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Preparing food slowly and eating it slowly together with other people and enjoying the entire process is psychologically healthy. Michael Pollan has written extensively about this. It's not just about the nutrients.

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

#334

Post by rodgerd » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 9:33 PM UTC

rdl wrote: post #186

tocomment wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is a protien shake for breakfast really that bad? I have not been able to find a breakfast food that's quick, tastes ok, and isn't high in carbs.

Pre-cooked bacon (ideally, that you cook yourself and just throw into the fridge). Eggs, if you want to bother cooking at all. Pre-cooked bacon can be eaten alone, or put on a salad, or whatever.

Streaky bacon can microwave in 5 minutes and tastes fucking delicious.

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

#335

Post by tsumnia » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 10:30 PM UTC

ohWhatever wrote: post #80

tsumnia wrote: post #12

I'm still reading this, but this paragraph just made me incredibly frustrated: "...The white stuff that was mixed into the tan stuff was floating to the top and congealing together... So I just started just scooping them out... I’m pretty sure the white chunks were the rice protein, and perhaps something else important." You're the first review of Soylent, and you throwing away blobs because ...? It looked icky? This…

Yeah, but so what? I mean, consider how much that honestly could have amounted to. 100 calories, distributed across 10 grams of nutrients per shake? He still drank a shake, and at no point does he claim to have reformulated the mix by adding to it, or deliberately attempting to chemically alter it, or switch to different products. Anyway, human nutrition must be capable of tolerating human error and envionmental haza…

Considering he says he started getting vertigo, we're talking a little more than 100 calories here. Meal/Protein powders don't need to be run through a blender, but a shaker cup definitely helps disperse the powder.

My only beef with the paragraph was that he's reviewing a food source, the first review by a non-member of the team. If he'd done this for a publication, you can be sure his editor would be chewing him out for such an action.

Real life consumption, sure, I've spilled plenty of dollars worth of protein powder. I, also, wasn't the first one reviewing it and/or testing its claims.

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

#336

Post by gnaritas » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 11:24 PM UTC

foobarbazqux wrote: post #333

gnaritas wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Preparing food slowly and eating it slowly together with other people and enjoying the entire process is psychologically healthy. Michael Pollan has written extensively about this. It's not just about the nutrients.

You know what else is psychologically healthy, not being forced to spend hours a day preparing and eating food. Not everyone enjoys the process and it's not psychologically healthy for those who don't, it's a pain in the ass.

Guess what, some of us don't like other people that much either and can't stand the idea of having to regularly eat meals with them. Michael Pollan is a foodie and an English major, he has no credentials with which to say what is or isn't psychologically healthy. His "opinion" on the matter is just that, an opinion.

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

#337

Post by Retric » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 11:43 PM UTC

asdasf wrote: post #326

Retric wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sorry, assuming you drink water still. does not read as assuming your water has unusual concentrations of Manganese. Even still, known heathrisks relate to breathing excesive Manganease as it's normally excreted though the gut not the urine.

Edit: If it's really bothering you. Ambient manganese concentrations in seawater have been reported to range from 0.4 to 10 μg/l (ATSDR, 2000), with an average of about 2 μg/l (Barceloux, 1999). Levels in fresh water typically range from 1 to 200 μg/l (Barceloux, 1999). ATSDR (2000) reported that a river water survey in the USA found dissolved manganese levels ranging from 51 μg/l. The United States Geological Survey’s National Water Quality Assessment Program has gathered limited data since 1991 on representative study basins around the USA. These data indicate a median manganese level of 16 μg/l in surface waters, with 99th-percentile concentrations of 400–800 μg/l (Leahy & Thompson, 1994; USGS, 2001). Higher levels in aerobic waters are usually associated with industrial pollution.. (http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/chemicals/man...)

So, again there may be people that need to be consurned to it's less than 1% of the population and they can get buy by drinking bottled water if nothing else.

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

#338

Post by jacques_chester » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 11:45 PM UTC

guizzy wrote: post #285

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…

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.

Having thought about it some more --

at one level you're right. Millions of dogs live off a handful of composite foodstuffs.

However, when you have millions of test subjects, you quickly discover what's missing and people won't sue you for wrongful death. You also have the advantage that if a peculiar deficiency emerges in a small part of the population, a vet will probably remedy it -- or the dog will get sick and die and nobody will be the wiser.

Finally, note that most dog foods are not really composed chemicals in the sense that Soylent proposes to be. They are usually processed food -- usually made of offcuts and mechanically recovered meat considered unsuitable for human consumption -- dried, ground, emulsified and then fortified with additives.

It's not really food replacement. It's food.

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

#339

Post by jacques_chester » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 11:50 PM UTC

asdasf wrote: post #287

lsc wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does Soylent explicitly and specifically claim to be a total food replacement?

Or do we all just think that because of the original blog post?

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

#340

Post by jacques_chester » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 11:52 PM UTC

thewordis wrote: post #282

StavrosK wrote: post #243

Earlier 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.

Liquids are nowhere near as effective at satiation as solids.

Fibre and protein can increase the satiety of a drink, though.