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How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

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Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#101

Post by cobrausn »

yuvadam wrote: post #69

Soylent might, technically, work. It might be safe and healthy, it definitely looks simple and allows you to forget anything related to grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning up afterwards. But thinking about the prospect of the future makes me sick to my stomach. Soylent paints a disgustingly frightening dystopia where humans are fed 100% "correct" food to allow them to continue being cogs in the business machine, n…

All I can think of when I see it is "Man, I thought the future was supposed to be awesome. Where is my engineered to be delicious lab grown steak? I get Soylent? This is not awesome."

Given, as long as I'm not being force fed the stuff as a government ration, I don't really see it as a problem, I just get sad when I see it marketed as 'future food'.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#102

Post by DanBC »

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #91

These top comments are really the worst of HN. Thoughtless, emotional vitriol. Until Soylent is proved unsafe, there is no basis for calling it unsafe.

We see unsuitably dressed workers scooping powders from uncovered boxes on a factory floor into other boxes to be mixed, with rats in the factory.

They've left that factory now, but it's telling that even though Rob didn't think the factory was suitable for a number of reasons he still went ahead and prepared and shipped product to (I assume) paying beta testers.

What more do you need?

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#103

Post by gtaylor »

yuvadam wrote: post #69

Soylent might, technically, work. It might be safe and healthy, it definitely looks simple and allows you to forget anything related to grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning up afterwards. But thinking about the prospect of the future makes me sick to my stomach. Soylent paints a disgustingly frightening dystopia where humans are fed 100% "correct" food to allow them to continue being cogs in the business machine, n…

There are also those of us that derive no joy from eating. Eating is an inconvenience to me. I have zero sweet tooth, and I don't have many cravings for specific foods. I'd rather be doing any number of other things, like reading, working out, yard/car work, calling up family, etc. I work for myself (and work reasonable hours). Of course, all of this anecdotal, but the point is that this isn't a dystopia scenario for all of us.

Having an incredibly convenient/healthy option would be outstanding for me personally. I suspect that people like me may represent a much smaller percentage of the population. I want to be healthy, but I hate shopping for and preparing food to the point where I sometimes don't eat as well as I should.

With that said, I wouldn't wish my food indifference on other people. I could see how it'd be spooky to see this kind of living being forced on people. It's probably a bit premature to worry about this just yet, though. Soylent and other similar products are still so polarizing that it's hard to imagine them taking over in the near future.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#104

Post by lowboy »

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #91

These top comments are really the worst of HN. Thoughtless, emotional vitriol. Until Soylent is proved unsafe, there is no basis for calling it unsafe.

Agreed.

I think part of the backlash is from Soylent's hubris about how it's perfectly optimized, etc. I think we have a long way to go before drawing any conclusion, but it's a promising technology.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#105

Post by lowboy »

DanBC wrote: post #102
sillysaurus2 wrote: post #91

These top comments are really the worst of HN. Thoughtless, emotional vitriol. Until Soylent is proved unsafe, there is no basis for calling it unsafe.

We see unsuitably dressed workers scooping powders from uncovered boxes on a factory floor into other boxes to be mixed, with rats in the factory. They've left that factory now, but it's telling that even though Rob didn't think the factory was suitable for a number of reasons he still went ahead and prepared and shipped product to (I assume) paying beta testers. What more do you need?

Eh. I'm not so squeamish. I know that pretty much every restaurant will have or has had rodents, it's just part of life.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#106

Post by justin66 »

beambot wrote: post #80
yuvadam wrote: post #69

Soylent might, technically, work. It might be safe and healthy, it definitely looks simple and allows you to forget anything related to grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning up afterwards. But thinking about the prospect of the future makes me sick to my stomach. Soylent paints a disgustingly frightening dystopia where humans are fed 100% "correct" food to allow them to continue being cogs in the business machine, n…

Or... it could put humanity in a position to provide a balanced nutrition as a fundamental human right, delivered right to your doorstep by USPS. If the economics worked out it could be provided everywhere worldwide, and then other food consumption could be purely for enjoyment. There are always people who scream "dystopia!" every time a new technology arrives. That seems very pessimistic.

The interchangeability of dystopias and utopias is sometimes a theme in SF. A lot of it is based on perception.

> Or... it could put humanity in a position to provide a balanced nutrition as a fundamental human right, delivered right to your doorstep by USPS.

The notion of using this glop as a permanent solution to fix hunger (someplace the USPS delivers!!!) - well, the fact that anyone would seriously entertain it - is so sad to me that it's hard to articulate. So, classic utopia/dystopia material, I guess.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#107

Post by jlgreco »

lowboy wrote: post #95
jlgreco wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a lawnmower breaks, you hit it really hard with a hefty wrench until it starts working again. Maybe even take it apart, clean it, and put it back together again. Worse case, you buy a new one and find yourself out a few thousand dollars. Percussive maintenance doesn't work on humans. When humans break, they die.

That's a poor analogy. 1) We're starting from a functional state, 2) Changing diet is nowhere near as violent as hitting something with a wrench. Humans are very adaptable wrt. food, generally speaking. Look at the different diets all around the world, or even in one person's lifetime. The only issue I take with Soylent is their claim that it's perfect. I think we need MUCH more time to gather data.

You have failed to understand the analogy. Hitting things with a wrench is how I fix things. Hitting things with a wrench is not analogous to eating Soylent, hitting things with a wrench is analogous to the medical care required when you break yourself.

The fear is that Soylent, used as hyped, has the potential to break a human.

Breaking yourself, or much worse, others, is a far more serious than breaking a machine. That sort of relaxed attitude towards health is exactly why I would not trust a product like this from people like this.

Soylent really should not be banking on "it is difficult to kill a human", and neither should you.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#108

Post by stinkytaco »

lowboy wrote: post #85
Pxtl wrote: post #68

> “You’re not going to feed a booming population with organic farms,” Rob says. This is a popular misconception. While organic farming requires far more labour than conventional farming and the yields are lower for the same land, it's not actually that much lower. We're talking about a 5-30% drop in yield. Not great, but not "OMG mass worldwide starvation" change. And that's while being vastly more efficient with fre…

Organic growing techniques use "vastly" less water? How so? I'm guessing that there's a correlation between farmers who choose to grow organic and those who try to conserve water, but I can't see how one is "vastly" different.

There's pretty solid evidence that biointesive techniques use less water because they make better use of the same space. If I grow two tomato plants in the space I used to grow one, I waste less water.

But yes, you're right, I don't know if "vastly" is the word I would use.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#109

Post by talles »

This is, IMO, the stupidest thing ever. Why just WHY give up on food? Cooking and enjoying food is one of our essential pleasures in life; I just can't see myself replacing it to some hipster matrix-like shake of nutrients. Just no thank you.

Anyway the title feels a lot misleading for someone that is used to do water fast. That is truly 'eating no food', and some do it for lengths of 30 days (yes it's safe for most people).

Cooking your own food, experimenting around and occasionally doing some fasting is, again IMO, the true way to eat happy and healthy. That's what I do.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#110

Post by stinkytaco »

Joona wrote: post #100
stinkytaco wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, so I like cooking and eating food. I think soylent is a scam, or at the very least just another in a long line of unappetizing "diet replacement shakes". But just allow me a moment to conduct a thought experiment, or at least play devil's advocate. For years you've been walking to get where you are going and you've been plowing your fields with a couple of very high maintenance animals that are costly and risky.…

You are not forced to do anything.

Did you mean this reply for me? Because I don't recall mentioning forcing someone to do something. I'm just saying that one could apply a similar thought process to tools that have changed the world in radical ways, like the internal combustion engine, steam power, precision machining, electricity, etc.

I understand that skepticism and in this case I share it, the number of inventions that have actually made radical changes to our world is infinitesimally small compared to the number that claim to, but the same reasoning could be applied to many past developments.

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