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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

#121

Post by justin66 »

abuehrle wrote: post #82

The three NYC food critics (11:20 in the video) really bugged me. Their immediate smug dismissal of the product and idea was predetermined. Maybe I'm reading too much into what was shown, but I got the impression that there was no possible world in which they give Soylent a chance. I'm not necessarily a believer, but I'm noticing this behavior more and more often as I get older and it's increasingly bothering me.

> Their immediate smug dismissal of the product and idea was predetermined. Maybe I'm reading too much into what was shown, but I got the impression that there was no possible world in which they give Soylent a chance.

Why would they? The best possible case is that it tastes like a milkshake or malt or something good like that. At which point, they're still arguing against a monoculture of millions of identical milkshakes, which are still hell for anyone who actually enjoys food.

I'd expect any food critic's attitude toward this stuff to make their attitude towards corporate fast food look pretty mild by comparison.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#122

Post by pionar »

nightski wrote: post #65
dragontamer wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It certainly isn't a scam. However, I went to an engineering school, and have met Food Engineers. Food Engineering is a difficult branch of chemical engineering. You've got regulations, you've got people's lives at stake. The Soylent guys just went at it like a hacker: because thats what they are. They're taking the "startup culture" and trying to apply it to food. And that is incredibly dangerous. Anyone who has any…

The food industry as a whole is one big hack, even with it's fancy regulations and bureaucracy. People are dying constantly due to the failures of the industry. It is nice to see fresh ideas.

>People are dying constantly due to the failures of the industry.

Wait, what? Not even anywhere near true[1]. The CDC says 3,000 people in the US die every year from foodborne illnesses. That's .1%, one-tenth of a percent. I'd say that's a pretty good track record.

[1]http://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#123

Post by lowboy »

jlgreco wrote: post #118
lowboy wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah. That wasn't very clear in your comment. Yes, breaking humans is bad. Is there any indication that Soylent is going to break people though? As far as I can tell, it's unknown what the long term effects will be, but we have some evidence that it should be just fine. Do you have any evidence that points to Soylent being harmful?

This is exactly the relaxed attitude I am talking about. Soylent, used as hyped, should not need to be proved hazardous. Soylent, used as hyped, should be shown to be safe.

Going back to lawnmowers, it would be like not wrapping the handle with leather for comfort because we can't prove that it's safe for the lawnmower. We think it's safe, we're pretty sure from our understanding that it's safe, but we can't prove it.

I say give it a try. Let's wrap the handle, observe in operation, and then react when we have more data.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#124

Post by JaggedJax »

fredsters_s wrote: post #62

As a long time beta user I have a bunch of problems with this piece: - the Oakland space was a temporary location while they were iterating on the beta. Soylent is not manufactured there. - all the journalists writing about Soylent seem to attribute to Rob stuff that he doesn't actually say: namely that you should only consume Soylent all the time. The point of Soylent is that it replaces transactional eating and mak…

A lot of the issues people have with Soylent seem to revolve around making it the only thing in your diet for extended periods. You're right that this is not how they are pushing it. I would never want to replace food with this entirely. If I were planning to have Soylent for dinner but some friends called up and asked if I wanted to grab a meal with them, I wouldn't hesitate for a second.

Because of this I don't worry if it's healthy enough to be the only thing I eat for a month, or if I would miss food, or be less social. This will never, and isn't designed to, replace all food.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#125

Post by derleth »

tolmasky wrote: post #115
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…

Its funny because we already live in this dystopia and you simply don't notice it because the plastic food we eat "looks real" and "tastes good". What is the difference between the completely artificial hamburger people get at McDonalds and Soylent? The fact that its basically "molded" to look like the real food we used to eat? The reality is that we long ago crossed the line into having a society that mostly eats ab…

> the completely artificial hamburger people get at McDonalds

Define 'completely artificial' here. It's meat, it's bread, it's vegetables and condiments.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#126

Post by jckt »

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.

Maybe not as violent, but a bad diet can quickly lead to disease. We never see it in the affluent West but micronutrient disease was and still is a pretty big problem -- you are getting enough food energy, so while you're not starving, you're still dying from your diet.

We've only begun to start understanding some of these diseases (like Pellagra: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellagra#Epidemiology), and we don't really have it all nailed down yet.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#127

Post by salemh »

tzakrajs wrote: post #35
mikeyouse wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was literally mold on a month-old product. How is it disingenuous to say there are rats and mold?

Because the mold occurred when the packaging was compromised -- this is not related to the conditions of the manufacturing.

Packaging is part of the manufacturing process.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#128

Post by lowboy »

stinkytaco wrote: post #108
lowboy wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does biointensive === organic?

Organic is a loaded term nowadays, so maybe it's just semantics.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#129

Post by timr »

tolmasky wrote: post #115
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…

Its funny because we already live in this dystopia and you simply don't notice it because the plastic food we eat "looks real" and "tastes good". What is the difference between the completely artificial hamburger people get at McDonalds and Soylent? The fact that its basically "molded" to look like the real food we used to eat? The reality is that we long ago crossed the line into having a society that mostly eats ab…

Ah yes...the "McDonald's is bad, so let's feed people glop instead" argument.

How about this: let's help people get access to, appreciate, and learn how to prepare "real" food, instead of jumping to the lowest common denominator. That's what I'd call "disruption".

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#130

Post by blueblank »

> Eating will become like boozing—something we do recreationally with friends, or as a hobby

or, part of the grimdark future where the trend of hobby eating sends the prices of food out of reach of the lower 7/8 of society

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