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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

#161

Post by oftenwrong »

gtaylor wrote: post #103
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…

So what do you eat? Do you blend everything into a homogeneous sludge?

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#162

Post by spinlock »

freyrs3 wrote: post #143
tolmasky wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> let's tell everyone carbohydrates are the most important staple to eat and let's put corn and sugar in everything Seems to be conflating two parties here. The USDA guidelines are written by government nutritionists and there are sound scientific reasons for recommending the base of any diet be grains. Though being a free country, whether or not the private sector decides to put corn syrup in everything is their own…

Humans have only eaten grains for the last 10,000 years or so. For the millions of years before that, we evolved on a diet that didn't include grain. Of courses those assertions don't prove anything but they do make me question the wisdom of basing the human diet on grain.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#164

Post by lowboy »

diydsp wrote: post #135
lowboy wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? The human body is a machine, and we can examine and alter that machine. We've been doing that throughout history. I don't like the early claims of Soylent being "perfectly optimized" and the like.

The human body isn't a machine. It is a more complex thing that includes many machines. There are so many features of the human body that we can not examine and that we don't even know where to look... The real question is "Soylent is perfectly optimized... for what?" Soylent may be optimized for "meeting the models of nutrition that we have." Yet, those models may be like using an FAQ to run a nuclear reactor. I'm n…

Yup, agreed. I never meant to imply that it was a simple machine.

I too see Soylent as an experiment, and a possible way to push our models of nutrition forward.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#165

Post by jlgreco »

lowboy wrote: post #141
jlgreco wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back to your hyper-relaxed "the human body is no more complicated or serious than a machine" thing? I can't believe I have not made myself clear on this already, but I'll give it one more go: You can fuck around with lawn mowers because breaking one typically doesn't fucking kill somebody. If you break your fucking lawnmower, you buy a new one. You don't get to buy another human. Such a lazy attitude towards human sa…

It's only a problem if it harms a human suddenly and irreversibly. I'm guessing that anyone who was suffering problems from a dietary change would have time to correct. Show me some evidence or even some indication that Soylent will result in an irreversible and sudden decline in health. I'm guessing that you won't, or can't. Your argument is "We don't know, so let's not risk it". The risk here is minimal. If it fail…

> Show me some evidence or even some indication that Soylent will result in an irreversible and sudden decline in health.

> If it fails to live up to the hype, it's reversible.

Once again, demanding evidence that something is unsafe instead of providing evidence that it is not, then in the same breath taking that it is not for granted.

Is that all you are wired to do? It's like what I'm saying is going in one ear and coming out the other.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#166

Post by genwin »

DanBC wrote: post #93
dm2 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can get better products from reputable companies. What products specifically?

Ensure / fortisip / Optifast (as seen in the video in the submutted link, where the doctor tells him that liquid total food replacements have been available for decades) / etc etc etc. Here's Abbott Nutrition http://abbottnutrition.com/ Here's Nutricia https://www.nutricia.co.uk/fortisip// It's frustrating that this question is asked, and answered, every single time Soylent is mentioned, and people then dishonestly s…

Yep. My mom got all her nutrition from Ensure for a couple months after stomach surgery. She lived.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#167

Post by tptacek »

bowlofpetunias wrote: post #32

EDIT: Unbelievable. Both the title and the link to the article I commented on have been swapped from the PandoDaily article ( http://pandodaily.com/2013/11/12/vice-investigates-soylent-f... ) to the Vice article which PandoDaily referred to, but that tries to give it a positive spin. This goes well beyond whatever policy pg was trying to defend recently. This is deeply manipulative. --- It looks a scam, it sounds lik…

I yield to no HN user in the extent and intensity of my distaste for the idea of Soylent, but the Pando article was, per Pando's charter, linkjacked clickbait that referred directly to the Vice article. It was totally reasonable --- desirable, even --- for the two articles to be switched. Would that we could simply do away with Pando altogether so that this kind of controversy might never recur.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#168

Post by jlgreco »

DanBC wrote: post #159
tolmasky wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> What is the difference between the completely artificial hamburger people get at McDonalds and Soylent? No one tells you that you can live on McDonald's alone.

Exactly. Not even McDonald's would suggest that. They are far more risk-adverse than the Soylent people are.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#169

Post by panarky »

freyrs3 wrote: post #143
tolmasky wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> let's tell everyone carbohydrates are the most important staple to eat and let's put corn and sugar in everything Seems to be conflating two parties here. The USDA guidelines are written by government nutritionists and there are sound scientific reasons for recommending the base of any diet be grains. Though being a free country, whether or not the private sector decides to put corn syrup in everything is their own…

The USDA has two conflicting missions: (1) promote US agricultural products, and (2) advise the public about healthy food choices.

This dual mandate results in significant food industry influence on the advice the USDA gives the public.

Unsurprisingly, guidance about what foods are unhealthy has been softened or eliminated. Changing guidance on proteins and grains are heavily influenced by the economic interests of entrenched agricultural corporations.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8375951

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#170

Post by freyrs3 »

spinlock wrote: post #162
freyrs3 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> let's tell everyone carbohydrates are the most important staple to eat and let's put corn and sugar in everything Seems to be conflating two parties here. The USDA guidelines are written by government nutritionists and there are sound scientific reasons for recommending the base of any diet be grains. Though being a free country, whether or not the private sector decides to put corn syrup in everything is their own…

Humans have only eaten grains for the last 10,000 years or so. For the millions of years before that, we evolved on a diet that didn't include grain. Of courses those assertions don't prove anything but they do make me question the wisdom of basing the human diet on grain.

Yes, and I dare say this whole civilization thing is working out pretty well as a result of our switch to grains.
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