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How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

motherboard.vice.com

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Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#221

Post by VLM »

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…

"like using an FAQ to run a nuclear reactor."

That sounds like a winning long term strategy if the opposition makes decisions solely to maximize short term profit. Don't overestimate the opposition. Bad money pushes out good.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#222

Post by quantumpotato_ »

nsxwolf wrote: post #178
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…

I'm not following. In what way is a McDonalds hamburger artificial? It's bread. It's meat. Even if there are mechanically separated parts of the meat, they're still meat. Even if it's as artificial as you say, isn't food that "looks real" and "tastes good" better than food that "looks like deplorable shit" and "tastes like deplorable shit" and is unapologetically named after something horrible from a 1970s dystopian…

Read this: http://www.amazon.com/Fast-Food-Nation-Dark-All-American/dp/... and tell me if you want to eat at McDonald's again.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#223

Post by quantumpotato_ »

digitalzombie wrote: post #207

I wouldn't mind eating this once and a while when I'm low on time and don't want to drive somewhere or whip something up. I wouldn't see myself eating this ONLY, cause the video did bring up a good point, eating is also a social thing. Hey babe you want to go back to my place and eat some soylent?

We can cook it, oh wait, don't have time.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#224

Post by fleitz »

stinkytaco wrote: post #136
fleitz wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The breaking of bread is one of the most important social aspects of humanity. Soylent is perfect for the disconnected from humanity factory worker. I fully appreciate that it's cheaper than food, and might be nutritionally healthy for you. Mental healthwise, it seems like a disaster.

Off topic but, I think that really gets to the core of our problems with food in western culture. Sharing food is the only bodily function we share publically. We don't use the bathroom together. We generally sleep and procreate in private with select people. We don't give play by plays of our breathing or hygiene, even if they are technically public. But food, food is such a powerful cultural symbol that we share it…

Exactly, the food our grandparents made was religious or ritual in nature, think about it...

Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, etc, etc. Even the 4th of July is marked by BBQ.

As you said, last supper, last meal, sacrement. Culture is food.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#225

Post by dingaling »

pionar wrote: post #122
nightski wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

EEk! Would you be content if 0.1% of US airline passengers died as a result of the airline industry each year?

After all it would only be 700 per year, every year.

( Note: 2012 global airline fatalities were 475 ).

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#226

Post by w1ntermute »

obstacle1 wrote: post #208
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 just tried to submit the investigation article, too, and the same happened to me. Worrisome. Is YCombinator invested in Soylent?

The CEO, Rob Rhinehart, is a YC alum.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#227

Post by pyrocat »

fleitz wrote: post #112
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.…

The breaking of bread is one of the most important social aspects of humanity. Soylent is perfect for the disconnected from humanity factory worker. I fully appreciate that it's cheaper than food, and might be nutritionally healthy for you. Mental healthwise, it seems like a disaster.

How many meals in week do you eat alone? How many with other people? I think most people will simply use this product to replace the meals they'd eat alone, and still go out for food with friends.

As a bachelor who eats out almost every meal, including the lunches and dinners when I eat alone. This sounds perfect for saving money and thus leaving more money to spend when I go out with friends.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#228

Post by mikk0j »

aianus wrote: post #172
_delirium wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soylent is a technology company. It's not just positioning. They are iterating towards finding an exponentially better way to do transactional eating using technology. That's the definition of a tech company. Well, any product is technology in that sense. But this particular technology, meal-replacement shakes, is already reasonably well established. What seems new to me is that Soylent is pitching itself to people w…

The existing products have really terrible marketing. They sell them in pharmacies and generally broadcast a message of "for supplementation or diseased/senile people only". Kudos to Soylent for trying to normalize liquid diets.

That's it. I had to read this far before I realized that's exactly what their core is: "trying to normalize liquid diets" (as in make them normal, acceptable, approachable, I think?). There's nothing natural (as in biologically normal, desirable or standard) about a liquid diet, so that's going to be an uphill battle.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#229

Post by pyrocat »

tptacek wrote: post #167
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.

Yup, same thing happened with the New York Times (1995) earlier today, it was originally a linkjacking blog post.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#230

Post by fleitz »

pyrocat wrote: post #227
fleitz wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The breaking of bread is one of the most important social aspects of humanity. Soylent is perfect for the disconnected from humanity factory worker. I fully appreciate that it's cheaper than food, and might be nutritionally healthy for you. Mental healthwise, it seems like a disaster.

How many meals in week do you eat alone? How many with other people? I think most people will simply use this product to replace the meals they'd eat alone, and still go out for food with friends. As a bachelor who eats out almost every meal, including the lunches and dinners when I eat alone. This sounds perfect for saving money and thus leaving more money to spend when I go out with friends.

I eat 4 meals alone per week, mostly because I eat lunch at my desk and am not super tight with my new co-workers (mostly because except for fridays I don't eat with them, see how that works?) Breakfast is with my partner, and dinner is with my partner or friends and family.

Why are you eating alone... let alone eating alone as a bachelor?

Make food for friends, go out with friends, not eating alone will change your life for the better (IMHO).

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