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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

#231

Post by freyrs3 »

VLM wrote: post #218
freyrs3 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Note that civilization can work out pretty well for itself even if its highly non-optimal for the individuals inside it. I'm certain that two people living two sickly lives and dying at 40 of diabetes is vastly economically superior in terms of revenue over one dude living a healthy 80 years. Grains not good for anything except acting as an "energy drink" to fatten up livestock animals. Grains are good food for our g…

> Grains not good for anything except acting as an "energy drink" to fatten up livestock animals. Grains are good food for our good food, at most.

This is so absurd, I'm not even sure how to respond. Most of the global human population gets their daily calories from staple cereals. A diet based on energy and time efficient calories from cereals is what allowed civilization to flourish.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#232

Post by diogenescynic »

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.

It seems like censorship or manipulation when no explanation is given. Even if it is on the up and up, it'd be nice if someone could comment as to why the changes occur.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#233

Post by Tehnix »

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…

>Soylent is doing nothing more than accommodating to the needs of humanoids who continue the endless pursuit of some vague promise of capitalist fulfillment

Or, I'm just really lazy and would prefer something remotely healthy and cheap compared to, say, ordering a pizza.

It isn't meant to replace all your food intake, but, it seems like a good thing for when-you-just-don't-feel-like-cooking or don't have time because you have other things you'd rather do, then spend time cooking and eating (don't get me wrong though, I very much enjoy eating)..

As a student, this seems like a super product for someone like me...

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#234

Post by pyrocat »

trentmb wrote: post #96
herge wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must be the dude still holding out on cell phones because of the microwaves?

Considering the earliest signs of scurvy start at the one month mark, I don't consider suspicion of a 30 day trial to be overly cautious.

What are the early signs of scurvy? I didn't see mention of that in the Vice article.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#235

Post by eclipxe »

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…

iterating on the beta, transactional eating, exponentially better way, etc.

Give me a break.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#236

Post by obstacle1 »

lowboy wrote: post #72
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…

A scam? Hardly. The only "scammy" thing was overreaching claims about how it's "optimized perfectly" and the like. And from what I've heard, they've toned that down. We haven't cracked the human body, but there is science that supports Soylent.

>there is science that supports Soylent.

Since you made the claim, what specifically is the science that supports Soylent? I assume you can provide references to peer-reviewed stuff, given the nature of your claim, and I look forward to reading it.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#237

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#238

Post by jlgreco »

ogreyonder wrote: post #144
moocowduckquack wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be related to the rat.

You might be a literate orangutan. Figured I'd join in on the speculation while it's fresh.

His speculation seems more than fair, since we know they at least had a rat problem.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#239

Post by ebiester »

timr wrote: post #129
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…

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".

The disruption is the prep work and cleanup. I dream of a kitchen in a way that cleanup takes less than three minutes and my veg is uniformly chopped for me while I'm on my way home. (I'm quite capable of doing each, but I'm slow, and getting my mise en place takes far too long.)

That leads to me only cooking on weekends when I don't have anything going on. I'm a good cook, but by the time the brussel sprouts are roasted or the vegetable soup is coming together, we've eaten and I've cleaned up, I only have 2 hours before I have to sleep.

Disruption would be fixing that problem, not teaching people they should cook for themselves. (And it's similar for working class poor people, but compounded by the realities of working two jobs and raising children on a limited budged.)

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#240

Post by timr »

tolmasky wrote: post #199
timr wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

My main point was simply that I find it strange that people criticize Soylent for a problem that in my mind already exists in a worse form. I myself am a "real food" advocate -- I just think its silly to think that Soylent will bring about the "food dystopia", and if it does, it will be no worse than our current food dystopia.

I don't know about "food dystopia", and I don't generally concern myself with other people's poor choices, unless it directly impacts my life. I really, truly don't care what Soylent does. I'm not the target market, and I'll never consume it.

That said, Soylent falls in the sort of nerd lifestyle myopia that I find frustrating, and I admit to being genuinely puzzled by the buzz around the thing (I suspect that's where most of the hype comes from, actually -- not genuine interest, so much as curiosity). But when I hear the creator talking about replacing all food or providing cheap nutrition to the poor, I just get depressed: our aim should be higher than this. Disruption that intends to replace our food with flavorless goo is a disruption not worth having.

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