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Soylent Month Three

robrhinehart.com

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Re: Soylent Month Three

#131

Post by NuZZ »

corresation wrote: post #110
orclev wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He isn't pushing it as a product, he asked for volunteers to help test its suitability as a food substitute. This is research, not marketing.

He isn't pushing it as a product Everything has been pivoting into a kickstarter campaign. He is trying to turn this into a business. Which is all very weird. There are a number of "nutritionally complete" meal supplements on the market. I do not understand why this particular one, with rather quackish supporting claims, gets attention here.

I think if you thought about it for a moment you would realize that he is appealing to the concept of hacking. In this case, hacking diet, something everyone on this site can relate to. This is why it gets attention.

I'm on the fence as to whether I'll to wait and see how this turns out, with his volenteer base or to even hit up the Kickstarter to try it myself, as I personally am at a pivot point where I could change my diet significantly and benefit. If Soylent proves the easy route, so be it.

I also believe a lot of us are just curious.

Re: Soylent Month Three

#132

Post by calinet6 »

"Practically everything has gotten better over the past century but food has gotten worse."

I highly disagree. Food as an art form and as a science has gotten leagues better since 1913. Probably several orders of magnitude in whatever you're measuring.

Except the French. They had it right the whole time.

If you look at the extremes, the negative side of food has gone from shit (literally) to shit (figuratively) so not much change there either.

Re: Soylent Month Three

#133

Post by o0-0o »

calinet6 wrote: post #132

"Practically everything has gotten better over the past century but food has gotten worse." I highly disagree. Food as an art form and as a science has gotten leagues better since 1913. Probably several orders of magnitude in whatever you're measuring. Except the French. They had it right the whole time. If you look at the extremes, the negative side of food has gone from shit (literally) to shit (figuratively) so no…

Have you tasted frog legs?

Re: Soylent Month Three

#134

Post by pbreit »

huhtenberg wrote: post #2

At the risk of stating the obvious - this is all good and the experiment he's running is very interesting, but - no. I really like eating tasty food. Not for the nutrients, but for the experience. Similarly to how I really like sleeping in a comfortable bed and taking a hot shower daily even though, technically, I can rest as well on a bare floor and shower once a week. To each his own, but some things are just too u…

You might not have read the whole post but the OP mentions that he's now enjoying the regular food experience more than ever.

Re: Soylent Month Three

#135

Post by epmatsw »

rdouble wrote: post #57
epmatsw wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question, is there a truly significant portion of American agriculture that is based on plowing by hand? I was under the impression that most food comes from commercial-level farms that use machinery to plow. My dad works on a pretty small farm, and they definitely don't do anything by hand at this point. I suppose that you could be referring to people who garden as a hobby, but I don't know if I'd count that…

Plowing is not done by hand but picking is. Sugar beet field weeding used to be done by teams of migrant workers with handheld hoes. I think they've figured out how to not have the weeds in the first place with better pesticides. Most fruits and vegetables are picked by hand.

Makes sense. I guess I just was imagining corn and grains, stuff that seems like it'd be easy to pick mechanically. Didn't really think about stuff like beets. Thanks for the answer though!

Re: Soylent Month Three

#136

Post by antoko »

XorNot wrote: post #119
nbdbvcrea wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be most concerned about overdosing some vitamin or mineral powder, taken in miligram range. Just one pinch can cause serious and painful injury. Will it always be mixed evenly?

Presumably this is a problem that's been long-solved in scale up manufacture, and something you should just be concerned with on the small scale. Generally though - yes - anything water-soluble is pretty easy to get very controlled concentrations of, since you can dilute until your in the operating range of your weighing machine.

I'm not much of a biologist and I may just be spouting what I've heard in the past, but I think all the water soluble vitamins and such are totally safe and impossible to OD on, it is the fat-soluble ones where there's the potential to OD.

EDIT: Mostly correct! Fat-soluble vitamins build up in the fatty tissues and are much slower to release and are almost always responsible for Vitamin Poisoning, water-soluble vitamins are easily excreted in the obvious way.

There are exceptions though, you can overdose on some of the B vitamins which are water-soluble, I didn't follow up to find out why that is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_poisoning

Re: Soylent Month Three

#137

Post by orclev »

corresation wrote: post #110
orclev wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He isn't pushing it as a product, he asked for volunteers to help test its suitability as a food substitute. This is research, not marketing.

He isn't pushing it as a product Everything has been pivoting into a kickstarter campaign. He is trying to turn this into a business. Which is all very weird. There are a number of "nutritionally complete" meal supplements on the market. I do not understand why this particular one, with rather quackish supporting claims, gets attention here.

Well, since he hasn't actually made the kickstarter page we can't tell his true intentions, however the statements he has made previously are that the purpose of the kickstarter campaign is to fund a larger study than the limited local volunteer population he's currently using. The goal is of course to eventually make a commercial product ASSUMING that the research doesn't uncover some kind of insurmountable problem. So yes, this is still research, but the hope is that given some more time it might eventually lead to a product. I know I'm certainly hoping for it, and I'd probably contribute to the kickstarter in the hopes that it bears fruit, and I believe it will based on the results he's achieved so far.

At the end of the day, this is all still experimental, caveat emptor and all that, but everything I've seen so far suggests to me soylent can't possibly be any worse than the garbage served at any number of fast-food restaurants every day.

As for the "nutritionally complete" meal supplements, I think that you can find your answer in the last word of that, "supplement". None of the various "food shakes" that are available commercially are designed to be truly nutritionally complete, rather they're designed to include some of the vitamins and minerals that tend to be lacking in the average diet. Further they tend to be a "one size fits all" affair which out of necessity will be less than optimal for nearly everyone in an attempt to be marginally useful to everyone.

Re: Soylent Month Three

#139

Post by [deleted] »

abstractbill wrote: post #62
rdouble wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plowing is not done by hand but picking is. Sugar beet field weeding used to be done by teams of migrant workers with handheld hoes. I think they've figured out how to not have the weeds in the first place with better pesticides. Most fruits and vegetables are picked by hand.

You don't need big muscles to pick fruits and vegetables though, just endurance (I've done it for a couple of summers as a job).

[deleted]
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