Why is it so easy to make a food that dogs and cats can eat for every meal but so difficult for humans? Anyone know?
Soylent Month Three
181–190 of 207 posts
Re: Soylent Month Three
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
So the way I look at this critique is that most people in the US are running a parallel experiment with their bodies, only instead of the input being Soylent, it's garbage like fast food. It's true, we don't understand how the human body operates - whether you're eating McDonald's, or organic, or Soylent. So given that the baseline seems to be an equally untested and probably more detrimental food choice, this comple…
If proper studies were done on this, we could actually know if it is better or worse than burgers and pizza. From what I know of how the human body works (serious amateur interest), I'm exceedingly doubtful. I really believe the combination of long-term liquid diet and an extreme uniformity of diet will be the cause of significant health problems. I also think we will find a bunch of "nanonutrients" that are critical…
> There is no easy answer today for nutrition. If there was, the thousands of food technicians working everywhere from universities to food companies to NASA and the military would have already come up with it. They all have compelling reasons to try.
You have to start somewhere[1]...
[1]: http://xkcd.com/397/
Re: Soylent Month Three
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 vitam…
Nothing stops you from using a lipophile solvent rather than a hydrophile in preparing these dilutions.
Re: Soylent Month Three
#184He missed the sixth most abundant element in the human body, and, now that it's there, he is sure everything is OK? I can only say, "Wow". I really believe that if an actual scientific study[1] was done on this, it would rank right next to a pure fast food diet. It's not that it isn't theoretically possible to make something that is "perfect" nutrition, it's that we don't know enough today to say definitively whether…
Overreaction.
I'd take the drink over the junk an average American eats any day. I'd take it over my own well researched eating regime every other day if it seemed to be working for me.
You underestimate the power of self experimentation. With a drug which if you took 40x the daily dose you might die, or a drug that might cause significant harmful side effects at normal dose, you need careful studies to prove a benefit and quantify risks. With a dietary change, the risks are orders of magnitude lower. I'd be surprised if the average American wouldn't improve their nutritional status doing this for a while, with an existing diet likely low in magnesium, copper, zinc, vitamin c and d and probably more.
Re: Soylent Month Three
#185I'm really surprised by people who act like this is some kind of new or novel idea. Meal replacements have been around for a very, very long time. There are some really common ones you can buy at any grocery store, such as Ensure. Want to replace a meal with something similar? Throw some milk, oats, protein powder and peanut butter in a blender. Drink it down with a multi-vitamin and a fish oil capsule or two.
> I'm really surprised by people who act like this is some kind of new or novel idea. Meal replacements have been around for a very, very long time. There are some really common ones you can buy at any grocery store, such as Ensure.
I read something yesterday that summed this up pretty much perfectly.
If there's more than one of something, it means that it wasn't done right the first time. See: Cars, Computers, Telephones, Light Bulbs, etc...
Re: Soylent Month Three
#186I get lost in my work/play quite a bit and often forget about meals. I'd definitely be interested in trying soylent simply as a meal replacement, especially if ingestion/preparation of it is quick enough not to break my workflow.
You are looking for a product called Ensure. You can find it in every mini-mart in the country. It has actually been scientifically developed and tested as a meal replacement and is based on real research by people who know what they are talking about rather than one guy who is making a lot of guesses...
Except that it's really, really expensive per-calorie.
Re: Soylent Month Three
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
"No one in the United States plows fields or hammers steel [by hand]." Wow, talk about being disconnected from reality.
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…
There are still a lot of blue-collar workers.
Re: Soylent Month Three
#188He missed the sixth most abundant element in the human body, and, now that it's there, he is sure everything is OK? I can only say, "Wow". I really believe that if an actual scientific study[1] was done on this, it would rank right next to a pure fast food diet. It's not that it isn't theoretically possible to make something that is "perfect" nutrition, it's that we don't know enough today to say definitively whether…
Overreaction. I'd take the drink over the junk an average American eats any day. I'd take it over my own well researched eating regime every other day if it seemed to be working for me. You underestimate the power of self experimentation. With a drug which if you took 40x the daily dose you might die, or a drug that might cause significant harmful side effects at normal dose, you need careful studies to prove a benef…
I'd take the drink over the junk an average American eats any day.
Me too. But just because junk food is worse, does not mean this is good. I for one would not take this over: Eat food, mostly plants, get exercise and lots of sleep.
Re: Soylent Month Three
#189* “Bacon is high in Oleic acid, the principal component of adipose (fat) tissue so it is great for increasing body fat.[...] By the way, an acid is anything that donates protons. Only a few have corrosive properties like sulfuric acid, and bases can be corrosive too.”
So now I'm thinking, ‘does this guy even know what fats are, or how fat digestion, assimilation and metabolism works?’.
* “We no longer live in a hunter-gatherer society. I have no use for bulging biceps. No one in the United States plows fields or hammers steel. It has all been automated. We need mental strength.”
Well, y'know, that's true until you're caught in a car accident, or a bombing, or a fight, or any kind of natural disaster which actually tests your ability to survive. It's simplistic and naïve to suggest that we've evolved beyond the need to even try to survive.
* “If people had more self-control obesity would take care of itself.”
There's just so much incorrectness here, I don't know where to start.
- - -
Anyone can go ahead and try an experiment like this for themselves, and I support their right to document and share the experience. But seriously, anyone ignorant enough to try subsisting 100% on this 'soylent' concoction, in its current or future form, deserves all the health problems that await them.
Re: Soylent Month Three
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
A croissant is also about the most amount of butter you can possibly fit into a pastry.
I think that dubious honour probably belongs to the "buttery" from North East Scotland: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttery_%28bread%29 They are basically lumps of butter and salt held together with a trace amount of flour. The versions available from mainstream stores (e.g. M&S) or from recipes online are fairly tame - for the real effect they need to be purchased from a small local baker in some remote fishing vil…
You'd be hard pushed to find a buttery actually made of butter these days. Even the local bakers are using vegetable oil and fat. Still, they are beautiful, flaky rolls of salty tastiness.