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Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks

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Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks

#181

Post by Blahah »

marze wrote: post #130
nonchalance wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your aim is for improved mental function, more energy, less health problems, etc., you don't need to know how to interpret any obscure tests. You'll know. Perception is different from reality, as exemplified by an Apple anecdote: http://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html We’ve done a cool $50 million of R & D on the Apple Human Interface. We discovered, among other things, two pertinent facts: - Test s…

No doubt people can misjudge things. With health changes, I think it is often easier to see changes in the negative direction, like the author when he stopped the soylent trial. If the changes are great enough in magnitude to be obvious, then you know you're on to something. Also, measures like weight and computer mental agility tests can be quite reliable if you are consistent in your testing, and they aren't subjec…

'and they aren't subject to misinterpretation or wishful thinking.' ... right, and we have no way of knowing whether they are.

This is exactly why we have science: people have prior beliefs that affect how they perceive the thing they're trying to measure. People cannot objectively judge their own health in response to a variable. There are thousands of placebo studies that demonstrate this.

Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks

#182

Post by dagw »

samstave wrote: post #142
jacques_chester wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funnily enough, that's the whole pitch for Soylent. "I'm just a smart guy with a fresh pair of eyes who spent a few weekends reading undergrad textbooks and skimming pubmed". Not: "we're a large company with deeply-interested professionals who've made this their life's work, our own multi-million dollar labs and decades of accumulated experience in the development, testing, validation and manufacture of temporary foo…

While I have no ability to judge the veracity of the claims of Soylent.me -- let me tell you the only reason I am hopeful it works is for the same reason Jobs only wore black turtle-necks and jeans: simplicity. I want to be able to take a good fuel for my body and indulge in great food whenever I want. I want to be able to back-pack for a week with only a 4-pound food supply.

I want to be able to back-pack for a week with only a 4-pound food supply.

That's doable already. 4-pounds of dehydrated food will last you a week, and has the advantage that you get to eat something different for every meal.

Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks

#183

Post by vidarh »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #147
nonchalance wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your aim is for improved mental function, more energy, less health problems, etc., you don't need to know how to interpret any obscure tests. You'll know. Perception is different from reality, as exemplified by an Apple anecdote: http://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html We’ve done a cool $50 million of R & D on the Apple Human Interface. We discovered, among other things, two pertinent facts: - Test s…

>This contradiction between user-experience and reality apparently forms the basis for many user/developers’ belief that the keyboard is faster. Interesting article. I'm sure the $50M in studies were of non-power users, though, and so irrelevant for developers with sufficiently powerful keyboard shortcuts. I can guarantee it doesn't take me 2 seconds for my top 20 keyboard shortcuts, any more than it takes 2 seconds…

> I can guarantee it doesn't take me 2 seconds for my top 20 keyboard shortcuts,

From observing developers I've worked with over the years, I doubt most developers know more keyboard shortcuts than "normal people".

In fact, I've come to realise just how appallingly bad most of us are at using our tools.

Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks

#184

Post by ekianjo »

marze wrote: post #84
alphaoverlord wrote: post #9

I'm all for people having the freedom to eat whatever they want and I really like the quantified self aspect of seeing how diet affects how they feel and metrics of health, but I have to say the author grossly does not understand the medical tests he had done and misinterprets the data. I'm not going to comment on the drink, but rather on his misunderstanding of medicine. First, EGFR is not "Epidermal Growth Factor R…

Nice job missing the forest but spotting a few trees. I see some promising initial signs given the short duration of the trial. Imagine if there was a new drug that gave the mental benefits the guy reported after two weeks of use and saved you money too. It would be front page news. The guy doesn't claim to be a medical expert, he just did his best to report the results of a bunch of miscellaneous tests that were sug…

> Imagine if there was a new drug that gave the mental benefits the guy reported after two weeks of use and saved you money too. It would be front page news.

Benefits are not self-assessed for drugs.

Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks

#185

Post by rdl »

What I don't get about all the criticism of Soylent is that people seem to be comparing it to a perfect diet of conventional food -- the most likely alternative for most of the users is far worse than that, and probably worse than even the most naive form of Soylent.

I'd love to try something like Soylent when away from my kitchen for weeks at a time. I'm going to be in the Nevada desert for two weeks doing something I enjoy (NOT Burning Man! A bunch of shotgun/pistol classes at Frontsight next month!), and not having to deal with food when waking up at 0430 and going to bed at 2230 every day would be really nice. It looks a bit too heavy on carbs and too light on protein for my taste, but it wouldn't be hard to cut it with protein powder or something.

The biggest practical problem I see is "tastes best at (As it is, the most practical thing for me is probably beef jerky, fiber and vitamin pills, lots of water, and a few trips to steakhouses. Maybe some Capriotti's sandwiches in a cooler.)

Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks

#186

Post by rdl »

tocomment wrote: post #14
cup wrote: post #6

Soylent aside, im amazed at how terrible his traditional normal days meal is? I mean hes eating a processed breakfast subsitute in the morning, take away mexican food with a soft drink for lunch and more take away for dinner. You don't need to be a nutritionist to know thats going to have a terrible impact on his life later down the track. Postnote: Now that Ive read the whole article, I wonder if all the benefits he…

Is a protien shake for breakfast really that bad? I have not been able to find a breakfast food that's quick, tastes ok, and isn't high in carbs.

Pre-cooked bacon (ideally, that you cook yourself and just throw into the fridge). Eggs, if you want to bother cooking at all. Pre-cooked bacon can be eaten alone, or put on a salad, or whatever.

Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks

#187

Post by ekianjo »

shanedanger wrote: post #122
alphaoverlord wrote: post #9

I'm all for people having the freedom to eat whatever they want and I really like the quantified self aspect of seeing how diet affects how they feel and metrics of health, but I have to say the author grossly does not understand the medical tests he had done and misinterprets the data. I'm not going to comment on the drink, but rather on his misunderstanding of medicine. First, EGFR is not "Epidermal Growth Factor R…

"the author grossly does not understand the medical tests he had done and misinterprets the data" As the author himself, I can corroborate your statement that I don't understand medical tests as well as a trained physician. :) However, the point of the post was to present the data so others could interpret / draw conclusions. I gave my observations and perspective, but I made every attempt to indicate the potential w…

You did not mention the placebo effect though. That's the largest weakness of such an experiment. Your brain may be convinced (without you being strictly conscious about it) that Soylent is good for you and trigger all kind of benefits that you assessed yourself.

That's why clinical trials are running in double-blind modes, to remove as much as possible the placebo effect. A self-assessed experiment is, and will always be, meaningless.

Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks

#188

Post by rdl »

jlgreco wrote: post #87
md224 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll just say this: I hate cooking, and ordering delivery every night, while easy, isn't ideal (cost, etc.). Eating delicious, real food every once in a while is a great treat, but why the hell do I have to put so much energy into this ritual of choosing/preparing/acquiring meals every single day of my life ? Sometimes I just don't want to be hungry, and I don't really care how I get not-hungry. I'm withholding judge…

Buy a crate of MREs.

Converting a sealed MRE to food is actually more hassle than cooking ramen or opening a can/pouch of tuna or microwaving frozen food. The ration heaters are a huge pain if you're in a civilized environment; you don't really want to use them indoors due to H2 gas.

(I only ever ate MREs in transit, and at most for ~10 meals in a row. My preferred strategy was to eat the main antree "cold" (I only got them in 90F+ weather, so they were plenty warm), maybe the candy (if it was the carmels, or I think M&Ms), pocket the little bottle of tabasco for future bloody mary use, and give away or trash the rest. Otherwise, far too much hassle. Given the choice, the tuna pouches from the PX were 10x superior, even if I had to pay for them, especially if I had some packets of mustard and relish and salt and pepper).

Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks

#189

Post by vidarh »

stephenbez wrote: post #141
marze wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice job missing the forest but spotting a few trees. I see some promising initial signs given the short duration of the trial. Imagine if there was a new drug that gave the mental benefits the guy reported after two weeks of use and saved you money too. It would be front page news. The guy doesn't claim to be a medical expert, he just did his best to report the results of a bunch of miscellaneous tests that were sug…

From this NYTimes article ( http://www.nytimes.com/1986/09/07/business/the-ever-fatter-b... ): "The Government forced all liquid protein products off the market after they were implicated in 59 deaths." The article doesn't give many details, but it looks like changes in diet can be dangerous.

No, it looks like people can be scared by correlation.

Of course changes in diet can be dangerous (you just try switching to an all cyanide diet).

But "liquid protein products"? Like milk? Or protein shakes? There are certainly plenty of "liquid protein products" on the market, and heavily used, and tons more protein products sold as powders to be mixed with water, milk or juice by consumers.

Somehow we don't have weightlifters dropping like flies.

Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks

#190

Post by [deleted] »

jacques_chester wrote: post #51
w1ntermute wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the best parts about this whole Soylent debacle is getting to watch well-known people make complete fools of themselves by commenting on things that they clearly know absolutely nothing about, but still feel like they have the right to make authoritative statements on.

Funnily enough, that's the whole pitch for Soylent. "I'm just a smart guy with a fresh pair of eyes who spent a few weekends reading undergrad textbooks and skimming pubmed". Not: "we're a large company with deeply-interested professionals who've made this their life's work, our own multi-million dollar labs and decades of accumulated experience in the development, testing, validation and manufacture of temporary foo…

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