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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

#211
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 we…

Milk cannot not be liquid protein product by almost any sane definition. It has more fat and more carbohydrates per gram than protein.

Most protein products have substantial amounts of carbs and fat. The point is not - unless you are buying pure protein products or "diet" protein shakes for cutting - to avoid carbs and fat, but to get more protein.

It is far easier to stomach large amounts of protein (due to taste and consistency) when mixed with a lot of carbs than alone, and unless you're cutting you generally need a lot of carbs too when training hard, so there's little incentive for most general protein supplements to keep carbs down.

In fact, there are a large number of protein supplements on the market where the majority of calories comes from carbs and fat, and many will have more carbs alone by weight than protein (many often also are specifically advertised for weight gain / bulking).

They are still commonly referred to as protein products because the main basis for calling something a protein supplement amongst suppliers and people using them is generally large amounts of protein, not low amounts of carbs and fats. (And yes, that means some of them - intentionally - have massive amounts of calories)

You also probably talk about "pure" milk, but there's also a number of milk products on the market that are milk + extra casein extracted from milk, for very high protein concentrations - my favourite has about 40g of protein per 300ml; you are free to not accept that as "milk", but it tastes like milk and is generally marketed as "protein milk" or similar.

But milk alone is also frequently used by weight lifters for the decent protein content and good ration of protein, carbs and fat (a well known "supplemental diet" for bulking for lifters is called GOMAD: Gallon Of Milk A Day)

The main point being that large amounts of protein is being ingested in liquid form every day all around the world, and has been for decades, and we're not seeing mass deaths.

Barring actual evidence to the contrary, there's very little reason to believe that the deaths referenced in the article had anything to do with getting "liquid protein", and very good reasons to believe it was hysteria.

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

#212
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…

Imagine that there was a drug that reduced your renal function by 25% in two weeks.[1] People will see in this what they want to see. This is why case reports are evidence of the lowest grade. This is more a curio than it is evidence, and there is nothing wrong with writing a blog post about a curio. 1 = I think the creatinine bump is quite likely due to stochastic fluctuation, but if for discussion's sake we attribu…

As my doctor pointed out to me when I warned her to expect significantly elevated creatinine because of my protein supplementation: Raised creatinine in itself is not a "negative". Substantially raised creatinine may be a symptom of reduced renal function, but it is also a symptom of any number of other things - such as, indeed, increased protein intake.

It could be just fluctuating in his case, or it could very well be, given his past diet (how could he survive on that), that he was finally getting decent amounts of protein.

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

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the big deal? What this guy is eating already is definitely above average in quality. A Chipotle burrito bol (fresh whole ingredients, sans tortilla) is a legit meal. Other than dental impacts from the carbonation, health hysteria about diet soda and aspartame has been debunked. I don't know about the take-out Thai, but at least it's real food and not some preservative-laden packaged food product from the groc…

One burrito bowl can contain something like 75% of your daily sodium intake. The calorie:vitamin ratio is also terrible. Go play around with their nutrition calculator [1]. It's fast food. [1] - http://www.chipotle.com/en-us/menu/nutrition_calculator/nutr...

Unless you're at high risk of a heart attack or totally dehydrated, negative health effects of high sodium are almost entirely negligible.

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

#214

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…

I'm sorry, but you've collected no data, only noise. Eating rice for 2 weeks would have produced similar effects. As to your subjective experience – it's probably 100% placebo.

If you want to call something an experiment, you should know how to conduct an experiment in that respective field. Your experiences only show how a product like Soylent induces magical thinking in its consumers.

If you want to produce a single data point with Soylent (that would hardly be relevant, as it would be a sampling size of one, but still, it would be one sampling of data rather than zero), eat nothing but Soylent for at least 6 months.

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

#215
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This Soylent thing is literally the SV techie equivalent of those "This School Teacher(tm) found one weird trick to [BLANK]... [BLANKERS] hate her!" advertisements that we all like to make fun of. Why do those ads use "school teachers"? Because it is relatable to the target audience and sufficiently anti-authoritarian that they don't question the credentials.

Well it's like that story of Colonel H. McMaster, who DID technically find "one weird trick", and the Army DID pass him over for promotions, etc... I'm not for or against Soylent, and I usually find this kind of advertising annoying, but it's also entirely possible that people further down the chain of command in any system discover things that people higher-up won't or can't. That's part of the entire premise of why…

Re McMasters - I think the parent refers to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._R._McMaster and the change from daily location in Tal Afar to permanent location there.

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

#216
I'll keep bumping my open source, whole food, cheaper alternative as long as soylent remains popular. I've been using this as about 40% of my calories for about a year now and my blood panel numbers are great.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjA38cUd4BZBdGZ...

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

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 alwa…

Well, they can't use a placebo for that, you'll starve the placebo group.

You could provide a different meal replacement powder and compare the results (provided the subjects don't know which one looks like what)

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

#218
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine that there was a drug that reduced your renal function by 25% in two weeks.[1] People will see in this what they want to see. This is why case reports are evidence of the lowest grade. This is more a curio than it is evidence, and there is nothing wrong with writing a blog post about a curio. 1 = I think the creatinine bump is quite likely due to stochastic fluctuation, but if for discussion's sake we attribu…

As my doctor pointed out to me when I warned her to expect significantly elevated creatinine because of my protein supplementation: Raised creatinine in itself is not a "negative". Substantially raised creatinine may be a symptom of reduced renal function, but it is also a symptom of any number of other things - such as, indeed, increased protein intake. It could be just fluctuating in his case, or it could very well…

I think you might be thinking of BUN.

For creatinine, there is peer-reviewed data demonstrating that in people without renal disease, increasing the protein in your diet tends to improve your eGFR, not decrease it (which is what happened here). So for him, it either fluctuated or was a marker of true kidney disease, but in any case this is not just a marker of adequate protein intake.

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

#219
post #35

The guy claim himself to be a "mildly out of shape 28 year old", and then state: "I consider myself a pretty health-conscious person. No alcohol. No meat. Slow-carbs when possible. Run three miles, three times a week. Pull-ups, push-ups on the days I don’t run" which indicates he's more active than 90% of the population (I just made that stat up) I was irritated from that point on-wards.

You stopped too late. The whole post is a farce. Take the title When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks . I've actually done this. I mean, stopped eating aside from water for weeks, and it's really no big deal. The body is designed for that kind of privation. He's just some yuppie going for page views without a discernible reason, unless he's marketing for blah-blah-blah health tonic.

>I mean, stopped eating aside from water for weeks, and it's really no big deal. The body is designed for that kind of privation. //

I've fasted for 2 days. I felt weak, dizzy and unwell on the second day (yes I had plenty of water). I was unable to do normal activities. It was a big deal.

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

#220
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As my doctor pointed out to me when I warned her to expect significantly elevated creatinine because of my protein supplementation: Raised creatinine in itself is not a "negative". Substantially raised creatinine may be a symptom of reduced renal function, but it is also a symptom of any number of other things - such as, indeed, increased protein intake. It could be just fluctuating in his case, or it could very well…

I think you might be thinking of BUN. For creatinine, there is peer-reviewed data demonstrating that in people without renal disease, increasing the protein in your diet tends to improve your eGFR, not decrease it (which is what happened here). So for him, it either fluctuated or was a marker of true kidney disease, but in any case this is not just a marker of adequate protein intake.

Neither. I'm talking of creatinine levels in the blood, and my doctor was also very clear on that, and that it wasn't normally a concern at the levels she would expect to see from protein supplementation, but if it was too high, she'd need to establish filtration rate to rule out renal problems.

Also, while you may very well be right that GFR would improve, the little bits of reading I've had time to do indicates that unless they did eGFR by measuring his urine over 24 hours, then they likely estimated it from his creatinine levels, and so anything increasing creatinine levels would presumably cause the eGFR value to drop whether or not the increased creatinine levels are due to renal function or anything else.

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